Avuncular American

America: Exceptional, Indispensable, or Musclebound?

Two unrelated but thought-provoking seminars in Brussels, plus a Presidential address from West Point later today, have put American foreign and security policy on my mind.  If the spin is accurate, we are told to expect the announcement tonight of an Afghanistan surge by the President from the US Military Academy.

Bob Herbert in the New York Times today ("A Tragic Mistake") calls escalation - to use a Vietnam-era term - in Afghanistan "the easier option"

It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Obama to look this troubled nation in the eye and explain why it is in our best interest to begin winding down the permanent state of warfare left to us by the Bush and Cheney regime.

Is that true - that the United States has been in "permanent state of warfare?"  That was one of the premises behind Michael Moore's 2002 hit Bowling For Columbine, but for a less hysterical look at a "permanent state of exceptionalism" since the outset of the republic, let me talk about the very serious conference organized around the book launch of "Exceptionalisme américain et les droits de l'homme" (American Exceptionalism and Human Rights, edited by two young ULB law professors Ludovic Hennebel of the Magna Carta Institute and Arnaud Van Waeyenberge of the Perelman Centre).

Non-lawyer that I am, I was most interested in one of the assertions in the book/conference by Van Waeyenberge: that the European human rights concept of "human dignity" - curiously - is not a concept that is enshrined in the US Constitution, though I suppose the Bill of Rights goes some way towards rectifying the omission.  But even there, the enumerated rights don't really address human dignity.

Maybe that's why there is a discipline called Human Dignity and Humiliation Studies (HumanDHS), "Breaking the cycle of humiliation."  Remember how the general public in the US appeared to be less than horrified at the revelations of Bush/Cheney-approved torture?  Perhaps they have become inured to the routine hand and foot shackling of even non-violent suspects in the American judicial system, the fitting of slavery-evoking "spit guards" on young minority defendants, the chaining of women prisoners as they deliver babies... yes, "exceptionalism" can include lots of affronts to human dignity.

One shining example of taking exception to Bush/Cheney legal and moral exceptionalism was in the JAG corps, the military's judicial and prosecutorial cadre in the Judge Advocate General branches of each of the services.  If the US still claims adherence to the Geneva Conventions, it is in large part thanks to several senior military lawyers and judges, who put their careers on the line.

Venerable Realists, and Realistic Upstarts

Exceptionalism, and Madeleine Albright's "indispensable nation" were also the subject of an IERI conference that I moderated on readings of three prominent American strategic thinkers: Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Samuel Huntington.  I was relieved that the analyst, Jacques Lippert of IERI, took issue with Huntington's "clashing civilizations," as his amalgam of Chinese/Islamic threats to the West always sounded like the lumping together of deadly enemies Iran and Iraq with outlying crazies in North Korea to form Bush's "Axis of Evil."

But lest the audience of European Union functionaries and diplomats get the impression that American strategic thought is caught in a Kissinger-Brzezinski time warp of the Seventies, I harped on about Boston University Professor Andrew Bacevich and his take on realism as an antidote to the dark ages of neoconservatism. In "The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced By War" (my review), Bacevich builds his argument against military adventurism, and against the bipartisan tendency to look to military solutions for thorny world problems.  A musclebound muscle man is like a one-note song.  Bacevich's most recent book, "The Limits of Power: American Exceptionalism," should be required night table reading for Obama Administration advisers.

Just as Kissinger, Brzezinski, and Albright incarnated the mid-20th century European exodus to the safety of the United States, so do some of today's brightest thinkers on international affairs - Fareed Zakaria and Parag Khanna - represent another, southern, diaspora of growing importance in 21st century USA.  Their books point to "the rise of the rest" or a dynamic, resource-rich "second world" that has come up out of the old Third World.  Neither would sign on to the "realpolitik" definitions of national power that narrowly focus on troop strength or missile range.  They would, however, see merit in the DIME construct that the US military likes to inculcate in its strategic thinkers, that Diplomatic, Informational, Military, and Economic pillars constitute crucial elements of national power.  Not in isolation, but collectively.

