Brookings: Topics - U.S. Military Affairs

Why Drones Work: The Case for Washington's Weapon of Choice

Daniel L. Byman — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Despite President Barack Obama’s recent call to reduce the United States’ reliance on drones, they will likely remain his administration’s weapon of choice. Whereas President George W. Bush oversaw fewer than 50 drone strikes during his tenure, Obama has signed off on over 400 of them in the last four years, making the program the centerpiece of U.S. counterterrorism strategy. The drones have done their job remarkably well: by killing key leaders and denying terrorists sanctuaries in Pakistan, Yemen, and, to a lesser degree, Somalia, drones have devastated al Qaeda and associated anti-American militant groups. And they have done so at little financial cost, at no risk to U.S. forces, and with fewer civilian casualties than many alternative methods would have caused.

Critics, however, remain skeptical. They claim that drones kill thousands of innocent civilians, alienate allied governments, anger foreign publics, illegally target Americans, and set a dangerous precedent that irresponsible governments will abuse. Some of these criticisms are valid; others, less so. In the end, drone strikes remain a necessary instrument of counterterrorism. The United States simply cannot tolerate terrorist safe havens in remote parts of Pakistan and elsewhere, and drones offer a comparatively low-risk way of targeting these areas while minimizing collateral damage.

So drone warfare is here to stay, and it is likely to expand in the years to come as other countries’ capabilities catch up with those of the United States. But Washington must continue to improve its drone policy, spelling out clearer rules for extrajudicial and extraterritorial killings so that tyrannical regimes will have a harder time pointing to the U.S. drone program to justify attacks against political opponents. At the same time, even as it solidifies the drone program, Washington must remain mindful of the built-in limits of low-cost, unmanned interventions, since the very convenience of drone warfare risks dragging the United States into conflicts it could otherwise avoid.

NOBODY DOES IT BETTER

The Obama administration relies on drones for one simple reason: they work. According to data compiled by the New America Foundation, since Obama has been in the White House, U.S. drones have killed an estimated 3,300 al Qaeda, Taliban, and other jihadist operatives in Pakistan and Yemen. That number includes over 50 senior leaders of al Qaeda and the Taliban—top figures who are not easily replaced. In 2010, Osama bin Laden warned his chief aide, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who was later killed by a drone strike in the Waziristan region of Pakistan in 2011, that when experienced leaders are eliminated, the result is “the rise of lower leaders who are not as experienced as the former leaders” and who are prone to errors and miscalculations. And drones also hurt terrorist organizations when they eliminate operatives who are lower down on the food chain but who boast special skills: passport forgers, bomb makers, recruiters, and fundraisers.

Drones have also undercut terrorists’ ability to communicate and to train new recruits. In order to avoid attracting drones, al Qaeda and Taliban operatives try to avoid using electronic devices or gathering in large numbers. A tip sheet found among jihadists in Mali advised militants to “maintain complete silence of all wireless contacts” and “avoid gathering in open areas.” Leaders, however, cannot give orders when they are incommunicado, and training on a large scale is nearly impossible when a drone strike could wipe out an entire group of new recruits. Drones have turned al Qaeda’s command and training structures into a liability, forcing the group to choose between having no leaders and risking dead leaders.

Critics of drone strikes often fail to take into account the fact that the alternatives are either too risky or unrealistic. To be sure, in an ideal world, militants would be captured alive, allowing authorities to question them and search their compounds for useful information. Raids, arrests, and interrogations can produce vital intelligence and can be less controversial than lethal operations. That is why they should be, and indeed already are, used in stable countries where the United States enjoys the support of the host government. But in war zones or unstable countries, such as Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, arresting militants is highly dangerous and, even if successful, often inefficient. In those three countries, the government exerts little or no control over remote areas, which means that it is highly dangerous to go after militants hiding out there. Worse yet, in Pakistan and Yemen, the governments have at times cooperated with militants. If the United States regularly sent in special operations forces to hunt down terrorists there, sympathetic officials could easily tip off the jihadists, likely leading to firefights, U.S. casualties, and possibly the deaths of the suspects and innocent civilians.

Of course, it was a Navy SEAL team and not a drone strike that finally got bin Laden, but in many cases in which the United States needs to capture or eliminate an enemy, raids are too risky and costly. And even if a raid results in a successful capture, it begets another problem: what to do with the detainee. Prosecuting detainees in a federal or military court is difficult because often the intelligence against terrorists is inadmissible or using it risks jeopardizing sources and methods. And given the fact that the United States is trying to close, rather than expand, the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, it has become much harder to justify holding suspects indefinitely. It has become more politically palatable for the United States to kill rather than detain suspected terrorists.

Furthermore, although a drone strike may violate the local state’s sovereignty, it does so to a lesser degree than would putting U.S. boots on the ground or conducting a large-scale air campaign. And compared with a 500-pound bomb dropped from an F-16, the grenadelike warheads carried by most drones create smaller, more precise blast zones that decrease the risk of unexpected structural damage and casualties. Even more important, drones, unlike traditional airplanes, can loiter above a target for hours, waiting for the ideal moment to strike and thus reducing the odds that civilians will be caught in the kill zone.

Finally, using drones is also far less bloody than asking allies to hunt down terrorists on the United States’ behalf. The Pakistani and Yemeni militaries, for example, are known to regularly torture and execute detainees, and they often indiscriminately bomb civilian areas or use scorched-earth tactics against militant groups.

Some critics of the drone program, such as Ben Emmerson, the UN’s special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, have questioned the lethal approach, arguing for more focus on the factors that might contribute to extremism and terrorism, such as poverty, unemployment, and authoritarianism. Such a strategy is appealing in principle, but it is far from clear how Washington could execute it. Individuals join anti-American terrorist groups for many reasons, ranging from outrage over U.S. support for Israel to anger at their own government’s cooperation with the United States. Some people simply join up because their neighbors are doing so. Slashing unemployment in Yemen, bringing democracy to Saudi Arabia, and building a functioning government in Somalia are laudable goals, but they are not politically or financially possible for the United States, and even if achieved, they still might not reduce the allure of jihad.

In some cases, the most sensible alternative to carrying out drone strikes is to do nothing at all. At times, that is the right option: if militants abroad pose little threat or if the risk of killing civilians, delegitimizing allies, or establishing the wrong precedent is too high. But sometimes imminent and intolerable threats do arise and drone strikes are the best way to eliminate them.

THE NUMBERS GAME

Despite the obvious benefits of using drones and the problems associated with the alternatives, numerous critics argue that drones still have too many disadvantages. First among them is an unacceptably high level of civilian casualties. Admittedly, drones have killed innocents. But the real debate is over how many and whether alternative approaches are any better. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that in 2011, drone strikes killed as many as 146 noncombatants, including as many as 9 children. Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Clinic also cites high numbers of civilian deaths, as does the Pakistani organization Pakistan Body Count. Peter Bergen of the New America Foundation oversees a database of drone casualties culled from U.S. sources and international media reports. He estimates that between 150 and 500 civilians have been killed by drones during Obama’s administration. U.S. officials, meanwhile, maintain that drone strikes have killed almost no civilians. In June 2011, John Brennan, then Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, even contended that U.S. drone strikes had killed no civilians in the previous year. But these claims are based on the fact that the U.S. government assumes that all military-age males in the blast area of a drone strike are combatants— unless it can determine after the fact that they were innocent (and such intelligence gathering is not a priority).

The United States has recently taken to launching “signature strikes,” which target not specific individuals but instead groups engaged in suspicious activities. This approach makes it even more difficult to distinguish between combatants and civilians and verify body counts of each. Still, as one U.S. official told The New York Times last year, “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization—innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs.” Of course, not everyone accepts this reasoning. Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani, who runs Pakistan Body Count, says that “neither [the United States] nor Pakistan releases any detailed information about the victims . . . so [although the United States] likes to call everybody Taliban, I call everybody civilians.”

The truth is that all the public numbers are unreliable. Who constitutes a civilian is often unclear; when trying to kill the Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, for example, the United States also killed his doctor. The doctor was not targeting U.S. or allied forces, but he was aiding a known terrorist leader. In addition, most strikes are carried out in such remote locations that it is nearly impossible for independent sources to verify who was killed. In Pakistan, for example, the overwhelming majority of drone killings occur in tribal areas that lie outside the government’s control and are prohibitively dangerous for Westerners and independent local journalists to enter. Thus, although the New America Foundation has come under fire for relying heavily on unverifiable information provided by anonymous U.S. officials, reports from local Pakistani organizations, and the Western organizations that rely on them, are no better: their numbers are frequently doctored by the Pakistani government or by militant groups. After a strike in Pakistan, militants often cordon off the area, remove their dead, and admit only local reporters sympathetic to their cause or decide on a body count themselves. The U.S. media often then draw on such faulty reporting to give the illusion of having used multiple sources. As a result, statistics on civilians killed by drones are often inflated. One of the few truly independent on-the-ground reporting efforts, conducted by the Associated Press last year, concluded that the strikes “are killing far fewer civilians than many in [Pakistan] are led to believe.”

But even the most unfavorable estimates of drone casualties reveal that the ratio of civilian to militant deaths—about one to three, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism—is lower than it would be for other forms of strikes. Bombings by F-16s or Tomahawk cruise missile salvos, for example, pack a much more deadly payload. In December 2009, the United States fired Tomahawks at a suspected terrorist training camp in Yemen, and over 30 people were killed in the blast, most of them women and children. At the time, the Yemeni regime refused to allow the use of drones, but had this not been the case, a drone’s real-time surveillance would probably have spotted the large number of women and children, and the attack would have been aborted. Even if the strike had gone forward for some reason, the drone’s far smaller warhead would have killed fewer innocents. Civilian deaths are tragic and pose political problems. But the data show that drones are more discriminate than other types of force.

FOREIGN FRIENDS

It is also telling that drones have earned the backing, albeit secret, of foreign governments. In order to maintain popular support, politicians in Pakistan and Yemen routinely rail against the U.S. drone campaign. In reality, however, the governments of both countries have supported it. During the Bush and Obama administrations, Pakistan has even periodically hosted U.S. drone facilities and has been told about strikes in advance. Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan until 2008, was not worried about the drone program’s negative publicity: “In Pakistan, things fall out of the sky all the time,” he reportedly remarked. Yemen’s former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, also at times allowed drone strikes in his country and even covered for them by telling the public that they were conducted by the Yemeni air force. When the United States’ involvement was leaked in 2002, however, relations between the two countries soured. Still, Saleh later let the drone program resume in Yemen, and his replacement, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, has publicly praised drones, saying that “they pinpoint the target and have zero margin of error, if you know what target you’re aiming at.”

As officials in both Pakistan and Yemen realize, U.S. drone strikes help their governments by targeting common enemies. A memo released by the antisecrecy website WikiLeaks revealed that Pakistan’s army chief, Ashfaq Parvez kayani, privately asked U.S. military leaders in 2008 for “continuous Predator coverage” over antigovernment militants, and the journalist Mark Mazzetti has reported that the United States has conducted “goodwill kills” against Pakistani militants who threatened Pakistan far more than the United States. Thus, in private, Pakistan supports the drone program. As then Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told Anne Patterson, then the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, in 2008, “We’ll protest [against the drone program] in the National Assembly and then ignore it.”

Still, Pakistan is reluctant to make its approval public. First of all, the country’s inability to fight terrorists on its own soil is a humiliation for Pakistan’s politically powerful armed forces and intelligence service. In addition, although drones kill some of the government’s enemies, they have also targeted pro-government groups that are hostile to the United States, such as the Haqqani network and the Taliban, which Pakistan has supported since its birth in the early 1990s. Even more important, the Pakistani public is vehemently opposed to U.S. drone strikes.

A 2012 poll found that 74 percent of Pakistanis viewed the United States as their enemy, likely in part because of the ongoing drone campaign. Similarly, in Yemen, as the scholar Gregory Johnsen has pointed out, drone strikes can win the enmity of entire tribes. This has led critics to argue that the drone program is shortsighted: that it kills today’s enemies but creates tomorrow’s in the process.

Such concerns are valid, but the level of local anger over drones is often lower than commonly portrayed. Many surveys of public opinion related to drones are conducted by anti-drone organizations, which results in biased samples. Other surveys exclude those who are unaware of the drone program and thus overstate the importance of those who are angered by it. In addition, many Pakistanis do not realize that the drones often target the very militants who are wreaking havoc on their country. And for most Pakistanis and Yemenis, the most important problems they struggle with are corruption, weak representative institutions, and poor economic growth; the drone program is only a small part of their overall anger, most of which is directed toward their own governments. A poll conducted in 2007, well before the drone campaign had expanded to its current scope, found that only 15 percent of Pakistanis had a favorable opinion of the United States. It is hard to imagine that alternatives to drone strikes, such as seal team raids or cruise missile strikes, would make the United States more popular.

THE HOME FRONT

Still, public opposition is real, and there is growing concern about the drone strikes even in the United States. The program came under especially heavy criticism domestically in 2011, when Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen born in New Mexico, was killed by a drone strike in Yemen. There is no question that Awlaki was dangerous. Adept at interspersing Islamist rhetoric with pop-culture references, Awlaki had been described as a “pied piper for Western ears”: one admirer was Nidal Malik Hasan, the U.S. Army officer who killed 13 U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

The Obama administration claims that Awlaki was actively involved in plots against the United States and that the strike against him was legal under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which Congress passed three days after 9/11 and which gives the president broad authority to use force against terrorist groups linked to the 9/11 attacks. Yet with the war on terrorism almost 12 years old and bin Laden dead, critics, such as the Georgetown University law professor Rosa Brooks, have begun questioning whether the AUMF still justifies drone strikes today. As Brooks has argued, “Many of the groups now being identified as threats don’t fall clearly under the AUMF’s umbrella—and many don’t pose a significant danger to the United States.” As for the case of Awlaki, opponents of his killing have argued that he did not pose an imminent threat to the United States and that in keeping the evidence used to justify his assassination secret, the administration violated the constitutional guarantee of due process for U.S. citizens. As Ron Paul, then a Texas representative, pointed out during his presidential campaign, Awlaki was never charged with any crime. He added, “If the American people accept this blindly and casually, that we now have an accepted practice of the president assassinating people who he thinks are bad guys, I think it’s sad.”

