Hear that? Its the sound of norm disintegration...

Back in April, I remember hearing rumors around the water cooler that the Israelis were lobbying the Nuclear Suppliers Group for a 'Bush-Singh' type of nuclear trade agreement. At the time, I wasn't able to uncover any news items to confirm such talk, so I dismissed it as Pentagon gossip.

Well, it appears that the rumors were true. According to a piece in today's Post, Israel did lobby the NSG back in March and they are now taking a proposal to Capitol Hill:

The Israeli presentation, made in a "nonpaper" that allows for official deniability, was offered in the context of the NSG's debate over India's bid for an exemption, according to a March 17 letter by the NSG's chairman. Among the nations that have not signed the treaty, only India and Israel would qualify for admission to the NSG under the Israeli proposal.

David Siegel, spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, said it would be "grossly inaccurate" to suggest that Israel is demanding an exemption or linking its efforts to any other issue, such as the India debate.

"Israel has never asked the NSG for any exemption to its nuclear supply guidelines, nor has Israel made any Israeli-specific request of the NSG," Siegel said. "Israel, recognized to be a full-fledged adherent to the NSG guidelines, has urged the NSG to consider adopting a generic, multi-tiered, criteria-based approach towards nuclear technology transfers." He noted that some NSG countries previously have suggested such an approach.

"Modification of the NSG guidelines, were it to take place along the lines proposed by Israel, would considerably enhance the nuclear nonproliferation regime," Siegel said.

The Israeli plan offers 12 criteria for allowing nuclear trade with non-treaty states, including one that hints at Israel's status as an undeclared nuclear weapons state: A state should be allowed to engage in nuclear trade if it applies "stringent physical protection, control and accountancy measures to all nuclear weapons, nuclear facilities, source material and special nuclear material in its territory."

If you look at the tenor of Bush administration nonproliferation policy, they should be inclined to agree with such a proposal. Prior to 2000, nonproliferation was about keeping the declared and undeclared portions of the nuclear weapons club as small as possible. Now, nonproliferation is about keeping nuclear weapons out of the hands of 'tyrants' and 'terrorists.'

While I would be the last one to advocate for giving a 'tyrant' or a 'terrorist' a nuclear weapon, I would like to point out two flaws in the White House's logic: (1) What exactly are the criteria for applying either label to a nation or group? (2) How do plan on convincing all states with relatively mature nuclear industries to sign up to those definitions?

Right now, the answer to the first question looks a lot like 'those nations or groups who oppose U.S. foreign policy.' If the administration has an answer for the second question, I sincerely hope it does not have the word 'followership' in it. It wouldn't surprise me if it had the word 'U.S. sanctions' in it though.

Fortunately, I think the Bush administration will keep its distance from the Israeli proposal for fear of doing harm to their India deal. This is probably also why we are hearing about Israeli activity on Capitol Hill. If the White House was really receptive to the proposal, the first time we would have heard about it is when a final agreement was ready for signature.

The problem with the phrase 'evil-doer'

I had conversation with a friend over lunch last week that got me thinking about how the word 'evil-doer,' specifically how use of the word has become more common in foreign policy discussions. This friend has been working for Program Executive Officer Soldier since he finished undergrad in 2005. He had limited exposure to politics or history as an accounting major, so he was picking my brain about the 'surge' and the War on Terror more broadly.

It is difficult to discuss U.S. foreign policy towards the Near East in the abstract, so before delving into my views, I asked him about how much he knew about the region. Not surprisingly, his response was 'very little,' so I refined my question to 'Do you know why a guy like OBL is a terrorist'? The response to that was 'He hates America and wants to take over the Near East. I don't know why he uses terrorism though. Evil is kind of hard to understand.'

At this point, I gave him a 20 minute primer on the origins of linkage between Islamic fundamentalism and grand terrorism -- starting from Sayyid Qutb's Milestones to today. He was particularly surprised to hear that even though Osama bin Laden and Saddam are not explicitly linked, al Qaeda's existence and mission are deeply intertwined with the 1991 Persian Gulf War and its aftermath.

