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Off target: Israeli Iran propaganda

August 26, 2012 by Haviland Smith

Originally published in The Rutland Herald and The Barre Times Argus

Today’s Internet is increasingly carrying articles from both American and foreign sources to the effect that Israel is pulling out the stops trying to get the United States involved in military action against Iran.

During the past few months, we have been told in the press by the Israelis that all the previous estimates by the U.S. intelligence community have been wrong and that Iran is, in fact, working assiduously on building an atomic weapon. It should be noted here that this assessment is not shared either by the International Atomic Energy Agency or the U.S. intelligence community .

Further, this allegation has come in spite of the fact that three former chiefs of Israeli intelligence services have said not only that they did not believe the allegation to be true, but that Iran does not represent any sort of existential threat to Israel.

It has been reported that the recent rise in gasoline prices here at home is the result of fears of an Israeli strike on Iran and that that fear is in turn based in a large measure on statements by the Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. Barak has “leaked” what he alleges to be a U.S. national intelligence estimate, normally a sensitive, classified document, which he claimed says the U.S. intelligence community is changing its view and getting closer to the Likud view.

Given the thrust of this Israeli activity, it would appear that there are elements in both Israel and the United States who would like to see the U.S. involved in such military action.

There are two likely purposes in this campaign. First, a poll last week by Israel Channel 10 shows that 46 percent of Israelis are against a unilateral attack on Iran and only 26 percent in favor. According to a recent poll published by the Israel Democracy Institute and Tel Aviv University, a majority of Jewish Israelis (60.7 percent) oppose an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities without U.S. cooperation.

It would appear that the Likud leadership is trying, through an internal Israeli propaganda operation, to sway the Israeli people to support an attack on Iran. This campaign has not only involved the purported NIE “leaks”, but has traded on Israeli concerns about the Holocaust and nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, fueled by a Netanyahu article inHaaretz.

The major concern here is that Israelis believe, probably correctly, that Israel does not have the military capability to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities successfully.

It might be said parenthetically that there is serious doubt in American military circles that the U.S. military establishment would be any more successful in such an attack.

So the obvious next step for Netanyahu and Barak, frustrated by the disinclination of their countrymen to support such an attack, has been to turn their propaganda guns on the U.S.

This campaign has not worked on the Obama administration and would be less likely to be successful if Obama were elected to a second term in which he would have no concerns about re-election and could really act in the American national interest.

The wild card comes in a Romney presidential victory. Romney has consistently said that “Israel policy will be our policy.” In addition, his foreign policy advisers are heavily populated with the same neoconservatives who got us militarily involved in Afghanistan and Iraq and who continue to favor U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. Who knows what a President Romney would do in the face of such Israeli pressures?

And all of this comes at a time when American polling shows that only small numbers (under 15 percent) of Americans support a pre-emptive attack on Iran absent an existential threat to Israel. Yet Netanyahu and his Likud followers persist in trying to get the U.S. to attack Iran. If this persists, this will do nothing but threaten long-term U.S.-Israeli relations.

Do normally pro-Israel groups here in America want Israel to declare war in the hope of American military support? Do they wish to strongly influence U.S. policy in that direction? Are they not aware of flagging American public enthusiasm for U.S. military activity in the Middle East in the wake of Afghanistan and Iraq? And do any of them consider what such a conflict would mean in economic terms to the United States?

It is really difficult to see that any attack on Iran, ab sent any Iranian attack on us or our allies, is consistent with the U.S. national interest.

Posted in foreign policy, Iraq, United States | Leave a Comment »

