Greg Sanders

Marylanders: The fate of the Purple Line does ride on tomorrow's election

I hope all U.S. citizens vote tomorrow. I recommend Vote411.org as a way to help you get information about your polling place and learn the candidates' stands on the issues.

One race particularly important to me this year is Maryland's gubernatorial election where Lt. Gov. Brown (D) faces off against Larry Hogan (R).

Hogan is explicitly an enemy of the Purple Line:

Hogan says he would put a far greater priority on building and repairing roads than on mass transit. He pledges to block two major light-rail projects: the Purple Line in the Washington suburbs and the Red Line in Baltimore.

Hogan's emphasis on new roads ultimately does not make sense. Vehicle Miles Traveled are down across the country. Infrastructure repair is important and specific projects might be worthwhile, but Hogan is pursuing road building as a culture war issue rather than an governing agenda for Maryland that actually makes sense.

By comparison, the Purple Line and Red Line are near ready for construction start.  The economic benefits are immense, especially at a time where the construction market has yet to fully recover and interest rates are low:

• 69,300 daily riders.
• $3 in economic returns anticipated for every $1 invested.
• 17,000 cars off the roads in the Montgomery and Prince George's Counties.
• Completion of the Capital Crescent trail.
• 2,380 to 4,140 new jobs for every $100 million of cost.

The Maryland governor is entirely capable of putting a project like this on hold. For those of you Marylanders will not directly benefit from the transit, this is still an investment in the state's long term future. Much of the funding comes from the federal government, with $800 million in federal matching funds to help build it. The economic activity generated will support the state's tax base and among other things help keep tuition low at Maryland's university system, a particularly remarkable accomplishment of the O'Malley-Brown administration when much of the country was experiencing jumps in public school costs. The Lt. Governor has taken his hits, rightfully, on the healthcare website debut. That ship has been righted, but for those with ongoing concerns about implementation I'd point to his own Lt. Gov. candidate, Howard County's Ken Ulman. As a present resident of Howard, I've got to say I've been consistently impressed by our young executive. I hope he has the chance to serve the state as a whole as well as he's served Howard County.

In closing, I certainly confess to being a partisan Democrat. But I'm also a proud Marylander. I think our state has managed great things in these past eight years, even when the national situation had headwinds against us. I'm asking Marylanders to vote for the Lt. Gov. because he'll build on the successes of the O'Malley administration and not undercut our economic future to fight culture war battles over infrastructure. I know this election can feel like there's not much as stake, but when it comes to the Purple Line, the opposite is true.

Speaking for myself and not my employer. Similarly, I'm not speaking for any non-profits I volunteer for. That said, Kate does back with me!

International Relations Debate Notes: Reputation for Resolve

Routine reminder: I speak for myself and not my employer.

What’s a reputation for resolve? The summary below will lay out the technical definition, but the short version is that those calling for more coercive action (be it military or economic) backing up U.S. threats and red lines regularly cite reputational benefits that will go beyond the immediate incident. Alternately, those believing in the importance of reputation for resolve may simply argue for making more limited use of threats and red lines, as is outlined below. This ties into a variety of related concepts; reputation in general, deterrence, and credibility all tie together to the concept, but the biggest controversy lies in the resolve component.

The Foreign Entanglements show on Blogging Heads TV recently had a debate on the matter that I summarize below because I think that you often can learn more of the strengths and weaknesses of each side when they actually talk to one another. To more succinctly summarize the discussions, I’ve grouped arguments thematically rather than by when they occurred in the video. For a literature review going in, check out the blogging heads link or this Drezner piece from a few years back.

Mercer’s Deterrence Theory:

Deterrence is based on credibility/reputation which has three parts:

• Power: What a state’s capacity is. What forces or tools does it have available and how costly is it to use them? In general the United States is the highest capacity state in the world, but it varies from case to case. When it comes to Iran or Russia, Europe has more economic tools available.
• Interest: How much does the country care about this issue? The United States does not have a high interest in Libya or Syria, but fought a war in the former case and not the latter. By comparison, free travel of oil through the Straits of Hormuz is considered a high interest of the United States.
• Resolve: Whether a country’s leadership seems likely to use its power to assert the interest in question. In poker terms, does the county’s leadership have a tendency to bluff?

Critiques to a reputation for resolve

Going back five years or so, the resolve portion of that triad has faced substantially more skepticism from academic political scientists. Farley was defending the strong critique, not just that a reputation for resolve is not applicable as the situation varies, but that it is not even well enough understood to be a useful concept. Farley argues that the reason for this is that we cannot predict how actions that send messages will be received. There's too many moving parts. Specifically, had the U.S. bombed Syria without overthrowing Assad, this might have been viewed as a result that failed to demonstrate resolve.

Debating the examples

Farley countered that we we have not seen a reputation for resolve in practice. Our red lines against Iran include, for example, mining the Straits of Hormuz. These have not been pressed and what we have done in Syria has made no difference. The reason for this is that we obviously have greater interests at stake in Iran. On the other hand, red lines often do not work when our interests are weak; for example, our red line in Syria did not work even though we had just deposed Qaddafi in Libya.

