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Archive for the ‘foreign policy’ Category

Sidestepping the pitfalls of global policy

Posted in foreign policy on November 9, 2008|

[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]

For Americans who closely follow U.S. foreign policy, the end of the Bush era cannot come quickly enough. The precipitous change in the world’s view of American policy between 2001 and 2008 has been absolutely terrifying for those of us who truly believe that given world realities America cannot now and never could “go it alone” in the post-Cold War world.

The future of this country and the world, for that matter, lies not in Bush’s pre-emptive unilateralism, which was so fiercely championed by the neocons, practiced in Iraq and yearned for in Iran, but in establishing and maintaining alliances with other countries for the purpose of dealing with common problems and threats. Issues like terrorism, Korean nukes and Iranian nuclear development do not lend themselves to unilateral solutions.

We now have the potential to put that all behind us. A quick look at the resounding and virtually unanimous approval of the rest of the world of Barack Obama’s election as president, shows clearly not only what the world thinks of Bush’s policy of pre-emptive unilateralism and its total disregard for and rejection of the ideas of other nations, but the yearning for a more cooperative planet.

None of this is to suggest that the United States should simply disregard its legitimate national interests. Quite the contrary, it is to say clearly that our national interests lie not only in the goals we pursue, but in the means we use to pursue those goals. Even though it may be in our interest to seek a nuclear-free Iran, it is not in our interest to accomplish that through unilateral military action. In today’s world, because of our own policies and activities, our importance and influence are daily becoming more marginal. The ramifications of such policies, as embodied in Iraq today and soon in Afghanistan, will continue to be so threatening to our national interests that undertaking them will weaken America, rather than strengthen it. Our Iraq adventure has diminished our influence in the world in general and the Middle East in particular, decreased our ability to maintain friends and allies and limited our effectiveness in combating terrorism.

In the foreign policy context, President-elect Obama has developed policies that are clearly designed to pursue our national interests – with a major exception: Afghanistan and Pakistan, two nations that are joined at the hip. That problem will ultimately prove to be more complicated and intractable than Iraq and has no military solution. There is real peril there for the new president.

The Obama administration will carefully wind down U.S. commitment in Iraq where, successful surge or not, the ethnically and religiously divided Iraqis are historically disinclined to live peacefully together. There is, in fact, no history of such reconciliation in the absence of a repressive hand to enforce it. The purpose of the surge was to create an environment in which reconciliation would be possible, yet there is little evidence today that the Iraqis wish to make that happen.

Without taking the military option off the table, Obama will search for a negotiated settlement on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. This will be in direct contrast to the neocon mantra that military action is the first and only useful tool in the conduct of foreign affairs. Such negotiations have the potential to re-establish a group of nations in support of a new policy in contrast to the opposition we face in proposing any military solution.

Palestine is the central issue in the Muslim world that makes problems for the United States. That is because U.S. policy is viewed by Muslims as one-sided. The issues are clear. There are United Nations resolutions on the table. The Obama administration will need to carefully examine past U.S. policies, not to punish either side, but to mitigate a 60-year-old irritant to regional harmony.

In return for real peace, Israel will have to seriously consider a border approximating that which existed before 1967 and the West Bank settlements will have to go. Further, the Obama administration will need to get American troops off Arab soil and reconsider its political and military support of the region’s undemocratic regimes. That may mean that something other than democracy will come to the Middle East, but absent that, turmoil will reign in the region.

Most important, if the Obama administration really wants to have an impact in the region; it will need to stop exporting democracy through force of arms. That simply will not work. Better we get our own house in order, something clearly high on the Obama agenda, to re-create that “shining city on the hill” that has made America so attractive over the decades to the rest of the world. Let the world import our strengths, but only if they choose to.

There are pitfalls and opportunities out there for the Obama administration. Fortunately, many of the pitfalls are amply illuminated by the blunders of the Bush administration and therefore easily avoided. The opportunities are equally identifiable by observing what the Bush administration did not do.

Somewhere in that mix lies a foreign policy that can put America back in sync with the rest of the world.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who lives in Williston.

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Go-it-alone woes beset America

Posted in foreign policy, Israel/Palestine on October 12, 2008|

[Originally published in the Barre Times-Argus and Rutland Herald.]

Since World War II, perhaps as a reaction to European appeasement of Nazi Germany, the United States has become more and more interested in and committed to military responses to international problems.

In recent decades, the Republican Party has consistently advocated a foreign policy that features the projection of U.S. power abroad. During the past eight years, that position has been further amplified through the extraordinary influence of the neoconservatives on Bush administration foreign policy.

The neoconservatives believe that foreign policy should be based strictly on issues of good and evil (choose sides and take the moral high ground); that the prime tool in foreign policy is military power and our willingness to use it pre-emptively in a new unipolar world; that we should avoid conventional diplomacy including international organizations, particularly the United Nations; and that our focus should be on the Middle East and global Islam as the principal theaters for U.S. overseas interests.

It is impossible to argue logically that these neocon principles have not been the backbone of Bush administration foreign policies. So, the issue is not the nature of our foreign policy; it is whether that policy is serving our national interests.

