Nation-Building

There's a new foreign policy group in town called the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy , and they have written a letter to President Obama urging him to "focus US strategy more clearly on Al Qaeda" instead of explicit nation-building. The text of the letter follows: Dear Mr. President: During your campaign for the Presidency, Americans around the country appreciated your skepticism of the rationales for the Iraq war. In 2002, you had warned that such an endeavor would yield "a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, and with unintended consequences." You pointed out the dangers of fighting such a war "without a clear rationale and without strong international support." As scholars of international relations and U.S. foreign policy, many of us issued similar warnings before the war, unfortunately to little avail. Today, we are concerned that the war in Afghanistan is growing increasingly detached from considerations of leng...

Earlier, I posted my thoughts about whether terrorism was still a threat , noting that in one sense the answer was obviously yes, but asking whether 9-11 was the outlier it seemed to be. My post was intended to provoke a discussion, and the best response was by Dave Schuler, reproduced here in full: The question reminds me of the story of the guy who jumped off the Empire State Building. As he passed the 30th floor, someone yelled to him "How are you doing?" to which he responded "So far, so good." Of course 9/11 is an outlier. Unfortunately, from a political standpoint that's irrelevant. Any resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. will necessarily respond to such an event (my view is that President Gore would have done virtually everything that President George W. Bush did , including invading Iraq, but I seem to be an outlier in that belief). Yes, terrorism is a threat. As I pointed out in my memorial post , we haven't really responded prudently to the threat...

The obvious answer to the question is yes - and that goes for before as well as after 9-11. In many ways, 9-11 distorts the picture because it was the single largest casualty count of any terrorist attack in history (unless you start to factor in acts of state-sponsored terrorism during armed conflicts, but let's accept the conventional though arbitrary definition of terrorism as solely due to non-state actors). The count of all major terrorist attacks resulting in 100 or more fatalities is an interesting one. There were 33 such attacks prior to 9-11, and a huge fraction of the post-9-11 attacks are in Iraq. I may be mistaken but the only attacks of any significant scale in the West after 9-11 have been in London and Madrid, though there have been numerous arrests of various Western muslims (mostly British) for various plots (mostly inept, like the ricin plot, the shoe bomber, and the liquid bombs). So, what does that all mean? If we exclude 9-11, then it looks like terrorism is a...

cross-posted from City of Brass One of the major problems with the Bush Administration and its conservative Republican stalwarts regarding the Iraq War was the "stay the course" dogma which seemed immune to any attempt at an honest evaluation of the war's goals or purpose. There were no metrics for success, aside from a nebulous goal of "victory". Proponents of withdrawal were accused of defeatism and virtual treason. The bottom line was that " failure was not an option ", which in the absence of a well-defined success meant perpetual war for its own sake. President Obama promised a different approach, where success would be clearly defined and measured and the policy would be defined by the facts, not the other way around. The war in Afghanistan will put Obama's rhetoric to the test. Will he stay the course no matter the facts? Or will he be willing to adapt? It should be noted that the opportunity for genuine and timely intervention in Afghanista...

Josh Trevino makes an impassioned plea against the inevitable , ie the pending declaration of independence by the province of Kosovo from Serbia. The following nugget of argument is in a sense the real heart of his argument: The old Wilsonian idea that a geographically-bounded majority population deserves its own sovereignty dies hard. In this decade, with American foreign policy predicated more than ever on quasi-Wilsonian principles, it is especially formidable. It is also a recipe for disaster: with the United States engaged in two wars in multiethnic states, to explicitly affirm this precedent in Kosovo invites more serious problems and bloodshed elsewhere. With Kosovo independent, what grounds do we have for dissuading the independence aspirations of the Kurds, the Pashtuns, the Baluchis, the Assyrians, the Arab Shi’a, et al.? Furthermore, what prevents Russia from seizing upon this precedent to cause trouble in the Caucasus and Moldova? (They say they won’t — for now — but why gi...

Blake succinctly summarizes the problem : for all our rhetoric about freedom, in practice our foreign policy has been pro-Western instead: The United States says it supports democracy, but ends up backing pro-Western leaders when push comes to shove. Take the case of Pervez Musharraf, whom U.S. President George W. Bush described Tuesday as "somebody who believes in democracy" despite the fact that the Pakistani leader has suspended the Constitution, thrown many of his opponents in jail, and gone after independent media outlets. Or consider the Palestinian territories, where the White House called for elections and then blanched when the distasteful Hamas won them fair and square. Is it any wonder that U.S. rhetoric on democracy isn't taken seriously? The policy has been consistent across political parties and presidential administrations, though only the Bush Administration has staked so much rhetorical capital on freedom. As The Arabist notes, we are essentially pursuing...