Gartenstein-Ross argues resolve when your interests are highly involved is different than when they are peripheral. He outlined the reputation for resolve as relevant in two categories 1) where U.S. interests are low but a clear threat is made, 2) where U.S. interests are directly involved but the situation is messy. He argued that Syria was reacting not to Libya but instead the lack of U.S. response to Iran's support of insurgents that killed Americans in Iraq and Assad's allowing foreign fighters to transit through Syria to Iraq.

Farley argues that we have no real visibility into the Assad regime; one could tell a competing narrative that the U.S. would be interested in payback when an opportunity arose due to the weakness of his regime. This leaves reputation for resolve as a variable without predictive content. Gartenstein-Ross agreed that the Assad regime would consider both stories. This is a case of acting with incomplete information.

Farley points to Cold War history, saying that if academics and historians can't establish a how a reputation for resolve works with the extensive archives from the Cold War, then policymakers should be extremely careful about making any decisions on the basis of a reputation for resolve.

How to implement academic humility

Gartenstein-Ross laid out that he believes that reputation for resolve is a case where the academics are experiencing a bias towards variables they can measure. In one example, for a time the statistic-oriented baseball fans undervalued fielding because there wasn't a good way to report on it, unlike hitting. Leaving out an important variable could then lead to an undervaluing of certain players and worse performance for the team despite a more scientific-seeming approach. Gartenstein-Ross specifically believed that academics were prone to make this mistake and believed they made the same error when discounting the specific religious content of belief systems in militant organizations.

Farley replies that practitioners are not acting in a theory-free zone; they are operating with theories that come out of Cold War deterrence theory and Thomas Schelling. They continue to operate with this Cold War understanding because that's where they gained much of their experience. Those with the strongest and most visceral feel of reputation and resolve were old Russia hands. Academics should be humble, but that humility encourages tearing down previous academic theories that are now obsolete. It is possible that we will find a way to show the impact of reputation for resolve in the future, but in the absence of such evidence we should not expend blood and treasure to maintain a reputation for resolve.

Gartenstein-Ross says that the two views are not necessarily irreconcilable. He is not arguing for expenditure of blood and treasure to maintain a reputation for resolve. Instead, when things are not in our interest, we should be very hesitant to make any sort of threat if we are not willing to fulfill it. By this means reputation can be obtained, and we should use this mechanism.

The utility of bluffing and a reputation for resolve

Farley queries whether this means Gartenstein-Ross wishes to take the bluff away from the United State's strategic toolkit. He further charges that many of those who say we should have acted in Syria are doing so on the basis that we could better bluff our way through Crimea. Farley raises the example of the Chinese air identification zone. In that instance, the U.S. flew B-52s, planes that you cannot possibly overlook, through the zone and China did nothing. Similarly, he says that Putin has effectively deployed bluffing on multiple occasions.

Gartenstein-Ross stands by his view and argues that the Chinese bluff was counterproductive. During the unipolar moment in the 1990s we had a high ability to bluff.  However, our relative decline over the past thirteen years have weakened our ability. He finds the U.S. bluff on Syria to be outmoded thinking much as Farley argues that the reputation for resolve is outmoded. Bluffs are now more likely to be called, both because of the reduced capability and because of the vicious circle of he reputation for resolve because bluffs that are called.

Gartenstein-Ross then returns to the Iran example in pointing to the utility of a reputation for resolve. The U.S. has a variety of red lines with respect to Iran. Some are clear, like the Straits of Hormuz. However, there are subtler moves regarding the nuclear program where a reputation for resolve can matter. Reputation for resolve is not as important for the bluff, or the big policy areas and matters of war and peace, but for subtler decisions it plays a bigger role.  He says that while he's more skeptical than Farley of political science's ability to truly measure something like the reputation for resolve and thinks Farley overstates a legitimate critique, he believes that it's something that should be better understood.

My own thoughts

Gartenstein-Ross argues the more limited case for reputation for resolve and I think to really judge that debate we’d have to get into the literature on bluffing. That said, it is important to remember that in the specific case of Syria, tons of chemical weapons were removed from the country and their existing facilities were demilitarized. There are allegations of continued use of chlorine gas and continued atrocities by the Syrian government are indisputable, but the significant quantity of weapons and facilities destroyed is a boon in its own right.

What’s more telling is that the Gartenstein-Ross’s limited case for a reputation for resolve points to greater restraint when U.S. interests are low. He repeatedly argued that President Obama’s mistake was setting the red line, not in failing to enforce it. While he noted that our reputation for resolve was diminished by failing to engaged in unspecified retaliation against Iran and Syria for aiding insurgents in Iraq, he did not lay out any positive mechanisms by which to increase our reputation for resolve. If spending blood and treasure are off the table and limited strikes will make little difference, than wherefore complaints from other commentators about the President’s policy in Ukraine? U.S. sanctions have slowly been ratcheted up. European allies have been slower to act, but due to greater connections with Russia their actions have had greater effect.

What about complaints from allies?