[Explainer: Part of bin Laden's hatred towards the Saudi royal family comes from the fact that they chose American support over his offer to wage an Afghan-style guerrilla war in defense of Kuwait. Bin Laden's 1996 fatwah states that the presence of U.S. troops on Saudi soil as an affront to Islam. It also claims that the U.S. is culpable for the deaths of the millions of Iraqi children due to sanctions.]

We need to move away from terms like 'evil-doer' because they allow people to paper over the murky elements of politics and war. We're not facing-off against an opaque, cartoonish foe, such as Cobra Commander or Skeletor. Bin Laden and his ilk more like Tony Soprano or even Tony Montana. They ruthlessly pursue a set of fairly clear objectives in a manner that is bounded by their own twisted sense of right and wrong.

After mentioning this conversation to another friend, she suggested that I photoshop Cobra Commander into the photo of Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein shaking hands in the 1980s.

Update: SG has just been brimming with great ideas. Here is a rough breakdown of what goes into G.I. Joe's definition of the "The Battle":

So what's up with these Near East arms deals?

One news item from recent headlines is Bush administration's plans to build up a tighter anti-Iran block in the Near East through arms deals. Specifically, they plan to sell at least $20 billion worth of arms to the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates), as well as increase the amount of military aid given to Israel and Egypt.

Before I critique the Bush administration's approach, I would like to correct a common misunderstanding about U.S. arms sales to the Near East. First of all, the U.S. sells hundreds of millions of dollars worth of arms to GCC states on an annual basis. Between 2000 and 2006 alone, Saudi Arabia purchased $5.8 billion worth of defense articles and services through the Foreign Military Sales system. We also signed off on direct commercial sales of $1.8 billion worth of U.S. defense articles and services to the Saudis as well. (Both FMS and DCS numbers compiled from annual reports, send me an e-mail if you want them in a spreadsheet.)

The Bush administration is proposing that we relax some of the limitations we have placed on the types of weapons the U.S. can sell to Saudi Arabia. To be fair, some of these restrictions were based on tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors, so relaxing them now makes sense in the face of recent Arab-Israeli detente. If we're going to sell arms to the GCC states anyways, we might as well sell them as much as we can for practical economic reasons, if not strategic ones. As one Navy-focused blogger points out, if the Saudis can't buy more advanced weaponry from the United States, there are plenty of other relatively advanced arms exporting states willing to fill the gap.

The real flaw of this decision is that it will probably do nothing to achieve its intended goal of adjusting the military balance between the GCC states and Iran. As Bill Arkin aptly points out, the Saudis and their GCC neighbors aren't planning on buying the advanced weapons we are offering in large enough quantities to be useful. His point about the drivers and limitations behind Saudi procurement planning is particularly important. The Saudis will only buy enough JDAMs, F-16s and M1A2s to keep their prince-generals happy. They cannot buy enough to become a force of reckoning the Near East because they afraid of making their military too powerful.

If you take a look at the publicly available Function 150 sales toplines published by the State Department, there appears to be some evidence of this. The Saudis averaged about $700-800 million in arms purchases between 2000 and 2006. If you look at the 655 Reports that the Federation of American Scientists obtained for these years, the largest portion of annual Saudi purchases are for defense services (i.e. maintenance, logistics, administration, training, etc.).

Even though this $20 billion deal will effectively double Saudi spending on arms imports, I am sceptical about how much of this spending will actually go to platforms. History doesn't paint an optimistic picture. If the arms sales only serve as a window dressing on the U.S. side (subject to interpretation) of the military balance across the Persian Gulf and if al Qaeda uses U.S. arms sales to House of Saud as a justification for its mission, then why sell them arms to begin with? The only reason I can think of is that we really have viable alternative.

Our hands are tied by decades of 'lowest common denominator' policy-making capped off by the invasion of Iraq and the complete collapse of the Bush administration's freedom agenda.

