The GOP Candidates and Iraq

If ignorance is indeed bliss, the GOP candidates for president in 2012 demonstrated that they must be the most contented lot in the world after their pronouncements about President Obama’s announcement this past week that the United States would end all military operations in Iraq by the end of the year. The stupendous ignorance of the facts demonstrated by the GOP field regarding how and why this ending will occur is breathtaking; it is also a sobering reminder of what foreign policy might look like should one of them somehow become commander-in-chief. Of that latter prospect, only the most ardent neo-conservative could possibly take take solace in the prospect.

What was the collective accusation? It was that somehow Obama had acted in a way that somehow would cause the United States to quit the field in Iraq, thereby submitting the United States and the region and world to great potential peril, since we will no longer be able to maintain some semblance of control there when all our troops (other than the Marines guarding the embassy) are gone–in time for the holidays, according to the administration.

That statement, which is of course a composite, has four distinct parts, two of which are clearly false or misleading, and two of which are arguable. Let’s look at each.

1. It was an action by Obama that has caused this situation. This assertion is, of course, necessary to blame the White House for something–which of course is the partisan putpose anyway–and it is patently false. The reason the U.S. will leave Iraq at the end of the year is because the Iraqis want us out. This is hardly a revelation, and it has been enshrined in an agreement signed by President Bush with the Iraqi government in December 2008 that called for withdrawal by the end of this year. The al-Malaki government views this requirement as a bedrock of their mandate, and it has been a condition and date that has existed–and been publicly known–for over three years.

The only way that treaty obligation could have been modified or moderated was through the negotiation of a new agreement with the Iraqis to allow some number of Americans to stay after the end of the year. The U.S. has indeed been trying to do so to allow a token force to stay behind, but those negotiations foundered on a critical provision of the Status of Force Agreement (SOFA) that would have been necessary to extend the American presence: a provision that American forces be exempted from prosecution of alleged offenses under Iraqi law (a standard item of SOFAs the U.S. has with foreign governments). THE IRAQIS REFUSED TO ACCEPT THIS STIPULATION, and this is why the U.S. is leaving. There were probably two reasons for the Iraqi position: 1) they wanted us to leave, and knew this would force us out, and 2) given the track record of some Americans on the scene, they did not trust us enough to make the concession (think Abu Ghraib). We are leaving because we could not conclude a successful SOFA, and there is no SOFA because the Iraqis refused to negotiated one. Period. End of story.

If one wants to blame the president for this, all one can argue (much too subtle for the current GOP field) is that the Obama administration, which also wants out of Iraq, did not try as hard as they might have to force the Iraqis to relent. That is at least arguable, although to be accepted, two additional elements are needed: proof the Obama people dragged their feet and evidence that a more assertive advocacy would have made a difference. The first is possible; the latter fantasy.

2. The U.S. action will leave American interests at peril. Specifically, the argument goes that an Iraq without an American presence will be subject to pressure from Iran and will be driven into the arms of Iran. This outcome is at least arguable on a number of grounds, and one can accept the notion that the postwar environment will leave Iran the clear winner in the American war against Iraq. What is very misleading about this assertion, however, is the idea that the U.S. decision to honor its treaty promises is the cause of this outcome. Iranian increased influence was probably the inevitable outcome of overthrowing Iran’s greatest single obstacles in the region, Saddam Hussein, and was cemented by by our eight year occupation. Iran is equally likely to benefit regardless of when the U.S. leaves; to blame it on honoring Bush’s commitment is pure demagogery.

3.  A continuing American presence would help stabilize the situation in Iraq, and their removal reduces the U.S. ability to influence the situation. Exactly how the retention of 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq is supposed to stabilize anything is not clear,except in the symbolism of their presence and the implied threat (a very hollow one) that they could be reinforced if need be by sending more back. It is true that American influence will wane somewhat with all our presence there, but it is pretty hard to contend that we have much influence there anymore anyway. For a sliver of evidence, how successful were we in keeping al-Maliki from endorsing the continuing rule of Bashar al-Assad in Syria?