This debate did not touch on one source of complaints of ill-resolve: those from U.S. allies. Gripes have been made in public and in private. Vehement critiques of resolve like Daniel Larison do not dispute the existence of such complaints but instead argue that they play to Washington’s pride and insecurity. I don’t doubt that some of that goes on, but I think some of the behavior may have a less harsh interpretation, namely allies bargain about who should bear the burden of common interests. Matt Yglesias gives an example of how this works in European debate over sanction policy:

The biggest gas importer is Germany, which would rather see someone else's ox gored. Angela Merkel has been talking up the idea of a ban on the export of military equipment to Russia. Conveniently, Germany doesn't have a big outstanding weapon sale to Russia. But France is scheduled to sell advanced Mistral naval vessels to Russia. Much of the international community wants France to cancel that deal, hurting the Russian military and the French economy while leaving others unscathed. Meanwhile, from the French viewpoint a better countermove might be for the UK to seize Russian funds and property squirreled away in London.

It’s not that France, Germany, and the UK doubt one another’s resolve, they’d just genuinely prefer that someone else pay the bill and no doubt can come up with compelling normative reasons why this is so. Rather than applying the deterrence-elated concept of reputation and credibility writ large to allies, I would argue that we should apply a range of appropriate tools, such as collective action problems to negotiation theory to security dilemmas. This is not to say that complaints from allies are merely bluffs and puffery – the current alignment of the Middle East in particular is genuinely unstable - but that their use of the word credibility should not dictate our choice of intellectual framework.

Hiroshima Peace Museum: Main Building 2014-05-28

Content warning: The main museum gets most directly into the consequences of the bombing of Hiroshima, beyond even what is shown in the East building.

Walking through corridors showing the damage done to Hiroshima to property and to people, I certainly felt a moral imperative that these weapons never be used again. However, how is it that nuclear weapons have only been used twice in battle? I believe deterrence and mutually assured destruction is part of the story, but a key related concept is what Thomas Schelling calls the nuclear taboo. At first the escalation to nuclear weapons was seen as more of a continuation of existing policy than a radical break during WWII, and President Eisenhower made nuclear first use a policy in the event of a conventional Soviet invasion of Europe. However, by 1964 President Johnson declared “Make no mistake, there is no such thing as a conventional nuclear weapon. For 19 peril-filled years no nation has loosed the atom against another. To do so now is a political decision of the highest order.” This reflected earlier decisions not to deploy them in Korea and subsequent avoidance by the U.S. in Vietnam, by Israel against Egypt in 1973, and by the Soviets in Afghanistan. Nina Tattenwald discusses the origin of the taboo (summary by Patrick Lam) and the main building passionately and decisively makes the case that this taboo must be maintained whether you believe in full abolition or that they’ve contributed to the decline in great power war.

The displays (excerpted online) covered the multitude of ways that nuclear weapons can visit destruction upon cities: the rays of heat, the blast itself, the conflagration of flammable materials, and of course the radiation. The picture on the left shows a portion of the facade of a bank where someone was sitting at 8:15 that morning, likely waiting for it to open. Given the location, the person died on the spot, the stone around them was blasted white while the steps underneath them left the remnant of their “shadow” in the middle of the picture.

The mangled remains of the city, stone, wood, and steel filled many of the displays showing the widespread extent of the damage from a single nuclear bomb with a small yield by today’s standards. The museum did its best to mark where each piece came from within the blast zone. The details filled out the almost incomprehensible damage shown in the photographs and the detailed model on the right. One piece I don’t have the heart to include in the display was the shredded remnants of the school uniforms of children who died in the bombing or the days thereafter (let alone the photographs of the burned bodies directly afflicted). Some had been evacuated to the country but others were conscripted to create firebreaks and in anticipation of conventional bombing.

Death and devastation can come in many forms. As I’ve earlier mentioned, more people died from a single raid in the firebombing of Tokyo; however, that raid involved 334 B-29s with 279 dropping bombs. By comparison, the Enola Gay flew with only two other planes, suggesting a terrible potential to scale that was achieved by both sides in the Cold War. This is also where the radiation comes in, as experienced by many of the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombs. Sadako Sasaki, who helped inspire the Children’s War Memorial, had been two at the time of the bombing but died years later of leukemia despite having been quite healthy in the interim. The picture on the right are some of the cranes she folded; you may have read or heard of her story when you were a child.

The remainder of the museum focused on the stories of survivors, the rescue and recovery efforts, and even pictures drawn by those who were there. This was complemented by prayers and wishes for peace from around the world and a view out to the rest of the park. Based on the wikipedia page, one million people visit the museum a year. I hope, in addition to whatever else we do to make this a better world, we all work to keep this taboo from fading.

Halt our aid to Egypt

Technorati Tags: Egypt,Foreign Assistance,Massacre

Cutting off aid is mandated by law after a coup. As a general principle, I’m not fond of the executive branch overriding or evading constitutional laws. Nonetheless, I think the administration’s buying time by not making a declaration may have been forgivable if the Egyptian government took the deal that the U.S. and partner nations mediated with the Muslim Brotherhood.

But efforts to prevent the crackdown failed. Jay Ulfelder puts it in quantitative perspective:

According to a story in this morning’s New York Times, the crackdown that began a few days ago “so far has killed more than 1,000 protesters.”

This puts Egypt in rare and sullied company. Since World War II, the world has only seen onsets of about 110 of these episodes, and fewer than a handful of those onsets occurred after 2000: in Sudan in 2003 (Darfur) and again in 2011 (South Kordofan);  in Sri Lanka in 2009; and in Syria since 2011.

