What Hezbollah Is Thinking

By all accounts and measures, Hezbollah, since the 2006 war with Israel, has dramatically strengthened their position in Lebanon. On the military front, they've developed a long-range weapons capability and restocked their missile arsenal; politically, they've been able to stymie the formation of a government in Lebanon for months, despite the win of the March 14th coalition early this summer.

Hezbollah has long worried about the potential for internal division or the emergence of various break-off factions. As Hassan Nasrallah himself has repeatedly argued, such division is the greatest threat that the movement faces - more so, even, than that of Israel's army. This lesson was driven home to Hezbollah's leadership late during the Lebanese civil war when the Shiite Amal party and Hezbollah militants engaged in a vicious inter-Shia conflict. The dispute caused the focus to shift away from the party's overarching goal, that of fighting the Israeli occupation, and led to a significant reduction in attacks on Israeli forces.

These days, however, as Nicholas Noe argues in the Palestine Chronicle, the "specter of internal division" has receded from Hezbollah's vision and they are now focusing their attention more squarely on Israel. While their domestic position is obviously not entirely secure, Hezbollah is looking increasingly confident. Noe suggests that Hezbollah is convinced that another conflict with their Jewish neighbor is right on the horizon -- thus, all the reports about re-arming and expanding their missile capabilities that we've seen in recent weeks. But Hezbollah is not only confident that another war is in the offing, they also believe that they can win it - even more decisively than they won the July 2006 war. Noe writes:

The overwhelming sentiment within the party seems to be that a confrontation is not only inevitable, but that when it comes it will finally lead to the total collapse of Israel. This means, above all else, that the relative quiet of the past few years has not brought restored Israeli deterrence, but instead the deferment of a conflict that Hizballah feels vastly more secure in waging.

Hezbollah, writes Noe, believes that what they're seeing in Israel is a kind of internal collapse of the state as evidenced by military failures, corruption scandals, heavy international pressure, and the "corrosive" effects of the occupation. Now armed to the teeth and eager to experiment with their new toys, Hezbollah looks ready - if not eager - for a fight. It's a fight that, according to Noe, Hezbollah believes will deal a decisive blow to Israel.

Joshua Landis, the Syria expert over at the University of Oklahoma, contests Noe's theory about Hezbollah's burgeoning confidence.

It is hard to believe Hizbullah is really as confident as [Noe suggests.] Certainly, “the resistance,” and that includes Hamas and Syria, must do something. The ball is in their court. Israel has won, at least it would seem that way for the time being. What do I mean by won? The Gaza solution. Israel has defied Obama, who claims that only the two-state solution is viable. It has presented an alternative solution, the Gaza solution. By bombing Hizbullah hard and bombing Hamas hard Israel has mapped out a policy. It seems to be working. No Western power complained when Israel smashed Gaza, nor have they complained since. No Hizbullah attack in over 3 years and quite on the Gaza front as the population languishes in its tents – that is success of the starkest kind.

If the “resistance” does not respond within the year, there will be precious few remaining Israelis – or Westerner politicians for that matter – who will argue that concessions need to be made for peace. Hizbullah may talk a confident
game, but the Israelis have promised that Lebanon will be Gaza’ed if Hizbullah strikes. I believe them.

I largely agree with this. I am not sure I would take Hezbollah's bravado-filled public statements as an indication of what the movement really thinks. Nasrallah is trying to appeal and excite a domestic audience, and talking tough about Israel is a practiced method they've used many times before. That said, I would caution that Hezbollah's dramatic expansion of its missile arsenal is a big cause for worry - not just because of the practical application of these weapons, but because of the sense of adventurism and excitement that they must imbue in the movement's leadership. Time and time again, most notably in WWI, big arms build-ups have left leaders itching for a chance to test out their new toys. I fear that there might be a sense of this within Hezbollah as well.

That said, Nasrallah's circle is made up of pragmatists and I would be surprised if they were truly itching for the kind of conflict with Israel that Noe seems to suggest they are. Even though Hezbollah "won" the last round (by way of a draw), the Lebanese suffered many, many times more than did the Israelis. It's hard for me to believe they want to run that nightmere-ish scenario all over again, big guns or not.

Good News for Space Watchers

A Vanity Fair poll reveals that more Americans -- I kid you not -- think it more likely that life will be found in outer space than that peace will be achieved in the Middle East.

What Journalists Get Paid For

This exchange between the press and the State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, is truly a gem. I'm glad that there are still some journalists floating around in Washington that are willing to ask the tough questions. That said, credit to the journalists aside, I'm not happy to see it so clearly confirmed that George Mitchell is accomplishing a big bunch of nothing with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It actually sounds like he's getting a fairly good talking-to by the Israelis.

I am posting the full transcript here, which is long, but also impossible to just excerpt in brief. Every sentence is telling.
_________

QUESTION: On the peace process, Israel has approved today the construction of 900 new housing units in East Jerusalem. How do you view this approval at this specific time?

MR. KELLY: Well, I think, Michel, you've heard us say many times that we believe that neither party should engage in any kind of actions that could unilaterally preempt or appear to preempt negotiations. And I think that we find the Jerusalem Planning Committee's decision to move forward on the approval of the - approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem as dismaying.

This is at a time when we're working to re-launch negotiations, and we believe that these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed. So we object to this, and we object to other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes.

And - just to repeat what we've said all along, our position on Jerusalem is clear. We believe that the - that Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the two parties.

QUESTION: Can you tell us, did this come up in Ambassador Mitchell's meetings in London yesterday? Apparently, we were told that he met an advisor to Netanyahu, asked them to not permit these new buildings, and then that request was flatly turned down.