4. If we are gone, who will protect the American contractors and aid workers left behind? This is a serious question, because the answer is the Iraqis will have to do so. If they want whatever goodies we are dispensing, they will do so; if getting rid of all the Americans is what they really want, they will not. One can only hope all the remaining Americans in the country are keeping packed bags under their beds. Having said that, 5,000 Americans in garrison are probably not much better equipped to protect and extract those Americans from danger than Marines or special forces on duty on ships in the Persian Gulf.

One need not be a particular supporter on Obama foreign policy to see that the withering criticism of his Iraq announcement was uncalled for, unfair, and displayed considerable ignorance on the part of those who made it. Up until now, the GOP  field has been remarkably quiet on foreign policy matters, and one can certainly see why in this cacophony of ignorance. If there is a bottom line to this sorry episode, it is a question: would anyone really like turning over America’s relations with the world to any of these bozos?  

 

The Rebirth of President Putin

Vladimir Putin announced yesterday that he will trade places with current president Dmitry Medvedev next year, running for the presidency while Medvedev settles for the number two spot of prime minister. Under revisions to the Russian constitution, the presidency has been lengthened from a four-year to a six-year term, and presidents can run for re-election once. Twelve more years!

The announcement was hardly a surprise, of course. Despite appearances and titles, Putin has largely been running the show in Moscow even since Medvedev formally became the country’s chief executive in 2008, and virtually no one is surprised that Putin will seek to regain his formal status as president next year or that he will, in all likelihood, be elected overwhelmingly by the Russian electorate in reasonably free and open voting. Unless he either becomes ill or Russia experiences a great downturn during his first six years, he will dutifully be reelected in 2018. If all goes according to plan, Putin will remain in power until he is 72. Speculation about anything past 2024 is not worth making.

While exhibiting the beauty and inevitability of a mud slide (an analogy I crib without permission from an old University of Alabama dean), this is not particularly good news for the United States or the region, at least in term of promoting greater democratization and independence for the countries and peoples there. Russians apparently do not care terribly about such matters; what they care about is what Putin delivers.

Putin is attractive to the Russian (and especially ethnic Russian) majority in the federation. A robust and charismatic figure, Putin has three obvious sources of attraction. First, he is a dynamic and forceful leader who, particularly in the minds of Russians, projects an image of strength and importance of their country in the world. Just as we are entreated not to “mess with Texas,” the image of Vladimir Putin is that you had better not mess with Russia either.

Second, Putin is committed to restoring Russia’s place as a major power in the region and the world. This determination, which is related to the first source of his attraction, rings very much true to the Russian electorate. One of Russian history’s major themes is the quest for status as a world power. While most Russians do not look back at the old Soviet days with much poignancy, they do remember favorably the fact that the Soviet Union was an acknowledged, even feared, superpower which held sway within its region and was, for many purposes, the major peer of the United States. Russians want to return to that status; Putin, by word and deed, offers them what they believe is the best chance to do so. This perception stands in stark contrast with the image of the affable Medvedev, who appears much too bland and compliant for Russian tastes. Think Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Third, Putin is a consummate politician. His rise to power happened to coincide with Russia’s emergence as the world’s second largest exporter of oil and largest exporter of natural gas (especially to Europe, which is highyl dependent on Russian supplies), and he turned this windfall into two advantages for himself and his country. Internally, Putin has skillfullyused energy revenues essentially to “buy off” the voting public with the largesse of government disbursements that have improved the material conditions of many Russians. He became, during the 2000s wshen he was formally in the presidency, one of the two particular experts in what Thomas L. Friedman calls “petrolist” politics, using oil revenues to bolster support and, not entirely coincidentally, to erode democracy. It is a Faustian bargain of sorts, but one the Russian people have accepted as a necessary tradeoff for their own prosperity and sense of national resurgence.