Thus, I think we should obey the law and cut off non-democracy building aid to Egypt (which is the vast majority of our aid; even our non-military aid is mostly economic). We need not oppose their attempts to gain IMF aid nor seek sanctions against them, but unless and until the distant prospect of a genuine civilian democratic rights-respecting government emerges we must cut them off as a client.

The expert I trust most on these issues is  Marc Lynch, although I recommend the Arabist for a great collection of regional reactions on Middle East issues, with the note that I will regularly disagree with some of the sources they pull in but it’s important to be aware of opinions you disagree with. Lynch also has his own round up over on Foreign Policy. Now that I’ve laid out my sources, I feel I can safely endorse Lynch’s pessimistic read of the effects of cutting of aid:

These steps won't matter very much in the short term. Cairo has made it very clear that it doesn't care what Washington thinks and the Gulf states will happily replace whatever cash stops flowing from U.S. coffers. Anti-American incitement will continue, along with the state of emergency, violence and polarization, the stripping away of the fig leaf of civilian government, and the disaster brewing in the Sinai. It won't affect Secretary of State John Kerry's Israel-Palestine peace talks and the Camp David accords will be fine, too; Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi can't manage his own streets, and it's unlikely he wants to mess with Israel right now.

The hard truth is that the United States has no real influence to lose right now anyway, and immediate impact isn't the point. Taking a (much belated) stand is the only way for the United States to regain any credibility -- with Cairo, with the region, and with its own tattered democratic rhetoric.

The benefits may go beyond a slow start on restoring credibility, based on my past research on Egyptian aid. Past research by Steven Finkel for the U.S. Agency for International Development (PDF) found that democracy aid can be effective, but tends to be undermined in countries where the majority of aid goes to the military. That result is probably over-determined, but I’ve got one hypothesis I hope to explore in future work: namely that military aid is not apolitical in countries with weak civilian control of the military and in which the military is a major economic actor. Egypt certainly fits that bill on both fronts. While I don’t see them allowing real U.S. democracy building aid again anytime soon, we should stop giving the military an edge against other actors. Should we restore aid at some point in the future, the current approach to Pakistan where assistance is not funneled through the military may be a helpful model. Of course, if we move away from military assistance, that may hurt U.S. arms exports, but I think that’s a correct prioritization.

Finally, on a personal note, I suspect many of the people I met in Egypt, particularly the Coptics, victims in their own right, are now backing the crackdown. Even in those heady post-revolution days when we visited, the military was often above criticism. Moreover, while the Morsi presidency was actively sabotaged on political and economic fronts, his party worked hard to alienate and disempower everyone outside their immediate coalition. However, the coup was ill-advised because wide-spread violence was a predictable - and predicted - effect. With hope for reconciliation off the table and the U.S. distrusted on all sides, we are not in a position to make a positive impact, but we can start by not being complicit in a bloody mistake.

As ever, speaking for myself and not my employer.

Purple Line Brochure ISSU brochure experiment (web version)

Purple Line Brochure ISSU brochure experiment (high-res)

Marylanders: Please tell Senator Cardin not to back down on stopping filibuster abuse

Update: The Baltimore office at least was closed on Thursday 1/3 but will be open tomorrow 1/4. The vote will be on [1/22], post-inauguration, although calling sooner is still probably better.

Senator Cardin apparently may be part of a bipartisan group opposing bringing democracy and effectiveness to the U.S Senate. In doing so, he risks blowing our one opportunity for the next two years to make progress. I had the alarm raised for me via email, but the story checks out according to Ben German of `the Hill:

A bipartisan group is offering Senate leaders a political compromise on filibuster reform as Democrats push to change rules that frequently require 60 votes to pass bills.

The group met Friday morning in the office of Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, and plans to present its idea to the separate caucuses later in the day…

Lawmakers involved in the ad-hoc group, in addition to Kyl, Alexander and Cardin, include Sens. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and, according to The Huffington Post, Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

The filibuster as presently constituted does not work with European style parliamentary politics and as a result the Senate can't get anything done. The alternative to an effective legislature is not some panacea of democracy: it is the accrual of power to the executive branch. This is true whether the President is Republican or Democrat.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is leading up a call drive to push for real reform; if you follow this link, they'll get you the phone numbers and information you need.

In summary, I'll hand the floor to Ezra Klein:

[The McCain proposal] is filibuster reform for people who don’t want to reform the filibuster.

In other words, it wouldn’t do much of anything. Unlike Sen. Tom Harkin’sreform proposal, it wouldn’t change the number of votes needed to break a filibuster. Unlike Sen. Jeff Merkley’s reform proposal, it wouldn’t require the minority to actually hold the floor and talk. And perhaps most importantly, it wouldn’t use “the constitutional option,” thus protecting the precedent that changing Senate rules requires a two-thirds vote rather than a simple majority.

If you think the Senate is pretty much working well as is, and the biggest threat are the folks who want to change the rules, then this is the proposal for you. It lets people say they’re doing something to curb the abuse of the filibuster without actually doing anything at all. But if you think the Senate is broken, there’s nothing in here that would even plausibly fix any of its problems.

If you care about this issue, please call soon.