MR. KELLY: Yeah. Andy, I just don't want to get into the substance of these negotiations. They're sensitive. I think you've seen the Israeli - some Israeli press reports that did report that this was raised in the meetings. This is - I mean, these
kinds of unilateral actions are exactly the kind of actions that we think that both sides should refrain from at a time when we're trying to start the negotiations again. But I don't want to get into the substance of the discussions yesterday in London.

QUESTION: Would you steer us away from not believing the Israeli press reports?

MR. KELLY: I just don't want to get into the substance. I'm not going to steer you one way or the other on it.

QUESTION: Where's Senator Mitchell today?

QUESTION: How long is the U.S. going to continue to tolerate Israel's violation of international law? I mean, soon it's not even going to be possible - there's not going to be any land left for the Palestinians to establish an independent state.

MR. KELLY: Well, again, this is a - we understand the Israeli point of view about Jerusalem. But we think that all sides right now, at this time when we're expending such intense efforts to try and get the two sides to sit down, that we should refrain from these actions, like this decision to move forward on an approval process for more housing units in East Jerusalem.

QUESTION: But should U.S. inaction, or in response to Israel's actions, then be interpreted as some sort of about-face in policy - the President turning his back on the promises he's made to the Palestinians?

MR. KELLY: You're - okay, you're using language that I wouldn't use. I mean, again, our focus is to get these negotiations started. We're calling on both parties to refrain from actions, from - and from rhetoric that would impede this process. It's a challenging time, and we just need to focus on what's important here, and that's --

QUESTION: Well, what actions (inaudible) the Palestinians taken recently that would impede progress?

MR. KELLY: Well, as I say, we would discourage all unilateral actions, and I think --

QUESTION: Fair enough. But the Palestinians --

MR. KELLY: We talked yesterday --

QUESTION: -- don't appear to be taking any unilateral actions. It seems to be (inaudible).

MR. KELLY: Well, we did talk yesterday about the - and I want to make sure I get my language right here - about the - discouraging any kind of unilateral appeal for United Nations Security Council recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. That would fall in that category of unilateral actions.

QUESTION: Okay. So the Palestinian call for this, which was rejected by both the EU and yourself yesterday, you're putting that on the same level as them building - as the Israelis building --

MR. KELLY: No, I'm not saying that. You just said that, Matt. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that --

QUESTION: Well, you're saying you're calling on both sides to stop doing these things.

MR. KELLY: We are.

QUESTION: Yeah. But the rhetoric from the --

MR. KELLY: I'm not saying they're equivalent.

QUESTION: -- Palestinians is not actually constructed in a --

MR. KELLY: I'm not saying they're equivalent. I'm just saying that we - they - we have to treat these things as sensitive issues.

QUESTION: You said a little bit earlier that we understand the Israeli point of view on Jerusalem. Can you explain what you mean by that?

MR. KELLY: Well, you have to ask - I'm not going to stand up here and characterize
the Israeli point of view on --

QUESTION: No. I'm just asking you, if you understand the Israeli point of view on Jerusalem, why are you saying that this is not a good thing?

MR. KELLY: I'm not saying we support the Israeli point of view. We understand it.

QUESTION: Right. And then, last one on this, you characterized this decision by the planning commission as dismaying.

MR. KELLY: Yes.

QUESTION: You can't come up with anything stronger than "dismaying"? I mean, this flies in the face of everything you've been talking about for months and months and months.

MR. KELLY: It's dismaying.

QUESTION: Yeah, you can't offer a condemnation of it or anything like that? (Laughter.) I mean, who is in charge of the language here.

MR. KELLY: I have said what I have said, Mr. Lee. Yeah.

QUESTION: Would you say, though, that your own envoy has - does he have any leverage at this point, given the fact that the Israelis not only refuse, but blatantly have ignored his wishes on this?

MR. KELLY: Well, let's take a step back and let's also recognize that both sides agree on the goal, and that goal is a comprehensive peace. That goal is two states living side by side in peace and security and cooperation. So that is why we continue to be committed to this. That is why Special Envoy Mitchell meets with both sides at every opportunity, and why we are continuing to expend such efforts on this. So let's remember that, that we do share a common goal.

QUESTION: Well, where's Senator Mitchell today?

MR. KELLY: I believe Senator Mitchell is on his way back today.

QUESTION: Could you give us just a brief synopsis of the progress that Senator Mitchell has made in his months on the job?

MR. KELLY: Well, I think we have - we've gotten --

QUESTION: Yeah, maybe if the --

MR. KELLY: -- both sides to agree on this goal. We have gotten both sides --

QUESTION: Ian, they agreed on the goal years ago. I mean, that's not --

MR. KELLY: Well, I think that we - this government --

QUESTION: You mean you got the Israel Government to say, yes, we're willing to accept a Palestinian state? You got Netanyahu to say that, and that's his big accomplishment?

MR. KELLY: That is an accomplishment.

QUESTION: But previous Israeli administration - previous Israeli governments had agreed to that already.

MR. KELLY: Okay, all right.

QUESTION: So in other words, the bottom line is that, in the list of accomplishments that Mitchell has come up with or established since he started, is zero.

MR. KELLY: I wouldn't say zero.

QUESTION: Well, then what would you say it is?

MR. KELLY: Well, I would say that we've gotten both sides to commit to this goal. They have - we have - we've had a intensive round or rounds of negotiations, the President brought the two leaders together in New York. Look --

QUESTION: But wait, hold on. You haven't had any intense --

MR. KELLY: Obviously --

QUESTION: There haven't been any negotiations.

MR. KELLY: Obviously, we're not even in the red zone yet, okay.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MR. KELLY: I mean, we're not - but it's - we are less than a year into this Administration, and I think we've accomplished more over the last year than the previous administration did in eight years.

QUESTION: Well, I - really, because the previous administration actually had them sitting down talking to each other. You guys can't even get that far.