Colin Powell, soldier and diplomat that he has been, knows a thing or two about the bases of national power, and was a keen believer in that phrase "all elements of national power."  His Powell Doctrine, which includes overwhelming force coupled with national purpose and an exit strategy, may be due for a revisit, as we learn in today's post from Diplopundit.

If so, it couldn't be more timely.

Veterans Day: Easy On the Onion Rings

When you are on a US military installation, whether soldier or civilian, you're supposed to stop out of respect if you're walking outside when the bugler plays taps at the end of the day.

Yesterday, a day ahead of Veterans Day, as the November 11 Armistice Day ending World War I has been known in the United States for more than fifty years, President Obama observed that respect in the Fort Hood ceremony.  Dignified - the proper stance for a Veterans Day that is as delicate a moment as any in recent years.  For once, a President and his advisers are doing war planning that will strive to end our two ongoing wars/occupations, deliberating in a way that apparently was not done when President Bush - with typically undeliberative speed - got the US into those wars.

Dignity doesn't always come naturally to Americans wanting to profit from identification with patriotism.  "Free onion rings for men and women in uniform" promises a fast food outlet, its way of "investing" a few scraps in the war effort.  Well, I suppose that if you're a private or airman risking your life on what approaches minimum wage, anything that comes free is welcome.

But don't ask the fast food magnate to sacrifice his son or daughter to the defense of the realm - that's for people who eat onion rings in greasy spoons.

From Dirty Dick's Christian Spa and Good Eats

My friend Dick, happily retired in Florida's Gulf coast, does provide the Good Eats (although you might have to cook some yourself), but the Christian part is definitely tongue in cheek.  He's one of the tidiest bachelors around, so the "Dirty Dick" part is there just for color, though it does sound properly rakish and piratical.   He was a Navy man before he became a diplomat and eventually my first boss in the Foreign Service.

Those days are past, and we spend much of our time applying our honed analytical skills - sorry, but Evaluation Report language always manages to creep in... trying to get our heads around the matter of the State of the United States.  It's a lifelong task.

We were blissfully enjoying a beer and Cheap Eeetz alongside the marina when a wide screen TV on the wall announced the mass killing at Fort Hood ("the largest active duty armored post in the United States Armed Services") Texas.  When we read the caption naming the alleged shooter, we knew it boded ill for a whole host of reasons.  Yet another "senseless killing" as they say, the work of a possibly deranged individual.  A Lone Star Shooter.  But because the suspect has a name that resonates from here to the Middle East, and because his victims were soldiers in a place where they shouldn't have been under fire, he won't be "just another" mass murderer.

Nidal Malik Hasan's apparent infiltration of personal weapons onto the base has to cause concern for the hundreds of other military installations scattered across the country, and across the world.  "We will increase our security presence here in the coming days" said base commander Lieutenant General Robert Cone.  Well, of course they will, but the deed is done, and no amount of posting Humvees with 50 caliber machine guns trained at the gates will screen murderous intent in the minds of soldiers who might "go Postal."

Do you know how many private cars pass through the gates of just this one base - population 50,000 or so - daily?  Sure, they can double and triple check ID, pull some suspicious sergeants and potentially mad majors over and have them open up the trunk, but a determined killer will easily stow a few handguns and plenty of ammunition wherever he pleases.  It's what's in the mind, not what's under the hood.

Read today's Bob Herbert, himself a Vietnam era vet and consistent in his recognition of the extreme stress that upwards of a decade of wars has put on the US military.  Herbert reminds us that stress is not just a minor irritant in the context of repeated exposure to war zones.  There is not one iota of an excuse for this insane act's perpetrator, but Herbert reminds us that "we haven’t heard a lot about the scores of suicides at that same base — the highest of any U.S. military installation — since the invasion of Iraq in 2003."

This mass murder, like the many before it, unleashes the perennial battle over gun control, or rather the lack thereof, in the United States.  The same arguments for and against will be trotted out with numbing effect.  It's unfortunate that there are ultra-stressed out individuals, whether soldiers or civilians, but why oh why do we make it so easy for them to act out their impulses?  "Guns Don't Kill People; People Kill People" read the NRA bumper stickers.  Perhaps, but a potential mass murderer armed with, say, a kitchen knife he just grabbed on impulse might be a tad less lethal than one armed with an automatic weapon and endless ammo clips.