The administration contends that the discussions held within the executive branch and the extensive vetting of evidence constitute a form of due process. Meanwhile, as the legal scholar Benjamin Wittes has pointed out, both Congress and the federal courts have repeatedly reaffirmed the validity of the AUMF since 2001. The U.S. government argues that given how secretly terrorists operate, it is not always possible to use other means to stop an individual overseas from planning attacks on U.S. forces or allies. As a result, the imminence of a threat should be assessed based on the individual’s propensity for violence and the likelihood of being able to stop him in the future. Wittes compares the decision-making process to that used in hostage situations, when police are not required to ask a judge for authority to kill a hostage taker or refrain from taking a clear shot if they have one. Perhaps most important, the White House has claimed only a very limited right to conduct drone strikes against U.S. citizens. The administration has asserted the authority to kill only senior al Qaeda leaders who cannot be captured, not any American member of al Qaeda. Indeed, it appears that Awlaki is the only U.S. citizen who has been deliberately killed by a drone.?

FOLLOW THE LEADER

The fact remains that by using drones so much, Washington risks setting a troublesome precedent with regard to extrajudicial and extraterritorial killings. Zeke Johnson of Amnesty International contends that “when the U.S. government violates international law, that sets a precedent and provides an excuse for the rest of the world to do the same.” And it is alarming to think what leaders such as Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who has used deadly force against peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators he has deemed terrorists, would do with drones of their own. Similarly, Iran could mockingly cite the U.S. precedent to justify sending drones after rebels in Syria. Even Brennan has conceded that the administration is “establishing precedents that other nations may follow.”

Controlling the spread of drone technology will prove impossible; that horse left the barn years ago. Drones are highly capable weapons that are easy to produce, and so there is no chance that Washington can stop other militaries from acquiring and using them. Nearly 90 other countries already have surveillance drones in their arsenals, and China is producing several inexpensive models for export. Armed drones are more difficult to produce and deploy, but they, too, will likely spread rapidly. Beijing even recently announced (although later denied) that it had considered sending a drone to Myanmar (also called Burma) to kill a wanted drug trafficker hiding there.

The spread of drones cannot be stopped, but the United States can still influence how they are used. The coming proliferation means that Washington needs to set forth a clear policy now on extrajudicial and extraterritorial killings of terrorists—and stick to it. Fortunately, Obama has begun to discuss what constitutes a legitimate drone strike. But the definition remains murky, and this murkiness will undermine the president’s ability to denounce other countries’ behavior should they start using drones or other means to hunt down enemies. By keeping its policy secret, Washington also makes it easier for critics to claim that the United States is wantonly slaughtering innocents. More transparency would make it harder for countries such as Pakistan to make outlandish claims about what the United States is doing. Drones actually protect many Pakistanis, and Washington should emphasize this fact. By being more open, the administration could also show that it carefully considers the law and the risks to civilians before ordering a strike.

Washington needs to be especially open about its use of signature strikes. According to the Obama administration, signature strikes have eliminated not only low-level al Qaeda and Taliban figures but also a surprising number of higher-level officials whose presence at the scenes of the strikes was unexpected. Signature strikes are in keeping with traditional military practice; for the most part, U.S. soldiers have been trained to strike enemies at large, such as German soldiers or Vietcong guerrillas, and not specific individuals. The rise of unconventional warfare, however, has made this usual strategy more difficult because the battlefield is no longer clearly defined and enemies no longer wear identifiable uniforms, making combatants harder to distinguish from civilians. In the case of drones, where there is little on-the-ground knowledge of who is who, signature strikes raise legitimate concerns, especially because the Obama administration has not made clear what its rules and procedures for such strikes are.

Washington should exercise particular care with regard to signature strikes because mistakes risk tarnishing the entire drone program. In the absence of other information, the argument that drones are wantonly killing innocents is gaining traction in the United States and abroad. More transparency could help calm these fears that Washington is acting recklessly.

The U.S. government also needs to guard against another kind of danger: that the relative ease of using drones will make U.S. intervention abroad too common. The scholars Daniel Brunstetter and Megan Braun have argued that drones provide “a way to avoid deploying troops or conducting an intensive bombing campaign” and that this “may encourage countries to act on just cause with an ease that is potentially worrisome.” Although al Qaeda remains a threat, it has been substantially defanged since 9/11, thanks to the destruction of its haven in Afghanistan and effective global police, intelligence, and drone campaigns against its cells. In addition, the U.S. government needs to remember that many of the world’s jihadist organizations are focused first and foremost on local regimes and that although the United States has an interest in helping its allies fight extremists, Washington cannot and should not directly involve itself in every fight. The Obama administration should spell out those cases in which the AUMF does not apply and recognize the risks of carrying out so-called goodwill kills on behalf of foreign governments. Helping French and Malian forces defeat jihadists in Mali by providing logistical support, for example, is smart policy, but sending U.S. drones there is not.

In places where terrorists are actively plotting against the United States, however, drones give Washington the ability to limit its military commitments abroad while keeping Americans safe. Afghanistan, for example, could again become a Taliban-run haven for terrorists after U.S. forces depart next year. Drones can greatly reduce the risk of this happening. Hovering in the skies above, they can keep Taliban leaders on the run and hinder al Qaeda’s ability to plot another 9/11.

Authors

Daniel L. Byman

Publication: Foreign Affairs

Image Source: © Erik de Castro / Reuters

Will Arming Syrian Rebels Lead to Disaster?

Bruce Riedel — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

The United States is about to start arming and training the Syrian rebels fighting to overthrow the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. If done well, this move can end a bloody civil war. If done poorly, it could lead to disaster. Will Obama and his team do the right thing?

It turns out Afghanistan of the 1980s is a terrific test case for how to handle the Syrian rebels. The Afghan mujahedin then and the Syrian rebels now both seem incapable of forming a broad national consensus or an effective united political and military organization. Both have a significant component of hard-core Islamist extremists in their midst who are fundamentally opposed to American interests. But both also have a legitimate cause that deserves our support. The issue is how to help wisely.

The CIA’s support of the Afghans ended in brilliant success and the downfall of the Soviet Union, but it succeeded only because it was fought with a clear mission, strong allies and broad bipartisan support. Even then, it also had serious unintended consequences that haunt us to this day.

A key lesson of Afghanistan is to be very clear from the beginning about your objective and mission. In the 1980s the goal was to defeat the Soviets by creating a quagmire for the Red Army like Vietnam was for America. The key planners behind the CIA operation to support the mujahedin, especially CIA Director Bill Casey, wanted to turn Afghanistan into Moscow’s Vietnam. They did.

Then Washington let mission creep develop. The Reagan and Bush administrations were unsure of what they wanted to do next. Some in Washington wanted to overthrow the communist government in Kabul that survived after the Russian withdrawal. Others wanted to support a political process to build a broad-based national unity government. And others wanted to forget Afghanistan and concentrate on forging a new world order with the post-communist leadership in Moscow. The American national-security bureaucracy became almost dysfunctional. In the end chaos ensued in Afghanistan.

What mission does arming the rebels in Syria support? It must be more than stopping Assad’s use of chemical weapons. Is it regime change or bolstering a political process in Geneva? Is it a means to unite the opposition and purge it of the al Nusra front, al Qaeda’s arm in Syria? Is it to defeat Iran and Hezbollah and bring regime change beyond Syria? We have yet to hear the answers to these questions.

Then there’s the matter of allies. The American support for the Afghan resistance was built around strong support from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Only some 50 or so CIA officers were ever engaged at one time in helping the mujahedin. Their job was to buy arms for the rebels and ship them to Karachi. After they arrived in that port the war was fought by the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI), which did all the training of the insurgents. ISI officers crossed the border into Afghanistan and even Soviet Central Asia to provide critical “boots on the ground” expertise and leadership when needed. The Pakistanis took all the risks of Soviet blowback at home as the KGB used terror operations inside Pakistan to try to shake Islamabad’s resolve. The Saudis helped pay for the operation with both government and private funds.

Of course, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia had different interests in Afghanistan than America. Our interests only overlapped for a time. Saudi Arabia wanted to establish an Islamic state in Afghanistan and repress Shia (it wants the same in Syria today). And Pakistan was determined to install a puppet government in Afghanistan once the Russians left. That remains the ISI’s goal today, which is why we are now fighting a proxy war with Pakistan in Afghanistan.

In Syria, we will need the same sort of help. We can’t arm the rebels without a base next door. We should work with Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar as well as the U.K. and France. But we should have no illusions that we all share the same end game. Our arms could end up in al Qaeda’s hands not just in Syria but in Iraq, Jordan, and elsewhere. They could be used to kill Americans.

And there is going to need to be bipartisan support in the Congress for a major covert operation arming a rebellion. Reagan and Casey had that in the 1980s. It was famously Democratic congressman Charlie Wilson’s war as much as it was Reagan’s war (at least in Hollywood). Some of the enthusiasm included a great deal of naiveté about our allies, especially the ISI, and a lot of romanticism about the mujahedin, but it also provided a solid base of support.

If America’s Syria mission lacks that, it will be constantly second-guessed. If the administration wants to arm the rebels, then it needs to make the case clearly and strongly. The president will need to take ownership. Hesitancy and uncertainty are a recipe for disaster.

Of course, there are many differences between Afghanistan in the 1980s and Syria today. Assad is not Brezhnev, and frankly, the stakes are not nearly as great. But no matter what, there will be unintended consequences. Arming the mujahedin was the right policy in the 1980s; Casey and Reagan never dreamed that Afghanistan would become a base for jihadists who would attack America. But it also had unintended and dangerous fallout. Clear thinking about goal, avoiding mission creep, frank talk with allies, and building bipartisan support can help bring the right outcome. Arming the rebels in Syria may be the right move today, but it could also be the start to a process that ends in another deeply unpopular, expensive, and counterproductive American war in the Islamic world.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Daily Beast

Image Source: © Muzaffar Salman / Reuters

Rebalancing the U.S. Military in Asia and the Pacific

Michael E. O'Hanlon — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 00:00:00 -0400

According to some, the U.S. rebalancing to the Asia-Pacific region in recent years is a bold strategic shift in national security policy. To many Chinese interlocutors, in fact, the military dimensions of the policy seem directed at them and smack of containment — and they resent it.

In fact, rebalancing represents only a modest realignment of American defense capabilities. Indeed, as the sequestration ax hits the Pentagon budget, whatever increases in capabilities rebalancing was designed to produce are at risk of being neutralized or even outweighed by looming cutbacks.

An informative way to examine the military scope of the rebalancing shift is to estimate its budgetary significance. Specifically, within the annual Pentagon budget of roughly $550 billion a year (excluding war costs), one might ask, “What* is the dollar magnitude of the rebalancing?’ In other words, roughly speaking, how much more of that $550 billion are we now allocating to the Asia-Pacific region than before?

How to calculate this figure? Although some of the steps listed below arguably predated the new policy, I would summarize the chief military effects of rebalancing as follows:

Rotating up to 2,500 Marines at a time through Darwin, Australia, on training and presence missions;
Adding 14 long-range missile defense interceptors to bases in Alaska (oriented toward the North Korea threat) and a THAAD missile-defense battery to Guam (these measures followed the main rebalancing decision but can be logically linked to it);
Adding perhaps three more attack submarines to be home-ported in Guam;
Basing four of the Navy’s new Littoral Combat Ships in Singapore;
More generally, allocating 60 percent of total Navy assets to the Pacific Fleet rather than the 50 percent commonly devoted previously.

Each of these shifts can be translated into an average annual cost and then summed to determine a total estimate of the rebalancing’s military significance.

If a Marine unit of 2,500 were permanently based in Australia, it might represent some $500 million of annual expenditures, in terms of the average cost of equipping, training and paying that force for that time. Prorating some construction costs to establish facilities in Australia over, say, a 10-year period might drive that average yearly figure to $750 million.

The additional missile defense capabilities represent some $2 billion in one-time procurement costs — averaging over a 20-year period makes for $100 million a year — plus operating costs of an additional $200 million annually (these include salaries as well as routine maintenance and support). Together, that adds $300 million a year overall to the bill.

The average annual cost of a single Littoral Combat Ship might total $50 million. That makes for $200 million for the eventual deployment of four ships, or a total of $300 million once construction costs for berths in Singapore are averaged in, too. Placing three more attack subs on Guam might correspond to an average of $500 million a year. Taken together, these new homeport arrangements might have a dollar value of $800 million for a grand total so far of just about $2 billion in reallocated annual expense.

That leaves the big enchilada — the reassignment of naval assets so that 60 percent will now be in the Pacific. An upper bound on the dollar significance of this shift can be calculated as follows: Since the Navy’s annual budget is about $150 billion and some two-thirds of that (or $100 billion) is for the deployable Navy, we need to take 60 percent of $100 billion now and compare it with 50 percent of $100 billion before. The net is a $10 billion increase (though there is potentially some double counting here due to the attack submarine and Littoral Combat Ship estimates as previously noted).

The bottom line is this: In round numbers, the rebalancing may be in the process of swinging $10 billion to $12 billion or a bit more in annual Pentagon expenditures to the Asia-Pacific region.

This shift is hardly insignificant — though it hardly represents a tectonic change, either. Indeed, in recent years, China’s overall military budget has been growing about this amount each year, whereas the rebalancing was a one-time thing that is not presently scheduled to be followed up by additional policy changes.