Oh well, just add the Near East to the list of Baby-Boomer legacies that my generation will spend their entire careers trying to fix.

Bottom falling out of the freedom agenda?

First off, I apologize for the lack of a substantive post in about a week. The Army saw fit to leave me in charge of a skeleton crew at the Pentagon while everyone and their mom from the Army security cooperation program went to the Paris Air Show. I know, you're probably asking yourself "What are a bunch of groundpounders doing at some flyboy convention?" Well the Army does have its fleet of combat helicopters and cargo planes to think about.

Anyways, I examine how recent events in the Palestinian territories and the United States' policy responses have hammered the final nails in the coffin for the Bush administration's "freedom agenda":

It has been almost two weeks since Fatah's security forces lost Gaza to Hamas gunmen. Not long after the Presidential compound was seized by Hamas, President Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert moved firmly behind Palestinian Authority (PA) President and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas. They also agreed, along with the EU and UN, to release millions in Palestinian tax revenue and international aid that had been embargoed since Hamas joined the PA government after winning a majority on the Palestinian Legislative Council back in January 2006.

The Arab states neighboring also met with Abbas and Olmert for about 45 minutes today in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh to throw their weight behind the Fatah government in the West Bank. All of these theatrics have apparently encouraged Hamas to return to dialogue with Fatah, but it is way to early in the game to know whether this opening will be big enough to drive the 18-wheel power-sharing agreement needed to stem future violence through it.

The problem is that, as Robert Malley and Aaron D. Miller so aptly point out, Hamas's electoral victory can't be undone through the intervention of foreign powers into Palestinian politics. The Quartet has a legitimate reason for denying foreign aid and maybe even Palestinian tax revenue to a government led by an unrepentant Hamas. Palestinian finances and bureaucracy are often so opaque it would be very difficult to guarantee the cash wouldn't be used to fund suicide bombings or Qassam rocket attacks.

Trying to use such funding to create a reinvigorated Fatah party to muscle Hamas out of the political scene, on the other hand, is an incredibly short-sighted policy. It says to the average Palestinian that the U.S. is only interested in electoral democracy, as long as it produces governments with policies that are compatible to U.S. interests. As the disintegration of Fatah-Hamas relations in Gaza demonstrated, attempting to create a winner in Palestine will only serve to undermine what is left of the U.S.'s image as a well-intentioned mediator. It will also push the Palestinian people straight into the open arms of the extremists that we are seeking to undermine, while at the same time, allowing Fatah to become more corrupt and factionalized.

Think I'm crazy? Just look at how unflinching U.S. support for Jiang Jieshi's leadership of the Kuomintang turned out for Chinese democrats. If the Bush administration honestly thinks it can turn Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah into a winner in the West Bank, they need to think again. It is time to get Fatah and Hamas at the table and bang some heads together.

Soft pol-mil breakdowns and the Winograd Commission

Center for Defense Information's Haninah Levine did a great translation and summary of the Winograd Commission's interim report. Among the report's findings, Haninah picks out three main themes that aren't strangers to this blog:

1. Western militaries are in active denial concerning the limitations of precision weapons.

2. There are real consequences to overstretching a military

3. Rhetorical praise for the troops must not interfere with honest assessment of their abilities

To be honest, I think Haninah's the second point is a little tautological. The term overstretched implies negative consequences that stem from having more responsibilities than one can handle.

It is still a wonderful analysis, but I propose rearranging the logical so that it flows more naturally. Specifically, the military's denial of the limitations of guided weapons warfare and a popular aversion to criticizing the military can lead to an 'overstretching' of military capabilities.

This conundrum is what could be called a "soft" breakdown of the classical Huntingtonian political-military relationship. In the Huntington formulation, civilians exert total control over military strategy, while military leaders are given control over tactics and operations. Problems arise when the line between strategy and operations/tactics is not clear and leaders on both sides are faced with the prospect of overstepping their authority. A "soft" breakdown occurs when civilian and military leaders avoid a conflict in this grey area by simply ignoring one another.