I think it's probably necessary to preface this post with the following disclosures: I was against invading Iraq; I am a pragmatic liberal interventionist as regards to foreign policy; I think that the argument for total and complete withdrawal from Iraq is a. genuinely harmful to America's self-interest (in a global sense) and b. not on the table, regardless of who wins the election in 2008. The very term "withdrawal" is in fact meaningless, but there's some irony in the fact that the rabid Article III/Section 3-quoting right-wingers and the reflexively anti-military ultra-leftists define the term in precisely the same way. Rather analogous to how Islamophobes and Al Qaeda interpret the Qur'an the same way, in fact, but that's truly tangential. Small-w withdrawal can take many forms, and there are costs and benefits accordingly. For the sake of discussion, let's define Withdrawal with a capital W as the total Vietnam-esque withdrawal of every last sol...

Atrios has been on a snark roll recently lampooning what he calls the club of "very serious people" aka the VSP who dominate foreign policy debate. Glenn Greenwald recently alluded to the same, arguing that the sacred cow of American foreign policy is that America has a right to intervene around the world in its own interests . He casts this as a " rigid pro-war ideology " but frankly, this is a perfectly reasonable prime motivator for any nation's self-interest; given that America has the most power of all nations in the world (and more than the rest combined), a truly liberal and moral foreign policy demands not that we have the right to intervene, but rather that we have the obligation to intervene. Pragmatic and liberal intervention , of course - and always firmly within the bounds of international law. (It bears repeating that the Iraq war was perfectly legal and bore UN sanction). I kind of like the acronym, VSP. Might as well adopt it - as Very Seriou...

[Posted at ProgressiveHistorians , Daily Kos , My Left Wing , MyDD , Never In Our Names , European Tribune , Eteraz , and Nation-Building .] New Mexico Governor and Democratic Presidential Candidate Bill Richardson is one of America's leading foreign policy experts.  A former Ambassador to the United Nations, Richardson holds an M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.  Richardson is also perhaps America's leading diplomatic negotiator, having recently brokered successful agreements in both Darfur and North Korea.  Whether or not Richardson is elected President in 2008, he is certain to be one of the most influential foreign policy advisors in any Democratic administration.  Therefore, it is important to ascertain just where Richardson stands on the foreign policy issues most important to progressive activists. After reading my January diary about Bill Richardson and the need for a visionary foreign policy, a Richardson for President ...

At myDD there is considerable consternation about Hillary's statement that there would likely be a significant military presence in Iraq for the indefinite future . Now keep in mind I am no fan of Hillary - for reasons mostly relating to Dubai Ports World. My foreign policy prescription is to embrace Islamic liberals , not indulge in xenophobia . But I must respect the fact that Hillary is saying what all the major candidates are thinking. Now, I am aware that my pragmatic liberal interventionist views on foreign policy are directly opposed to the evolving anti-interventional conventional wisdom here. But I think that no matter your views on the use of military force (as an adjunct to other means!) you must understand the reality. That reality is that of the major viable candidates - Edwards, Hillary, Obama, Richardson - not a single one will ever fully withdraw all troops from Iraq. (whether thats the right or wrong policy is a matter for debate, but that debate isnt the purpos...

[Cross-posted at ProgressiveHistorians .] On September 25, 1919, the day before he suffered the first of a series of strokes that that would leave him incapacitated for the rest of his life, Woodrow Wilson delivered the last and most brilliant speech of his political career.  The location: Pueblo, Colorado.  The subject: the League of Nations. The most dangerous thing for a bad cause is to expose it to the opinion of the world. The most certain way that you can prove that a man is mistaken is by letting all his neighbours know what he thinks, by letting all his neighbours discuss what he thinks, and if he is in the wrong you will notice that he will stay at home, he will not walk on the street. He will be afraid of the eyes of his neighbours. He will be afraid of their judgment of his character. He will know that his cause is lost unless he can sustain it by the arguments of right and of justice. The same law that applies to individuals applies to nations. ... We must se...

Excellent article by Blake at TAP Online. Recently here on TAP Online, Shadi Hamid and Spencer Ackerman debated what should serve as the lodestar of a progressive foreign policy vision. Hamid argued that the United States should make the promotion of democracy the centerpiece of its foreign policy, while Ackerman advocated that human rights take that role. Such questions will very likely become more relevant after Tuesday, if Democrats gain more power in Congress. But neither Hamid nor Ackerman offered the correct answer. As the small example of Vietnam helps to illustrate, the United States ought to be redirecting its energies toward renewing its strength and expanding the postwar liberal world order. Do that, and the rest -- democracy, human rights, liberal reforms -- will eventually follow. I think however that he relies too much on the example of Acheson - as I note in a comment over at AF , there are a lot of other prominent people - including Gore, Fukuyama, Hart, and even Zakar...