Marylanders, please vote for question 6

For those that are undecided, perhaps because of the warnings of pastors, I'd argue that it's key to realize that this measure is about going to the court house, not the chapel. It's explicit in the language of the bill. Whether churches choose to recognize the marriages is left to them.

Obviously, those provisions haven't completely allayed the concerns of some religious groups. However, I'd still ask you on a personal basis to support it.

My marriage was only possible because a gay friend introduced my wife and I. For that reason and many other reasons, he was my best man at my wedding. We both gladly attended his subsequent marriage and the stable, loving example he and his husband set a positive example for other couples. This should be no surprise, friends in loving stable relationship are regularly an inspiration. The reason this issue has gained public support so quickly is that same sex marriages succeed, and fail, just like any other marriages. When the match is right, they can bring a lot of good to two people and those around them, and more or more people have had a chance to witness this phenomenon. To know gays or lesbians that have been able to gain formal recognition for their relationship is to know that there's nothing to be afraid of. At the same time, denying these civil  rights makes the lives of such couples unnecessarily hard by blocking benefits, visitation rights, and all the other little things our society grants in recognition of a couple that have chosen to commit themselves to each other.

Please vote yes for 6.

I'm schedule[d] to be on 1500AM Federal News Radio this afternoon to talk about Defense Contracting sometime after 3

Along with DIIG Assistant Director Guy Ben-Ari, the plan is we'll be speaking with Francis Rose about trends in defense contracting. It may be around 3 p.m. but no promises.

If you'd like to listen online, it should be live steaming from the Federal News Radio site.

[Update: The archive is available from Federal News Radio]

Beyond the point of no return in Egypt

From what I'm reading from a range of sources, mostly Twitter, it sounds as if the security situation has deteriorated in Egypt with many blaming the former security services for the looting. U.S. citizens are being offered evacuation. From David Kirkpatrick and Alan Cowell's reporting for the NY Times, it sounds like a crackdown order is coming:

But the soldiers refused protesters’ pleas to open fire on the security police. And the police battered the protesters with tear gas, shotguns and rubber bullets. Everywhere in Cairo, soldiers and protesters hugged or snapped pictures together on top of military tanks. With the soldiers’ consent, protesters scrawled graffiti denouncing Mr. Mubarak on many of the tanks. “This is the revolution of all the people,” read a common slogan. “No, no, Mubarak” was another.

By Saturday night, informal brigades of mostly young men armed with bats, kitchen knives and other makeshift weapons had taken control, setting up checkpoints around the city.

Some speculated that the sudden withdrawal of the police from the cities — even some museums and embassies in Cairo were left unguarded — was intended to create chaos that could justify a crackdown.

If enough of the Army cooperates, Mubarak could still get control of the situation. However, it would be a discredited regime that emerged from the rubble. We're now seeing an Egyptian population that is willing to stand up and choose its own destiny. I think John Quiggin is right in that we are seeing the end to the Arab exception [which treats Arabic nations as unready for democracy], although the oil rich emirates can probably buy their people off for some time to come. Yglesias highlights the key point (emphasis Yglesias):

The point applies most obviously in relation to oil. The idea that the US can legitimately use its military power to ensure continued access to oil resources rests, in large measure, on the (not entirely unfounded) assumption that those controlling the resources are a bunch of sheikhs and military adventurers who happened to be in the right place, with guns, at the right time. Without the Arab exception, the idea of oil as a special case, not subject to the ordinary assumption that resources are the property of the people in whose country they are found, will also be hard to sustain.

It is time to say that we will not support a regime that engages in a brutal crackdown and that free and fair elections are the only soft landing available. More important, it's time to call in the chips we have with the military to increase the odds that a crackdown order is not obeyed. The removal of the police forces made this a double or nothing situation; martial law without security services will likely prove reminiscent of the Tiananmen square massacre where police forces were similarly inadequate or unavailable.

[Minor grammar edits and a clarification on the term "Arab exception."]

Next America Repost: Defense-Industry Haikus

In a silly experiment, with help from Matt Zlatnik, I present the following seven haikus inspired by defense-related newsletters. There’s a bit of a contest involved with these with a prize of a Lockheed Martin toiletries kit, see the Next America page for details.

Private security
Cost six billion through ‘09
More in subcontracts

Big 3Q spend bump
The supplement arrived late
Not conspiracy

Cost-plus contracting
Now buys many more services
McCain not pleased

Six hundred million 
Meant for small businesses 
Went to the big boys

Europe does research 
But Americans sell stuff
Thank you big budget!

Big helicopter 
Spend lots on fancy add-ons
Save the President!

Large trade surpluses
Show the U.S. still produces
When it comes to arms

Again, go here for the source newsletters.

This entry also available at CSIS’s Next America Blog.

Afghanistan's Future: Colombia? Vietnam? Pakistan? Lebanon? Afghanistan's past?

As the administration works to formulate a new strategy for Afghanistan, popular and elite support appears to be dropping off and a string of attacks makes the stakes all too clear.

Dichotomies such as counter-insurgency versus counterterrorism, double down or fold, are useful ways to try to force prioritization rather than allow inertia to set strategy.  However, they preclude options that would vary the approach based on the region.  Another, still overly simple, way to look at Afghanistan is by comparing possible end states.