We have had seven years of a pre-emptive, unilateral foreign policy. It has lost us whatever hopes we initially had for Afghanistan. It has brought us a political, ethnic/secular stalemate inside Iraq with little progress by those factions toward stable governance. It has cost us trillions of dollars, mortgaging our country to foreign investors. It has lost us just about all our traditional allies and turned neutral nations against us. It has stretched our military establishment to, or if you believe the Pentagon, perhaps beyond the breaking point. It has helped fundamentalist Muslim terrorist recruiting, training (the Iraq experience) and fundraising. Our uneven approach to democracy in the Middle East, as embodied in pushing it in Iraq and ignoring it in Palestine, has alienated Arabs and the greater Muslim world.

At the same time, we have accomplished nothing to promote a solution for the critical Palestine issue. Further, we have had no effect on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. We continue to occupy Iraq and to station our troops in Muslim countries to the displeasure of their peoples. And we give political and material support to the most repressive regimes in the region to the detriment of their people.

As a result, America has little credibility in the world in general and the Middle East in particular. No one likes us, no one respects us and no one fears us. Now that we have overextended ourselves politically, economically and militarily in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have become fair game for other world powers that do not share our goals or views. Let’s face it, the only weapons we have in sufficient numbers are nuclear and that is neither a flexible or useable tool.

The Russians are ignoring us and our threats in Georgia because they know there is little we can do other than complain. The Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs have simply gone about discussing their issues without us. Pakistan ignores us while most of Afghanistan unites against us. Iran and North Korea do what they please in connection with their nuclear programs. The rest of the world treats terrorism as a criminal matter while we continue our “war,” with all its negative implications. In short, the world is going about our business without involving us and they are doing so because of their strong disagreement with our motives, goals and tactics.

Our woes in the world are the result of seven years of a go-it-alone, my-way-or-the-highway foreign policy. It is a simple fact that as long as our standard answer to foreign policy problems is a unilateral military response, we will continue to have major troubles internationally.

It is time to ask whether continuing these policies is in our interest. If it is, then we should elect John McCain who has been clear in his support of the “long war” in the region. On the other hand, Republicans have always painted Democrats as unwilling or unable to project American power abroad. Under that formulation, if you think we are on the wrong track, Barack Obama might appear to represent an alternative.

The fact is, however, that Democrats are ambivalent about the use of force. Even though he wants us out of Iraq, Obama wants to use additional force in Afghanistan. About the best we can hope for out of that adventure is political and military frustration, the further loss of American treasure, deeper troubles with Pakistan and continued collateral damage with its unintended consequences. Success, however it’s defined, will be extremely elusive. Although Obama’s position is probably driven by a perceived need to rebut ongoing Republican attacks on him for his “naiveté and inexperience,” the fact is that the military option remains high up in both candidates’ lists despite its many drawbacks.

We can’t have it both ways. If we continue our unilateral, pre-emptive military policies, we will need masses of money we don’t have and an infinitely larger military establishment to handle the predictable, coming threats that we are encouraging with our current policies.

Given the results we already have had from those policies, we need to look at alternatives. The “military option” is valid only if we are feared. Given our economic and military problems and the world’s current opinion of us, the only policy that makes much sense is a combination of diplomacy, alliances and negotiation, a policy that has served us so well in the past.

Unfortunately, neither candidate is wedded to that approach. Although Obama appears to support that policy on matters other than Afghanistan, McCain is openly opposed and dismissive, preferring to pursue the concept of the “long war.”

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff. He lives in Williston.

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U.S. hamstrung by irrational foreign policy

Posted in foreign policy on September 7, 2008|

[Originally published in the Rutland Herald and Barre Times-Argus.]

The Bush administration’s foreign policy is internally inconsistent. It claims the virtually exclusive right to bring democracy to any poor, misbegotten, non-democratic country of its choosing, while at the same time supporting some very undemocratic regimes.

It would be easy to understand this bifurcated policy if it were possible to determine that it was in the U.S. national interest, but that does not always seem to be the case. Far too often, the support or non-support of a given country is dependent on factors that have nothing to do with any rational thought process.

If you examine the best of America’s philosophical underpinnings, it is easy to understand why this administration or any other, for that matter, would want to spread democracy around the world. We truly believe that we have the best political system that has ever existed. We believe that if the entire world were based on democratic principles, there would be far fewer conflicts and far fewer dangers facing us from abroad. Whether or not this is objectively true, as a nation, we believe it to be.

We also know that this is a wildly dangerous world. If we learned nothing from the immense dangers of the Cold War, 9/11 taught us a lesson we will never forget: America, despite its historic sense of geographic isolation (safety) from the constantly warring worlds in Europe and Asia, is newly vulnerable in today’s technologically advancing world.

For the first time, our enemies really can get to us! They can cause us to be afraid – a traditionally alien emotion in fortress America. As we know from the past seven years, fear promotes compromise on constitutional issues like: civil rights, torture and interrogation and personal freedoms. The world has watched as we have fearfully condoned or at least overlooked wireless wiretapping, the abrogation of habeus corpus rights, questionable detention, interrogation and torture activities and the physical and mental abuse of military prisoners in the hope that such compromise would bring us more safety. This has not helped our image in the world. Sadly, we have forgotten Benjamin Franklin’s admonition that he who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.