Internationally, energy exports give Russia leverage they have lacked since the end of the Cold War. While Russia retains a nuclear force roughly equivalent to that of the United States, that is not enough to insure Russian prestige and acceptance as a”super” power: to many, it is still a “Third World country with nuclear weapons.” Oil and natural gas change that, since the world is hungry for energy, and especially for energy that does not come from the unstable Middle East: Russia may still be a Third World country, but energy makes them more consequential, and Putin both knows this and how to exploit it.

Will Putin return to his old ways when he returns to office? There is no reason to think he won’t. What will this mean for the United States? The answer somewhat depends on how the US government decides to treat a new Russian regime, but it will detainly dampen American enthusiasm for Russian movement toward “normal” status in the region and world and dim any hope that Russia will soon evolve into a full-scale western democracy. It will also mean a more assertive Russian stance toward the “internal abroad” (those ethnically non-Russian parts of Russia that seek autonomy or independence–think Chechnya and Dagestan) or the “near abroad” (the former Soviet republics on itrs periphery–think Georgia). Russia will almost certainly act in ways of which the United States disapproves, and the results will almost certainly return greater strain to those relations.

Russia still has its problems, which Putin cannot wish away. Russian demographics are still horrible, and population decline will continue and hamper Russia’s return to major status. The rate of exploitation of Russia’s oil reserves cannot be sustained long before they begin to become depleted. Russia needs to be looking toward new bases of influence beyond energy, and buying off the population only serves short-term, not long-term goals. These are Russian realities that face any Russian leader.

As yesterday’s indicates, Valdimir Putin is back. He never really went away, but in March, the Russian public will put him back in the driver’s seat, while his understudy, Dmitry Medvedev, will be consigned to the rumble seat. It is not particularly good news, but there is not a whole lot that can be done about it.

Whence Egypt?

The news columns and airwaves are filled with speculation about what may happen next in Egypt. Egyptian president/strong man Hosni Mubarak is hanging on by his fingernails, having dismissed virtually everyone (except his former colleagues and supporters in the military) to try to assuage the throngs on the Cairo streets, but it is clear that the demonstrations will not end until he physically steps down. What remains of this phase of the process of change in Egypt (the removal of the old guard) is mostly negotiating the terms of departure.

This in itself is proving tricky, for two reasons. One is about what happens to Mubarak physically in the process. The president said in his interview with ABC News this week that he does not intend to leave the country–that he plans to die on Egyptian soil–but his detractors insist he must physically leave the scene–depart Egypt. This could all be solved either by letting him go somewhere in internal exile within Egypt, but the demonstrators do not trust him enough to want him to do so. A temporary exit from the country–an overseas “vacation” that included assurances he could return into retirementat some point–might satisfy the demonstrators, but Mubarak is likely to balk, for fear (probably well deserved) that a new government would renege on the promise to let him return to die on Egyptian soil. The other possibilities–he is simply allowed to stay, serve out his term, and then retire somewhere within the country or that he be consigned to permanent exile–will not please both sides. Fortunately, no one has yet suggested seriously a Shah of Iran or Saddam Hussein solution.

The other tricky part of the equation is that the uprising (and, at this point, it is pretentious to call it more) is headless. Neither what is left of the Mubarak government, the Egyptian military, or international intermediaries can negotiate with a quarter-million person assemblage. This is apparently a true “people’s” movement. The good news is that it apparently represents popular sentiment among a lot of Egyptians; the not so good news is that it has no leaders with whom to discuss what happens next. It is not at all clear how much of the popular will is represented by those trying to set up a process for orderly succession.

