It was announced on Thursday November 21, 2013 that Washington and Kabul had reached an agreement to allow limited American training forces and anti-terrorism personnel to remain on after the scheduled departure of American combat personnel from Afghanistan in 2014. The deal has yet to be approved by the Grand Council or Loya Jirga, which has the power to approve or reject a deal. Afghani President Hamid Karzai is using his weakness as a strength to attempt to manipulate Washington into granting more concessions to him by making the deal subject to the Loya Jirga.
Showing posts with label Al Qaeda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Al Qaeda. Show all posts
Friday, November 22, 2013
Thursday, March 21, 2013
What Next for Obama with Israel?
As I write this, I imagine that due to the time difference the official activities of the second day of Obama's first official visit to Israel are over. The first day certainly seemed to go well. Obama got across the idea that he accepts that Israel has long roots in the area and that Israeli Jews are returned natives and not simply European settlers and their co-religionists from the region as most Arabs, Muslims, and those on the European and International Left seem to believe. For the record I believe that they are both--natives who through the circumstance of history were forced to return as settlers. Netanyahu has made nice and Israelis seem to be impressed.
So what happens now? The speeches and visit could be used for two different purposes. First, to smooth over relations with Jerusalem so as to better coordinate a response to Iranian nuclear activities and to the spillover from the Syrian civil war and other contingencies that may arise. Second, it could be used to down the road support a push for a renewed Israeli-Palestinian peace process as J Street, most non-Orthodox American Jews, and the Israeli Left (Meretz, Hadash, part of Labor) wants. But then Obama will face the same obstacles that he faced in his first term--even worse. The Palestinians are still divided between Fatah and Hamas. The Likud still has a veto over the other parties in the coalition, but this time a powerful Jewish Home party is in the coalition along with a Yesh Atid that is largely agnostic on the peace issue and the Likud is farther to the Right than it was in Netanyahu's second government.
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Romney's Foreign Policy
Obama's success in killing Osama Bin Laden, pursuing the war against Al Qaeda and ending the war in Iraq while preparing for an exit from Afghanistan has left the Republicans with few opportunities to criticize him on foreign policy grounds. This combined with unemployment stuck at over eight percent and record high deficits has meant that Romney has kept his campaign focused on economics. But because it is their job, foreign policy and security/defense writers have written articles speculating about Romney's likely foreign policy if he were to be elected. Several have been featured at RealClearWorld, because this is their job.
Take for instance this article from Foreign Policy by Jacob Heilbron. Sunday there was an article from Joe Klein of Time speculating on Romney's real foreign policy tendencies. And before that from a month ago an article from the American Interest by Walter Russell Mead on Romney's foreign policy address.There was also an earlier Mead (?) article on American foreign policy since World War I that unfortunately I can't find. But don't expect to find any foreign policy talk at the GOP Convention this week--that might scare off the voters or worse, send them to Obama.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Is Counterinsurgency Warfare a Scam?
Some liberal writers have written as if counterinsurgency (COIN) warfare aka low-intensity or asymmetrical warfare is all a scam to support big defense budgets and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. COIN warfare was first developed as a field of military science in the 20th century by the British army based on its experience in colonial conflicts in Africa and the Middle East and by the U.S. Marine Corps based on its experience fighting "banana wars" in Central America and the Caribbean in the 1930s. It then underwent major modification based on British experience in colonial conflicts in the 1950s and the French experience in Indochina. It is continuously evolving based on experience. The lessons derived are genuine, even if they are often misapplied.
Five cases are usually cited as models or exemplars for successful COIN warfare: the anti-Mau Mau campaign in Kenya in the 1950s; the Greek civil war of 1944-49; the Malaysian emergency of 1948-60; the anti-Huk campaign in the Philippines in the 1950s; and the British campaign in Northern Ireland. These campaigns have several features in common. First, the insurgents were usually separatist or Communist guerrillas from a minority ethnic group. Second, the insurgents were usually ill equipped in terms of arms and military training. Third, the insurgents were usually cut off from significant outside assistance or in the case of the Greek rebels suddenly had that aid cut off for political reasons. Still, these COIN campaigns lasted on average about eight years before they were successful.