MR. KELLY: All right.

QUESTION: I'll drop it.

MR. KELLY: Give us a chance. Thank you, Matt. Yeah, in the back.

QUESTION: It seems Senator Mitchell is focusing in his meetings on the Israeli side. Is he - does he have any plans to talk with the Palestinians, or there is no need now for that?

MR. KELLY: Well, he, as I say, he had meetings yesterday with the Israelis. He's coming back to the U.S. now. He always stands ready to talk to both sides. There are no plans at this moment to meet with the Palestinian side.

_____________
The painful lack of a clear condemnation from the American side with regards to continued Israeli settlement destruction goes back to the argument that blogging colleague Noam Sheizaf made recently: that Washington just is not getting it. Saying that our side is "dismayed" is not going to cut it anymore. We start to look pretty bad when, as Sheizaf writes, "the president of the United States is practically being told to go to hell by some low level bureaucrats [in the Jerusalem Planning Committee]" and all we can come up with as a response is some bland statement to express our general concern.

I also want to make a note here about George Mitchell. Liberals are often criticized for putting too much faith in diplomacy, of supporting "talk for the sake of talk." Allow me clarify something: liberal internationalists support smart and calculated diplomacy. Mitchell is not engaged in anything of the kind. I know few serious foreign policy analysts who are on board with his 'talk big and carry no stick' style of diplomacy with regards to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But let's also be clear about something else. While Mitchell is catching a lot of flack for Washington's failure to restart peace negotiations and stop Israeli settlement expansion, it's President Obama that is ultimately to blame. The buck stops with the president himself, not his envoy. If there is no authorization from the White House for Mitchell to seriously engage with the Palestinian and Israeli leaders in a way that combines carrots with legitimate sticks, which there doesn't seem to be, Mitchell's task is doomed from the outset.

(Hat tip: Steve Clemons)

Recommended Reads

A few articles that we strongly suggest taking a look at:

-Eric Martin's astute piece at The Progressive Realist about the flawed and "irrational exuberance invested in the ability of counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) to solve any insoluble military/political conundrum."

-Mark Katz's excellent and detailed write-up on the various dimensions of the three-pronged crisis in Yemen.

-Noam Sheizaf's sharply-worded post -- entitled "OMG! The White House Is Dismayed! (How the US Continues to Get It All Wrong)" -- criticizing the American reaction to the latest decision by Israeli authorities to authorize an additional round of settlement construction.

Choosing the Right Broker

Consider me a critic of the talk that France might play the role of mediator in a renewed round of Syrian-Israeli peace negotiations. Coming on the heels of supportive comments to this effect from Netanyahu, who stated on Sunday his interest in French -- rather than Turkish -- mediation, and a successful visit to Paris by Syria's Bashar Al-Assad, the AP reports today that Sarkozy has expressed his willingness to take on such a role. But it should be clear why Israeli hard-liners would wish to see Paris get involved: Netanyahu's administration has stated categorically that it has no interest in ceding the Golan to the Syrians and bringing the French into the equation would ensure that they don't have to, at least not anytime in the near future.

At a first glance, it would not be unreasonable to think that France could be considered a relatively fair mediator (and therefore a good broker for peace) - Paris commands a certain degree of respect in Damascus and Sarkozy has worked to cultivate a more pro-Israel image since taking office. But being seen as a fair mediator is not enough. A Syrian-Israeli peace deal is going to involve pressure and incentives from a third-party actor à la the Camp David Accords. And the French hold none of the same cards that the Americans do. Engaging with the French, therefore, is a convenient way for the hard-line Israeli government to show the world that they are "working for peace" while ensuring that an actual agreement never takes shape.

Moreover, French mediation would undermine and stall the more viable American effort to restart these talks - an effort which, while still stuck in a preliminary phase, remains our best (and perhaps only) hope for progress on this track. And let's be clear: America's historic ties to Israel and its dominant role in the Middle East dwarfs that of France's. Syria certainly understands this, which is one of the reasons that they have long pushed for a central American role - and have gone along only skeptically with other mediation efforts.

For statesmen, it is difficult to give up an opportunity to play the "peacebroker." But sometimes it is better to just say no. Although it is admirable of Sarkozy to display his willingness to take on the role of mediator, the fact is that if he's truly interested in peace, he should reject the idea. It is much more likely to be Washington who ultimately secures this agreement than Paris. Under the circumstances then, it is probably better to not muddy the waters with new actors and competing peace efforts.

Grading the Strategy

Nathan Brown, over at Carnegie, notes that one of the central flaws of the Obama administration's strategy towards Israel-Palestine is that they have essentially recycled many of the ill-considered policies of the Bush era. These poor policy choices include:

• A "West Bank First" strategy that favors backing Palestinian moderates in the West Bank while largely ignoring the situation in Gaza.
• Putting our trust in just one or two Palestinian leaders (in this case, Salam Fayyad and Mahmoud Abbas) to deliver the goods on building a viable Palestinian state.
  
• Ignoring the fact that Palestinians "have domestic politics too." (Consider what happened when the US convinced Abbas to ignore the Goldstone Report.)
• Assuming that Israeli settlements are an important but nonetheless a "side issue."

To Brown's list of poor assumptions and failed policies, I would add:

• The belief that the Palestinians can engage in meaningful and legitimate negotiations without a unified Palestinian authority. (In other words, that negotiations can be restarted while at the same time the Cairo-led reconciliation process falls to pieces.)
  
• The neglect of the Israeli-Syrian track, and the failure to realize the importance of the Syrian role in influencing Hamas and the broader Palestinian peace process.
  
• The failure to put any serious, sustained pressure on the Israeli side that involves a legitimate threat of aid cuts and/or other diplomatic or economic punishments.
• The establishment of high-hopes for peace that are not backed by a comprehensive plan or sustained engagement from Washington.
  