But at Dirty Dick's Christian Spa and Fine Foods, we don't indulge in pie-in-the-sky.  Just add Fort Hood to the list - Columbine, University of Texas, Virginia Tech - shake your head, and hit the remote control.  There are, apparently, other priorities.  To be continued...

Paying Them To Be Pals

Do you remember the scene in David Lean's epic film, Lawrence of Arabia, where Colonel TE Lawrence, to shouts of "Aurens! Aurens!" rides back to his Bedouin allies in the company of... mercenaries?  "Killers, cutthroats," say the disgusted princes and tribal leaders.  Lawrence has bought himself some protection, but at the cost of the respect of those who are fighting with him for a cause.

A century later, we have lots of modern-day Lawrences in Army and Marine camouflage BDUs, mingling in the Middle East and hiking the Hindu Kush, alternately fighting and tea-drinking with the various bands that make up Iraq and Afghanistan's warring factions.  In Lean's film, it was Ottoman gold that inspired some of Lawrence's Arab allies.  Nowadays, it's more likely to be the shrinking US dollar, shrink-wrapped in bricks of $100 bills.

When I read that the Pentagon's budget is now to include CERP ("Commander's Emergency Response Program") money to woo the Taliban over to "our side," that image of Lawrence's mercenaries looms up.  The $1.3 billion allotted to CERP in Afghanistan may be a drop in the bucket, but as with all such things, has there been much thought given to what happens when the former baddies stop getting money?

Read Shane Bauer's great expose in the September Mother Jones, "The Sheikh Down," for a look at what your money buys in Iraq, where CERP payments created the "Awakening Councils" out of former enemies among the Sunni population.  It's an entertaining read, except the part about the shaking down of the American taxpayer, who gets to pay for "reconstruction" projects at many times their justified price, all in the name of keeping the peace.  Getting a piece, for the sheikhs profiled, is more like it.

But what happens when the money stops?  Surely even Pentagon planners can harbor hopes of a rosy future of declining budget lines when the CERP program "sunsets," to use a term from accounting-speak?  But will the Sunni fighters in Iraq and the ex-Taliban pocketing the payments understand it when the CERP paymasters say "Thanks guys, but our funding has zeroed-out."  Their guns and bombs, bought and paid for by American largess - who will they point them at now?

How about allegations that Italian payments to the Taliban for peace in their sector, when stopped and not communicated to French forces that inherited their zone, subsequently brought the Taliban's wrath on the unsuspecting French?  According to the Times of London, even the US Embassy in Rome protested to the Italian government about such practices.  But now the same thing is in the Pentagon budget?

Tom Engelhardt's "Tomgram" put it squarely: "Will Today's US-Armed Ally Be Tomorrow's Enemy?"  We've been there before, in the self-same Afghanistan:

Let me suggest just one lesson that seems to be on no one else's mind at a moment when a key "option" being offered in Washington -- especially by Democrats not eager to see tens of thousands more U.S. troops heading Afghanistan-wards -- is to arm and "train" ever more thousands of Afghans into a vast army and police security force for a government that hardly exists. Based on the last three decades in the region, don't you think that we should pause and consider who exactly we may be arming and who exactly we may be supporting, and whether, given those 30 years of history, we have the slightest idea what we're doing?

Americans with amnesia should go out and rent Charlie Wilson's War, a slick rendition of how we "bought" the Mujahideen those thirty years ago, who then became the Taliban, who then started getting CERP payments...

AF-PAK-IRAN - Eddies of Instability, or Negotiation Opportunity?

Whatever happened to strategic options?

Discussions of Western policy towards Iran have a numbing inevitability to them.  You're going to hear about the sanctions option, which is always there as a way of warding off the Israeli bombing option.  Two flavors - is that all we have to choose from?

The weekend's deadly attack in Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan region should be of concern in capitals other than just Tehran.  And not only because of intemperate Iranian accusations of US or British involvement, which are probably ludicrous.  [UPDATE: Or perhaps not so ludicrous: see Washington Note post by Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett].  It would appear that the Anglo-Americans have quite enough on their hands without poking the eyes of the Iranians, especially in an area where they have little or no leverage.  After all, it was only last week that Baluchis on the Pakistani side expressed fears of US drone strikes in their region, which were apparently nixed by Islamabad.