Colombia: The U.S. has had mixed success is strengthening the government of Colombia and cracking down on cocaine cultivation.  However, mirroring Colombia's achievements would still be a boon to Afghanistan while still being a more realistic end-state than the mountainous and decentralized democracy of Switzerland.  Getting to Colombia in the mid-term would likely require a counterinsurgency approach and a substantial increase in resources and improvements in governance.

Vietnam: Joshua Kurlantzick raises Vietnam as a positive model of an end state. Namely after the withdrawal and the fall of South Vietnam, while the country is still authoritarian, the U.S. enjoys a close relationship with that country and the long-feared domino effect never occurred.   Whether a successor of the current government or the Taliban is in charge, the question of terrorist havens must be addressed.  However, that issues is by no means limited to Afghanistan.

Pakistan: Through the use of Predator drones support by good intel, the U.S. has been quite successful at targeting Al Qaeda leadership without a large scale military presence on the ground.   Austin Long discusses how such an approach could be applied in Afghanistan (via Michael Cohen).  On the one hand, civilian casualties from drone strike do raise tensions, on the other, many of the civilian deaths from airstrikes were a result of missiles and bombs being used to provide support to U.S. combat troops.  The experience in Pakistan shows that these target strikes alone will not defeat the Taliban, but may achieve the narrower objective of crippling Al Qaeda.  Implementing this strategy in the short-term should be manageable, but the sustainability, either in Afghanistan or Pakistan, is an open question.

Lebanon: According to Scott Wilson, one train of thought emerging in the Administration is that we attempt to weaken but not destroy the Taliban.  The analogy would be Hezbollah, which controls a portion of Lebanon and participates in its government as a minority party.  There is a risk that allowing this would destabilize Pakistan, but on the other hand the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban has often been far friendlier than the relationship between Hezbollah and Israel.  Such an approach could be population-centric in government strongholds while reserving the counter-terrorism for any Al Qaeda activity in the remainder of the country.

Afghanistan's Past: A way to pursue counter-insurgency with less troops would be to exclusively defend the cities.  As Matt Yglesias notes, this approach in some way mirrors the Soviet approach in the latter stages of their occupation, though of course would not seek to emulate many soviet methods.  The Soviet approach may be a subset of the Lebanon approach, the difference would be that a cities approach would pick key population centers nation-wide while a more Lebanon-like approach may abandon some larger population centers in Taliban sympathizing territory while protecting smaller but more sympathetic locales.

Successful pursuit of a strategy in a hostile environment typically requires providing a sufficient level of resources and sacrificing desirable objects that are not necessary for success.  More ambitious approaches require far more resources which will further tax the U.S. economy.  Less ambitious approaches, up to and including withdrawal, will not accomplish everything we would like to see happen in Afghanistan, but may prove the most efficient way to advance U.S. interests and values.  As the Status of Forces agreement in Iraq showed, these choices will be further limited by what the local politicians and population will support, but for such a negotiation to be practical we need to first determine what we are shooting for.

While determining the cost in casualties of any of these strategies is quite difficult, the cost in dollars is easier to estimate.  So, reader, do you think this is a good starting list?  Are there any other end-states to be considered?

This post is also available at ameasureofsecurity.org and Next America.

Belfast Black Taxi - Political Tour July 10, 2009

To my surprise, we were actually in Belfast shortly before the Orangemen march.  That’s the time when a group of Unionists (Protestants who want to stay in the UK) do their traditional march celebrating the a victory of William of Orange in Ireland.  As a side note, Orange was his color because he was from Holland, he was the Norman that conquered the UK.  This march goes through a Catholic neighborhood and thus tends to direct clashes.  The controversy over the march, and the larger marching season, is a symptom of sectarian conflict and not a root cause, but it does make for good news stories. 

The tour, done in the back of a black taxi that Belfast is known for, got into the deeper issues.  Here’s wikipedia’s full summary of the Troubles.  A short version is that Catholics were a minority in Northern Ireland and often discriminated against.  The British army was actually sent in to protect them around 1970 but ended up throwing oil on the fire at Bloody Sunday in (London)Derry when protesters were shot.  Civilians were killed by partisans and security forces had happened prior to that point, but that was when the bombing campaign got going.  In Belfast the center of the conflict was in two polarized neighborhoods in the West part of the city that were immediately adjacent to one another.  The tour went through both of them, pictures on the Loyalist side first.

The square at the start is a march staging area.  It’s surrounded by murals, some historical, some focusing on paramilitary (including terrorist) leaders, and a few that are harder to characterize. 

Next stop was the “Peace wall” between the two communities.  There were multiple gates with no checkpoints, though they would be closed in the evening.  Similarly getting around the wall wouldn’t be hard at all.  Instead, it serves to force anyone seeking to cause trouble to go through a few chokepoints, throw things over the wall at the caged backyards on the far side, or travel outside of their strongholds before or after an attack.  While the Good Friday peace accord has been in place for around a decade now, our driver, Tom, didn’t think the wall would be going away anytime soon.  I think he’s probably right.  Walls do a good job of providing protection but they also calcify lines of division.  You can’t attack as easily but nor can you intermingle.