Some advocates of COIN warfare have cited marvelous statistics demonstrating that most guerrilla wars are unsuccessful. This is true--most are. But in cases of wars of national liberation involving guerrillas fighting either against Western colonial powers or where Western armies are doing much of the fighting--as in the Vietnam War of the 1960s, Iraq from 2004--2009, and Afghanistan--the success rate is much lower for the government. This is for several reasons. First, the publics in Western democracies are impatient and want quick results. Second, they are fickle and wars they support today they may turn against tomorrow if the cost is significantly raised. Third, if Western armies use severe repression as did the French in Algeria with their widespread torture, they risk losing public support for the war effort. Fourth, native populations are often sensitive about a Western military presence because of colonialism or imperialism and will often turn against a ruler who depends on foreign soldiers.
If we look at these five cases in detail the results are not as impressive for COIN warfare as one might at first imagine. The Mau Mau warriors were limited to machetes (pangas), and a few shotguns and hunting rifles that they were able to steal from the houses of white settlers. In Kenya the native Kikuyu ethnic group was largely interned in special camps and so many died that Holocaust historian Daniel J. Goldhagen cites it as a case of eliminationist policy in his 2009 book Worse Than War. And three years after declaring the Mau Mau emergency over the British were forced to grant independence to the colony. In all the other settler colonies in Africa the white settlers were either militarily defeated or fought to a stalemate, or, in the case of South Africa, the whites were forced to concede majority rule while they still had the upper hand.
In Northern Ireland after a quarter century of warfare, most of that time against only a few hundred republican terrorists at a time, the British were only able to declare a stalemate and the unionists were forced to make major political concessions to the Irish Catholic nationalist minority (of which the republicans were a further minority at the time). These included power sharing and a political link to the Republic of Ireland. London kept up the fight only because Northern Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom only nine miles by sea from Scotland.
In the other three cases the insurgents were defeated in a shorter period of time without widespread repression. In Greece the royalists had British military advisors, but Greek soldiers did the fighting. When Tito had his falling out with Stalin he cutoff deliveries of East bloc arms to the Communist rebels. The Greek army was also led by a skilled general. In the Philippines an Air Force general served as an advisor to the local defense minister. But Filipino troops did the fighting. In Malaysia the rebels were limited to the ethnic Chinese minority who were disliked by the other main ethnic groups--the Malays and the Indians. The rural Chinese could be physically isolated from the guerrillas and then a "hearts and minds" campaign was successful. A decade later the successful advisors to the counterinsurency campaigns in the Philippines and Malaysia attempted to apply their lessons to another Asian counterinsurgency campaign. The United States ended up aiding a local effort for 21 years at great cost in both blood and treasure. The United States lost because it faced an enemy with an elaborate supply network and foreign sanctuary, the support or active acquisition of much of the rural and urban populations and sympathy throughout much of the Third World. If you haven't figured out yet I'm talking about Vietnam.
Afghanistan, although not as formidable an effort as Vietnam, is closer to being Vietnam than it is to being Malaysia, Kenya, the Philippines or Greece. The Taliban insurgency is backed by the majority ethnic group in the country, the Pashtun, who straddle the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The U.S. Army, as in Vietnam, has a severe shortage of personnel who speak the local languages. As in Vietnam, the United States and NATO controls much of the territory by day and the insurgents control it by night.