Thankfully we are no longer in the era of George W. "Axis of Evil" Bush, whose neat phrase lumped together two deadly enemies - Iraq and Iran - by simple conflation.  They were both Muslim-majority countries opposed to the United States - what more do you need?  Bush's crusade against Saddam eliminated the one enemy who had bloodied Iran, and so delivered Iraq into the Shia camp.  Blowback of which I am sure we will hear more as the US wearies of the occupation.

So why, when contemplating Iran policy, are we limited to options that are more worthy of Bush than Obama?

President Obama, after all, is He of the open hand reaching out to the clenched fist.  It's depressing that we are still arguing about Bomb Iran versus Sanction Iran, without considering Co-opt Iran.  Yes, use shared concern over ever-widening arcs of instability, eddying out from their epicenter in Afghanistan.  Pakistan is belatedly trying to deal with multiple insurgencies on its periphery, which, according to Mark Sappenfield of the Christian Science Monitor, won't necessarily help across the border: "All the major terrorist networks attacking US forces in Afghanistan operate from other areas of Pakistan."

Let's use some of the momentum from today's Vienna 4-way nuclear talks to encourage Tehran to expand the diplomatic option.  How about it, Iran: tired of importing natural gas when you're sitting on some of the world's largest reserves?  Find importing gasoline a tad expensive when you actually export the raw material?

In a neighborhood like Af/Pak, wouldn't you want to ensure a bit of stability in the surrounding countries?  India, large, dynamic, democratic to the east.  Central Asia to the north, with its economies trying to transition from Soviet command to capitalism.  And Iran to the west, looking to the west and its markets rather than obsessing about the Great Satan.

Alistair Crooke, writing in Conflicts Forum, questions whether the West (and the Arab Middle East) is again ready to consider Iran as a regional power, as it was under different management.  Whatever the answer, the recent trouble on Iran's Pakistan border may cause some policy makers - Iranian, American, and others - to consider shared interest in stability, in a region where that is in very short supply.

Image: Af/Pak coffee mug, available through Diplopundit.

Treading Water, Under the Radar: Maldives & Diego Garcia

Dots in the Indian Ocean (image: DuniyaLive.com)

The Maldives stand an average of 7ft above sea level, and the government says they face being wiped out if oceans rise.  The government of the Maldives has held a cabinet meeting about 16ft underwater to highlight the threat of global warming.

BBC, 17 October 2009

The island has an area of approximately 10.5 square miles with an average natural elevation of four feet above sea level.  The British wish you an enjoyable stay on Diego Garcia. Upon your arrival, please familiarize yourself with BIOT [British Indian Ocean Territory] regulations and try to preserve the island's ecology.

US Military Sealift Command (MSC) website briefing for US personnel

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How nice that the US Navy is concerned about the "island's ecology."  No such care was extended to the Island's human inhabitants, who were summarily exiled by an Anglo-American pact that denied their very existence (see my post about the long-suffering Chagos Islanders).

But the Maldives President's worries about being swamped under the rising tides of climate change are starting to have their impact in strategic circles.  Here's Senator John Kerry in September:

Diego Garcia Island in the Indian Ocean, a vital hub for our military operations across the Middle East, sits on an atoll just a few feet above sea level.

Kerry's concerns about the security impact of global warning (from the Boston Globe) were echoed weeks later by NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, speaking to an audience that probably cares more than most about catastrophic effects of global warming - Lloyd's of London:

Rising sea levels will have a clear effect on the ability of our armed forces to do their jobs.  Look at Diego Garcia.  It is an important logistical hub, including for this country; it is also only a few feet above sea level at its highest point.  A one metre rise in sea levels and most of it would be flooded.   We need to assess the impacts that these kinds of events would have.

Now, though it's gratifying that these two gentlemen are concerned about the planet's health and its defense, I wish that something other than the prospect of a B-52 runway getting flooded would galvanize them into action.

The upside for the Chagos Islanders, who have been quietly rotting away in distant Mauritius for upwards of forty years, is that their native Diego Garcia and other Chagos Archipelago islands might start taking water, and therefore send the US and UK scurrying for other lily pads (how about those in Central Asia?).