So, we are faced with a real dilemma. Who are we? Are we, as we believe, the most democratic people in the world? Or are we a people faced with a real existential threat from those terrorists who would do us harm and thus backed into a corner where adopting undemocratic methods and supporting undemocratic foreign elements is our only route to survival?

On the one hand, we support undemocratic regimes in Chad, Nigeria, Uganda, Ethiopia and elsewhere, either because they support us on our “War on Terror,” have oil or are somehow politically or economically important to us. The same is true in Egypt, the Sudan, Libya, Morocco and Saudi Arabia, to name a few. China is hardly a bastion of democracy. Yet, we have been told by our administration, after admissions that there were no weapons of mass destruction, no connection to 9/11 and that Iraq was really no threat to the United States, that we invaded Iraq in order to install democracy there. Why have we not invaded Myanmar to throw out those horrible people, or the Sudan to stop the horrors in Darfur, or Zimbabwe to get rid of Mugabe? The list goes on and on. Their peoples have suffered no less and probably considerably more than the Iraqis did under Saddam Hussein.

The purpose here is not to say which road we should take. The purpose is to point out that as long as we are pursuing two mutually incompatible policies, we will continue to marginalize ourselves as hypocrites in the outside world.

Today, all America has is its military power which is being worn down and overextended in its roles in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have no diplomatic, political or economic clout in the world. That is the case because our policies are laughed at by much of the rest of the world. If you don’t believe that, take a look at the Pew poll that shows what the rest of the world thinks of us today. It is not a pretty sight.

We need to decide what course to take. Shall we be the ultimate pragmatists who conduct our relationships based on our own national interest, without reference to difficult, nuanced issues of right and wrong? That’s our Saudi Arabian or China or Egypt policy today. Or shall we do this totally idealistically by supporting all movements that employ the democratic process? That’s what got us Hamas in Palestine.

This is not a simple issue, but it is one that needs to be examined and debated in this country. Whatever we actually are, or wish to think we are, we can’t get away with supporting two mutually contradictory policies at the same time.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff. He lives in Williston.

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Nation-building easier said than done

Posted in Afghanistan, foreign policy on August 3, 2008|

[Originally published in the Barre Times-Argus and the Rutland Herald.]

Barack Obama has articulated his goals for Afghanistan. In doing so, he becomes the first significant American politician since 9/11 to honestly lay out what he really wants for a country in the Middle East. John McCain has spoken favorably of the need for additional troops in Afghanistan.

Obama said during his recent visit to Afghanistan that “losing is not an option.” In the course of spelling out his plan to commit additional troops to the struggle there, he has said that he wishes to “rebuild the country.” His further goals are to stabilize the country, promote a rising standard of living and disable al-Qaida and the Taliban to the point where they cannot cause problems for anyone.

For those of us who are old enough to remember the 20th century, Obama is proposing another attempt at nation building. At that time, that is, before George W. Bush took office, invaded Iraq and turned his party upside down, Republicans were almost universally opposed to nation building. Democrats have never been so opposed, so it would appear that a more favorable climate may exist today for such an experiment in Afghanistan.

Nation building is the notion, favored by today’s Republicans for implementation in Iraq, that after a war, you can, by force of arms and occupation of the nation in question, successfully force a lasting change to a democratic form of government. Iraq provides us with a living example of the vicissitudes of nation building.

Many in this country view the current American approach in Iraq as “successful.” In fact, the “surge” has lowered the level of violence in Iraq. However, the originally stated purpose of the surge was to provide sufficient stability to enable the ethnic and sectarian groups in that country to successfully settle the basic political and economic issues that currently divide them. That has not been accomplished and if history is a decent guide, it will be a very difficult result for them to attain.

And now, we sail off into Afghanistan! It is almost as if, in the aftermath of 9/11, we are morally obliged to do that. We have to find Osama bin Laden. After all, he launched that attack on us from Afghanistan, with the protection of the Taliban – the same organization that has now morphed into an insurgency against our presence in their country.

Historically, where terrorist organizations hardly every win anything significant, insurgencies almost always do.

One truly hopes that our leaders understand enough of today’s realities and past history of that country to enable them to devise a workable plan for accomplishing their goals. If they do not, we may find a similar result there to what is facing us in Iraq.

Afghanistan is very different from Iraq. Where Iraq is fairly flat, Afghanistan is anything but. The terrain is mountainous and not favorable for conventional warfare. The people are different. Although they are not Arabs, but a mélange of Central Asians, Persians and other minor groups, they are 80 percent Sunni and 20 percent Shia. Their main languages are Indo-European and their culture is tied more to Persia than to the Arab world. They have the reputation of being unconquerable and ungovernable.

The Afghanis display characteristics common to all mountain people. They are Middle East versions of the Martins and the Coys. They are brave, bellicose, fiercely proud, loyal to their clan, tribe or family, wildly independent, have a highly developed sense of honor and are normally armed to the teeth and ready to fight. And they have spent eons fighting each other and themselves. They may have invented internecine warfare!

Even if it becomes possible to defeat the Taliban insurgency, these are not ideal candidates for pacification or nation building. In fact, foreigners have tried. Apart from the historical occupation of what is today Afghanistan by regional conquerors, in more recent centuries, both Britain and the Soviet Union have tried.