The ones that came later on the Catholic side were more recognizable as appeals for legitimacy or agitation regarding other conflicts.  The most interesting one for me was the mural of Bobby Sands, who was an IRA leader that the leadership managed to get himself elected as an MP while he was in prison.  He subsequently died on hunger strike as part of an attempt to get IRA prisoners treated as political prisoners/P.O.W.s.  Apparently he’s still a contested symbol between those in the IRA that compromised and breakaway hardliners, but I think the mural we saw was firmly in the mainline camp.  On the Catholic side there we’d also seen a remembrance garden listing the IRA and civilian dead from the Troubles.  Though there were certainly dead on the Unionist side, we didn’t see any of such shrines, so I’m not sure how they’d be different.

On the whole, the Black Taxi tour was well worth doing at 25 pounds for two people.  As an added bonus we got dropped off over at Queen’s university setting up our dinner and walk for the evening.

Talk Like a Modern Pirate Day

See here. Reading Medium Large? If not you should.

Second hand battleships

One of the reasons some U.S. aid may have been turned away by the Burmese government is that some of the assistance would come from warships. The U.S. Navy has a lot of capacity to do good, but even smaller detachment of ships still could pack a serious punch. We do have strictly hospital ships, such as the USNS Mercy shown below, but they’re only part of our response capability. One possible solution, suggested my friend and colleague Bryan Shea, might be to transfer some older ships to the State Department rather than selling or simply decommissioning them.’

The idea would face complications. To be effective the ship(s) would probably need to be forward deployed, perhaps combining aid with public diplomacy when there isn’t a disaster to respond to. Piracy can be a real issue in southeast Asia and aid teams often are targeted by spoilers or those simply seeking to rob them. An old nuclear carrier would have the advantage of fast movement but would raise a whole new class of concerns. But ultimately for our civilian agencies to be effective they must be in the field, and for large parts of the world, the field can be the oceans.

Image taken by Telstar Logistics and used under a Creative Commons license.

What to do about Burma?

It’s about month since Cyclone Nargis hit. The Burmese government has consistently failed their people with 2.4 million still homeless. More aid was allowed in after the government conducted its unfair and unfree constitutional referendum in the week following the quake. Near as I understand it, some U.S. aid is allowed in, but the aid workers who can actually operate in the country largely have to be from Asian countries. Given the severe limits on aid, from most of the world, I think it’s safe to say that initial harsh U.S. comments might not have made the difference in terms of access and were certainly well deserved. Sullivan has a link with pictures.

There are some, such as George Packer, that consider intervention. I don’t think anyone is arguing for a full on invasion, but instead sending in naval ships that have a proven record when it comes to disaster relief. Sadly, it would probably take ships or landing aircraft, as the PCR project points out airdrops can’t really be effective in this sort of situation.

I’d oppose a naval intervention, the Burmese government is made up of paranoiacs with no interest above maintaining power, they would escalate and a limited intervention would not stay limited. At the same time they’d likely cut off humanitarian access to those countries they’ve allowed in. Moreover, gross negligence in disaster response, while evil, doesn’t rise to the level of genocide. At the same time, setting aside China’s active opposition, we don’t have the support of democratic regional powers such as India or Indonesia.

However, as Matt Yglesias notes there are many opportunities, such as non-coercive relief opportunities in Sudan, where aid could help deal with disasters. We’d do well to gain experience by taking these opportunities that would give valuable experience. We actually handled the tsunami pretty well, but often have difficulty dealing with the other parts of a failed state even when we do have U.N. support. Learning to get better at that and developing a track record of success would much improve our performance and ability to gain support when coercion might be appropriate.

Image taken by groundreporter and used under a creative commons license.

Review: Heads in the Sand by Matt Yglesias

In his usual easy to read and witty style, Matthew Yglesias in his book Heads in the Sand addresses an issue that has long reverberated around the blogosphere.

*Q:* Why did the Democratic party keep losing to President Bush on foreign policy issues even under favorable conditions? *A:* Because it didn’t offer a coherent alternative.

Yglesias justifies a book length answer by providing a history of both the politics and the policy. His preferred alternative is classical liberal internationalism, an attempt to slowly progress towards a rule-based international system. This ideology dates back to Woodrow Wilson but was first implemented with any success under FDR. Containment, deterrence, and the first Gulf War were all compatible with this idea while pre-emptive war is dramatically opposed to it.

Support for this world view began to breakdown during the 1990s as some liberals, including myself, grew frustrated with the failures of the international community to prevent genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda. For the war in Kosovo the U.S. skirted U.N. approval and instead went to Nato to get multilateral support. After 9/11 key liberal hawks started treating a rule-based order as an instrument rather than a goal, pursuing international support was wise but even if the U.N. or a major regional organization did not sign on, a pre-emptive war could still be justified.

Yglesias argues that in 2002 and 2004 Democrats often sought to neutralize foreign policy issues either by supporting the President’s policies, critiquing on their implementation, or by pinning our hopes on military veteran candidates. By 2006 Democratic opponents of the war were finally in ascendancy but many liberals in the foreign policy community and the press still hew to the hawk line. Despite popular support for withdraw, Congress has been repeatedly thwarted in part because they have focused on tactical critiques rather than strategic ones. Since tactics and implementation are easy to change, and in some cases have changed for the better, the administration has consistently been able to out maneuver that charge. It may prove even weaker against John McCain who has supported many administration policies but still will have an easier time isolating himself from the President’s personal incompetence.