The main rationale for the war in Afghanistan is to avoid letting the territory again become a base for Al Qaeda. But this assumes that in the Muslim world there is a shortage of failed states that can act for Al Qaeda as an alternative. Remember, Al Qaeda came to Afghanistan from Sudan in the mid-1990s when Washington pressured the government in Khartoum to expel them. Today the tribal territories in Pakistan, Somalia, the southern Philippines, and Algeria are all possible sanctuaries for Al Qaeda, if it should attempt to rebuild. There are also Arab and Turkish ghettoes in Europe that can serve that same purpose--the banlieus in France, Turkish areas in the major German cities, possibly even Albania. President Obama once famously said that he is not opposed to all wars, just dumb ones--he should seriously consider adding Afghanistan to that category.
Five cases are usually cited as models or exemplars for successful COIN warfare: the anti-Mau Mau campaign in Kenya in the 1950s; the Greek civil war of 1944-49; the Malaysian emergency of 1948-60; the anti-Huk campaign in the Philippines in the 1950s; and the British campaign in Northern Ireland. These campaigns have several features in common. First, the insurgents were usually separatist or Communist guerrillas from a minority ethnic group. Second, the insurgents were usually ill equipped in terms of arms and military training. Third, the insurgents were usually cut off from significant outside assistance or in the case of the Greek rebels suddenly had that aid cut off for political reasons. Still, these COIN campaigns lasted on average about eight years before they were successful.
Some advocates of COIN warfare have cited marvelous statistics demonstrating that most guerrilla wars are unsuccessful. This is true--most are. But in cases of wars of national liberation involving guerrillas fighting either against Western colonial powers or where Western armies are doing much of the fighting--as in the Vietnam War of the 1960s, Iraq from 2004--2009, and Afghanistan--the success rate is much lower for the government. This is for several reasons. First, the publics in Western democracies are impatient and want quick results. Second, they are fickle and wars they support today they may turn against tomorrow if the cost is significantly raised. Third, if Western armies use severe repression as did the French in Algeria with their widespread torture, they risk losing public support for the war effort. Fourth, native populations are often sensitive about a Western military presence because of colonialism or imperialism and will often turn against a ruler who depends on foreign soldiers.
If we look at these five cases in detail the results are not as impressive for COIN warfare as one might at first imagine. The Mau Mau warriors were limited to machetes (pangas), and a few shotguns and hunting rifles that they were able to steal from the houses of white settlers. In Kenya the native Kikuyu ethnic group was largely interned in special camps and so many died that Holocaust historian Daniel J. Goldhagen cites it as a case of eliminationist policy in his 2009 book Worse Than War. And three years after declaring the Mau Mau emergency over the British were forced to grant independence to the colony. In all the other settler colonies in Africa the white settlers were either militarily defeated or fought to a stalemate, or, in the case of South Africa, the whites were forced to concede majority rule while they still had the upper hand.
In Northern Ireland after a quarter century of warfare, most of that time against only a few hundred republican terrorists at a time, the British were only able to declare a stalemate and the unionists were forced to make major political concessions to the Irish Catholic nationalist minority (of which the republicans were a further minority at the time). These included power sharing and a political link to the Republic of Ireland. London kept up the fight only because Northern Ireland is an integral part of the United Kingdom only nine miles by sea from Scotland.
In the other three cases the insurgents were defeated in a shorter period of time without widespread repression. In Greece the royalists had British military advisors, but Greek soldiers did the fighting. When Tito had his falling out with Stalin he cutoff deliveries of East bloc arms to the Communist rebels. The Greek army was also led by a skilled general. In the Philippines an Air Force general served as an advisor to the local defense minister. But Filipino troops did the fighting. In Malaysia the rebels were limited to the ethnic Chinese minority who were disliked by the other main ethnic groups--the Malays and the Indians. The rural Chinese could be physically isolated from the guerrillas and then a "hearts and minds" campaign was successful. A decade later the successful advisors to the counterinsurency campaigns in the Philippines and Malaysia attempted to apply their lessons to another Asian counterinsurgency campaign. The United States ended up aiding a local effort for 21 years at great cost in both blood and treasure. The United States lost because it faced an enemy with an elaborate supply network and foreign sanctuary, the support or active acquisition of much of the rural and urban populations and sympathy throughout much of the Third World. If you haven't figured out yet I'm talking about Vietnam.