Britain meddled actively in Afghanistan for over many decades in the 19th century. During that time, they were involved in three wars against Afghanistan. All in all, they never achieved any real victory or peace.

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. They remained 10 years. They committed 100,000 troops backed up by at least that many more. They lost 15,000 soldiers, whatever favorable image they had in the world before the invasion and spent billions of dollars, which fact almost certainly played a role in the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. These represent powerful lessons for us today.

As a people, Afghanis are not terribly interested in being ruled by anyone outside their own tribe or clan, let alone their nation. The have tried that before. If our goal in Afghanistan is to pacify the country, or bring them democracy and prosperity, let’s think again.

The issues are Pakistan, Pashtuns and poppies.

One of the starkest realities we face in Afghanistan is the fact that almost half the population is Pashtun – 13 million souls located in southern Afghanistan. The same Pashtuns total 28 million in contiguous Northwest Pakistan – about one-sixth of the overall Pakistani population.

The Taliban is overwhelmingly Pashtun. Pakistani Pashtuns have long supported and supplied the Afghan Taliban. In addition, the Taliban has always been supported by the Pakistani intelligence service and to this day, there remains much active support in Pakistan for the Taliban.

It would seem likely that any real attempt to crush the Taliban in Afghanistan will necessarily involve their supply lines and suppliers in Pakistan. At this moment, the Pakistan government seems disinclined to get involved with our Pashtun problem in Northwest Pakistan. We may well find it impossible to solve the Afghan problem without solving the Pakistan problem.

Then we have the poppy problem. Opium production now accounts for half of Afghanistan’s annual national income of $8 billion. Eighty percent of that opium is grown in Pashtun territory. The Taliban now gets a large portion of its income – something on the order of 40 percent — from the opium trade.

Afghanistan’s poverty is a real issue here and, legal or not, opium is an important crop. Eradicating it would bring increased poverty and hardship. Switching poppy farmers to other crops won’t be easy. Our best hope is that rising world food prices will seduce Afghani farmers to grow food crops.

As in the case of Iraq, our problem in Afghanistan is only superficially a military problem. Under the surface it is an economic, religious and political issue. If we do ramp up in Afghanistan, it is going to be wildly expensive because, in the end and even after military success, we are going to be back in the long and drawn-out business of pacification and nation building.

We had best be prepared for that and given our total lack of preparedness for a similar situation in Iraq, it had better be carefully thought through. We are not dealing here with post-war Germany or Japan. We are dealing with a Muslim country in which people think their Islamic system of governance is perfectly OK. There may be discontent in Afghanistan, but it is not with Islam.

Changing whole cultures is not easy. Think how difficult it has been for America to come to grips with the prospect of a female or black president. Before we take up the mantle of bringing change to the world, we had best understand that not the entire world wants what we have to offer and adapt our goals in Afghanistan to a continued Islamic framework. That may be the only thing that works there.

This will be an extremely expensive and difficult task.

Haviland Smith served in Eastern and Western Europe and the Middle East.

He was also chief of the counterterrorism staff.

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Americans Don’t Know Enough History To Try To ‘Fix’ the World

Posted in foreign policy on May 22, 2008|

[Originally published in the Herald of Randolph.]

This year’s news reports have brought us stories ranging from Kosovan independence, through Moqtada al Sadr’s changing positions on a Shiite ceasefire in Iraq, to Turkish incursions into Iraqi Kurdistan.   Far too many Americans fail to recognize that these struggles, like innumerable other examples throughout the world, are products of conflicts and animosities that have been going on sporadically or continuously for centuries, even millennia.

Much of today’s conflicted world is built on age-old animosities, or more recently on animosities occasioned by three centuries of western colonialism in today’s less developed world. These unsettled areas are often tribal, or Muslim, or ruled by modern dictators or imperialist governments.  In most cases, their people do not know and do not seek any other form of governance.  Yet America is convinced that a world that largely has no history of democracy, free press or the rule of law – the absolute minimum imperatives on which democracy is built – is somehow ripe for democratization.

Today’s American democracy evolved over 500 years.  During that period, Europeans and North Americans hammered out its philosophical bases and battled through its revolutionary birth pangs. Along with our European forebears, we came by our belief in and adherence to “democracy” experientially and legitimately through centuries of difficult intellectual and physical conflict.

In the halls of American power, the old truism is true:  No one reads history.  If they did, they would probably not be eager to get involved in battles that have been going on for centuries, offering the curative wonders of democracy and capitalism as their one-size-fits-all solution for the ills of the world.  Yet we blunder on, selling democracy rather than the basic right of self-determination, which is the right of people to choose the form of government under which they will live.

Deeply embedded in the psyche of the American people is the notion that they have the objectively most perfect form of government and economic system on the face of this earth.  Even with all its faults and inequities, that may be true – at least for us Americans.

And what of Islam?  Islam holds that the Koran represents the only enduring truth. It gives believers a complete and unequivocal blueprint for life, while we hold the same true for our Constitutional underpinnings.  Who is right?  Does it even matter who is right?