All Bark and No Bite

Odd though it may sound, I am vaguely heartened by Obama's continued indecision on Afghanistan - not for what it reveals about his foreign policy strategy for the region, but for what it says about the internal decision-making process in the White House. Specifically, what it indicates is that there is a clear policy of review and debate that accompanies major decisions of this nature; moreover, Obama appears to be engaged in fundamentally examining the assumptions on which our current involvement in Afghanistan is based. This may seem only logical -- it is, after all, what presidents are supposed to do -- but there are many examples where prior presidents surrounded themselves with ideologues and yes-men and poor foreign policy blunders were the result. (Anyone in particular coming to mind?)

That said, weeks of discussion with his Cabinet and top military leaders has yet to fully drive home to Obama what he absolutely must understand about our involvement in Afghanistan: that it's Afghan politics that matter more than anything. The American military can't win this fight through guns alone. Oh, Obama's made statements to the effect that Karzai's administration needs to reform itself - but, as a NYT analysis piece notes today, there has been no "or else" threat. In other words, by failing to threaten a withdrawal of American troops -- perhaps the only serious leverage the Obama administration has over Karzai -- we have established no bargaining power for which to affect change.

White House officials acknowledged this week that they were not planning on using the ultimate cudgel: pulling all American troops. Such a step would certainly get Mr. Karzai’s attention — it might lead to his overthrow because his political survival is dependent on the presence of American troops.

...“What if Karzai doesn’t do what we ask and calls our bluff?” asked Richard Fontaine, a former foreign policy adviser to Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona.

White Phosphorus Over Gaza

A Syrian friend of mine sent me these images of Israeli use of white phosphorus in its attack early this year on Gaza.

Often used for illumination or providing smokescreens during a battle, white phosphorus is also highly flammable and can cause terrible burns on the bodies of those who come in contact with it. In Gaza, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, the use of this weapon has been well documented; Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have both issued reports on the subject. HRW, for its part, has documented how Israel choose not to use less damaging smoke shells and, in one example on January 15th, "even ignored repeated warnings from UN staff before hitting the main UN compound in Gaza with white phosphorus shells." The Guardian quotes a senior researcher at HRW, Fred Abrahams, as saying:

"In Gaza, the Israeli military didn't just use white phosphorus in open areas as a screen for its troops....It fired white phosphorus repeatedly over densely populated areas, even when its troops weren't in the area and safe smoke shells were available. As a result, civilians needlessly suffered and died."

Israel initially denied the use of white phosphorus, but has since launched an "internal military investigation." It goes without saying, but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting on the results of that inquiry. The pictures below illustrating the use of this weapon are some of the most vivid I have seen. I have taken out some of the more graphic and terrible shots of burn victims. (Credit for these photos goes to Mohammed Abed of the AFP.)

Obama's War

This piece is the first in a series of posts that I'll be writing over the coming weeks that look at our developing policy towards Afghanistan in a historical context, drawing from our involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.

You have to wonder about the extent to which Obama's developing strategy in Afghanistan is based not upon a comprehensive foreign policy plan, but on pure domestic political calculations. More bluntly, and at the risk of sounding sensationalist, are we considering an escalation in our involvement in Afghanistan in order to pass a health care bill or ensure Obama's re-election?

It's not entirely out of the question. Obama has, for better or worse, staked out this conflict as "his war." He has taken personal ownership of it. It's not the Afghans' war; it's Obama's. By tacitly admitting defeat, by acknowledging that the war is unwinnable, by pulling American troops out of Afghanistan, Obama would make himself the target of a barrage of criticism from Congress and from the media; he would be labeled a weak, ineffective, and even cowardly leader. Without a doubt, such accusations would severely undercut Obama's impressive domestic agenda, including his health care package, his immigration proposals, and his plan for heavy investment in infrastructure. Can a president, weakened by a debilitating foreign policy defeat, truly implement his domestic goals? In most cases, history shows us, the answer is a clear no.

So you have to wonder: Is Obama recommitting to this war because he truly believes we can win (despite the obvious signs that victory is nowhere in sight), or is he hedging his bets and agreeing to some modest troop increases in order to, in part, save his ambitious domestic agenda?

Lyndon Johnson, in the mid-1960s, faced this same dilemma. Remember, LBJ hated the Vietnam War. He hated the Cabinet meetings, the casualty reports, the protests from anti-war demonstrators, the public criticism, the body bags. In fact, Johnson was not much of a foreign policy practitioner; he had little eye for foreign affairs, as biographies about him indicate, and he had a poor understanding for history or cultural differences. It was domestic policy that he excelled at. But I would argue that while it is true that LBJ fundamentally worried about the effect that war might have in serving as a distraction from his Great Society agenda, he also realized that he had to look strong and appease certain constituencies in order to pass his desired legislation. In essence, crass though it may sound, it may be fair to say that Johnson traded American and Vietnamese lives overseas for Medicare and the Great Society at home.

Johnson believed, at least early in his presidency, that if he pulled out of Vietnam, he'd face a popular revolt from not only Republicans but also members of his own party, particularly hawkish southern Democrats. Attacked as a coward and a poor president, he would have little remaining political capital to push through civil rights legislation or any of the rest of his sweeping legislative plan. Is Obama engaged in a similar calculation? Like Johnson, is he preparing to sacrifice additional American lives in order to, in part, safeguard and bolster an ambitious domestic agenda? It is a question worth considering.


Photo credit: (Doug Mills/The New York Times/Redux)

Op-Ed Page as Farce

Had I been eating or drinking something when I ran across this Washington Times op-ed by Oliver North, I'm sure I would have very comically spit it out. As it was, I just stared agape at the computer screen for a minute until my retinas hurt and I had to blink.