Maybe the Chagossians should team up with the Maldivians to drum up support for their respective causes.  With his underwater cabinet meeting stunt - "What else could I do to attract attention?" - the Maldives President appears to be on an effective public diplomacy strategy.

The Marine Corps School of Body Language

Stop!; Hands up!; Drop your weapons!; Stop your vehicle; Show me your identification card...

Selected phrases to be taught US military personnel prior to deployment to Afghanistan, from "In The Loop," Al Kamen, in today's Washington Post

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That last one - "Show me your I.D. card" - brings back memories of our Marine Security Guards at the American Consulate in Alexandria, Egypt.  The MSGs, our third line of defense after the Egyptian paramilitary guys with the Kalashnikovs and the local contract guards at the gate, manned the bulletproof glass-enclosed booth at the entrance to the Consulate proper.

Dressed in their white-hatted Marine best, they probably intimidated any poor Egyptian visa applicant who managed to get that far, if only because of their "Leatherneck" reputation.  But they were a very professional bunch of guys (this was before women MSGs appeared on the scene in the late 80s), and they did their best to learn some Arabic.  Including "Show me your I.D. card."  Result: blank stares.

Try as they might, the combination of American accent, inch-thick ballistic glass, and miles of cultural separation defeated their efforts at communication in the local vernacular.  Until they hit upon the hand over hand gesture, shown here.  Voilà!  Instant comprehension.  Oh, that I.D. card!

But here is the extra bit that the Marines learned, and taught me, who had pretty decent Arabic language skills back then: the hand over hand thing meant everything tangible, measurable.  Whatever you wanted it to mean, in context.  Want a French-style baguette loaf, and not the little round pita bread?  Right hand superimposed over left arm, up below the elbow - long.  Trying to describe a thimble-sized auto part to a mechanic?  Hand over opposite fingers - small.  And so on.  The ultimate universal gesticular mnemonic device - your hands.

General McChrystal's idea of hands-on language training before heading for Helmand makes sense, and I'd say that there are already lots of Marines and soldiers who have figured out that communication sometimes requires more than a few foreign words strung together.  Just be sure that what passes for a gesture of clarification in Egypt doesn't mean anything rude or hostile in Dari!

Paris (and Chateaulin) Liberated - August 1944

Since the big D-Day bash in June, when President Barack Obama honored the 65th anniversary of the Normandy landings, the commemorations have been either very local or just forgotten.  This week we were reminded that D-Day didn’t mean the end of the fighting in France in 1944; Paris was liberated by its own Resistance fighters, with big help over the horizon by the US Army, of course.

In Brittany, where we stayed for most of August, the fighting was still going on 65 years ago.  The Brest “Pocket” would not be reduced until mid-September, and other German redoubts – especially the submarine bases of Lorient and St. Nazaire – would hold out until the surrender of Germany in May 1945.

Our little market town of Chateaulin, on the Nantes-Brest Canal, was liberated by French partisans when the German garrison left in early August.  That American armored vehicle in the photo above left (courtesy Le Doaré Archives) tooling along the Canal looks like it’s being piloted by Free French forces.

Other partisans in the “maquis” didn’t have it so easy.  Upriver (this section of the Canal is formed by the river Aulne), you can visit a recent memorial to fighters (mostly Breton, but also Belgian and Soviet) killed in an ambush in spring 1944 when their position was divulged to the Germans.  It’s hard to imagine today, as you soak up the sun on an idyllic island in the river, that the place saw bloody reprisals in your parents’ or grandparents’ time.

On the way back to Brussels, overnight in Falaise, of WW II "Pocket" or "Gap" fame, "the decisive engagement in the Battle of Normandy,"  according to Wikipedia.  Another August 1944 anniversary.

Obama Challenges Africa's "Big Men"

 

Kente cloth, Ghana

Across Africa, we have seen countless examples of people taking control of their destiny and making change from the bottom up. Make no mistake: history is on the side of these brave Africans and not with those who use coups or change Constitutions to stay in power. Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.