On top of all that, sequestration is now promising to take $50 billion out of the Pentagon’s annual budget for the next decade (and the earlier, initial cuts from the 2011 Budget Control Act had already taken out a comparable amount previously). In rough terms, one might break down today’s Pentagon budget as being roughly one-third for Asia-Pacific matters, one-third for the Middle East and one-third for general purposes. Of course, all combat forces are flexible and movable, but in broad terms, this is still not a bad way to paint the overall picture. So one-third of that $50 billion sequestration hit might well come out of capabilities for the Asia-Pacific — maybe a bit less if we are able to protect this region’s capabilities selectively. Whatever the precise number, the key point is that sequestration will very likely cut about as much from our regional capability as the rebalancing will add.

The takeaways here are twofold. First, while the military capacities of a superpower still spending more than half a trillion a year on its armed forces should hardly be trivialized, and while we will modernize forces in the years ahead in ways discussed recently by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel at the annual Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore, the rebalancing itself is not a huge military deal. Policymakers in Beijing need not strongly object and should not feel “contained.” Second, however, for those who think that sequestration is having no appreciable effect on American military posture, they should think again. Perhaps the rebalancing was not needed in the first place or was not needed for very long in any event. But it cannot be sustained on its original terms in the face of such steep Pentagon budgetary reductions, if they are sustained.

Authors

Michael E. O'Hanlon

Publication: POLITICO

Image Source: © Cheryl Ravelo / Reuters

The State of the Marine Corps: A Conversation with Commandant James Amos

Wed, 29 May 2013 10:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 29, 2013
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

As more U.S. Marines come home from Afghanistan, attention is turning to the impact of general budget cuts and those related to sequestration, as well as future strategy in a world full of security threats. For the Marine Corps, this raises issues of force structure, near-term combat readiness, weapons modernization plans, overseas basing and a range of other topics.

On May 29, the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings hosted General James F. Amos, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps. Amos has been the commandant of the Marine Corps since 2010 after serving as assistant commandant since 2008. Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at Brookings and author of the new book Healing the Wounded Giant: Maintaining Military Preeminence While Cutting the Defense Budget (Brookings Press, 2013), moderated a question and answer session following the commandant’s remarks.

Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East

Thu, 23 May 2013 17:29:00 -0400

On August 28-29, 2012, the Saban Center at Brookings and the United States Central Command brought together analysts, officers, and policymakers to discuss the new and enduring challenges facing the United States in the Middle East.

The conference, Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East, explored security developments in key countries of the region, focusing on those issues where the risks and opportunities for the United States are the greatest.

General James N. Mattis, then CENTCOM’s commander, delivered opening remarks, and the Honorable Michèle Flournoy, formerly the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, deliver a keynote address. The conference also featured experts from the Middle East as well as senior American analysts and officials. Together, the speakers and conference participants offered insights that went well beyond conventional Washington wisdom and provided valuable lessons and ideas for the U.S. military and policy community.

The proceedings from this conference include summaries of the sessions and the full text of Dr. Flournoy’s keynote address.

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Beyond the Arab Awakening: A Strategic Assessment of the Middle East

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Lessons from America’s First War with Iran

Bruce Riedel — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:35:00 -0400

President Barack Obama has committed the United States to preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran seems determined to acquire them. As the United States and Iran approach confrontation and possible war to halt Tehran’s nuclear program, it is useful to remember that America has already fought one war with the Islamic Republic of Iran. During the late 1980s, President Ronald Reagan intervened in the Iran- Iraq War in support of Baghdad and Saddam Hussein, ultimately leading to an Iraqi victory. The United States engaged in an undeclared yet bloody naval and air war, while Iraq fought a brutal land war against Iran. The lessons of the first war with Iran should be carefully considered before the United States embarks hastily on a second.

In hindsight, the central lesson of the war in the 1980s is that it is easy to start a conflict with Iran and very difficult to end it. The Islamic Republic of Iran is not easy to intimidate and is likely to retaliate asymmetrically. Another key lesson is to beware the advice of your allies, both Arabs and Israelis, who are prone to give irresponsible recommendations on how to deal with Tehran.

The Toll of the Iran-Iraq War

The Iran-Iraq War was devastating. It was one of the largest and longest conventional interstate wars since the Korean War ended in 1953. A half million lives were lost, and perhaps another million were injured. The economic cost of the war exceeded one trillion dollars.1 Yet, the battle lines at the end of the war were almost exactly where they had been at the beginning of hostilities. It was also the only war in modern times in which chemical weapons were used on a massive scale.

Although the war ended in 1988, it led to numerous aftershocks that rippled throughout the region including the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990, the liberation of Kuwait a year later, and the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The bloody U.S. war that President Obama recently ended in Iraq was the finale in this march of folly. The seeds of multigenerational tragedy were planted in the Iran-Iraq War. The world will live with its consequences for decades, if not longer.

There were no “good guys” in the Iran-Iraq War, only two brutal dictatorships. Saddam Hussein was a megalomaniac who built enormous, ugly monuments to his ambitions and dreamed of becoming the dominant power in the Persian Gulf, controlling the world’s oil supplies, and destroying Israel. At the end of the first Gulf War in 1988, Hussein waged genocide against his own Kurdish population. Ayatollah Khomeini created a theocracy in Iran which imprisoned and executed thousands of its own citizens, forced tens of thousands into exile, and even took American diplomats hostage.

U.S. Policy During the War

America had no natural partners in the Iran-Iraq War, but its interests dictated that the United States allow neither Saddam nor Khomeini to dominate the region and the world’s energy supply. For most of the war, it was Iran that appeared on the verge of victory, so Washington had little choice but to support Iraq.

For those who aspire to a national security policy built on the principles of the United Nations Charter or a moral high ground, Iran-Iraq was an immoral swamp. For American policymakers in the 1980s, there was a simple difference. When the war began, Iran held dozens of American diplomats hostage and even tortured some. Only after 444 days in captivity did Iran let the American hostages go. In contrast to Khomeini, many Americans hoped that the Iraqi leader was somehow redeemable and could be worked with as a difficult but manageable partner. We realize now that this was a mirage, but in the 1980s it was still a hope. Thus, America tilted toward Iraq, hoping it would hold back the “medieval fanatics” to the east from gaining control of the world’s oil reserves.

But “our side” kept breaking the rules. First, Iraq was the aggressor in September 1980. Certainly Iraq had been provoked by Iranian actions along the border, but the main act of aggression was carried out by the Iraqi army in the form of a massive attack. As long as Iraq held Iranian territory, Washington did not call for the restoration of the status quo ante as would be the norm for most international conflicts; only when the tables turned did the United States call for respect for the international border. Then Iraq began using chemical weapons—first, in a piecemeal and largely ineffectual fashion, but by the war’s end, on an industrial scale and with decisive effect. The threat of Iraqi chemical warheads on long range missiles cleared Tehran of many of its inhabitants in 1988, and Saddam began using chemical warheads to systematically kill his own people. Rather than fall silent, the guns of war merely changed theaters with the 1988 cease-fire, as the Anfal campaign against the Iraqi Kurds began, an act of pure genocide by the government that the United States had supported during the war.

The conflict was not President Ronald Reagan’s finest hour. At first he tilted toward Iraq, sending the CIA to Baghdad with critical intelligence in 1982 to thwart Iran’s war plans. It worked. Then Reagan tilted toward Iran, sending sophisticated arms to Tehran in an effort to get American hostages in Lebanon freed. It didn’t work. A few hostages were released but more hostages were taken. Then Reagan tilted back toward Iraq and Washington’s undeclared war followed in 1987 and 1988. The principal architect of the policy was Reagan’s Director of Central Intelligence, Bill Casey, who died before the Iran scandal forced his resignation and possible indictment.

Lessons for Today

So what are the lessons of this war for America today? The first lesson is that we should expect to be blamed for all that goes wrong. Both Iraqis and Iranians came to believe the United States was manipulating each of them during the war. Ironically, and perhaps naively, the United States tried to reach out to both belligerents through the course of the war— in great secrecy both times—to try to build a strategic partnership. The disastrous arms-for-hostages policy, which came to be known as the Iran- Contra affair, convinced Iraqis rightly that the United States was trying to play both sides of the conflict. The result was that when the war ended, the Iraqi regime and most Iraqis regarded the United States as a threat, despite Washington’s support during the war. That support had taken the form of critical intelligence assistance to Baghdad, considerable diplomatic cover, and largesse from our Arab allies who loaned tens of billions of dollars to Baghdad to sustain Iraq’s war effort.

Iranians call the war the “Imposed War” because they believe the United States subjected them to the conflict and orchestrated the global “tilt” toward Iraq. They note that the United Nations did not condemn Iraq for starting the war. In fact, the UN did not even discuss the war for weeks after it started, and it ultimately considered Iraq to be the aggressor only years later, as part of a deal orchestrated by President George H.W. Bush to free the remaining U.S. hostages held by pro-Iranian terrorists in Lebanon.

Although the war had tragic consequences for Iran, by portraying the conflict as a “David and Goliath” struggle imposed by the United States and its allies, Iranian leaders managed to consolidate the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The Revolution was fairly short in duration and its cost was miniscule in comparison to the Iran-Iraq War. For the generation of Iranians who are now leading their country, including men like President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, the war was the defining event of their lives and a major force in shaping their worldview. Their anti-Americanism and deep suspicion of the West can be traced directly to their understanding of the Iran-Iraq War. We should thus expect the next war to make Iran more extreme and more determined to get the bomb.

Another lesson of the first war is that Iran will not be easily intimidated by the United States. By 1987, Iran was devastated by the war, many of its cities had been destroyed, its oil exports were minimal. and its economy was shattered. But it did not hesitate to fight the U.S. Navy in the Gulf and to use asymmetric means to retaliate in Lebanon and elsewhere. Even with most of its navy sunk by U.S. Naval forces, Iran kept fighting and the Iranian people continued rallying behind Ayatollah Khomeini.

Iran fought a smart war, avoiding too rapid and too dangerous an escalation. As General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, has noted, Iranian behavior is rational, not suicidal.2 Iran will not take steps that endanger the revolution’s survival; the country will look to exploit America’s vulnerabilities in Afghanistan and Bahrain, as well as Israel’s in Lebanon and the Saudis’ in Yemen. In the 1980s, Iran created Hezbollah in Lebanon to attack American, French, and Israeli targets as punishment for American support of Iraq. Hezbollah then tried to assassinate the emir of Kuwait to punish that country for being Iraq’s outlet to the Persian Gulf. In essence, Iran expanded the battlefield of the Iran-Iraq War to other countries where it could exploit security vulnerabilities. We should expect the same in a future war, one for which Iran and Hezbollah have had decades to prepare. Indeed, Iran and Hezbollah are already waging a low intensity terror campaign against Israel from Bulgaria to India, and they have reportedly used cyber warfare against Saudi and Qatari oil companies.3

Another lesson is that ending a future war will be a challenge. In 1988, Iran sued for a cease-fire only after suffering catastrophic defeat on the ground against Iraqi forces and after Saddam Hussein threatened to fire Scud missiles armed with chemical warheads into Iranian cities.4 Iranians feared they would face a second “Hiroshima” if they did not accept a truce; indeed many evacuated Tehran in fear of an Iraqi chemical attack. For Khomeini, accepting the truce was like “drinking poison.”5 No two wars are identical, but history suggests that Iran will not back down easily.

The final lesson is to always scrutinize the advice of allies. Ironically, in the 1980s the closest U.S. partner in the region, Israel, pressed Washington hard and repeatedly to essentially switch sides and offer assistance to Iran. Israeli leaders, generals, and spies were obsessed by the Iraqi threat in the 1980s just as they are preoccupied by the Iranian threat today, and they longed to restore the cozy relationship they had with the Shah in the 1960s and 1970s. Through the Iraq-Iran War, Israel was the only consistent source of spare parts for the Iranian air force’s U.S.-made jets.6 Israeli leaders, notably Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, brought considerable pressure to bear on Washington for an American engagement with Tehran, and Iran-Contra was in many ways their idea. American diplomats and spies deployed abroad were told to turn a blind eye to Israeli arms deals with Tehran, even when it was official U.S. policy (in the Washington euphemism of the day) to “staunch” all avenues by which the Iranians might obtain weapons or other material needed for their war effort.7

America’s Arab allies provided equally bad advice. Egypt’s President Mubarak, Jordan’s King Hussein, and Saudi King Fahd all urged support for Saddam and Iraq, while turning a blind eye to Saddam’s use of chemical weapons against his own people. Egypt sent arms, Jordan sent volunteers, and the Saudis bankrolled Saddam’s war, while telling America that he was a born-again moderate who could be worked with and trusted. It was not to be.

Looking back a quarter century after the war in 1988 is revealing and sobering. America accomplished its immediate goals in the first war: it halted Iran’s advance into Iraq, defended the tankers in the Gulf, and contained the war from spreading into the Arabian Peninsula. Khomeini did not conquer Basra and Baghdad and march on Jerusalem as he dreamed he would. But today, Iran is the dominant foreign power in Baghdad, thanks in large part to another war America fought in the Gulf. President George W. Bush toppled Saddam and ended his brutal dictatorship, but in doing so, Bush opened the door to a Shia majority government which is much friendlier to Tehran than to Riyadh or Amman, or Washington. These are sobering reminders of the unintended consequences of wars.

The first American war with Iran helped make Iran a more radical and extreme country. A second war may well do the same. Thus another war with Iran to stop its nuclear program may ultimately prove to be the catalyst that pushes Iran to acquire a dangerous nuclear weapons arsenal. Rather than stopping proliferation, it could incite it further.

History of course does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Lessons of old wars should be carefully considered before entering new ones. Many Americans have forgotten the lessons of our undeclared war in the 1980s. We have fought so many other wars since: in Iraq (twice), in Afghanistan, and in Libya. While it may be easy for Washington to forget, no Iranian has.