More after the cut

If I were a betting man

Well, PN Maliki’s make-or-break offensive is still rolling along. Sadr’s supporters have turned out thousands of protestors.

See Kevin Drum for other theories on PM Maliki’s motivation. He also provides a terrific cheat sheet for telling the Shiite factions apart. This is useful because they ofteen go by many names.

There’s a lot of other good material out there, but I’m kinda sleepy after a big meal and a bunch of wedding planning work.

So I’ll just say this. My money is on Sadr winning this round. Massive offensives are a highly questionable counter-insurgency tool. The fact that Sadr’s ceasefire did substantially clamp down on the violence leads me to believe he’s got a pretty well controlled and disciplined militia, "special groups" not withstanding.

More specifically, I think they’ll be an inconclusive outcome, Sadr’s people will probably get a few nice PR victories, and Maliki’s credibility will be greatly diminished. That said, I’m just going off what’s in the newspapers.

Maryland Polls staying open until 9:30

Good, the voters could use the time. It’s pretty miserable out there. Take care. The precipitation wasn’t that bad but the sidewalks were really icy. Not sure how the roads were, local ones I drove on weren’t that bad.

My sympathy to the judges (and my Mom who acts as an observer and will now be up an extra hour and a half).

Restaurant Review: Bamian

Last night I got dinner at Bamian and missed the Democratic debate. I kind wanted to catch that one, so I’ll see if I can find the whole thing online.

For now though, here’s a review, Bamian is a terrific Afghan restaurant in Falls Church. The atmosphere is nice if not amazing, the location not that terrific, you will have to drive or take a bus from a nearby Metro stop. However, the food is wonderful!

Anyways, the place was recommended to me by my Program head when I’d made an Afghan dish for a work function. Specifically he’d recommended the Aushak (dumplings) as an appetizer and Qaubili Palau (rice, lamb, carrots, and more) and Kadu Chalau (pumpkin with home made yogurt which was the dish I’d prepared).

So I had the Aushak and it was good, my friend had the Kabob Gosfand and liked it as well. I didn’t get the chance to do the Kadu Chalau this time, but will have to try it when I get back.

But, primarily, I am here today to praise the Qaubili Palau. (For the record, I think Qaubili os a different transliteration of the Afghan capital). The lamb was good but the rice, sweet carrots, and raisins (I think there was also some cinnamon) were perfectly blended and tasted incredible in combination. I’m a rice lover but typically I’m not even a fan of raisins in most contexts. The carrot preparation was particularly neat, they made carrot strips, I’m guessing with a peeler, and then just spread them over the top of the rice.

Other notes. MY friend was disappointed with the black chai, the green was alright, but based on the waitresses reaction I don’t think they specialize in either. I thought the bread was okay, I’ve heard they have great bread available, but maybe that’s something you can order extra. And, these dishes are pretty big, so unless you’ve got a large group you probably won’t need lots of extra bread. Large group with lots of trading is probably the best way to enjoy this place, but the two of us were still quite happy.

Group picture from the Bamian website. I’m guessing they won’t complain since I’m giving them a good review.

Intel Czar says waterboarding is torture and yet we don't torture

Yglesias among others caught this:

Am I reading this right? Intel czar Michael McConnell thinks waterboarding would be torture but no waterboarding that was actually done was torture, because torture is a crime and so that would mean that the people who ordered waterboarding (i.e., his bosses) are criminals. But what does this mean? If it’s torture, it’s torture.

So we’ve learned from past experience that this administration can be very careful with wording. Saying things that are highly misleading but technically true. Obviously there’s outright lies too, such as "We don’t torture." But I’m guessing McConnell is attempting to slowly improve U.S. policy while at the same time not getting caught in a lie. Here’s the quote:

"Waterboarding would be excruciating," the US director of national security, in overall charge of intelligence, said in the interview in the New Yorker magazine, speaking of the simulated drowning technique that many regard as torture.

"If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful! Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture," he said.

When asked to define torture, McConnell replied: "My own definition of torture is something that would cause excruciating pain...."

But he told the magazine flatly: "We don’t torture."

Waterboarding involves pouring water over the covered mouth of a suspect, creating a sensation of drowning.

So, what’s the distinction? Well, the wikipedia article on waterboarding goes into some detail about the technique. The main source of variety seems to be whether the mouth and/or nose are covered. An ABC News report describes the technique thusly:

Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

So, out on a limb here. I don’t have any special sources, I’m just assuming McConnell has picked his words very carefully. Perhaps the cellophane keeps water from dripping into the nose. I think the drowning effect would still happen just from having your breathing passages covered and feeling the water pouring over the covering. So, since the water doesn’t technically enter the breathing passages, I’m guessing the administration would argue that the suffering is psychological and not physical so it doesn’t count. Hence the emphasis on "excruciating pain" in McConnell’s statement.

So, would that actually be true? Well, let’s consult the UN Convention against Torture (which the US has ratified):

the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession...

Yup, mental pain is covered. So, if there’s those with more expertise on the specifics of the technique, feel free to correct me about whether this dodge makes sense. But, for now, this is my best guess as to the future propaganda we’ll be hearing.