The headless nature of the movement is, of course, a result of the kind of regime that Mubarak has run and which we in the West (including prominently the United States and Israel in the current context) have at least implicitly endorsed with continuing diplomatic and economic support. A central feature of that authoritarian regime has been the systematic elimination of all forms of political opposition, almost all of which is either dead, imprisoned, or forced into an exile that has separated them from the people. The American and Israeli government have turned an essentially blind eye toward all this, because Mubarak has played a positive role in promoting a more stable (which is to say not anti-American) region that does not threaten Israel. Mubarak has been”the devil we know,” and now we are looking to see who the devil we may not know is. Unfortunately, supporting Mubarak has meant we have also supported his elimination of successors (other than his unpopular son Gamal), so our ability to identify successors is limited by the paucity of obvious choices. This also, of course, means it is hard for us to choose our own personal preference for the succession.

Lacking someone whom we would like to see come to power is not entirely bad. The uprising has not turned anti-American (except, interestingly, among Mubarak  “supporters” among the demonstrators, most of whom are almost certainly government employees) to this point, and one reason is that there is no American choice around which to organize resistance. The case is even clearer with regard to Israeli preferences: I cannot imagine any more effective way to to discredit an aspirant to power in Egypt than to bestow on him or her with the Israeli seal of approval. We have kept our mouths shut about successors, which probably means that the popular will is less likely to produce a violently anti-American successor than it would if we found another Ahmed Chalabi and tried to promote him. It also means we are rolling the dice more on the outcome, but that is probably better than acting in such a way as to create a self-fulfilling prophecy of an outcome that injures our interests. Although they will have to swallow hard to admit it, the same is true for the Israelis.

The unsettling part of all this is to leave us as interested bystanders in how this all evolves. To this point, the Obama administration has been entirely appropriately restrained in its role, admonishing Mubarak to give up power and the demonstrators to remain peaceful. Nick Kristof captured the public side of this approach in his “We are all Egyptians” column earlier in the week in the New York Times.

In this unsettled atmosphere, one can only speculate about where this all is heading: whence Egypt? In today’s (2/6/11) Washington Post, the headline of Janine Zacharia’s column suggests possible analogies with Gdansk, Poland (a true popular uprising with a spreading democratic outcome), Beijing (a suppression like thay in 1989), or Tehran (an Islamist fundamentalist outcome), and Stanford political scientist Larry Diamond suggests a South African possibility (gradual democratic takeover). To the extent analogies are ever very precise, Gdansk or South Africa are clearly more desirable from our vantage point, Bejing and especially Tehran clearly less desirable.

Which way will it all play out? Will Cairo turn out analogously to recent predecessors, or will it be sui generis? I have a feeling the latter is likely to be the case, but I don’t feel qualified to predict what that will mean. And probably, those in the middle of the process don’t know either.

Deadly Kabuki in Korea

The current crisis between the Koreas is now over a month old, with the North and South Koreans gnashing their rhetorical teeth and one another and the world wondering if this could be the onset of a second Korean War. The current flap began last month over the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, a part of South Korea only seven miles off the North Korean coast, by the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea). Recriminations flew back and forth between the two sides and came to focus on South Korean atrillery exercises scheduled for this month off the island–an activity that the DPRK argued was provocative and could lead to renewed hostilities. These pronouncements were met in kind by the Republic of Korea (ROK or South Korea). Where will it all go? 

The whole episode has taken place in a familiar atmosphere in which common elements to other crises between the DPRK and ROK have worked themselves out. Three elements, two familiar from the past and one a recurring wraith that hangs over relations, stand out.

The first, and most obvious, source of tension and concern is the wraith of the DPRK nuclear arsenal. Without going into detail, North Korea is now generally acknowledged to be the world’s ninth nuclear power, with probably 6-8 nuclear weapons deliverable over moderate ranges that certainly include most of Soth Korea and probably Japan as well. The DPRK has alternately announced intself as a nuclear power, than backed away from the designation only to reassert it. The reasons the DPRK feels the need to keep a nuclear arsenal are numerous and include the prestige of having joined the nuclear club and thus the status it provides to a regime and country that would be highly inconsequential without them. The North Koreans were almost certainly motivated by the fact that they faced a nuclear-armed United States across the 38th Parallel (the de facto boundary between the Koreas) when they decided to launch a nuclear program in the 1950s, and the deterrence of attacks against them equally certainly underlays their commitment to being a nuclear power.