In brief, North argues that, in trying to engage the Iranian regime, the Obama Administration is repeating the mistakes of Jimmy Carter, failing to recognize Tehran's implacable and slightly psychotic hatred of the West. He implies some truly bizarre things. He argues, for example, that the United States could have stopped the consolidation of the Iranian Revolution had the Carter Administration not "dithered" while Khomeini was consolidating power. How we could have done this isn't made clear (invasion? engineering a coup?), but many conservatives take Carter's "weakness" as prima facie obvious (allowing, as it does, for the Great Redeemer Reagan to come save the day), so the historical liberties probably won't matter much to his audience.

He also implies that, in the context of an immensely fluid political situation in an area of prime strategic importance, it would have been somehow unwise for the U.S. to try to develop an understanding with those coming to power in Tehran. That's just dumb. Iran was a key element of America's "twin pillars" strategy in the Persian Gulf, and losing one of those pillars (Saudi Arabia being the other) did indeed throw our whole Middle East policy out of whack. The fact that, largely for domestic reasons, the factions that won out in Iran had much more to gain by antagonizing the U.S. than they did by reaching an accomodation made such gestures futile, but that doesn't mean they weren't worth trying.

Finally, North argues that the Iranian regime today is basically identical to its original incarnation of thirty years ago. Also dumb. Iran sees itself as a rising power with genuine political conflicts with the regional status quo, but to argue that nothing has changed ignores large shifts (back and forth) in policy and rhetoric over the past few decades, as well as the structural damage done to the regime by its naked repression of those it purports to represent. Now, that's not to say that "engagement" right now is necessarily the right strategy. Reports indicate that (again likely for domestic reasons) the current political balance within Iran will make successful engagement extremely difficult, and it may indeed be time to change tacks, but the U.S. shouldn't do so based on essentialist logic and poor history.

More than anything, though, the fact that Oliver North, Oliver North is arguing about how dispicable this regime is and how useless diplomacy will be in dealing with it is so absurd as to border on art. Oliver North, you may remember, was at the center of the Iran-Contra scandal during the 1980s, where he masterminded the sale of missiles to Iran through Israeli middlemen in order to covertly fund right wing rebels in South America.

Why in the name of God would a newspaper, even one with the impeccable editorial standards of the Washington Times, give this man a voice on this particular subject?

Not A Clue

It has been a true disappointment to watch our Middle East strategy visibly collapse these last few weeks as American officials have steadily turned a blind eye to Israeli settlement building. To their credit, the Obama administration had initially, at least for several months, been relatively clear about the need for Israel to stop construction of additional housing units. That is, until recently, when the administration began to drop the ball on the issue and their tough line against settlements started to fade perceptibly.

Then came Hilary Clinton's statement this week that appeared to praise Netanyahu's "unprecedented" policy towards settlements. No surprise, the Arab world erupted in anger, assuming that her words were evidence of a new American policy towards Israel based upon a highly lenient view of additional settlement construction. By the time that Clinton got to Morocco on the next leg of her overseas tour, she was already being roundly criticized by Arab leaders as a flip-flopper.

Clinton has since "clarified" the statement, but her simple poor choice of an adjective went a long way to undermining the Arab world's trust in the new American leadership. Reader of the Arab press over the last few days get a clear sense of a broad feeling of disappointment on the part of many Arabs. Obama, people thought, what with his majestic speech in Cairo not long after his inauguration, was supposed to herald in a new era of diplomacy and sustained American engagement. He was supposed to be different.

In the context of this latest controversy, no one should be surprised that Arab leaders haven't more enthusiastically jumped on board to Obama's plan for solving the Israeli-Palestinian dispute - a plan that involves, for them, undertaking a range of good-faith measures towards Israel. Arabs have little faith in America's commitment to this issue; they know the history of our biased and spotty engagement. Why should they sacrifice politically, putting themselves on the chopping block of rabidly anti-Israeli domestic audiences, for an effort that -- like its predecessors -- is likely to fail because of Washington's lack of commitment? Clinton's latest statements, combined with the general lethargy of the Obama administration towards this issue in recent weeks, has done nothing but further discourage the kind of Arab participation that Washington so desperately wants.

Adding to the administration's troubles, a now-humiliated Mahmoud Abbas has said that he won't run for re-election in light of the lack of peace progress. Now, our primary Palestinian partner, Fatah, which had already been undermined politically when they were told to disregard the Goldstone Report, is looking shakier than ever. More generally, Palestinian moderates who argue that only dialogue and engagement with the Israelis will bring a just solution to the conflict are appearing increasingly weak in the face of militant Hamas supporters who point to signs of another failed peace initiative as an indication that negotiations are a dead end.

Meanwhile, our Secretary of State, exemplifying the poor leadership that she has exhibited on the Israel-Palestine issue, now seems to think that she can just give the Arabs more money to make them like us. On Tuesday, just as the settlement controversy was breaking, she unrolled a miserly initiative to give a few dollars to "vulnerable young people" in Jordan (alongside some other projects in the region.) Shockingly, this bold, dramatic new initiative got little attention in the press.

Memo to Clinton: want to curry favor in the Middle East? Then tell the Israelis to stop settlement construction and then threaten them with aid cuts if they don't do it. That will, I can guarantee it, be a much more fruitful public diplomacy effort.

Quick Hit: The Absurdity of Authoritarian Rule

This isn't the most analytical thing I've ever written, and maybe I'm just punch drunk from being up nights lately, but as deadly serious as the subject is, I couldn't help but laugh when I read the following bit in the Times about Iranian hard-liners' attempts to circumscribe demonstrations around the thirtieth anniversary of the taking of the American Embassy in Tehran:

No rallies would be permitted except the state-sanctioned ones outside the old embassy and anyone chanting anything except “death to America” would be arrested.