Last summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah is a perfect example. The IDF did not warn the civilian leadership that it was given an set of strategic priorities that were greater than its capabilities. At the same time, the Olmert government failed to probe these capability gaps when they became apparent on the battlefield. This mutual distaste for broaching uncomfortable topics allowed the IDF's ineffective bombing strategy to drag on for days before new tactics were adopted.

The same could be said about the first 2-3 years about the U.S. experience in Iraq, but I will save that for another time.

The primary export of Avigdor Lieberman is crazy

I recently subscribed to the Atlantic Monthly on the recommendation of a few friends. I'm not a huge fan of the overly credulous reporting of Seymour Hersh, but [ed. I don't know why I mentioned this in the first place. Hersh writes for the New Yorker, not the Atlantic. Thanks Arnold] I am very attracted to the Atlantic's lingering literary magazine feel. This month's issue featured an article available only to subscribers that I wanted to highlight. The first piece is a profile on Israeli's recently appointed Minister of Strategic Affairs, Avigdor Lieberman. Instead of attempting to characterize why Lieberman is such a controversial figure, I will let these excepts stand for themselves:

Yet the fears on which Lieberman focuses are domestic. Israel’s parliamentary system has created instability, he says, tapping a common anxiety after five governments in fewer than 11 years. His answer: revamping the system to give the prime minister nearly unchecked power. The country’s Arab minority is a fifth column, he argues. His answer: removing the minority from the state or from the voting rolls—to transform Israel from a Jewish state to a Jews-only state.

Lieberman’s ascent, say supporters (and some rivals), shows he has moved toward the center. It could just as easily be read as evidence that the center of Israeli politics has collapsed. Olmert and the centrist Kadima movement were casualties of the war in Lebanon last summer. To bolster support in parliament, the prime minister had to offer Lieberman influence over decisions that could shape, and shake, the Middle East. Simply by granting him a ministerial position, Olmert gave legitimacy to hard-line views on internal issues. In December, addressing a convention of his Yisrael Beitenu, Lieberman declared that his goal was “to be the ruling party” within two elections. When aristocracies fade, a pariah may reign.

Soon after Lieberman’s appointment to the cabinet, I met him in Jerusalem, in his cramped office in Israel’s parliament building. Lieberman dismisses the Israeli media as “superficial and cynical” for looking for electoral calculations in his decision to join the government. His only goal, he insists, is to protect the country from growing dangers, such as the risk of a new Holocaust at Iran’s hands. “Anyone who draws the lessons from Hitler’s rise [knows Hitler] was telling the truth, and Ahmadinejad is telling the truth,” he says, referring to the Iranian president’s threats against Israel. “All attempts to pacify Hitler ended in World War II, and all attempts to appease Ahmadinejad are doomed to failure.”

The same dark certainty underlies Lieberman’s view of Jews and Palestinians. “Every place in the world where there are two peoples—two religions, two languages—there is friction and conflict,” he asserts. That iron law, he says, pounding his desk, applies to Northern Ireland, Canada, and the Caucasus. The solution is total political division—and so, just as Palestinians seek a state that is “Judenrein,” Israel must be free of a disloyal Arab minority. Otherwise, he says, “linkage … will clearly exist between Israeli Arabs and the future Palestinian state,” and “the pressure from within and without will blow us apart.”

Instead of wading into the moral and political issues associated with the Israel/Palestine issue, I will just focus on the most controversial part of his views: The disenfranchisement of Arab Israeli citizens. I'm simply dumbstruck by Lieberman's position considering his background as an immigrant from the then Soviet Union. Does he not realize that he is essentially making the same arguments that led to his father's 10-year exile in Siberia and his family's poor treatment in Moldova? "Judaism/Islam is incompatible with our state, so we must treat them a second class citizens." Thankfully, the following exchange shows that Isreali politicians take his preposterous statements with a huge grain of salt:

Lieberman, though, had his own twist: He proposed that Israel keep its largest West Bank settlements—and cede some of its own territory near the West Bank boundary, areas populated by Arabs who are Israeli citizens and voters. Initially, he spoke of “transferring” Arab citizens from elsewhere in Israel to the new Palestinian state.