This article was originally published by The Fletcher Forum.

Endnotes
1 Janet Lang et al, Becoming Enemies: U.S.-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, 1979-1988 (Plymouth, Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), ix.
2 Fareed Zakaria, “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: We are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a ‘rational actor,’” CNN Pressroom, February 21, 2012.
3 Nicole Perlroth, “In Cyberattack on Saudi firm, U.S. sees Iran firing back,” New York Times, October 23, 2012.
4 Lang, 169.
5 Lang, 196.
6 Lang, 89.
7 Lang, 90.

Authors

Bruce Riedel

Publication: The Fletcher Forum

Image Source: © Morteza Nikoubazl / Reuters

Lessons and Context of the Navy’s First Carrier Drone Flight

Peter W. Singer — Wed, 15 May 2013 16:33:00 -0400

The U.S. Navy recently made history with its flight of the X-47B UCAS, the first unmanned carrier drone (unmanned systems) to launch from an aircraft carrier. In 2009 and 2011, the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings had the pleasure of hosting then Chief of Naval Operations, ADM Gary Roughead, to discuss the future of unmanned operations. The vision he laid out is well on its way to fruition, making it especially useful to place what happened today in the context of the larger U.S. defense strategy and to look at what lessons have been learned in the development of unmanned systems. As I explored in a look at the past and future of naval aviation after 100 years of flight, this success is only one part of a much bigger story.

What this history tells us is that, now that the Navy has crossed yet another step that the naysayers said could never be done, the challenges are as much organizational and political, as they are technical. For example, now that unmanned systems have shown they can fly off a carrier, what will be their exact role? Whether they will be delegated to take on tasks on their own or paired with manned planes, for a package that is greater than the sum of its parts, is a crucial question of naval air combat doctrine moving forward. It is akin to the questions that early warplanes faced as to whether they were to be tethered to the existing surface force of battleships as scouts or serve as their own, as a new form of a battle fleet.

We are only at the start of this robotic revolution at sea, just around the World War I stage of things, if manned airplanes are a parallel. Just as the first Navy planes started out doing only observation, but soon began to be used for everything from bombing runs to carrier onboard delivery (COD), so we are seeing a similar expansion in the roles of unmanned systems. UCAS originally started out being just in the observation ISR role, but clearly has a more lethal future, while the Marines are already using robotic helicopters for roles like cargo delivery in Afghanistan. But just like back then, we don’t yet have all the answers as to the optimal doctrine. Even the basic design of this technology remains to be learned and adopted.

A second lesson is that despite its relentless advancement, there are no signs that technology will end the central role of humans in war and at sea any time soon. However, not “ending”, isn’t the same thing as not “changing.” The specifics of the human roles will be altered, but again, this is nothing new. Most Navy warplanes today don’t have tail gunners or navigators. The skill sets and ranks of those who wear the wings of gold might be altered, which opens up the kind of internal identity and qualification questions in the Navy that have also recently challenged the Air Force. Does the remote operator (note: “operator,” not “pilot” is the terminology so far in the Navy, as opposed to how the Air Force views the requirement) of a plane that can take off and land on its own, who is sitting behind a computer screen, actually need 20/20 eyesight or the ability to do 50 sit-ups? Do they even need to be an officer (akin to how the Army has handled UAS versus the Air Force)? The next few decades will be an exciting time, with new paths being forged, much like they were by the first generation of naval aviation pioneers.

This leads to a third challenge that may be the most vexing to the Pentagon in the years ahead. In an article entitled U-Turn, I explored how there are a series of speed bumps that loom for unmanned systems, not so ironically just as they are making their mark. These range from internal cultural resistance to budgetary battles, in which the new is often disadvantaged against the old. We are seeing this play out here again. Few realize that (according to figures from the DoD UAs office), at the very same time the X-47 knocked down yet another technical barrier, the Navy’s planned UAS budget is being cut by 24%, several times greater than the rest of the budget cuts. Indeed, the tension that the successful UCAS test created for F35’s longer term buy numbers is much like Voldemort in the Harry Potter books, not to be spoken about, but palpable.

Bottom line: Congrats to the Navy and the team behind the X-47B on yet again making history, but this history tells us we have an array of questions to explore in the years ahead.

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Image Source: © Jason Reed / Reuters

How to Cut the Pentagon Budget Better Than Sequestration Does

Michael E. O'Hanlon — Mon, 13 May 2013 15:16:00 -0400

A deeply flawed conventional wisdom is developing that despite warnings from former defense secretary Leon Panetta and others that the sky would fall if sequestration occurred, automatic spending cuts are not so bad after all. By this logic, not only should the cuts in defense as well as domestic “discretionary” accounts continue, but it would also be okay to implement automatic and across-the-board cuts in the next fiscal year, too, starting in October.

Yet the path we are on is far from acceptable.

While some of this year’s roughly $46 billion in defense cuts from sequestration reflect reasonable pruning, many of the reductions are not sustainable. Savings from policies such as dramatically reducing training for most military units this summer are not catastrophic if done once, but they cannot be continued without fundamentally jeopardizing military readiness.

Then there are savings that appear real but are not, such as deferred overhauls of major weaponry and deferred maintenance at bases. We can put off some repairs, but most will have to be done eventually — and may be more expensive if deferred. Then there are savings made on the backs of those with limited ability to make their voices heard: furloughs of civilian government employees top this list. In addition to being highly disruptive to government operations, these furloughs suggest that federal workers are second-class citizens (even as members of Congress can keep their entire paychecks for the year). Graduating students at public policy schools and other worthy individuals are being denied opportunities to work for the federal government due to hiring freezes.

Together, these temporary savings, faux savings and unfair savings represent at least half the $46 billion in cutbacks that the Defense Department is experiencing.

The military budget can be cut beyond the initial reductions from the 2011 Budget Control Act. But continued sequestration or reductions of comparable magnitude such as those resulting from the Simpson-Bowles proposals go too far. Such plans tend to make sweeping claims that, because defense spending remains reasonably high by historic and international standards, it can be cut much further. This reasoning is too vague for a world in which crises continue throughout the broader Middle East, U.S. forces remain engaged in Afghanistan, North Korea continues to nuclearize, and China continues its rise. It is time to get specific about further defense cuts.

Read the full article »

Authors

Michael E. O'Hanlon

Publication: The Washington Post

Image Source: © Romeo Ranoco / Reuters

The Road to War : Presidential Commitments Honored and Betrayed

Marvin Kalb — Fri, 10 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Brookings Institution Press 2013 280pp.

If you remember the golden age of broadcast network news, then you probably welcomed Marvin Kalb into your living room on a regular basis. Recruited by Edward R. Murrow to join CBS News, Kalb went on to a distinguished three-decade career with CBS, and then NBC News. In The Road to War, Kalb examines the role of diplomatic commitments made by presidents. These commitments, rather than formal declarations of war, have led one president after another, from Truman to Obama, to order American troops into wars all over the world.

Condensed Excerpt:

Since World War II, presidents have relied more on commitments, public and private, than they have on declarations of war, even though the U.S. Constitution declares rather unambiguously that Congress has the responsibility to “declare war.”

Over the years, presidential commitments have come in different shapes and sizes, suggesting honor and integrity, strength and determination, the word of a president backed by the military power of the United States. No trifling matter, in diplomatic affairs. And yet . . .

Some commitments, such as America’s to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, have been successful and durable, in part because they have been based on solemn treaties ratified by Congress. Another example is America’s commitment to South Korea, also based on a mutual defense treaty, supported by the presence of 28,500 American troops armed with nuclear weapons until December 1991.

Words have consequence. Spoken by a president, they can often become American policy, with or without congressional approval.

South Vietnam represented a very different challenge. It was war by presidential commitment, the United States sliding mindlessly, one administration after another, into a guerrilla war in Indochina, which cost more than 58,000 American lives. Few in Congress or the media questioned the war’s provenance or legitimacy, until it was too late.

Finally, in this book, which focuses on American commitments to South Korea, South Vietnam, and Israel, the one to Israel is perhaps the most fascinating. Here we have an unusually close relationship, culturally, religiously, politically in alignment, more or less, yet one without any basis in a formal treaty linking the interests of one nation to the other. It is based primarily on private presidential letters to Israeli prime ministers, rich with American promises and pledges to Israeli security. Over the years many of the promises have been honored, but some were betrayed, leaving feelings of anxiety among Israeli leaders about the ultimate reliability of an American commitment.

No doubt, presidential commitments are seen as serious, almost sacred, promises to act made by a chief executive on behalf of his administration. And other nations may view these commitments as binding nation-to-nation promises that succeeding administrations will honor, too. But there is a problem. Will they?

In 1982, for example, President Ronald Reagan pledged America’s “iron- clad commitment to the defense of Israel.” The commitment made sense to Reagan at the time, and it has been echoed by one president after another ever since. But does Reagan’s pledge have the same resonance now that it did then? Does it mean that if Israel feels it must bomb Iran to stop its nuclear program that America must join in the attack? Much has to do with trust between leaders and countries. Do Israeli leaders trust President Barack Obama as much as they did Bill Clinton and George W. Bush? These are questions that cut to the heart—and viability—of a presidential commitment.

Words have consequence. Spoken by a president, they can often become American policy, with or without congressional approval. When a president “commits” the United States to a controversial course of action, he may be setting the nation on the road to war or on a road to reconciliation. In matters of national security, his powers have become awesome—his word decisive. Who decides when we go to war? The president decides. As former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski told me, it “all depends” on the president. “It’s his call.” Likewise, it is his decision when and whether, and under what conditions, to support a friendly nation.

In the final analysis, for reasons both political and military, Israel may, on its own, strike Iran. Would it then expect American diplomatic and military support? Obama has strongly implied yes. But, without a mutual defense treaty, there may always be a question about the durability and reliability of a presidential commitment.

A president, such as Barack Obama, for example, pledges that the United States has “an ironclad commitment” to Israel’s security—meaning, one would imagine, that if Israel were attacked, the United States would come to Israel’s defense. Is there anything more to this commitment than a presidential promise? Obviously, yes. Israel enjoys broad-based support from Congress and the American people. For the most part, both nations share common values and common aims. But the president is the key to determining the flow and texture of this delicate relationship.

A question often asked by political leaders in Israel is whether Obama will live up to his word. Will his commitment be honored or betrayed by him or by a successor? The answer to this question can mean war or peace. Might it not be better for both nations to negotiate a formal defense treaty—and, in this way, try to reduce or even eliminate areas of doubt in their relationship? Those who question the value or relevance of a U.S.-Israeli defense treaty point out that in recent years Obama has tried to organize Israeli-Palestinian peace talks only to fail abysmally because of Palestinian objections to Israeli settlements and Israeli insistence on building such settlements in the name of security. How would a treaty resolve these problems, they ask? Indeed, even the effort to negotiate a defense treaty would likely kick up fresh tumult and anxiety among Arab states, which are apt to see a U.S. treaty with Israel as proof that the United States can no longer be counted on as an impartial negotiator.

Another question: Obama has warned, more than once: “Let there be no doubt—America is determined to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.” Though the world has heard this warning, there are still many, especially in the Middle East, who question whether Obama would really use American military power to stop Iran from “getting nuclear weapons,” however that phrase might be defined. It is said in Washington and Jerusalem that never before have Israel and the United States been in closer alignment on stopping Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. True, and yet not quite true. In the final analysis, for reasons both political and military, Israel may, on its own, strike Iran. Would it then expect American diplomatic and military support? Obama has strongly implied yes. But, without a mutual defense treaty, there may always be a question about the durability and reliability of a presidential commitment.

* * *

The Road to War is available in both hardcover and eBook formats:

Praise for The Road to War:

“Every road to war is ultimately also a tragedy. Kalb’s concluding chapter, however, offers a timely and important ray of hope: a defense treaty between the U.S. and Israel in the context of a fair peace settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians might avoid not just one but even two wars. President Obama should read this chapter.”
—Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser

“Marvin Kalb has written a fine book that should be required reading for everyone who wants to be president because it underlines what every president seems not to know in the beginning—that it is much easier to get into war than to get out of it. Terrific insight, carefully researched and clearly written.”
—Bob Schieffer, CBS News

“Kalb raises important questions about the unchecked power of presidents to take the nation to war. His provocative proposal for a U.S.-Israeli defense treaty will certainly add to the debate about the future of U.S. diplomacy in the Middle East.”
—Graham Allison, Harvard University

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marvin Kalb

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NATO and the Costs of Star Wars

Clara M. O'Donnell — Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Over the last decade, the US has spent tens of billions of dollars constructing a shield to stop nuclear missiles from North Korea or Iran reaching its soil. So far, the shield does not work. Fortunately for the Americans, neither Pyongyang nor Tehran has nuclear missiles that could hit the US. Unfortunately, however, America's missile defence programme has upset China and Russia, two countries that do have nuclear arsenals that could reach its homeland. America's European partners in NATO should try to convince Washington to scale back its missile defence ambitions for the next few years. Not only would this allow the US government to spend its shrinking defence budget on more pressing military needs. It would also improve European security by reducing tensions between NATO and Russia.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US has been increasingly worried about nuclear attacks by 'rogue' states. In 1998, a study group chaired by Donald Rumsfeld predicted that North Korea and Iran could field intercontinental ballistic missiles within five years. Today, however, Iran has neither intercontinental missiles nor a nuclear bomb. In March of this year, a report from the Pentagon's intelligence agency (erroneously declassified) assessed "with moderate confidence" that Pyongyang could build a nuclear device that fits on a missile. But there is still no evidence that North Korean missiles are sophisticated enough to reach the US.