Afghanistan, although not as formidable an effort as Vietnam, is closer to being Vietnam than it is to being Malaysia, Kenya, the Philippines or Greece. The Taliban insurgency is backed by the majority ethnic group in the country, the Pashtun, who straddle the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The U.S. Army, as in Vietnam, has a severe shortage of personnel who speak the local languages. As in Vietnam, the United States and NATO controls much of the territory by day and the insurgents control it by night.
The main rationale for the war in Afghanistan is to avoid letting the territory again become a base for Al Qaeda. But this assumes that in the Muslim world there is a shortage of failed states that can act for Al Qaeda as an alternative. Remember, Al Qaeda came to Afghanistan from Sudan in the mid-1990s when Washington pressured the government in Khartoum to expel them. Today the tribal territories in Pakistan, Somalia, the southern Philippines, and Algeria are all possible sanctuaries for Al Qaeda, if it should attempt to rebuild. There are also Arab and Turkish ghettoes in Europe that can serve that same purpose--the banlieus in France, Turkish areas in the major German cities, possibly even Albania. President Obama once famously said that he is not opposed to all wars, just dumb ones--he should seriously consider adding Afghanistan to that category.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
What are American interests in the Middle East?
In 2005 Palgrave Macmillan published a book by Leon Hadar, who like myself both has a doctorate in international relations and is a graduate of Hebrew University, called Sandstorm. The book appears to be largely a continuation of his earlier book, Quagmire, published in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War a year later. In Sandstorm Hadar argues that most of America's policies and difficulties in the region stem from a failure to reexamine the Cold War era Middle East Paradigm (MEP), which dominated from the time of the Truman Doctrine to the end of the Cold War. The MEP had three overriding American interests in the region: 1) Guaranteeing the supply of oil at a reasonable price; 2) combating Soviet expansion and influence in the region; 3) and ensuring the security of Israel. The only concession to reality since 1990 has been to substitute Al Qaeda and Iran for the Soviet Union.
Hadar reminded me of a fact that I knew but had forgotten: the United States gets ninety percent (90%) of its oil from outside the region. Protecting the oil flow from the region was largely a factor of the United States leading the anti-Soviet alliance during the Cold War. It allowed Europe and Japan to become free riders on the back of the American tax payer during the Cold War and has continued that policy since.
America's support for the peace process stems largely from an attempt to reconcile the incompatibility of the first two goals with the third i.e. American support for Israel hurts America's standing in the Muslim countries of the region. Hadar argues persuasively that it is really Europe and Japan (and South Korea) who have much more at stake in the region than the United States does. America's fixation with the region is really a symptom of Washington's imperial complex--its desire to function as a hegemon on the world stage. Europe is unwilling to back financially Washington's policies in the region without an equal input into determining those same policies. America's propensity to use military force and to back the policies of the Israeli Right in the occupied territories have been gradually causing a rift with Europe. The 2002-03 rift over the war in Iraq between "Old Europe" and America was almost a mirror image of the November 1956 Suez Crisis argument between Washington on one hand and London and Paris on the other.
I agree with Hadar that America can best reconcile its real opposing interests in the region by making a much smaller footprint. This can be accomplished through a gradual military withdrawal from the region. This would force the EU and Japan to play a greater role. It would also mean that Israel would have to make adjustments--funneling money away from settlements and into defense.
Now is a very opportune point to begin this process for two reasons. First, the publication of the Palestine Papers by Al Jazeera demonstrates how incompatible the Israelis and Palestinians still are. A Kadima-Labor coalition government was afraid of making concessions to match major Palestinian concessions out of fear of the Right. A Likud-led government of the Right is unlikely to be even as forthcoming, while the approach of the Palestinian Authority has been to deny that it made any concessions to Israel. Internal politics on both sides combined with the power gap prevent an implementation of the two-state solution at this time and for some years to come.