Regardless of why North Korea has gone nuclear, their possession has at least two important consequences. One is that it raises the deadly calculus of war on the peninsula. Almost all observers agree that the DPRK would lose such a war and that one of the consequences would be the overthrow of the regime and the probable reunification of the country under South Korean control. These outcomes are, hopefully, well enough known and unpalatable enough to keep the DPRK from starting a war in the first place, but should they launch such a war anyway, these dynamics might well lead to a decision to use their nuclear arsenal as a last-ditch, desperation way to avoid defeat. Such an action would equally likely result in a nuclear strike against them, and the Korean peninsula would be the sure loser. Second, the failure to convince the DPRK to back away from its nuclear program could lead other regional powers, notably the ROK and Japan, to conclude they must develop comensating capabilities, thereby initiating a nw nuclear arms race.

There are also two familiar dynamics at work here that have been present in past crises. One is a succession process in the DPRK. Thecurrent leader, Kim Jung-Il, is known to be in failing health, and following the lead of his father (Kim Il-Sung, the original DPRK leader), he has designated a son to take his place. Until his elevation, Kim Jong-Un was virtually unknown prior to his designation, and the twenty-six-year-old was quickly appointed as the world’s youngest four-star general this fall. Covering the succession process with a crisis was also done when the current leader was annointed. Third, North Korea is apparently undergoing one of its periodic, chronic food crises, and it has been the case before that the DPRK has precipitated crises as a way to extract needed aid from the outside world rather than having openly to beg for them.

Thus, the current crisis has a slightly familiar ring. The North Koreans provoke, the South Koreans rise to the bait and issue counter-threats, the world holds its breath and intervenes (currently through the “unofficial” Bill Richardson mission–with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer along for the ride). The news today suggests that the ritual kabuki is going according to script: the South Koreans have delayed their artillery exercise, with bad weatheras the excuse; and the North Koreans have suggested to Richardson they might let American forensic personnel into the DPRK to examine recently discovered remains of fallen Americans from the Korean War.

The current crisis could deviate from the past script and degenerate into warfare that no one wants and which would benefit no one, but there is a hint of a familiar kabuki in the air. Let’s hope the participants don’t forget their roles and their lines, paticularly since the failure to do so could have particularly devastating consequences in a nuclear-armed Korean peninsula.

Watching Karzai, Seeing Diem

Historians warn us not to overgeneralize based on different events, citing the special circumstances that surround any particular event or complex of events. That warning in mind, the latest dustup between the Obama administration and its erstwhile Afgan ally (oops, “partner” according to White House spokesman David Gibbs) brings to mind a similar disagreement between the American government and its Vietnamese protege of the early 1960s, Ngo Dinh Diem. Let’s hope the analogy is inappropriate, but if it is at all accurate, it does not bode very well for the American future in Afghanistan.

For those who were not around to witness the tumultuous and ultimately disastrous relationship between the United States and Diem, a word of context may help. Diem became the president of South Vietnam after the Geneva Conference of 1954 temporarily partitioned Vietnam into a North and South Vietnam, with the 17th parallel (the DMZ or Demilitarized Zone) as its boundary. The stated (if not necessarily underlying geopolitical) intent was that the line would be temporary, a convenient way to allow the departing French to quit the country without being shot as they boarded the troop ships going home, following which unifying elections would be held. It was apparent that Ho Chi Minh would win such elections if fairly held, and since Ho was both the leading nationalist figure and a communist, the United States opposed actually holding the elections, citing North Vietamese fraud that was matched in the south. Diem, originally a transitional figure, emerged as the leader of an independent Republic of Vietnam with American backing. He was not at the time a particularly popular leader: he was, for instance, a Roman Catholic in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country, and he was secretive, authoritarian, and corrupt. Moreover, he was repressive of anyone who opposed him, in the process effectively creating his own organized opposition in the form of the National Liberation Front, the military wing of which was the more familiar Viet Cong.