Although the American mainland is not currently under threat, every president since George H.W. Bush has sought to deploy nation-wide defences against a limited attack by ballistic missiles. Reviving some of President Ronald Reagan's 'star wars' ambitions, the US has had missile interceptors deployed in Alaska and California since 2004. Both the George W Bush and Obama administrations have also had various plans to deploy interceptors against intercontinental missiles at bases in Europe. (The Obama administration, working with NATO, has also been deploying interceptors in Europe to protect Europeans and US troops in the region against shorter-range missiles from Iran – a threat which does exist.) In March, Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel announced that because of technical problems and budgetary constraints, the US is suspending its efforts to build Europe-based strategic interceptors. He also said that in response to the bellicose attitude of North Korea's new leader, the US will add 14 missile interceptors in on its West Coast, and perhaps deploy a few more on the East Coast, too.

The Obama administration has been wise to cancel the European leg of its strategic missile defence plans. Several recent studies had highlighted significant shortcomings in the programme. For example, a 2012 report by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that the interceptors planned for Europe would have been too slow to stop an incoming missile. But the US would be ill advised to increase the number of interceptors on the West – and possibly East – Coast. Studies have shown that the interceptors in Alaska and California do not work well either. According to Congress' Government Accountability Office, ten out of the 30 interceptors rely on technology which has never intercepted a missile during tests. The GAO estimates that it will take several years to repair this technology, costing the US taxpayer an additional $700 million. Hagel has promised to fix these glitches before the new interceptors are deployed. But the Pentagon does not yet have a solution to another big problem. None of its interceptors can distinguish between an incoming warhead and debris or decoys. (Ballistic missiles can easily carry decoys in addition to warheads.)

America's strategic missile defence efforts have made the US taxpayer fund a weapon that does not work to tackle a threat that does not exist. They have also antagonised China and Russia. Both countries worry that US technological breakthroughs could undermine their strategic deterrents. Moscow has been most displeased. The Kremlin has been asking for legal guarantees that the US would not direct its missile defences against Russia's strategic nuclear weapons. To reassure Russia, the Obama administration has encouraged Moscow to co-operate with NATO's defence programme against Iranian short and long-range missiles. (Moscow is less worried about NATO's defences against Iranian short-range missiles because the interceptors used would be too slow to stop a Russian strategic missile.) Washington has also been willing to provide Moscow political guarantees that its nuclear deterrent is not under threat.

But so far, the Obama administration has refused to give Russia legal guarantees. The US has made such commitments in the past. The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty established limits on what Moscow and Washington could do in this area from the 1970s until 2002. President George W Bush then withdrew from the agreement in order to pursue America’s missile defence ambitions unhindered. The Obama administration fears that Republican senators – who are keen on missile defence – would not ratify a treaty that would constrain the US. As a result, missile defence has become one of the most contentious issues in a troubled US-Russia relationship. Moscow has refused to negotiate further cuts in its nuclear arsenal until the issue is resolved. Last year, the chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces threatened to attack the European NATO countries hosting US missile defences. And according to press reports, Russian bombers have been simulating strikes against American missile defence installations.

Now that Hagel has cancelled the European leg of US strategic missile defences, there is a chance that NATO and Russia could end their dispute. Senior American and Russian officials have resumed talks about Russia co-operating with NATO's missile defence efforts. US policy-makers have also been encouraging Moscow to negotiate new bilateral nuclear reductions – a top priority for President Barack Obama. According to some Russian officials, President Vladimir Putin may be open to an agreement when he meets President Obama at the G8 in June or at their bilateral summit in September. But the Russians still want legal guarantees on strategic missile defences.

Europeans welcome the possibility of improved NATO-Russia ties. Most of them have never been convinced of the need for, or feasibility of, strategic missile defences and many disliked Washington's decision to leave the ABM treaty. Germany and others have been keen for Russia to co-operate with NATO's missile defence programme as a way to alleviate tensions. To maximise the chances of a deal between Washington and Moscow, Europeans should now encourage their American allies to include legal guarantees on missile defence in a new nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. Steven Pifer and Michael O'Hanlon from the Brookings Institution point out in their book 'The opportunity' that treaty limits could still allow the US to deploy all its planned defences against North Korea and Iran: the US and Russia could for example agree to each having a maximum of 125 interceptors capable of engaging intercontinental missiles. (The ABM treaty initially allowed for 200.) The treaty could also be limited to ten years, so that both sides could reconsider its ceilings in light of how the threats from North Korea and Iran evolve.

The White House, and Europeans, would struggle to convince some Republican senators to ratify such a treaty. But without it, Russia is unlikely to reduce its numerous tactical nuclear weapons – an arsenal that worries both Democrats and Republicans. Europeans should also discourage their US counterparts from deploying additional interceptors against strategic missiles until tests have shown them to be effective. The risk of wasting large sums of money at a time of savage defence cuts should help senators to reassess their views on missile defence.

As Greg Thielmann, a former senior US state department intelligence official, remarks, Europeans have "tamed ill-considered American instincts" in the past: in the 1980s, Europeans encouraged a reluctant Reagan administration to negotiate the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. For the benefit of NATO-Russia relations and global arms control, the Europeans should encourage their ally to reassess its stance again.

Authors

Clara M. O'Donnell

Publication: Centre for European Reform

Image Source: © Yves Herman / Reuters

On Retirement, the Marine Corps, and the Sacrifices of the U.S. Armed Forces

John R. Allen — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's Note: In his retirement remarks delivered at the U.S. Naval Academy, General John Allen recognizes the sacrifice of American forces over the last 13 years of conflict as well as the Marine Corps’ dedication to the country since its founding. After nearly 35 years of service, General Allen’s most recent assignment was as commander of ISAF and US Forces in Afghanistan.

Thank you Commandant for consenting to this event and supporting it so magnificently.

In the same breath, Colonel Cabaniss, the commander of these magnificent Marines who stand before you today, the Marines of our Oldest Post in the Corps, the Marines of Marine Barracks Washington, thank you for your enormous support of this event.

Secretary of the Navy Mabus, ADM Greenert, and VADM Miller, thank you for permitting this ceremony to occur at the Naval Academy, this incomparable institution that has such meaning to our Navy and Marine Corps.

This day … retirement … comes for all of us eventually, and while often it is viewed in a manner akin to the coming of the Grim Reaper, I can tell you for my family and for me, this day marks a new beginning for the Allens. Our distant horizon is bright. Many of our dearest friends have gone aloft, high into the rigging, and are helping us to see what’s ahead and to plot a course into the future.

It would not be possible to put into words what I’m feeling this afternoon. I grew up in a Navy family … a Navy junior … and enlisted in April 1971, shortly after I turned 17, and from the day I was born to this moment, I’ve known only the naval service and more recently the Joint Force. Throughout, even accounting for some the challenging and dark moments, and 33 months in combat, it really has been the best of times.

My career has spanned portions of five decades, a period in our Nation’s history fraught with challenge and danger, a period which has seen our forces in action against the nation’s foes, from the end of the Vietnam War, the Cold War, Grenada, Panama, Haiti, Desert Shield and Storm, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Through this period I’ve been blessed to be entrusted with a number of special assignments in East Asia, the Middle East and Central and South Asia.

I have been humbled to be part of all this. Humbled to hold the commission of an officer of Marines. Humbled to lead Marines and Sailors, and more recently the Soldiers, Airmen and civilians of the Joint Force. Ladies and gentlemen, let me talk about them for a few moments for they are magnificent, all of them, and I have treasured, truly treasured, every moment I have had with them.

It is often lost on the American people that the security of our nation and our freedom, and frankly that freedom of much of the rest of the world, is secured by the smallest fraction of our people- less than one percent of US population. On the broad and strong shoulders of these young men and women we’ve just fought two major wars, and kept the wolf from the door in the Gulf, on the Korean Peninsula, in East Asia, and in places too numerous to mention where we strive with the dark forces of evil seeking to destroy us and our way of life.

In his landmark book The Anatomy of Courage, Lord Moran spoke of courage in war. From his own long experience in the trenches of the western front, he learned that war has no power to transform a person, rather war – combat – only has the power to reveal. “A man of character in peace is a man of courage in war.” War is not about some heroic, mystical, transformative force. Indeed, combat strips away the superficial trappings of society, and at that hard, uncompromising moment, the moment of truth, war reveals us all for what we are. And more than a decade of conflict, war has revealed to us that these troops are noble, they are selfless, they are courageous in mind, in body, and in spirit.

And when America sleeps tonight, it will not know what was done this day, in a 100 un-named places by our precious young men and women who protected us while we slept. So tonight America will rest peacefully likely unaware of the sacrifices of that day and the horrendous price paid by some for our freedom. It has been the greatest my honor of my life to lead these young warriors.

Across the years I’ve keenly felt their loss; each one was personal to me, and in Afghanistan it didn’t get easier at the head of a field army. It was harder. When I was notified of our casualties, my thoughts ran immediately to a home somewhere in America where a young wife and her tiny children sleep peacefully in the hopes a precious husband and darling father will come home to them safely, whole in body and in mind. And I always knew in a few hours, a knock on the door would change their lives forever and ever.

This decade plus of war has exacted a heavy price from our forces. All of us in uniform have given something, but many have given much, and some, several thousand, have given everything. In my time in Afghanistan, more than 5500 of my troops were wounded, many of them amputations, but 561 of my precious troops were killed. I will bear that responsibility to my grave, and not a day goes by, nor the passing of a night, without my seeing the faces or hearing their names. They are with me constantly. They are the best of us, they are the new “greatest generation,” and I miss them so!

Laurence Binyon in For The Fallen captured the very essence of this sacrifice and indicted all of us to understand this heavy toll and to keep faith with this sacrifice, to make it mean something. He would write one of the most moving poems of sacrifice and about the dead of the Great War. In this poem, in so few lines, he captured it all. The first four lines I’ll read you’ve perhaps never heard, but they are as relevant today as then. The last four lines are well known to many of us, especially each year on Veterans Day.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

And so, borrowing from the final scene of the epic film Saving Private Ryan, I say to our leaders of government, to our learned elite, to those whose decisions cash in on the lives of our blessed youth, I say to them and to the people of America, live that we deserve this greatest sacrifice from the youth of America. Deserve this!

Let me talk about the Corps for a moment, and not to the exclusion of our other services. In most of my adult life, all I have known is the Corps. For over two centuries our US Marine Corps has embodied the very essence of all that is right and true in America. Our standards are high and uncompromising. Indeed, in ways essential to who we are and what we must do for America, Marines are animated by a spiritual truth, that while we may be called upon to kill, indeed the real source of our strength and power comes from the more poignant reality: that we are prepared to die, to sacrifice all we have, indeed to sacrifice all we are, in a cause greater than ourselves.

As our Marines emerge from 13 years of war, I am encouraged, indeed I’m optimistic, about the future of our Corps, the nation’s 911 force. Seated here today, and embodied in the presence of our Commandant and his First Lady, is the transformational leadership that will carry the Corps into the next 50 years. With Jim Amos and others at the helm I am optimistic about our future. And America can continue to count on its Marines.

This ceremony today embodies the sweep of my career and my life, so powerfully represented by the Marine battalion on line before you here in Alumni Hall. While I’ve been a Marine for nearly 4 decades, I was reared at the US Naval Academy. For my guests here today, the entire sweep of the history of America’s Naval Service is revealed on this campus, the 338 acres called, in the tradition of our Navy, simply: The Yard. In many ways, this is hallowed ground for our Navy and Marines. And in that vein, I am truly blessed to have with me today over 100 members and family of my class, the great Bicentennial Class of 1976.

Kathy and I are so honored and blessed to have you all with us today. And you are led by our great Class president and my company mate from 34^th Company, Kevin Stone. We entered the Academy 1329 strong on the 1^st of July 1972, and graduated on 2 JUN, 1976 with 832 in ranks. Each of us was shaped profoundly by our experiences here. And whether we went on to submarines, or Navy air, surface warfare or SEALs or the Marine Corps, our lives were inextricably and forever linked by what happened here in the Yard.

The Yard is full of the silent messages of the essential values of our naval service, such as “Don’t’ Give Up the Ship” or “I have not yet begun to fight” messages of courage, sacrifice and fortitude. But none of those messages speaks more directly to what we are, to the selflessness of our profession, than the words on the massive bronze doors of our Naval Academy Chapel. In the ancient Latin of our Roman forebears, the midshipmen of Annapolis and the graduates, young and old, are called upon to live the very essence of sacrifice and selflessness: “Non sibi sed patriae … not for self, but country.” Not for self, but country. And the Class of 1976 has lived and embodied those words of courage, of sacrifice, of selflessness. Vinny Smith was killed in action in Beirut in 1983, and many others have fallen in the line of duty serving with the Fleet and Fleet Marine Force at the far flung edges of American influence. I honor their memory today.

In my career I would be both an instructor here at Annapolis, but also the Commandant, and while our football team struggled each of those seasons I stood on the sidelines, at least we beat Army both years.

We’d hoped that my Classmate, Jim Stavridis, would be here today to help pipe me over the side, but the call of duty and intensity of Syria and other challenges kept him in Europe. In my last tour, Jim was a God send as both my NATO commander as SACEUR, but was as close a friend and confidant as I could ever have hoped to serve.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the Naval Academy Alma Mater, Navy Blue and Gold is so precious to us. We were literally raised on the first verse and there’s not a grad living, no matter how white the hair or dim the vision, who cannot rise to his or her feet, place hand over heart, and recite from memory Navy Blue and Gold. But today it is the third verse that I will recite- mercifully for you I won’t sing it. For in these words was the reason Jim and I had hoped to appear together this morning and why I wanted to end my career in the Yard at Annapolis, surrounded by friends and family and Classmates and Marines. And the last verse goes:

Four years together by the Bay where Severn joins the tide.
And by the service called away we’re scattered far and wide.
But then when two or three shall meet, old stories be retold
From low to highest in the Fleet … we pledge the Blue and Gold.
Go Navy

And finally, my precious family. I made a decision earlier this year that it was time to go home to Virginia, my birthplace and the place where I will live out my days. The last six years had been very challenging for my family. But through it all, Kathy was a great stalwart. Kathy has always been a hero to me. The ultimate example of selflessness, she’s spent her years raising our two wonderful daughters while I was gone for so much of their young lives, but she also provided as much as she could for the families of our Marines and Sailors, and then later the families of our Joint Force.