Again, I don't mean to make light of the very real crimes committed by a very repressive state, but stepping back, one has to appreciate the profound absurdity involved in choreographing support for authoritarian regimes. They've gone beyond the standard tactics of rounding up some supporters and putting implicit boundaries around the general gist of what they're supposed to express. They're quite literally demanding that people get together at a particular time and place and look REALLY EXCITED while reading from a meticulously prepared script. The closest parallel I can think of is certain elements of religious ritual, but when was the last time you heard someone put real passion into the Nicene Creed?

Quick Hit: Europe Says No to Crucifixes in Italian Schools

The European Court of Human Rights has reportedly ruled that the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools violates religous freedom, and, barring a successful appeal by the Italian government, such displays must end within three months. The AP quotes the Court's ruling:

...the court said the presence of the crucifix ''could easily be interpreted by pupils of all ages as a religious sign and they would feel that they were being educated in a school environment bearing the stamp of a given religion.'' It added that the presence of such symbols could be ''disturbing for pupils who practiced other religions or were atheists.''

The court said secular, state-run schools must ''observe confessional neutrality in the context of public education,'' where attendance is compulsory.

The Italian right, needless to say, is going mildly ballistic (if you can read Italian, check out reporting from La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera). I'd imagine that Italian Euroskeptic parties will make plenty of hay out of this decision in the coming months. I don't have much commentary yet, except to say that it's an interesting intrusion of trans-European institutions into issues of identity and values in one of the E.U.'s constituent states (the Italian government has generally argued that the crucifix is as much a symbol of Italian history and cultural identity as it is of Catholicism explicitly). It's worth noting that this decision overturns the verdict of the Italian Constitutional Court, which is the highest national authority on such matters.

Finally, while there's a sense in which this bodes well for the strength of European institutions, I wonder whether or not the Court is playing with fire. Issues of national identity remain immensely important in Europe, and are primary rallying points around which Euroskeptic forces gather. It will be interesting to see which way the political winds blow.

Photo Credit: Correire della Sera

The Meaning of "Pressure"

The New York Times reports that Secretary Clinton has denied that the Obama Administration has eased pressure on Israel to implement a full settlement freeze, saying that such a freeze remains an American goal. Here's the thing, though: "pressure" involves more than just saying stuff. It involves more than just saying stuff forcefully. What "pressure" generally means is credibly threatening undesirable consequences if behavior doesn't conform to the wishes of the entity applying it.

The Administration called rather forcefully for a settlement freeze months ago. At that point, the words themselves were significant enough, because they represented a startling departure from previous U.S. rhetoric. It made many in Israel very uncomfortable, precisely because the Administration's implication was that, if Israel wasn't going to play ball, there would be consequences. Now that Israel hasn't played ball, and there haven't been consequences, words no longer constitute "pressure." Indeed, they've arguably been devalued by their lack of correspondence with reality.

If the Obama Administration actually wants leverage with the Israelis, it is going to have to come up with some strategies for making them believe they'll actually pay a price for not doing what it asks them to. If not, talk of "pressure" is basically meaningless.

Boots Alone Can't Win Afghanistan

President Obama hasn't officially announced his new Afghanistan strategy, but as Matt noted on Thursday, leaks indicate that he is leaning towards an approach that would focus on reinforcing and protecting major population centers, increasing the speed of training for Afghan forces, and relying to a greater extent on unmanned Predator drones to kill Taliban and al-Qaeda militants. Ignoring, for a moment, the nuts and bolts of the military strategy, there is one thing that really concerns me: the absence of a comprehensive political plan to make the Kabul government a legitimate and respected authority for the Afghan people.

It should be obvious that the US cannot prop up one of the most corrupt governments in the region through military smarts alone (think Diem in Vietnam) - and hope to be successful. All of the additional troop numbers and strategic force relocations can't change the fact that if Karzai's administration has no popular legitimacy, the insurgency will still have a strong base of support from which to operate. Effective governance, in other words, is the foundation upon which the military strategy will either succeed or fail. As Major General Michael T. Flynn, a senior American military intelligence official told the NYT, "If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves."

In general, counterinsurgency only tends to succeed under two scenarios: either when brutal and overwhelming force is used (think of Sri Lanka's crush-them-and-mop-them-up offensive against the Tamil Tigers earlier this year), or when the government waging the counterinsurgency campaign is popular enough to win over the majority of the people and thereby marginalize its anti-government opponents.

The Obama administration obviously is not about to adopt a military strategy with its Kabul allies that is styled on the brutal approach that the Sri Lankan government recently embraced in its own domestic struggle. The reasons are obvious. The Taliban are largely based in the border regions of Pakistan and targeting them on a major scale would not be well received in Islamabad; moreover, international public opinion would never tolerate the kind of bloodshed that it would take to eliminate the Taliban problem.

The only other policy option, then, is the second one, based on the much repeated "winning hearts and minds" mantra, which is designed to undermine the insurgents' base of support. But Obama, by failing to include in this new strategy any major focus on reforming Afghani politics, is dooming his plan to failure before it has even begun. We should have no illusions: if we look the other way as Hamid Karzai's administration destroys its own legitimacy through corruption, election stealing, and poor management, our military strategy - no matter how creative - is certain to fail to bring stability to Afghanistan.

You have to wonder if our military commanders understand this. For my part, I found this line in the recent NYT profile piece on General McChrystal to be hauntingly prophetic:

...[I]ncreasingly, McChrystal, as well as President Obama and the American people, are being forced to confront the possibility that they will be stuck fighting and dying and paying for a government that is widely viewed as illegitimate. When I asked McChrystal about this, it was the one issue that he seemed not to have thought through.