Part of the problem we face in the world today is a problem of our own creation.  Much of it is occasioned by our absolute conviction that we know the truth. Our truth it is based on democracy and capitalism and we will bring it messianically to the rest of the world, militarily if need be, whether they want it or not.

Americans and Muslims alike believe that their system is the best.  Both parties have evangelical components.  The Muslims are told it is their duty to bring Islam to the rest of the world simply because it is the perfect word of Allah.  Americans are told we must bring democracy to the world because it is the absolute best form of governance on the planet.  Neither side can comprehend the other’s disinterest.  This conflict is like all the other ethnic, tribal, religious and ideological conflicts in the world because believers on both sides see themselves as right and their opponents as wrong.

The portent in these conflicts for the United States is that we will suffer unless we learn that there are no easy, quick fixes.  What may appear to be the right thing to do in any given situation may well be wrong, or inflict further damage on mankind, or both.  That understanding, which brings with it acceptance that truth is relative among different cultures, is the only thing that can possibly save us from our own inclination to “fix the world”.

The history of man gives reasonable evidence that there are endless traps lying in wait for 21st Century America.   We really had better know what we are doing when we stick out a toe, however tentatively, with the notion that, in doing so, we will make the world a better place.  Our current policies on Iraq and terrorism demonstrate clearly that we see the world only as we would like it to be, rather than as it really is. That lack of understanding will always serve us poorly.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as Chief of the Counter-terrorism Staff.  He lives in Williston.

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With cowboys in charge, danger is high

Posted in foreign policy, Iraq on July 12, 2007|

[Originally published in the Rutland Herald.]

Serious commentators in America state unequivocally that the Bush administration will attack Iran and that this will happen without notice because of the president’s interpretation of his powers as commander in chief. It would almost have to be that way, because there are few American supporters of such an insane scheme.

Overseas, Israel is the only country that has been quite openly encouraging the U.S. to attack Iran. However, although it is extremely unlikely that it will ever become public, some Sunni Arab regimes might not see such an attack as wholly undesirable. There are the perennial Sunni-Shia tensions. In addition, the ancient struggle over hegemony in the gulf is still alive and well, and there is a fairly high level of anxiety in the Sunni Arab world that Iran, if it goes nuclear, will become the dominant power in the region at the expense of those Sunni Arab regimes.

That notwithstanding, there is zero support among what’s left of our allies around the World for a U.S. attack of any kind on Iran.

Support for such an attack here at home stems mainly from our most conservative political elements. In Iran, it seems likely that the only support for that policy would come from the Ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guards.

The only two players who really matter are Presidents Bush and Ahmadinejad, who sound like two gunslingers in the old West. Neither of them enjoys much support from their people.

Bush is in trouble over a multitude of issues from Iraq to Scooter Libby. His poll numbers are abysmally low and unlikely to rise. He has lost his majorities in the Congress. He is beginning to lose support from Republican congressmen who are coming up for re-election and who see further blind support of failed Bush policies as virtual political suicide.

In Iran, President Ahmadinejad enjoys roughly equal popularity. Nothing he has promised has worked. Inflation is rampant. Housing costs have risen steeply. Food prices are up, and just recently we have learned that the price of gasoline has been raised significantly. Instead of tending to the needs of the Iranians, he has spent massive amounts of money on Iran’s nuclear program and in support of foreign adventures. There are protests and rioting in the streets of Iran.

So we have two presidents with much in common. They are both in deep political trouble. They both shoot from the hip. Unfortunately, it is quite possible that they see the same salvation for themselves in a military confrontation.

President Bush has “promised” that he would attack Iran if they did not give up their nuclear program before he leaves office. In the absence of rational foreign policy guidance from his “team,” he may honestly believe that his best contribution to the welfare of the world would an unannounced, massive precision missile strike. Apparently we already have such a plan on the books in the Pentagon. Never mind that military experts agree that this would not eliminate the nuclear threat for more than a short period of time.

The only thing, it would appear, that has the potential to unite a now discontented and divided Iran behind Ahmadinejad would be just such a strike. Any U.S. military action against Iran would be likely to unify the country, despite its difficulties and differences, against us and cause us major problems around the world.

So both presidents would appear to believe they have something to gain from a military confrontation. The situation is ripe for provocation. We have a large chunk of our Navy sitting in the narrow confines of the gulf. We have our Army and Marines stretched out all over Iraq. The Army now says that Iran is providing materiel that is killing our soldiers. If that is true, Iran must know that it is taking a major risk of providing the rationale for an American attack against them.

The Iranian navy has recently run a provocation against the British navy in the Gulf. The Brits reacted calmly and rationally and that threat appears over. What will happen if they do the same to us? Will we find a casus belli in that or in some other Iranian provocation? Are we seeking that? Is that what Iran wants?

This is an extremely dangerous situation in which the leaders of both countries seem to have reason not to avoid military confrontation. It would only take one well-planned provocation for the whole thing to blow up. With the cowboys in charge, there’s no telling what will happen.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Iran and Lebanon and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston.

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Greatest Foreign Policy Disaster in the History of our Republic

Posted in foreign policy, Iraq on May 17, 2007|

[Originally published in the Herald of Randolph.]