She comes by this sense of duty honestly and easily. And I’d like to review the record briefly. Her grandfather, Merton Jennings Batchelder, was a Marine General Officer and a highly decorated and celebrated combat leader from both WWI and II. He would serve on the Western Front in the Great War and lead the 25th Marine Regimental Landing Team at Saipan and Tinian (where he would receive the Navy Cross), culminating in his leading the assault waves of the 4^th Marine Division at Iwo Jima as the Division COS.

Kathy’s grandmother, Kate Jolliff, was an Army nurse in a field hospital in France in WW I. Her grandparents would meet and marry a year after the war.

Kathy’s mother, Betty, the oldest of the three children of Brigadier General and Mrs. Mert and Kate Batchelder would meet and marry a dashing young Marine captain, Archie Norford, when she was 19. With only four months together, he deployed to the Pacific and to the 2d Battalion, 4^th Marines. He distinguished himself in battle on Guam, and just days before the end of the fighting on Okinawa, leading his rifle company from the front in some of the most vicious combat on the island, he was killed in action.

Kathy’s mother would marry a second time also to a Marine, Robert Glickert, who was Kathy’s father. He would land on Tulagi with Edson’s Raiders, clearing that island of the Japanese defenders, then shift into the desperate fighting against the Japanese on Guadalcanal.

Last week I had the great honor of reading the eulogy at the funeral for Kathy’s Uncle, the youngest child and son of Mert and Kate Batchelder, Merton Jennings Batchelder, Jr. He graduated from the Naval Academy Class of 1951 and followed his father into the Corps. As a Marine Second Lieutenant Mert plunged head-long into the North Korean and Chinese forces during the desperate fighting of 1951 and 52 in Korea along the outpost line.

Kathy and my precious daughters, Betty and Bobbie, have more Marine green pumping in their veins than most Marines I know. With my retirement today as the last living Marine in our family, we proudly mark well over 100 years of service in and to our Corps and Country, but we do so humbly, having been honored to wear the precious icon of our Corps: the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor.

Yes, Kathy and Betty and Bobbie come by their characters and their love of family and country honestly and naturally and it is with that in mind and the sacrifices they have made that I made the decision to retire. So I’ll end where I began: we see only the bright light of promise on our horizon. Each of you here today has been precious to us in your own unique ways and we’re so grateful for your love and friendship, something we will always treasure, always.

As the shadows of our lives begin to lengthen, Kathy and I will draw upon the happiness and pleasure and the memories each of you has brought us in such great abundance.

Let me close with a quote of parting from the great Shakespeare play Julius Caesar. Two Roman generals, dear friends, are uncertain of the future as the certainty of battle loomed hard upon them. They knew this could be a final parting, and while I hope with all my heart this is not our final parting, please know with these words how I feel about you all now.

And whether we shall meet again I know not.
Therefore our everlasting farewell take:
For ever, and for ever, farewell, Cassius!
If we do meet again, why, we shall smile;
If not, why then, this parting was well made

Ladies and Gentlemen, by your presence today you have honored Kathy and me. Thank you for coming. Semper Fidelis.

Authors

John R. Allen

Publication: U.S. Naval Academy

Image Source: © Mohammad Ismail / Reuters

Which Military Opinions To Listen To

Paul R. Pillar — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's note: This article was originally published by The National Interest.

A recent study by Jim Golby, Kyle Dropp and Peter Feaver published by the Center for New American Security examines the effects that public statements by senior military officers have on public opinion about the use of force. The study is based on survey research in which respondents were presented with real and hypothetical questions about whether the United States should apply military force to certain situations overseas. Some respondents were told that U.S. military leaders favored the contemplated action, others were told that the same military leaders opposed the action, and still others were given no cues about what the military thinks. The main finding of the research is that publicly expressed military views do make a difference on public opinion, especially when such views oppose a military action. Military opposition reduced public support for the use of military force abroad by an average of seven percentage points, while military support increased public support by three percentage points. The surveyed sample was large enough that these were significant differences.

The authors discuss some concerns suggested by these findings, especially the hazard of what they call “a problematic politicization of the military.” Their concerns are legitimate, but the study fails to make an important distinction between the sort of military opinions that ought to worry us (worry us, that is, because they are being expressed publicly) and the sort that ought not.

The public (and policymakers in the executive branch and Congress) ought to pay careful attention to what senior military officers say on questions that are contained within the military's area of expertise. That is where military officers can offer opinions that are more firmly grounded than what anyone else can offer. Such questions would include the costs and time required to accomplish a military mission, risks incurred in accomplishing it such as collateral damage to civilians, and the likelihood of being able to accomplish it at all.

A military officer's opinion ought not to be considered worth more than anyone else's when it goes beyond the area of specifically military expertise. Outside that area would be questions such as political and diplomatic costs of an action, national priorities in the allocation of limited resources, and how important attainment of the military objective would be to the national interest. Because these sorts of questions are just as important in any decision to apply armed force overseas as are the ones on which military officers are specially qualified to speak, an overall judgment on whether any given application of force ought to be undertaken also goes beyond the area of military expertise. Thoughtful and intelligent military officers are going to have opinions about these things and are entitled to have them, but that is not the same as having a special claim on the public's attention.

If there is a norm to be cultivated here, it is that active-duty military officers ought to insist on being heard on military questions (which is not the same as the question of whether a particular military action ought to be undertaken), while being mindful of the politicization hazard that Golby, Dropp and Feaver mention and thereby not taking advantage of their prestige, their uniform and their credibility to offer publicly their opinions on other things.

Unfortunately, too often military opinion gets handled in exactly the opposite way. On one hand, armchair generals sometimes do not defer to the military on military questions. A well known and egregious example is the public disparagement by civilian Pentagon leaders of the army chief of staff's judgment about the U.S. troop presence that would be required in Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. On the other hand, military officers' opinions on questions that go beyond strictly military judgments sometimes are given excessive prominence, usually because politicians either want to shirk the responsibility for making a decision by pretending that a military opinion can be treated as a surrogate for a policy judgment, or want to use military officers as supporting props for promoting their own point of view.

Authors

Paul R. Pillar

Publication: The National Interest

Big Hurdles Ahead for Arms Control

Steven Pifer — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's note: This article was originally published by The National Interest.

Four years ago in Prague, President Obama announced his desire to reduce the role and number of nuclear weapons in U.S. security policy and set an ultimate goal of a world free of nuclear arms. He returned to the Czech capital one year later to sign the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). The president has said he wants to do more: cut nuclear weapons further and ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Those are worthwhile goals, but achieving them will require overcoming significant challenges.

The New START Treaty limits the United States and Russia each to no more than 1,550 deployed strategic warheads on 700 deployed strategic missiles and bombers. That is a good step, but do those weapons levels make sense twenty years after the end of the Cold War? New START, moreover, covers only a part of the total nuclear arsenals of the superpowers; non-deployed (reserve) strategic warheads and non-strategic (tactical) weapons remain free of any constraint.

The superpowers each have total stockpiles numbering 4,500–5,000 nuclear weapons, more than fifteen times larger than the next nuclear weapons state. Washington and Moscow could easily reduce their arsenals by half and retain robust deterrents—and they would clearly remain top dogs in the nuclear-arms world.

In his January state of the union message, Mr. Obama stated his intention to “engage Russia to seek further reductions in our nuclear arsenals.” Press reports in early February suggested the administration was nearing a decision on reductions to no more than 1,000–1,100 deployed strategic warheads and a total of 2,500–3,500 total nuclear weapons. The administration could pursue this in different ways.

One option would seek to negotiate a U.S.-Russian treaty covering all nuclear weapons. It might limit each side to 2,500 total weapons, with a sublimit of 1,000 deployed strategic warheads. That would reduce the New START level by 35 percent and, more significantly, for the first time cap reserve strategic and tactical nuclear weapons.

Negotiating such an agreement would get into new territory; for example, the sides would need to develop agreed definitions, counting rules and verification measures to apply to the classes of warheads not previously limited. None of that would be easy and would take considerably longer than the eleven months it took to finish New START.

The Obama administration might conclude that it lacks time to finish such a treaty before the end of his second term. It thus might consider a fast deal to reduce New START’s limits. That could be as simple as just negotiating new numbers, for example, a limit of 1,000 deployed strategic warheads in place of 1,550. New START’s definitions, counting rules and verification measures would apply equally well to the new numerical limits. As for reserve strategic and tactical weapons, Washington could seek to engage Moscow in a process beginning with transparency and confidence-building measures and ultimately leading to a negotiation of legally binding limits. However, getting to that negotiation, and then concluding it, would take far longer than agreeing to change the New START limits.

Pursuing either approach would encounter challenges. The first and most critical: is Moscow prepared to engage? President Putin and the Russians have shown little enthusiasm recently for further nuclear arms cuts. They may choose not to play.

Perhaps not, but it is too early to close that door. The Russian government could have incentives to negotiate. For example, while the U.S. military can easily maintain its forces at New START levels, the Russian military must build new missiles to keep to the levels. Lowering New START’s limits could provide an attractive cost-saving measure for Moscow.

National Security Advisor Donilon travels to Moscow next week, and presidents Obama and Putin plan to meet in June and September. Those encounters provide opportunities to sound out the Russians’ readiness to deal.

Verification will pose a special challenge for limits on reserve and tactical nuclear arms. The U.S. intelligence community has high confidence in its ability to monitor New START’s limits. But monitoring constraints on reserve strategic and tactical weapons—which are not deployed on large strategic ballistic missiles but sit in storage bunkers—will prove a tougher task.

In the end, the intelligence community likely will not have the same degree of confidence in its ability to monitor those limits as it does with New START. That will raise questions, particularly in the Senate, though the risk posed by less certainty in monitoring limits on reserve strategic and tactical weapons should be set against the current situation, in which there are no constraints of any kind on those weapons.

A third challenge waits on Capitol Hill. Senate turnover has meant the loss of considerable muscle memory on nuclear arms-control questions. Senate Republicans, moreover, tend to be skeptical about the value of arms control. And they feel that the Obama administration has not moved as fast on nuclear modernization as it promised during the New START ratification debate. So, any new nuclear-reductions treaty would face a stiff test in a ratification vote.

That has led the administration to weigh options other than a legally binding treaty. One could be to seek a political commitment by the U.S. and Russian presidents to cut deployed strategic warheads to one thousand on no more than five hundred deployed strategic delivery vehicles. The sides could use New START’s verification measures to monitor these politically binding limits as well as the legally binding limits of 1,550 and 700.

The administration also would like to secure ratification of the 1996 CTBT. The Senate did not consent to ratification in 1999, primarily due to concerns about the reliability of the U.S. stockpile absent testing and the ability to detect cheating. Developments over the past ten years in the stockpile-stewardship program and advances in monitoring, such as improved seismic techniques, have largely allayed those two worries.

Bear in mind also how hard Nevada fought against storage of nuclear waste at the nuclear test site. With the population of nearby Las Vegas having tripled since 1992, the year of the last U.S. nuclear test, does anyone believe a resumption of testing would be feasible politically? Moreover, the United States carried out more nuclear tests than the rest of the world combined and learned more from individual tests. Why not freeze this American advantage?

Persuading Senate Republicans of the validity of these points nevertheless cannot be taken for granted. The administration will want to do a careful head count before making a CTBT ratification push, as a second negative vote in the Senate would be devastating for the treaty.

The president has said he wants to do more on cutting nuclear-arms levels and moving the CTBT closer to reality. Those are worthy goals that could cement his nuclear legacy and make America more secure. But major challenges stand before his agenda. President Obama has to engage personally, both with the Russians and the Senate, if he wants to overcome them.

Authors

Steven Pifer

Publication: The National Interest

America's Care in the Use of Force (and Use of Drones)

Michael E. O'Hanlon — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 11:36:00 -0400

American University professor Akbar Ahmed’s new book, The Thistle and the Drone, is elegant and erudite in many ways. He demonstrates a rich historical and anthropological understanding not only of his native Pakistan but of other tribal societies around the world relevant in the broader “war against terrorism.” He cautions wisely about the geostrategic dangers that can result if Washington is seen as using force disproportionately or carelessly in ways that hurt innocent people in these areas. Ahmed is right to question whether the United States needs to reassess its approaches in these matters.

However, as someone who has followed these same issues myself, albeit from a somewhat different vantage point as a national security scholar with close ties to the U.S. military and intelligence community, I have a different perspective on several of the issues Ahmed raises. In some of his specific arguments, Professor Ahmed is not fully fair, accurate, or up to date.

He makes insufficient effort to understand trends in drone warfare including the huge progress that the United States has made in minimizing civilian casualties. While mistakes are sometimes still made, I believe after following the use of drones closely for years that the United States Armed Forces take a great deal of care in their use of force. It is dangerous for Ahmed to suggest otherwise, since in doing so he can fuel the very fires of hatred and distrust that he decries.

For example, in Afghanistan, ISAF forces have made extraordinary efforts to reduce their use of firepower, and accidental or inadvertent strikes now account for less than 10 percent of all civilian fatalities there according to UN figures. This is still far too many—a few hundred a year—but it is incredibly precise by the standards of warfare. Indeed, under General McChrystal three years ago, some NATO troops felt they were even being asked to accept greater personal risk to themselves and their fellow troopers when engaged in firefights so as to ensure maximum safety for Afghans. NATO troops do not fire on Afghan homes or other buildings unless in dire peril, and their care has produced a huge improvement in our track record.