The United States, which opposed the communization of Vietnam, ended up adopting Diem as our ally in the anti-communist competition. It was an uneasy alliance, largely because Diem had an agenda quite different from that pursued by Washington. Most notably, he opposed land reform to transfer agricultural lands controlled by large land holders (of which the Catholic Church was a notable example). The United States realized this was the major issue that could lead to civil war and attempted to cajole or coerce Diem into initiating land and other reforms. This mostly took place behind closed doors in Saigon between Diem and American ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., and the bottom line was that Diem basically ignored the requests/demands by the Americans. In late 1963, Diem was assassinated, and the rest is history.

Dial forward to today. Major American involvement in Afghanistan came in response to 9/11 ans the desire to root Al Qaeda from Afghanistan. In the process, the United States aided the victory of the Northern Alliance over the Taliban, and from this struggle, Hamid Karzai emerged as the president of the new Afghanistan. Karzai was the choice because he is a Pashtun (admittedly of the Durrani branch), and he was one of the most prominent Pashtuns in the Northern Alliance. Moreover, he was westernized, spoke excellent English and was a great public relations success in the United States (the Catholic Church helped orchestrate a campaign to establish the popularity of Diem in the United States as well).

Like Diem, Karzai brought some baggage with him. He was not a figure with whom the majority of Pashtuns identified, and his collaboration with the Northern Alliance made him suspicious as well. In the “grand” Afghan tradition, he has proven to be classically corrupt, instituting a kleptocracy in which members of his family have been notable beneficiaries. Corruption has, like land reform in Southeast Asia, been a major theme in Afghan opposition to Karzai, and the United States has publicly and privately implored him to clean up his regime’s act. Like Diem, he has issued pious rhetoric about attacking the problem but basically not done anything about it. As evidence, Americans seeking to liberate Helmand Province regularly report they fear corrupt Afghan officials as much or more than the Taliban.

Karzai has responded to pressure most recently by creating a confrontation with Washington, accusing “foreigners” (aka Americans) of causing all his problems, such as rigging the elections last year that returned him to office. You have to give the guy high marks for sheer chutzpah; could Karl Rove be acting as a consultant? Most recently, the U.S. has hinted at cancelling a state visit by Karzai to the White House in May because it is not clear there is anything to talk about; Karzai has responded that unless foreign harassment ends, he might join the Taliban himself. Yeah, right! 

  How will this end? In Vietnam, the U.S. government’s frustration led to a withdrawal of support for Diem, helping lead to his assassination (the U.S. quit paying Diem’s bodyguards, who left, paving the way to grabbing and killing him; American complicity remains debatable). The result was further destabilization, since there were no clear successors (Diem had killed or chased most alternatives into exile). Should the United States decide to dump Karzai (not an entirely bad idea prima facie), wuld the result be the same? Who knows? What is clear is that there is no obvious successor in a country that traditionally opposes central governmental control.

The analogy becomes scariest if one projects the two events into the future. Diem’s assassination was the Foreword to America’s until-then longest war (a distinction Afghanistan has already exceeded). At the time, some counselled using Diem’s fall as an excuse to wash our hands of Vietnam and come home, and they were ignored. In retrospect, that idea may have had more merit than was attributed to it at the time. The problem, of course, wasthat two arguments were used against withdrawal. One was that opposing the spread of communism was vital to America’s survival (replace communism with terrorism here). The second was that we already had so much investment that we could not walk away (no substitution needed).  Would the same thing happen if the U.S. jettisoned Hamid Karzai? The idea is certainly tempting.