The twin realities of a Democratic Congress bent on representing the desires of the American electorate, as expressed in the 2006 elections, and an obdurate President Bush, immune to consideration of any policy change, but armed with an override-proof veto, mean that we will not know for sure what will happen in Iraq until after the 2008 Presidential elections.

Impeachment will not happen. We are stuck in Iraq at least until then, and probably far beyond.

Nevertheless, the question of where this is headed is clearly important enough to be addressed. Largely because crystal balls are notoriously cloudy, only those without adequate common sense and good judgment are prone to offer answers.

According to the Bush Administration, we will either win or lose. There is no middle ground for them. V.P. Cheney now defines “winning” as the establishment of a “democratic government that can defend itself,” so it all depends on the formation of a viable government.

Every American military expert in and out of this Administration, says Iraq cannot be won militarily. The solution in Iraq is political. Such a political solution is improbable at best because none of the Iraqi parties is interested. Each is interested in a solution that will bring it power at the expense of its internal rivals. The Kurds and Shia have waited eternities and suffered endlessly from their enemies. Thus “winning” seems essentially unreachable. Nevertheless, we are committed to pursue the current strategy or to fail. As hard as it may be to believe, there is no Plan B.

“Losing” means that the American people (not the Congress, as Bush insists) will no longer support the Iraq war and we will withdraw, salvaging what we can from an impossible situation.

Incredibly, within this spectrum the Republicans acknowledge only two outcomes- “win” or “lose”. There is no middle ground, even though the Iraq Study Group findings include numerous alternate strategies. Unfortunately, we have never been told precisely what progress the Bush administration requires to be able to say that the current “surge policy” has “won.” Must an Iraqi government be functioning? Does Iraq have to be safe, or is safety only required in selected areas around Baghdad?

And, how do we define “safe”? Polls today indicate that almost no Iraqis feel “safe,” that Iraqis overwhelmingly would like us out of their country, and that over half of Iraqis approve of killing Americans.

Right now, we appear to be dealing primarily with Sunni insurgents and foreign fighters. What has happened to the Mahdi Army and Moqtada al Sadr? What are his plans? If he keeps his powerful militia out of the fray, the Bush administration might conceivably be able to declare that we have succeeded and then withdraw our troops.

A case can be made that this is, or might be, the collective, secret prayer of the Bush administration, because if Moqtada turns the Mahdi Army loose, all hell will result.

But remember, the Mahdi is Shia and thus part of the largest ethnic or religious group in the country. It has never shown any inclination to share power with the others. It is highly likely that even if they do stay out of the fray long enough to permit us to withdraw, they will return to battle after our withdrawal with the same goal of dominance, removing whatever shred of hope we might have had for democracy, stability and political compromise within Iraq.

What we have to ask ourselves is just how much we can hope to influence the ultimate Iraq outcome, just how much that will cost and whether or not it’s worth it.

Forget the “at all costs” part of the Bush equation for “winning.” Many of the Bush administration’s dire predictions about the consequences of “premature” withdrawal are wildly overblown and can be fixed or mitigated by any number of policy changes that the Bush administration will not now even consider.

American foreign policy is not nimble. It corrects course more like an aircraft carrier than a PT boat. The simple implementation of the 2003 invasion of Iraq has set in play a process that will take much longer to fix than most Americans would like. It seems likely that whoever is elected President in 2008 will struggle mightily with the inheritance of Iraq and will suffer roughly the same fate as its authors.

America’s extraordinary misadventure in Iraq will probably turn out to be the greatest foreign policy disaster in the history of our Republic. We have sacrificed decades of good will generated through the past pursuit of policies that were generally viewed internationally as positive. We are now seen as a mindlessly arrogant bully, thrashing about the world unapologetically, doing whatever we think is good for America, without any understanding of the cultures in which we meddle and without reference to the needs of anyone other than ourselves.

This cloudy, crystal ball thinks that this will be the Bush legacy. What will we do in 2008?

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA Station Chief who served, inter alia, in Lebanon and Iran and as Chief of the Agency’s Counterterrorism Staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

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Bush Administration Ignores Reality

Posted in foreign policy, Iraq on July 29, 2006|

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

Watching the Bush Administration purposefully avoid doing anything concrete about the Middle East gives any observer a very clear picture of what their policy is, at least for the moment.  The United States is going to do nothing, because this is consistent with our policy in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The Bush administration believes that democracy, which in America is viewed as just about the best existing system of governance and the one most consistent with our beliefs, is a commodity that can be exported like wheat or Coca Cola.  And, of course, if they are right about this, the successful imposition of democracy on the Middle East would solve many of our problems there.  Unfortunately, there are over a billion Muslims who do not share that belief.  They hold their certainties just as tenaciously as we hold ours.  Their belief system is focused on the Koran, an authoritarian scripture which makes our Bible look like an invitation to misbehavior.

Last year’s elections in Palestine and the growing political power of Hizballah in Lebanon demonstrate clearly that there are a lot of Arabs/Muslims who aren’t really interested in our democracy except insofar as it provides them with the mechanism to gain power themselves through free elections.  Trying to understand why there are souls in the world who are disinterested in democracy is a futile endeavor.   Suffice it to say that they have always existed and are growing in numbers, in some ways thanks to our policies in the Middle East, including our war in Iraq and our disinclination to become involved in Lebanon.