In Pakistan, U.S. forces have had essentially a zero-casualty policy for at least three years. Attacks are not made if there is any realistic risk to civilians—with only a partial exception if al Qaeda’s top two or three leaders might be in the crosshairs. Yes, mistakes have been made. But these have been extremely rare. Peter Bergen tallies the number of accidental deaths of innocents as well under 10 percent of the total in recent times. To be sure, critiques are warranted, and we can afford to scale back our use of force now that bin Laden is dead, top al Qaeda leadership in general is decimated, and some key Haqqani leaders are out of the picture (we have already reduced the pace of attacks substantially, as Bergen’s data repeated at www.brookings.edu/afghanistanindex show). But the insinuations that we have not been extremely careful and have not tried to learn further lessons along are simply incorrect.

Ahmed goes further. On p. 39 of his book, he even says that "There appears to be a deliberate attempt by official agencies in the war on terror to obfuscate and distort." This is a big charge that he makes without substantiation or specificity.

There are a few other specific matters where dissent is warranted, as well. On p. 305 he suggests that many if not most American scholars blame Islam and its basic nature for terrorism. This is not accurate. Far more American scholars go out of their way to argue just the opposite in the last 12 years.

On p. 309 he actually suggests that a mainstream strand of American national security thinking wants to "eradicate Islam." This is, frankly, a preposterous and irresponsible allegation.

On p. 311 he suggests that it was a serious idea to carpet bomb Muslim villages with videos of Baywatch, and that Americans would take such nonsense seriously. Perhaps here Ahmed is being tongue in cheek, but in light of his other arguments, I couldn’t tell. I hope so!

On p. 313, he says that al Qaeda is now blamed for every outburst of violence around the world, and that Americans live on pins and needles because of fear of another attack. In fact, most Americans have moved on. They worry far more about the economy. In national security terms, recent policy has focused as much on the so-called rebalancing towards Asia, and the problems with North Korea. More than anything else, though, what typifies the current American public policy debate is less paranoia over al Qaeda than Americans' growing isolationism. Ahmed would have been more fair to criticize the country for its indifference towards the Syrian civil war than for hypervigilance towards militants.

Finally, on p. 319, Ahmed suggests that anthropologists were brought into U.S. foreign policy decisionmaking to help determine how to properly torture Muslim prisoners. This too is wrong.

Ahmed is a remarkable scholar who has made big contributions, but on the above matters, I simply disagree.

Authors

Michael E. O'Hanlon

A Discussion About Drones

Peter W. Singer — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's note: In an interview with Charlie Rose, Peter W. Singer joins Michael Boyle of LaSalle University, Rosa Brooks of Georgetown University, and Scott Shane of The New York Times to discuss the revolutionary nature of drone technology as well as the dilemmas—strategic, ethical, political—that they present. Read an excerpt below.

Charlie Rose: Peter Singer, put this in the context of warfare overall.

Peter Singer: Well you have a revolutionary change that’s happening in the technology of war. Now, the question here is, are we talking about war or counterterrorism—we’ve got things conflated. But when you look at the technology of drones, it’s a gamechanger in war. It’s something along the level of the introduction of gunpowder or the steam engine or the airplane. By that I mean it gives you a series of capabilities that we didn’t imagine we’d have a generation ago, but also it’s giving us a series of dilemmas that we also didn’t imagine we’d be having a generation ago. And they’re dilemmas that are political, strategic, tactical, all the way down to ethical and legal.

Now one thing that’s happening here I think that’s a challenge is that we’re seeing things conflated. So, just as the example that Scott gave of the conflation between the JSOC kill list and process—the Joint Special Operations Command on the military side—and the one that the CIA is doing, both of which are taking place in the shadow wars that are out there.

Peter Singer: Signature strikes is an illustration of this, where on one hand we’ve seen administration officials say either “we don’t do that,” and other times we’ve heard them say “we do do that, but this is why.” But then we also have a variety of tactics beyond signature strikes that, for example, in an overt military operation you would never utilize.

One’s called a 'double tap strike,' which is where you strike at a target and then you wait for the rescuers to come about and you strike again. Now that’s been something that we’ve pointed out that if adversaries did that in Afghanistan or Iraq we would say “how dare you, this is evidence of how bad they are.” Yet there have been reports that we may have conducted strikes in a similar manner. Don’t know whether they’re confirmed or not.

But what I’m getting at here is that a civilian, political appointee lawyer, operating under a very different set of laws and priorities, looks at that issue and the question of what tactics you might bring, what rules of engagement you operate under, very differently from how a military lawyer would. And that’s part of the importance of whether these do shift from intelligence agency to military, but also whether they stay in the complete black ops world or whether we own up to the fact that these are not covert operations anymore, they’re frankly not so covert, and we need to stop running away from them and embrace the fact that we are doing them and these are the rules we’re going to operate under and actually stick and follow those rules.

Authors

Peter W. Singer

Publication: Charlie Rose

SORT vs. New START: Why the Administration is Leery of a Treaty

Steven Pifer — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:49:00 -0400

Yesterday’s blog—“Presidents, Nuclear Reductions and the Senate”—described how presidents over the past 40 years have sought to limit or reduce nuclear weapons by means other than a treaty requiring two-thirds majority approval in the Senate. Why would the Obama administration consider something other than a treaty? Because it fears that Republicans in the Senate would not consider a treaty on its merits. A comparison of the ratification experiences of the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) signed by President George W. Bush in 2002 and the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) signed by Mr. Obama in 2010 provides Exhibit A for those fears.

SORT limited the United States and Russia each to no more than 1,700-2,200 “strategic nuclear warheads,” the level of nuclear weapons that the Bush administration’s 2001 nuclear posture review concluded was necessary for the United States—regardless of what levels of nuclear arms other countries had. Mr. Bush originally proposed that he and President Vladimir Putin merely make statements of national policy setting out their intended strategic force levels, but he later agreed to do a treaty at Mr. Putin’s insistence.

SORT was not much of a treaty. While START I and New START each made a good-sized book, SORT barely filled two pages. Curiously, it did not define a “strategic nuclear warhead” … or any other term for that matter. Lacking any monitoring provisions, SORT was unverifiable.

It appears, moreover, that Washington and Moscow did not even count the same weapons. The Bush administration defined “strategic nuclear warheads” as the same as “operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads”—that is, nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) plus nuclear bombs and air-launched cruise missiles stored at air bases for B-2 and B-52 bombers (as a normal practice, neither side’s air force keeps weapons on bombers). The Russians, however, apparently tallied only warheads on ICBMs and SLBMs. They did not count bombs or air-launched cruise missiles at air bases for their bombers; those weapons were not on the aircraft and thus not “deployed.”

On March 6, 2003, 48 Republican senators voted to consent to ratify SORT, which won approval by a tally of 95-0.

Given how SORT sailed through the Senate, the Obama administration in 2010 expected the New START Treaty to receive easy approval as well. After all, the treaties imposed similar limits on deployed strategic warheads. New START specified a limit of 1,550, but it treated each bomber as only one deployed warhead (bombers can carry more). The United States and Russia each likely have 200-300 additional weapons to put on their bombers, so New START’s 1,550 limit amounts to about 1,800 or so total weapons, equivalent to SORT’s 1,700-2,200. In contrast to SORT, the sides use agreed counting rules under New START, so they count the same things. Moreover, New START has substantial monitoring provisions and is verifiable.

What happened to New START in the Senate? It faced a tortuous ratification debate: myriad claims of alleged flaws and weaknesses, 1,000 questions for the record, and several efforts to delay a vote. On December 22, 2010, the Senate finally approved New START by a count of 71-26. Seventy-one votes meant four more than needed, but it was a far cry from the 95 votes that approved SORT.

The 26 senators who voted against New START in 2010 were all Republicans. Sixteen of them held seats in the Senate in 2003; 15 voted to approve SORT while one abstained. Moreover, three other Republican senators who voted to approve SORT chose to abstain on New START.

So 18 Republican senators who voted “yea” on SORT in 2003 just seven years later found New START—a verifiable treaty with agreed counting rules and a warhead limit comparable to SORT—an unacceptable risk to U.S. national security. One can be forgiven for thinking that factors other than New START’s merits and the national interest figured in their votes. Indeed, one senator attributed his “nay” vote against New START to unhappiness with the Obama administration’s decision to do away with the military’s “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy.

It thus should come as little surprise that the Obama administration thinks about arrangements other than a treaty. And the administration need only look back to its predecessor for a ready model: the Bush administration’s original proposal in 2001 that Mr. Bush and Mr. Putin simply make parallel statements of the number of strategic warheads that each country would deploy.

Say that Mr. Obama and Mr. Putin now agree that they could reduce the number of each country’s deployed strategic warheads from New START’s limit of 1,550 to 1,000 (still well more than enough to devastate the other). The two presidents could announce, perhaps in a joint statement, that each had decided as a matter of national policy to limit his country’s strategic forces to no more than 1,000 deployed strategic warheads.

The 1,000 limit would be politically binding, while the 1,550 limit would remain a legally binding constraint. U.S. and Russian officials could use the detailed monitoring provisions of New START to verify compliance with both limits.

This would be a relatively fast and simple way to achieve further nuclear reductions—not requiring a new treaty, not requiring a treaty amendment, and not requiring a vote in the Senate.

To be clear, the preferable way for such an arms control agreement would be a legally binding treaty, ideally one that limited all U.S. and Russia nuclear weapons, not just deployed strategic warheads. But a treaty is not the only option the Obama administration has. Nor, given attitudes of some in the Republican Senate ranks, is it the only option the administration should consider.

Authors

Steven Pifer

Still Peddling Iraq War Myths, Ten Years Later

Paul R. Pillar — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0400

Editor's note: This article was originally published by The National Interest.

Documentaries, commentaries and forums marking the ten-year anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War have been so numerous that they already have become tiresome, even though the actual anniversary of the invasion is not until next Tuesday. The repetition would nonetheless be worthwhile if it helped to inculcate and to reinforce lessons that might reduce the chance that a debacle comparable to the Iraq War will itself be repeated. Maybe some such positive reinforcement will occur, but a problem is that the anniversary retrospectives also give renewed exposure to those who promoted the war and have a large stake in still promoting the idea that they were not responsible for foisting on the nation an expedition that was so hugely damaging to American interests.

I participated in one anniversary event earlier this week: a loosely structured on-the-record discussion, organized by the Rand Corporation and the publishers of Foreign Policy, involving about twenty people who had something to do with the Iraq War, whether it was starting it, fighting it, or writing about it. The session had the admirable stated purpose of extracting lessons for the future rather than merely repeating old debates from the past. But a clear pattern throughout the event was that ten years have not diluted the house line of those most directly involved in promoting the war, including among others then-deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley and Douglas Feith, who as an undersecretary of defense was one of the most rabid of the war promoters. Not only did they give no hint of acknowledgment that this war of choice (and Hadley refused to accept even that characterization) was one of the worst and most inexcusable blunders in the history of U.S. foreign policy. They also stuck to the line that if there was any mistake in the origin of the war it was solely a matter of “bad intelligence” and that the only “lessons” to be learned were to distrust intelligence more or ask tougher questions about it.

Intelligence did not drive or guide the decision to invade Iraq—not by a long shot, despite the aggressive use by the Bush administration of cherry-picked fragments of intelligence reporting in its public sales campaign for the war. Multiple realities confirm this observation. I have addressed them in detail elsewhere, but it would be useful to mention briefly the main ones.

The neoconservative champions of the war were publicly pushing for the use of military force to overthrow Saddam Hussein even in the 1990s, when they were out of power. One they were in power in the Bush administration, the intelligence community was not saying to them anything about Iraqi weapons programs that was remotely close to an expression of alarm about such programs, much less a reason to go to war. In its public assessments and (as investigative journalists such as Bob Woodward have reported) in closed ones as well, George Tenet and the community barely even mentioned the subject as being worthy of the policy-makers' attention. Consistent with such assessments, Secretary of State Colin Powell was saying publicly in the first year of the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein was well contained and that whatever he might be trying to do with unconventional weapons, he wasn't having much success. It was only after the 9/11 terrorist attack drastically changed the mood of the American public and thereby created for the first time the domestic political base for the neocons to realize their regime-changing dream that the administration turned Iraqi weapons programs into a war-justifying rationale.

In rare unguarded comments, some promoters of the war let slip that this is how they were using the issue. Feith and Paul Wolfowitz each later admitted that the weapons of mass destruction issue was a convenient public selling point, not the reason the war was being launched in the first place.

Policy-makers in the administration showed no interest at all in the intelligence community's judgments about Iraq, regarding weapons programs or anything else, despite the assiduousness with which they exploited the fragments of reporting that could be woven into their public sales campaign. The administration did not ask for the infamously flawed intelligence estimate about Iraqi unconventional weapons programs—Democrats in Congress did.

Even that estimate did not support the war-making case. Among other things it contained the judgment that if Saddam did have any of those feared weapons of mass destruction he was unlikely to use them against U.S. interests or to give them to terrorists—except in the extreme case in which his country was invaded and his regime about to be overthrown. If this judgment had a policy implication it was not to launch the war. The judgment directly contradicted—but did nothing to slow down—the administration's steady stream of scary rhetoric about how in the absence of a war Saddam could give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups.

Even if everything in the intelligence assessments about Iraqi weapons were true, this would not have constituted a case for launching an offensive war any more than it would have with China, North Korea, Pakistan, the Soviet Union or any other country which has developed nuclear weapons. This is indicated by the fact that even many people, both in the United States and abroad, who accepted the belief about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction nonetheless opposed the war.