President Barack Obama, Accra, Ghana, 11 July 2009 (text)

In Chinua Achebe's 1966 novel A Man of the People, "Chief the Honourable M. A. Nanga, M.P." calls the shots, pulls the strings, does everything for His People that a Big Man is supposed to.  All the while helping himself to public money and quashing dissent.  As Somali journalist Abdi Guled recently wrote, confronting the "Big Man Syndrome" in Africa is one of the Obama Administration's major challenges on the continent.  Today's speech was a good step in that direction.

Many Africans might look at Mr. Obama himself as the biggest of Big Men, as a son of Africa who has made it in the West (understatement), and might now be counted on, in time-honored African fashion, to be the Big Benefactor and send more money back "home."  But the President is having none of it:

[T]he true sign of success is not whether we are a source of perpetual aid that helps people scrape by — it is whether we are partners in building the capacity for transformational change.  Aid is not an end in itself. The purpose of foreign assistance must be creating the conditions where it is no longer needed.

Though much anticipated and well-received, the speech appears to be continuation of many programmatic themes of US policy.  Obama gave due credit to George W. Bush's initiatives on health care, though it must be said that even in a country as democratic as Ghana, the best health care is available to elites, and is usually found in the Military Hospital, in capital cities across the continent.

That other Bush initiative - the establishment of AFRICOM - was put in proper perspective, just after diplomacy: "our Africa Command is focused not on establishing a foothold in the continent, but on confronting these common challenges to advance the security of America, Africa and the world."  Obama's mention of "foothold" may be seen by Africans as a reference to Bush Administration frustration in its early attempts to get African support to site AFRICOM headquarters on the continent.

The strength of Obama's "Good Governance" speech, as former Ugandan Foreign Minister Olara Ottunnu said on a BBC program, may come from his "moral authority as a son of an African intellectual."  His reminding African audiences that poor leadership - not colonialism - is responsible for "the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy," for the use of child soldiers, for tribalism, nepotism, or corruption, is made all the more credible because of who he is.

The Big Man in Africa is a reality, and the realist in Obama knows that he will have to continue to work with African Big Men, in presidential palaces and governor's mansions from Cairo to Katanga.  But today's speech mentions Africa's unsung heroes, "these brave Africans" - people from civil society and the civil service who fight injustice and corruption.  Obama's singling out of those courageous people and organizations should provide encouragement to young Africans who hang on his every word.  And make the Big Men feel slightly less comfortable in their plush palaces.

Secret Défense: Who Killed French Monks In Algeria?

Yesterday's Le Monde article on revelations of testimony by a former French military attaché in Algiers has caused somewhat of a stir on both sides of the Mediterranean.  The former attaché, General François Buchwalter, testified that the seven monks beheaded in 1996 during the worst years of Algeria's civil war, had in fact been killed by the Algerian Army.

Algerian media reaction (a selection here via Algeria Watch) has been quick, seeing a nefarious post-colonial, anti-Algerian motivation: "The Delirium Of A General," or "The Return of 'Who Killed Who'?"  The latter, "Qui tue qui?", is shorthand for calling into question responsibility for thousands of deaths during the dirty war.  According to several former Algerian military, not all "terrorist" killings were carried out by Islamic militants.

Today, French President Nicolas Sarkozy promised to declassify documents relating to the investigation.  As L'Express points out, Sarkozy was not in the Chirac government during the period in question.

In their 2007 book Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed, Martin Evans and John Phillips wrote extensively about the monks and the events leading up to their deaths, saying "the monks' deaths could be seen as the consequence of a counter-insurgency game that went disastrously wrong."  Evans and Phillips draw on previous revelations, notably by a former Algerian government infiltrator in the armed groups.

The British authors know of what they speak: Phillips was the Times (London) correspondent in Algeria during the worst years of the war, including during the monks' killing at Tibéhirine. "Reporting from Algeria," they write, "with a regime one of whose characteristics was disinformation on a grand scale, was notoriously hazardous."  One of the main areas of focus in the current French investigation is whether the French authorities were complicit in covering up the disinformation.

Algeria's 2005 National Reconciliation Charter was supposed to have unleashed a kind of "live and let live" spirit, but as Liam Stack wrote recently in the Christian Science Monitor, it has instead "focused on forgetting the past," at least for those in the government.  French justice, not bound by the Algerian charter, is free to look where the truth may take it.