They see our invasion of Iraq as an arrogant American attempt to force democracy on them.  They see our uninvolved posture in Lebanon as yet another American effort to support Israeli tactics in their struggles with Hizballah.  Arabs in particular and Muslims in general see American policy in the Middle East as anti-Arab/Palestinian and Pro-Israel.  One may see this as an unfair characterization, but it doesn’t really matter, because fair or not, true or not, that is their position and like it or not, that is the position we have to deal with.

The Bush Administration has chosen to ignore these realities.  They have said they will not deal with Syria, Iran, Hamas or Hizballah – who are causing all this trouble.   If they remain uninvolved, if there is no resolution of the one major issue that underlies this matter, there will be no peace for the Middle East, and as we already know from 9/11, Madrid and London, for the rest of the world.

The vast majority of Arabs in particular and Muslims in general, want to see a viable, independent Palestinian state living next to and at peace with Israel.  Only a tiny minority seeks to “throw Israel into the sea” and if the Palestinians were ever to get their own state, that hostile minority would quickly be subdued by the majority.  That is the only hope that exists for peace.

This approach does not abandon Israel.  Quite the contrary, it would have to be preceded by iron-cast guarantees of Israeli security.

The problem today lies in Arab desires to destroy Israel and Israeli settlement policy on Palestine’s West Bank.  This is a problem that Americans do not want to hear or discuss.  Significant groups in Israel and the United States support not only Israeli settlement policy, but would like to see Israel expand into the old Biblical lands of Samaria and Judea.  The numbers of Israelis supporting the settlement policy wax and wane with the level of Palestinian threat to their country.  Right now, with Hizballah rocketing Northern Israel, the support is at its maximum.  The wild card in the equation is America’s Evangelical Christian Right which believes that the second coming of Christ will not take place until Samaria and Judea have been reoccupied by Israel.

As long as radical dreamers on both sides can indulge their destructive fantasies – Arabs pushing Israelis into the sea and Israelis occupying Samaria and Judea – there will be war, hate and destruction.

These are extraordinarily difficult issues.   We all wish they would go away.  But they won’t.  As long as there is no peace in Israel/Palestine, there will be no peace in Iraq, the Middle East or the world.  Fair or not, America is viewed universally as the only country that has any hope of addressing this problem, and our current behavior in that area is daily diminishing our credibility and prospects as a peacemaker.  This may be our last best chance to help.  To try and fail would be far better than to sit back, do nothing and watch it burn.

Haviland Smith retired as a CIA Station Chief in 1980.  He served in East and West Europe and the Middle East and as Chief of the Counterterrorism Staff.  He lives in Williston, Vt.

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Coping With the Disadvantage of Military Superiority

Posted in foreign policy on July 22, 2006|

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

“Asymmetrical war” and “disproportionate response” are terms that entered our consciousness in a big way after 9/11. The reasons are obvious. Terrorism brings an asymmetry that is characterized by a relatively small group of terrorists attacking a far larger group or nation. “Disproportionate response” is and has been the logical response to an asymmetrical attack when the aggrieved nation decides it must undertake military action against the people who attacked it.

The biggest problem with this imbalance is that such disproportionate response is indiscriminate and, even though it may well slow or inhibit the activities of the terrorists in the short run, it is far from clear that the long-term effect will be anything other than negative. The indiscriminate killing of civilians is often seen as collective punishment and has a way of bringing more material and emotional support to the terrorists and new terrorists to their cause.

Witness the American response to the terrorists attacks on U.S. embassies in Africa during the Clinton administration — cruise missiles fired into Sudan with little to no effect and really bad publicity. The 9/11 attack brought our invasion of Afghanistan, a military action that is still going on. Consider Russia’s response to Chechen attacks on its homeland — the invasion of and continuing state of war in Chechnya over the past 15 years.
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Similar examples exist in the treatment by France of its North African colonies’ “terrorist problems” — massive retaliation, collective punishment and “collateral damage.” The post-World War II colonial world yields many more examples — in Palestine, Africa and East Asia — where colonial powers were trying to put down home-grown national liberation movements, most of which would now be called “terrorists movements.”

In a non-terrorist context, one can look at the recent history of American military activities in 20th-century Vietnam and 21st-century Iraq. In those two cases, relatively weaker forces fighting in highly unconventional and asymmetrical ways managed to thwart the efforts and goals of the most powerful military establishment in the world, and brought more recruits to their side in the process.

The saddest and perhaps most hopeless example of this asymmetry is today’s struggle between Israel and Palestine which has now been going on without resolution for almost 60 years. In that case, minuscule numbers of aggrieved and angry Palestinians have created a living hell for Israel. Imagine living under the constant threat of random and unpredictable incoming rockets and suicide bombers. At least in World War II London, there were air raid sirens.

How does government protect its people under those conditions? Short of acknowledging and peacefully settling the differences between the two sides, there is no way but asymmetrical response. You simply focus the full force of your military might on the assumed positions of the enemy and turn it loose. When the enemy does not wear uniforms, has no barracks or bases and lives and works in and around the rest of the civilian population, whether in Gaza or Lebanon, there is bound to be a lot of collateral damage, likely to be seen as collective punishment.