Intelligence assessments on other aspects of Iraq constituted even less of a case for the war. In fact, some of the most important intelligence judgments were so contrary to the administration's pro-war case that the war promoters, far from being guided by those judgments, put considerable effort into trying to discredit them. (That's what the effort in the vice president's office that led to the criminal case against Lewis Libby was all about.) This was especially true of the intelligence community's judgments about terrorist connections, which contradicted the administration's phantasmagorical assertions about an “alliance” between Saddam's regime and al-Qaeda. It was also true of the community's judgments—which turned out to be much more relevant to the painful experience that the Iraq War became than were any judgments about weapons of mass destruction—about the political, security and economic mess in Iraq that was likely to follow overthrow of the regime.

The story of the United States getting into the Iraq War was, of course, not just one of what led the war's promoters to seek a war but also of how they were able to get enough other Americans to go along for the ride. But despite how much many of those other Americans, including ones in Congress who voted in favor of the war, said they hinged their position on judgments about Iraqi weapons, intelligence did not drive or guide that part of the process either. Only a very few members of Congress bothered even to look at the infamous intelligence estimate on the subject. One of the few who did—Bob Graham, then chairman of the Senate intelligence committee—later said his reading showed to him that the intelligence judgments were not at all the same as what the administration was saying in its sales campaign. That inconsistency was one of the reasons he voted against the war resolution.

One can also do a thought experiment by imagining how events might or might not have been different if the intelligence work on this subject had been absolutely perfect. (That is well beyond the reach of even the most magnificent intelligence service, but it can serve as an imaginary reference point.) “Perfect” in this case could be equated with what was in the exhaustive post-invasion report later compiled based on exploiting all the on-the-ground evidence that had been unavailable to analysts before the war. That product, known as the Duelfer report after the officer who was in charge of most of its preparation, concluded that Saddam intended to reactivate his nuclear and other unconventional weapons programs once he got out from under the already-weakening international sanctions. If prewar intelligence assessments had said the same things as the Duelfer report, the administration would have had to change a few lines in its rhetoric and maybe would have lost a few member's votes in Congress, but otherwise the sales campaign—which was much more about Saddam's intentions and what he “could” do than about extant weapons systems—would have been unchanged. The administration still would have gotten its war. Even Dick Cheney later cited the actual Duelfer report as support for the administration's pro-war case.

And yet, despite the voluminous record that bad intelligence was not why the United States went to war in Iraq, the myth that it was persists partly because the war promoters also keep promoting the myth. The event in which I participated this week demonstrates this hazard of the ten-year anniversary happenings. An early write-up of the event correctly notes that there were “sharp exchanges” on this and other questions, but on this question only quotes the side of the exchange that came from Hadley and Feith.

If one wants to learn valid lessons from what happened ten years ago, the process back then was so pathological that many specific lessons about what to avoid in the future could be extracted. Many of those lessons could be subsumed into one observation: extraordinary as it may seem, there was no policy process at all—no options paper, no meeting in the White House situation room or anything else—that addressed whether going to war against Iraq was a good idea. So it was not only the intelligence community but also other sources of information and insight, inside and outside government, that were shut out from having any impact on the decision to launch the war.

Hadley denied this observation, too, muttering something about needing to keep things close-hold so as not to jeopardize the “diplomatic process.” That just raises another myth—that the administration was trying to solve a problem through diplomacy before resorting to force—that also is belied by a substantial record, leading up to the final days in which the United States kicked international arms inspectors out of Iraq and in effect said “never mind that we didn't get another UN resolution, we're going to war anyway.” What pretended to be interest in diplomacy was a charade intended mainly to placate Powell and the British.

Authors

Paul R. Pillar

Publication: The National Interest

Brookings Launches the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence (21CSI)

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 16:40:00 -0400

Washington, D.C. — The Brookings Institution announced today the establishment of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence (21CSI). The new center will be unique in addressing defense, cybersecurity, arms control and intelligence challenges in a comprehensive manner, seeking not just to explore key emerging security issues, but also how they cross traditional fields and domains.

“With the launch of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence, Brookings will be at the forefront of research and public debate on the critical security issues of our time,” said Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution. "21CSI will bring together the extraordinary array of scholars already working on defense and security issues at Brookings, along with adding new experts in fields that range from cyber to intelligence policy."

The Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence will be housed in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and Peter W. Singer will serve as its founding director. One of the world’s leading experts on modern warfare and author of the New York Times bestseller, Wired for War (Penguin, 2009), Singer has founded and managed two previous projects at Brookings, the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World and the 21st Century Defense Initiative.

The center will encompass four key focal points of policy research on security and defense issues:

A Defense Policy team will be led by Michael O'Hanlon, one of the most influential and widely published defense scholars in the world, who also serves as director of research in the Foreign Policy program. He will be joined by other resident and nonresident scholars including Senior Fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown, a leading expert on counterinsurgency and illicit networks, and Senior Fellow Stephen Cohen, a pre-eminent expert in South Asian security issues. The team will also comprise the Federal Executive Fellows (FEFs), career officers from each military service and the Coast Guard, who spend a year in residence researching and writing on defense topics.
The new Intelligence Project, focusing on the nexus of intelligence and policymaking, will be led by Senior Fellow Bruce Riedel, a 30-year veteran of the intelligence community who also served on the National Security Council staff for three presidents. Riedel will be supported by a team of resident and nonresident scholars, including Paul Pillar and John McLaughlin, as well as career officers seconded from the intelligence community, and an advisory group of distinguished former senior intelligence officials and policymakers. The Intelligence Project is the first of its kind to be established at a major research institution.
The Arms Control Initiative will combine a focus on existing challenges of nuclear and conventional disarmament with new policy research on the Iranian and North Korean challenges to the nuclear nonproliferation regime. It is led by Senior Fellow Steven Pifer, a former special assistant to the president with substantial arms control experience. Robert Einhorn, currently the State Department’s special adviser for Nonproliferation and Arms Control, is expected to join later this spring as a Senior Fellow. The Initiative will also house a new program designed to cultivate and mentor the next generation of arms control and nonproliferation scholars.
The new Cybersecurity project will bring together the work of Visiting Fellow Ian Wallace, a former senior official at the British Ministry of Defence, who helped develop British cyber strategy, as well as its cyber-relationship with the United States, and a team of nonresident fellows, including Noah Shachtman, national security editor at Wired magazine, recently named one of the top 10 cybersecurity writers in the world; Ben Hammersley, a war journalist, noted technology writer, and author of the upcoming book Approaching the Future: 64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then; and Ralph Langner, the cybersecurity expert credited with “decoding” Stuxnet.

21CSI will focus on cutting-edge, in-depth, policy-relevant research and programming, designed to help shape the public policy debate and inform policy-makers. Bringing together a diverse group of experts and scholars, it will seek to promote collaboration across the various policy domains, in order to better understand the rapidly evolving, increasingly complex 21st century battlefield.

“We’ve created 21CSI in response to the enormous changes playing out in the global security environment,” said Martin Indyk, vice president and director of the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. “To address the diverse range of issues in this field, we’ve assembled a world-class team of researchers, who are some of the leading voices on the current challenges driving security policy today, as well as how we should think about tomorrow.”

Ill Will and the Multiplier Effect: Counterterrorism Attacks in Pakistan

Paul R. Pillar — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Editor's note: This article was originally published by The National Interest.

A story from northwest Pakistan involves a discrepancy between reality and perception with regard to U.S. drone strikes. Last month two attacks in the tribal belt generated the kind of spreading news that has come to be routinely associated with the drones. A couple of al-Qaeda types are killed, but so are several villagers. The Pakistani foreign ministry lodges a protest with the U.S. embassy. According to American officials, however, the United States and U.S. drones were not involved at all in the attacks. “They were not ours,” said one official.

American speculation is that the Pakistani military conducted the attacks and attributed them to the United States to escape blame for the collateral damage. If so, this represents a reversal of a previous Pakistani practice of claiming responsibility for what really were U.S. drone strikes, to escape the embarrassment of allowing the Americans to conduct, or not preventing them from conducting, attacks on Pakistani territory. So a variable in this case is whatever public relations problem the Pakistani military and government most want to avoid in any given week.

There is a larger phenomenon at work, however, which helps to account for the believability of the Pakistani cover story. Once the United States gains a reputation for something, for good or for ill, the reputation not only becomes hard to shake but also gets applied by foreign populations in an exaggerated or overly expansive way. People are reacting to the reputation more than to individual events, because their perception of an event is heavily colored by the reputation.

This phenomenon can sometimes work to the advantage of the United States. It is involved in deterrence; a reputation for striking back can dissuade others from some transgression without actually having to strike them. But more often lately it has been a disadvantage. This applies particularly to the reputation the United States has acquired for Muslim-bashing. Americans tend not to understand the phenomenon fully because they see this reputation as a bum rap and know their intentions are better than that. They not only do not realize what is coloring other Muslims' interpretation of American actions in their part of the world; they also miss how some of their actions are adding to the reputation and thereby coloring the interpretation of future events.

The policy lesson in this is to take full account of the reputation-based multiplier effect in weighing the costs and benefits of actions ranging from drone strikes to military deployments and much else. The policy-maker needs to realize how existing reputations will color how foreign publics and governments interpret whatever action is being contemplated. He also needs to realize how the action may in turn affect the reputation of the United States and thus affect how the United States will be either thanked or hated for future actions—maybe even actions the United States itself does not commit.

Authors

Paul R. Pillar

Publication: The National Interest

Weighing U.S. Intervention: Syria v. Congo

Michael E. O'Hanlon — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 17:29:00 -0500

President Barack Obama, in a January New Republic interview, was asked bluntly if the United States should actively intervene in Syria’s civil war. He thoughtfully explained his reservations. Several concerned Syria, but the last one pointed to larger ethical issues. “And how do I weigh,” Obama asked, “tens of thousands who’ve been killed in Syria versus the tens of thousands who are currently being killed in the Congo?”

With this comment, Obama cut to the heart of an age-old dilemma about humanitarian military intervention — whether it is worth addressing some conflicts when you know that others continue to simmer, or boil over, at the same time?

This was the case in the 1970s when wars in the Horn of Africa, Uganda, Cambodia and elsewhere killed many hundreds of thousands. It was true in the 1980s when conflict intensified in places like Afghanistan, Angola and Central America. And in the 1990s when the Balkans and Rwanda and parts of West Africa blew up, while Sudan, Somalia and other wars continued.

But for all the terrible headlines today, Obama enjoys advantages that leaders in previous eras did not have. There are fewer wars in the world; more international consensus on what to do about them, and more capable U.S. forces that can help in the task even as other nations generally provide many of the peacekeeping troops. These conditions free Obama to make decisions about the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as Syria, on their respective merits — rather than remain paralyzed by broader philosophical conundrums.

While neither decision should be made lightly, there is a case for more assertive U.S. action in both Congo and Syria. These are now probably the world’s two worst wars that Washington is doing little to address.

Take Congo. First, it is not the case that the nation’s leaders or its insurgents are ordering tens of thousands directly killed on the same time scale as in Syria. What has been happening in eastern Congo for two decades is a breakdown of the state, caused by sporadic fighting among various domestic and foreign militias.

The killing has indeed been horrible — including some of the worst sexual violence in the world, with rape used as a tactical weapon. But most of the deaths have been caused by malnutrition and poor healthcare, resulting from the lack of any real state. The war is killing huge numbers of people, to be sure, but largely indirectly — by preventing government from properly caring for its citizens — something Congo can barely do in peaceful regions.

There is now a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, roughly 20,000 troops. This is a small force for a country the size of the United States east of the Mississippi, even if the force is concentrated in the rugged east.

Second, that force is underequipped and largely made up of African and South Asian peacekeepers. It does not have nearly the number of helicopters or other capabilities to ensure mobility that could compensate for its small size. Even modest additions to this force could help a great deal, with little risk of escalation.

The United States has spent a decade handling far more violent insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. For this, Washington created formations such as “advise and assist brigades,” each roughly 1,500 to 2,500 troops. By the end of 2013, most of these and other units are due to be back in the United States. We have already cut our overseas troop strength in the two wars by almost two-thirds, from its peak five years ago (the peak was some 200,000 troops including 22 combat brigade teams). We could consider deploying one or two of these advise and assist brigades into eastern Congo, as part of the U.N. mission. This could make a big difference to the capacity of the foreign force and in the development of the Congolese army.

Meanwhile, in Syria, while Obama is right to fear a slippery slope to more demanding operations, the most likely scenario for U.S. troops resembles what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization did in Bosnia in the 1990s. First, we arm the weaker side. Then we support it with air strikes. Finally, we help negotiate a peace accord allowing some degree of autonomy for the various sectarian groups within a weak federal structure.

This approach might not work. Even if it fails, however, it is unlikely to lead to the kind of large-scale invasion that we carried out in Iraq or Afghanistan.

In Syria, such an operation would only make sense if it were a combined Arab League-NATO mission, in which U.S. forces were just a small fraction. Using the Bosnia precedent, and allowing for a population four times its size, up to 200,000 foreign troops could be needed in a post-war stabilization effort – if only for a time. But if their focus were on policing ceasefire lines, the number might be cut in half, with the U.S. share perhaps 20,000.

Such scenarios may be unappealing to the president (as they are to me) — especially after a decade of war and a half decade of economic crisis. But the alternative of watching the slaughter in both countries go unchecked, while hoping that the insurgency somehow wins without much support in Syria, is fast becoming no alternative at all.

In fact, given the likely requirements of each mission, we can as part of multilateral coalitions that intervene in both Congo and Syria at once. It is probably not Obama’s preference for his second term — nor is it what most Americans would want, to be sure. But we can make a big difference by addressing the world’s two worst humanitarian crises with limited numbers of U.S. forces.

Obama has an opportunity here to revalidate the Nobel Committee’s decision to award him its peace prize four years ago. It’s also an opportunity to show that the 2011 Libya mission, of which the president is justifiably proud, was not a one-off. Now, with his new Cabinet, Obama should seriously explore his options in both these tragic wars.

Authors

Michael E. O'Hanlon

Publication: Reuters

Brookings: Topics - U.S. Military Affairs

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