“I am definitely speaking of exchanging populations and territory simultaneously, because there is no other solution,” Lieberman said from the Knesset podium in June 2004. From the left-wing benches came constant, angry catcalls.

“You’re like Stalin, and your transfer is like Stalin’s!” shouted the Laborite Yuli Tamir.

Lieberman struggled to return to his prepared text, citing the division of Cyprus into Greek and Turkish sectors as a model. “In the last two decades,” he said, “populations have been transferred in Central Europe … for instance in the Balkans.”

The heckling grew.

“I suggest to the left that it go to a democratic country like Syria,” Lieberman said.

“You go! What chutzpah! Who are you at all?” answered another heckler, Avshalom Vilan. As a kibbutz member, Vilan is part of an Israeli gentry whose fortunes have faded like those of the antebellum plantation owners in Faulkner’s novels. His gibe suggested that Lieberman was beyond the pale socially as well as politically. On other occasions, facing Arab hecklers in the Knesset, Lieberman has caught fire as an orator, shouting and slamming the podium. This time he looked rattled.

Lieberman, though, has stopped speaking of “transfer.” Instead, his platform in last year’s election called for conditioning citizenship on a loyalty oath to the state, the flag, and the national anthem. The requirement would apply to “every person reaching adulthood,” Yisrael Beitenu’s director-general, Faina Kirshenbaum, stressed when I spoke with her. Israel’s flag, with its Jewish star, and its anthem describing the “Jewish soul stirring,” have long spurred opposition from Israeli Arabs. Under Lieberman’s plan, anyone declining the oath would remain a resident but could not vote. Just as his partition plan would draw a sharp geographic border between Jews and Arabs, his citizenship bill would draw a thick black border in Israeli society between those who belong to the polity and those who do not. The Arabs would be outside; the immigrants would be inside. “Such a law is customary in advanced Western countries, chief among them the United States of America,” the party platform claims. “I’d say we’re more a party of the center” than of the right, Kirshenbaum told me. “We’re pragmatic.”

Surprisingly, that view is accepted by Roman Bronfman, who for a decade was the most prominent politician on the dovish side of the Russian-speaking community. Originally from Ukraine, Bronfman came to Israel in 1980 and earned his doctorate in Russian history. After leaving the Knesset last year, he opened an investment firm. His office is on the 25th floor of a Tel Aviv high-rise and looks out over the country’s most Westernized city toward the Mediterranean. The magazines in the waiting room are all in Hebrew, not Russian; the coffee offered by the receptionist is espresso, the beverage of communion for the Israeli business class. The office proclaims that Bronfman belongs. Lieberman, says Bronfman, “understood that his right-wing stance made him—in Russian the word is izgoi—an outcast,” and has been trying to fit into the new political consensus that wants territorial division and peace. But “he’s a racist,” Bronfman adds. “He has accepted ending the conflict with Palestinians but has opened a front against the Israeli Arabs.”

Sure, the United States has a permanent residence system, but we don't block permanent residents from naturalizing based on their religion. In the ultimate demonstration of "where there is smoke, there is fire"-style irony, Lieberman has also advocated for a few measures that would give the Israeli prime minister emergency powers and diminish the Knesset's role in government:

The citizenship bill is just one piece of Lieberman’s plan for remaking Israel. Last year, his party submitted a bill it said would provide a more stable government. Under the proposed law, the prime minister could appoint ministers without parliamentary approval. If the Knesset approved a state of emergency, the cabinet could enact emergency regulations temporarily superseding laws—and if “the prime minister sees that the cabinet cannot be convened, and there is a pressing and vital need for emergency regulations, he may enact them.” That system, surely, could eliminate much parliamentary dithering.

I guess the notion of a Jewish state is more important to Liberman than the idea of Jewish democracy...