Second, the Arab world is in upheaval with autocratic Arab rulers from Tunisia to Yemen being challenged. Washington can either opt to sacrifice democracy for stability in the hope of delaying a major upheaval or risk dealing with unknown forces taking over in possibly two or three Arab countries including important American allies like Egypt and Jordan. Either result poses considerable risks for America. Better to lower our identification with the local regimes.
My own research into the peace process in Northern Ireland pointed to imitating the Anglo-Irish dual mediation in the Middle East with a peace process co-sponsored by the European Union and the U.S. Brussels has been trying to get into Mideast diplomacy since 1980 with the Venice Declaration. It played an observer role during the Oslo process. By shifting some of the burden on to Brussels, Washington can hope to accommodate its interests as well as cancel its own pro-Israel bias. Brussels can offer Jerusalem a bribe that Washington cannot match--membership in the EU in exchange for peace. But this is for the future.
Hadar reminded me of a fact that I knew but had forgotten: the United States gets ninety percent (90%) of its oil from outside the region. Protecting the oil flow from the region was largely a factor of the United States leading the anti-Soviet alliance during the Cold War. It allowed Europe and Japan to become free riders on the back of the American tax payer during the Cold War and has continued that policy since.
America's support for the peace process stems largely from an attempt to reconcile the incompatibility of the first two goals with the third i.e. American support for Israel hurts America's standing in the Muslim countries of the region. Hadar argues persuasively that it is really Europe and Japan (and South Korea) who have much more at stake in the region than the United States does. America's fixation with the region is really a symptom of Washington's imperial complex--its desire to function as a hegemon on the world stage. Europe is unwilling to back financially Washington's policies in the region without an equal input into determining those same policies. America's propensity to use military force and to back the policies of the Israeli Right in the occupied territories have been gradually causing a rift with Europe. The 2002-03 rift over the war in Iraq between "Old Europe" and America was almost a mirror image of the November 1956 Suez Crisis argument between Washington on one hand and London and Paris on the other.
I agree with Hadar that America can best reconcile its real opposing interests in the region by making a much smaller footprint. This can be accomplished through a gradual military withdrawal from the region. This would force the EU and Japan to play a greater role. It would also mean that Israel would have to make adjustments--funneling money away from settlements and into defense.
Now is a very opportune point to begin this process for two reasons. First, the publication of the Palestine Papers by Al Jazeera demonstrates how incompatible the Israelis and Palestinians still are. A Kadima-Labor coalition government was afraid of making concessions to match major Palestinian concessions out of fear of the Right. A Likud-led government of the Right is unlikely to be even as forthcoming, while the approach of the Palestinian Authority has been to deny that it made any concessions to Israel. Internal politics on both sides combined with the power gap prevent an implementation of the two-state solution at this time and for some years to come.
Second, the Arab world is in upheaval with autocratic Arab rulers from Tunisia to Yemen being challenged. Washington can either opt to sacrifice democracy for stability in the hope of delaying a major upheaval or risk dealing with unknown forces taking over in possibly two or three Arab countries including important American allies like Egypt and Jordan. Either result poses considerable risks for America. Better to lower our identification with the local regimes.
My own research into the peace process in Northern Ireland pointed to imitating the Anglo-Irish dual mediation in the Middle East with a peace process co-sponsored by the European Union and the U.S. Brussels has been trying to get into Mideast diplomacy since 1980 with the Venice Declaration. It played an observer role during the Oslo process. By shifting some of the burden on to Brussels, Washington can hope to accommodate its interests as well as cancel its own pro-Israel bias. Brussels can offer Jerusalem a bribe that Washington cannot match--membership in the EU in exchange for peace. But this is for the future.
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