Photo: White House.

In Defense of History

Given the amount of half-sober arguments I've had over the past few weeks with various historians-in-training about the merits of their discipline, I feel a bit odd saying this, but Matt Yglesias's view of historical "lessons" strikes me as weird and insufficiently charitable to serious historians and social scientists. Responding to a thoughtful bit by Spencer Ackerman on the "lessons of Iraq" and how they're now being applied to Afghanistan, Yglesias writes:

I think appeals to “the lessons of history” are, in general, dangerous. Efforts to make predictions based on observations of human history tend to fail. But it’s especially difficult when you’re basically talking about learning lessons based on a single case.

Now, I'll be the first to agree that you have to be very careful when drawing historical parallels (for a prime example, see my recent analogy to the Chinese civil war, which in retrospect was so tortured as to merit referral to the ICC), but if you're not going to use history to inform and enrich your view of current events, what the hell are you going to use? History, broadly defined, is basically the only dataset from which social scientists and pundits have to draw. The danger, of course, is that the lens through which people view history will lead them to overemphasize facts that support the conclusions they want to draw anyway. History's a bit like the Bible, in that you can use it to justify basically any argument if you willfully ignore context. Still, I really really hope that when Administration planners are considering what course to take in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or Latin America, or the U.S. Congress for that matter, they're drawing on a deep well of historical knowledge. I'll take the risks of incorrect inferences over the risks of no inferences at all any day of the week.

Quick Hit: Obama Lifts HIV Travel Ban

Via Feministing.

Missed this one yesterday, but President Obama ended the week by announcing the federal government would lift the 22-year-old ban on travel and immigration to the U.S. by HIV-positive people.

The President called the original ban "a decision rooted in fear rather than fact."

"We are one of only a dozen countries that still bar people with HIV from entering our own country," he said. "If we want to be the global leader in HIV, we need to act like it."

Damn right.

More Thoughts on Afghanistan

A couple of days ago, the Times reported that the Obama Administration seems to be settling on an approach in Afghanistan that falls somewhere in between the "Biden" strategy of scaled-down troop commitments and anti-al-Qaeda operations and the "McChrystal" strategy of scaled-up troop commitments and a broader counterinsurgency campaign. Evidently, a consensus seems to be forming around the idea of using U.S. troops to protect major population centers, pulling back (at least in part) from many of their outposts in the Afghan countryside, then focusing on training the Afghan army to pick up the slack.

After reading the Times story, my immediate thought (nightmare?) was Chiang Kai-Shek's 1948 offensive against Mao's forces in the north of China. Supported by American materiel (though going against the advice of American advisers), Chiang initiated a major attack and captured most of the population centers that had previously been controlled by the communists. The problem, though, was that his troops never secured the countryside where Mao's support base rested, and so became stuck in urban islands surrounded by a hostile rural "sea." By 1949 Chiang was in Taiwan and Mao was in Beijing. Now, obviously, it's a very imperfect analogy. By the end of the Chinese civil war, the conflict had become a fairly conventional war of maneuver, and Chiang's troops, who were mostly half-starving conscripts, basically collapsed in the face of the final communist assault. I don't see that happening here. There's also the crucial difference that Mao was extraordinarily popular in the Chinese countryside, and communist governance there had actually increased his popularity (because of land redistribution and other reforms). Attitudes toward the Taliban are certainly more mixed. Bottom line: the U.S. can stay in Afghanistan, and support the government's control over some areas of Afghanistan, for basically as long as it's willing to commit the human, financial and political resources. The question this brings when it comes purely to the security element of the strategy is whether the U.S. public, realistically, is going to support a major presence in Afghanistan for as long as it might take to get an Afghan army in shape to control the country on its own.

This brings us to the two principal political questions operating here. The first is whether or not the political elements of the Afghan state are sound enough to, at the very least, make real forward progress on being able to engage in power-sharing, (re)legitimizing themselves in the eyes of most of the Afghan population, and running (and controlling) a military and security apparatus that will be able to effectively secure the country. It's a very tall order, but it seems to be what the strategy's implicitly banking on happening with time. Time, in turn, is key to the second political question, namely how long the U.S. public will realistically countenance a large American presence in a still-violent Afghanistan. Putting aside the personal fortunes of Obama and his administration, one way or another a war that the public does not support can't be continued indefinitely. Even taking into account the reduced salience of the war in the U.S. because of the lack of a draft, the economic and human price being paid just won't seem worth the gains. The question, then, is whether or not there's a real chance of this strategy showing measurable results before outlasting the patience of the American public. Also a tall order.

Finally, there's the question of tradeoffs in American policy that have to be made elsewhere because of its presence in Afghanistan. It hampers U.S. flexibility in Central Asia and complicates its relationship with Russia. It ties down large portions of a military already exhausted by almost eight years of war. It also complicates (to an extent), the American relationship with Pakistan and India.

All that said, the presence of al-Qaeda in the region does give the U.S. a compelling reason to be there, and a complete exit any time soon doesn't seem feasible or probably wise.

I'm thus waiting on the official announcement of a new strategy with a healthy skepticism. If it seems as though there's a sophisticated political strategy that shows a good chance of paying dividends in better governance, reduced corruption and effective security services, and furthermore paying them soon enough to maintain support for the war here at home, that will be encouraging. If such a strategy isn't forthcoming (or just isn't within American capabilities), I'll be far more concerned.

MISSING THE POINT

I used to read the Huffington Post a lot more than I do now. It's the MSNBC of the internet, and I can only take so much massively ideologically skewed news, even when I agree with it. Still, it's worth pointing out that the current massive headline on the site's front page kind of misses the point. It reads (in about the biggest font imaginable) "OVERKILL: Troops in Afghanistan Already Outnumber Taliban 12:1."