In the short run, there is little question that a forceful response will bring relief for the Israeli people who truly deserve to live in peace, rather than as random targets of Hamas and Hezbollah rockets, roadside bombs and suicide bombers. The rocketing will slow and maybe even stop for a while. But what are the long-term effects of that sort of asymmetrical response?

Policies that create hopeless and powerless populations are not good, whether in Gaza or Lebanon. Those are the people who end up strapped into suicide vests or firing rockets. This is a lesson that everyone knows. We know it from Iraq, where we are busily creating the next generation of al-Qaida fighters. Europe’s former colonial powers know it from their struggles with their own independence-seeking colonies.

Israel has to know that truth because it has been pursuing the same asymmetrical policies on and off since 1945 and full time since 1967. At some point, the question has to be asked, “What good it has done?” Have 60 years of asymmetrical response made Israeli lives safer or better? Are their future prospects better or different? Has the terrorism that plagues them been destroyed or disappeared? Even if Israel successfully destroys Hamas and Hezbollah, Middle East realities argue that new terrorists will take their place. To get rid of terrorism, they have to get rid of the conditions that feed it.

If disproportionate response fails, as its own history indicates it probably will, Israel’s next logical step may well be to go after the clearly identified sponsors of the terrorism —Iran and Syria. When and if Israel does that, it will have taken a step the country has never taken before, a step with absolutely unpredictable and not necessarily positive consequences, not just for Israel, but for the world.

Haviland Smith retired as a CIA station chief in 1980. He served in Europe, Lebanon and Iran and as chief of the counterterrorism staff. He lives in Williston, Vt.

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How Smart Is Our Wish For Democracy?

Posted in foreign policy on February 16, 2006|

[Originally published in the Valley News.]

For years, United Nations policy for the underdeveloped world has been to support “self-determination” – the notion that all people should be able to determine the kind of government they wish to live under. It’s hard to argue with that.

Nevertheless, the Bush administration’s policy of promoting democracy creates potential conflicts with the principle of self-determination. When we say we want to see the rise of democracy in the world, we cannot achieve that without free elections. Those free elections provide previously disenfranchised citizens with the mechanism for self-determination, which doesn’t always produce democracy.

The United States has not always been enamored of either self-determination or democracy. It has often preferred the stability that comes with entrenched, anti-democratic governments friendly to the United States over the unknown or unacceptable proclivities of the forces aligned against them. Think of what happened to Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran the 1950s, Salvador Allende in Chile in the 1970s and various other leaders around the world who enjoyed popular support but were deposed with U.S. support.

This approach was approved by many European nations eager for world stability. Leaders of those nations apparently have not changed their minds; European countries have shown little appetite for President Bush’s drive to democratize the world. For them, the logical outcome of such a policy can be seen in the results of the recent free and democratic elections in Palestine, where self-determination has not led to a democracy of our liking.

U.S. policy in the Muslim world today creates as many problems as it solves. When the White House began to call for democracy in the Middle East, it displayed little understanding of the history of the region, but instead based its policy on the rather idealistic premise that all people yearn for democracy – that is, democracy as we know and understand it.

The dominance of Islam, which is essentially anti-democratic, has not supported the evolution of the kinds of personal attitudes and institutions that would naturally support successful transition to democratic governance. That has put the White House in the position of pushing democracy in a region where democracy is something of an anathema.

Are we going to continue to promote democracy through free elections in a region that may prove immune to it? Are we going to support regime change only if the results are “democratic” and to our liking, or are we going to accept whatever comes out of the process? Finally, how are we going to mollify the European preference for stability over democracy?

The second part of this problem lies in whether or not we are going to be even-handed in our push for democracy. Are we going to push for regime change wherever people are oppressed, or are we going overlook repressive but friendly states and limit our focus to hostile countries?

f you look at the Muslim world today, there are no evolved and stable democracies. Turkey wants to be part of Europe. Who knows what will happen in Afghanistan and Iraq? Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Persian Gulf states and the Arab states in North Africa are not now practicing self-determination. They fit the category of entrenched, anti-democratic governments friendly to or dependent on the United States. While we push for democracy in currently or formerly hostile countries such as Iraq, Iran, Syria and Afghanistan, we are much less zealous about the crusade in important states where we think stability is our primary goal, including Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan and Egypt.

One of the U.S. policies that motivates al-Qaida and its allies against us is our continued support for these anti-democratic states. Clearly, what al-Qaida really seeks is the kind of self-determination where a newly “democratized” population votes out its old enemies as well as the friends of America and votes in the Muslim theocracy that radical Islamists really want. Democratic elections in much of the Muslim world are far more likely to produce that kind of result than the “democracy” we seek and of which we approve.

So, we push for regime change in some places and not in others – a perfect example of “realpolitik”, or foreign policy based on political expediency rather than ideals or ethics. America cannot hope to improve its standing in the Muslim world if it is idealistically pushing democracy in Iran, Syria and Libya while actively supporting anti-democratic governments such as those in Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

This hypocritical inconsistency can only bolster the morale and motivation and improve the standing of al-Qaida and its radical Muslim allies. That will make our struggle with terrorists all the more difficult. Our current policy is not serving our national interests.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in Lebanon and Iran. He lives in Williston, Vt.

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