Now, if we were fighting a conventional war of maneuver against regular enemy units, this would probably be something relevant to point out. We're not doing that, though. We're (at present anyway) fighting a counterinsurgency. My understanding of counterinsurgency war, for what it's worth, is that the important ratio is troops:population, not troops:enemy. It's the population whose attitudes and political orientation you need to secure. The number of Taliban obviously isn't irrelevant, but just empirically if we had enough troops in Afghanistan to defeat the Taliban, I doubt they'd currently control large sections of the country. The fact that we probably can't put enough boots on the ground to decisively defeat the Taliban and control the country, at least not quickly, is the reason our strategy there is being reexamined.

I know Arianna Huffington has taken up the mantle of the liberal Matt Drudge. That doesn't mean she needs to be blatantly misleading.

Labeling Turkish Foreign Policy

The thrust of Soner Cagaptay's recent piece in Foreign Affairs is similar to many like-minded articles that worry about Turkey's trend towards Islamism. In this case, the fear is about the country's increasingly Eastern-facing foreign policy. Cagaptay argues that Turkey's AKP leaders are not just trying to reengage with the Muslim world (a region that the historically Western-oriented Turkey had neglected); they are also actively pursuing friendships with radical Muslim countries. It's a sign, he says, of the increasing "Islamism in the country's foreign policy."

[T]he AKP's foreign policy has not promoted sympathy toward all Muslim states. Rather, the party has promoted solidarity with Islamist, anti-Western regimes (Qatar and Sudan, for example) while dismissing secular, pro-Western Muslim governments (Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia). This two-pronged strategy is especially apparent in the Palestinian territories: at the same time that the AKP government has called on Western countries to "recognize Hamas as the legitimate government of the Palestinian people," AKP officials have labeled Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas the "head of an illegitimate government." According to diplomats, Abbas' last visit to Ankara in July 2009 went terribly -- now, these diplomatic sources say, Abbas does not trust the AKP any more than he trusts Hamas.

...After seven years of the AKP's Islamist rhetoric, public opinion has shifted to embrace the idea of a politically united "Muslim world." According to independent polling in Turkey, the number of people identifying themselves as Muslim increased by ten percent between 2002 and 2007; in addition, almost half of those surveyed describe themselves as Islamist. The AKP's foreign policy now has a welcome audience at home, making it more likely to become entrenched. After Erdogan stormed out of his session at the World Economic Forum, thousands gathered to greet his plane as it arrived back home in what appeared to be an orchestrated welcome. (Banners with Turkish and Hamas flags stitched together appeared from nowhere in a matter of hours.)

The transformation of Turkish identity under the AKP has potentially massive ramifications. Guided by an Islamist worldview, it will become more and more impossible for Turkey to support Western foreign policy, even when doing so is in its national interest.

It is true that we've seen a warming of relations between Turkey and such Islamist heavyweights as Iran and Sudan - perhaps at the expense of the West. But there is a certain amount of analysis that is missing here. Cagaptay's reading is deeply pessimistic; I see a more nuanced and a less dire situation. One of the points made in the article is that Turkey is trying to systematically sever its ties with Israel. Such a reading seems inaccurate, given that until a very recent set of successive diplomatic spats, Turkey maintained relatively stable relations with its neighbor. As evidence of this, Ankara had established enough credibility with Tel Aviv to mediate informal peace talks with Damascus (no small task!) that lasted for a number of months. Indeed, up until the attack on Gaza, Turkish-Israeli relations seemed to be on relatively stable ground. (Even after the Gaza war ended, I would add, Turkey was reportedly pushing through back channels to restart its mediation effort of the stalled Israeli-Syrian peace track, an indication of its commitment to the Israeli-Turkish relationship.)

Ankara has also continued to pursue attempts to join the European Union. Although there is undoubtedly some waning of enthusiasm (largely, I would argue, due to the discouraging talk about Turkish accession from some EU members -- I'm looking at you, France), there continues to be engagement on this issue. Certainly, it should be noted that during the first period after they took office, the AKP, in the hopes of furthering the country's EU bid, passed the greatest expansion of women's rights since Ataturk alongside a range of other reforms. Reform measures have obviously slowed down since then, but efforts are still ongoing. (See Turkey's historic moves towards normalizing relations with Armenia, widely seen as an attempt to "assuage European Union opponents of Turkish membership.")

Turkey's foreign policy doesn't lend itself well to simple labels. For my part, I see Ankara as pursuing an approach to foreign affairs that is multi-pronged but still based largely on simple realism, not religious ideology. Specifically, Turkey appears to be continuing with a policy that has proven highly advantageous to it in the past: that of making nice with all of its neighbors, particularly those countries who, by association, will provide Ankara with increased regional clout. What I don't see is a clear shift by Turkey into the "Islamist" camp. Cagaptay portrays the AKP as long having had ambitions to unite the Islamist world at the expense of secular and Western-leaning Muslim countries like Jordan and Tunisia. Such talk seems grandiose.

A more realistic picture is the image of a Turkey which, hoping to cause "zero problems" with its neighbors, initially pursued good relations with both Europe and the Middle East during the early part of the AKP's tenure; however, having been rebuffed in its efforts by several prominent European countries, Turkey's leaders are now looking more towards the East. That they are cultivating ties with Iran and Sudan more than, say, Jordan and Egypt, should be seen as a sign that Ankara views these relationships as the way to becoming a bigger player in the region - not that they endorse these countries' world views or envision them as part of an effort to unite and spread the Islamist ideology.

In other words, make friends with Tehran and Khartoum while also maintaining relations with the West and you become a key link and an important regional power-broker. Focus on ties with Cairo and Amman, on the other hand, and you risk being seen as just another spineless lapdog of the United States.

Cartoon credit: The Economist.