Letting Iran Go Nuclear Might Be Best

July 20, 2012 by Haviland Smith

First Published in the Valley News
Foreign Affairs Magazine has recently published an article arguing
that Iran should get the bomb. This is, to say the least, a
revolutionary and provocative statement. Nevertheless, it is worth
serious examination.
No one really knows Iran’s nuclear intentions. For the sake of the
discussion, however, let’s assume a worst-case scenario — that it really
is intent on getting the bomb.
Figuring out the best way the U.S. should respond is quite a challenge.
For starters, the country is now sharply divided on virtually every
contentious foreign policy issue, at least at the political fringes of
right and left. On the left, we have a vast array of Democrats who
simply are unprepared to consider that additional military action in the
Middle East makes any sense under any conditions. The right appears to
favor military action in Syria and Iran.
Further, AIPAC, the dominant pro-Israel lobbying organization, has
proudly reported that 32 senators from both parties have said that they
would reject “any United States policy that would rely on efforts to
contain a nuclear weapons-capable Iran.” This underlines the Israeli
position that it will not accept Iranian possession of nuclear weapons.
It also supports the assessment that Israel really wants to attack
Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Yet, aggressive military action by us or Israel, which our experts say
can at best only briefly slow down an Iranian quest for these weapons,
is the only thing that will unite a viscerally pro-Western Iranian
population against us and create massive problems for us in the Middle East.
Are there any good foreign policy options regarding Iran?
During the Cold War, we managed a highly competitive, tense,
nuclear-armed world with a policy called “nuclear deterrence.” Nuclear
deterrence was the doctrine that assumed that an enemy would be deterred
from using nuclear weapons as long as it recognized that it would be
destroyed as a consequence. In other words, the threat of nuclear
annihilation as a response to the use of nuclear weapons was sufficient
to keep all parties from using those weapons. Everyone with nuclear
weapons in the Cold War knew the facts. Those weapons were never used.
There are two critical issues involved in this doctrine of nuclear
deterrence. First, all concerned have to realize that nuclear weapons
are a powerful tool only as long as they are not used. For once they are
used, deterrence is irrelevant and the combatants are literally consumed
by their own stupidity.
And that brings the second critical point. Despite their incredibly
contrasting sets of values and interests, the Soviet Union and its
allies and the U.S. and its allies were not stupid enough to use the
bomb. If they had, most of us would not be here today.
And there’s the hooker. Those who cannot abide the notion of nuclear
deterrence as the foundation of our Iran policy say that the Iranians
would use the bomb, probably against Israel. Of course, what they are
implying is that the Iranians are a bunch of know-nothing rag heads,
prone to self-destruction.
How far from the truth can that be? The ancient Persians — the forbears
of modern-day Iranians — were in the process of working out a viable
alphabet when Europe’s ancestors were scuttling about in their caves
dressed in bearskins. Organized communities first existed in Iran around
8,000 B.C. The first Persian kingdom began around 2800 BC. Those
Persians ruled from the Mediterranean Sea to the Indus River until about
the sixth century B.C. It was the first great kingdom to exist in the
world and was certainly the greatest empire of its time.
The Persian cultural contribution to the world has ranged from art
through architecture, music, technology (underground aqueducts; some
close to 3,000 years old, some 1,000 feet deep and some dozens of miles
long) and science to literature.
Modern-day Persians are educated (77 percent literate), nationalistic
and anything but stupid. Despite the stupidly ugly rhetoric employed by
some of their political leaders since 1979, they are anything but the
wild-eyed fanatics that some in the West portray them to be. They are in
no way suicidal. They have the requisite characteristics to participate
successfully in “nuclear deterrence.”
Purely objectively, Persia is smart enough to avoid self-destruction and
enough aware of its history to believe it has a major role to play in
the Middle East. With Iran possessing a land mass of over 630,000 square
miles, a military establishment over 500,000, an educated population of
over 75 million, two-thirds of the world’s crude oil reserve and
potential control over the Arabian Gulf, it is time we recognized that
Iran has a role to play in its region and that we can help that role to
be either positive or negative.
There is no reason to believe that Iran will not respond positively to
respectful negotiations. They are worthy candidates for “nuclear
deterrence.”
In many ways, Iran’s future is really up to us.
 
 

Posted in foreign policy, Iran, Middle East, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

No Matter US Course, Syria will Suffer

June 15, 2012 by Haviland Smith

Originally published in the “Valley News”

It is a simple fact that many “countries” in the Middle East are not really nation-states as they are understood to be in the West, but rather often unhappy agglomerations of ethnic, tribal, sectarian and even national groups having little in common.

Instability in the Middle East can be measured by the extent of tribal, sectarian, ethnic and national frictions in any “country” in the region.

The borders of many Middle East “countries” were drawn by European colonial powers for their own convenience and profit, without much if any consideration for the human realities with which they were dealing.  The result of this colonial legacy, coupled with the ongoing Arab Spring liberation, is the exacerbation of the conflicts and frictions that have existed for centuries, but which heretofore have been mostly repressively controlled.

Of all of these “countries”, Syria is among the most difficult and complicated.  Syria is 90% Arab and 10% Kurds and Armenians.  Sunni Moslems make up about 75% of the population with Alawites, a minority sect of Shia Islam, at about 15% and Christians around 10%.

What makes Syria different is that the minority Alawites govern the majority Sunni population, not necessarily very kindly or gently.  Because the Alawites have been in charge since Hafez Assad took power in a military coup in 1970, they have effectively consolidated their grip on the country.

The Alawites control the military and intelligence services in Syria.  In addition, under both Hafez Assad and his son Bashar, they have judiciously included important non-Alawites in government and commerce, creating a larger power base than would normally be operated by a 15% minority.  There are important Sunnis and Christians who have economic or political stakes in the success of the present Alawite-dominated government.  In effect, the Alawites have power and the guns, an extremely well armed, well-trained and effective army.

The prime international supporters of Alawite Syria are Russia and Shia Iran.  The Iranians support them as the only other Shia regime in the region, one that supports the Iran-centered Hezbollah and Hamas organizations against Israel.  Syria is an important Iranian ally.

Russia has supported Syria since just after the 1956 Suez crisis when the USSR contracted to sell them military weaponry.  The USSR and now Russia have since then been suppliers of arms to Syria.  Clearly, their ongoing rejection of any UN sanctioned military action against the Assad regime is based on that relationship and the importance with which it is viewed in Russia.  However, that pro-Alawite stand has hurt the Russians with the region’s majority Sunni world, which will make that policy increasingly disadvantageous to Russia.  It could change.

There have probably been 10,000 killed in the ongoing Syrian insurrection.  Because of the Alawite/Sunni issues, the great fear is that the insurrection could easily become a sectarian civil war, something that could spread to and have major negative ramifications in the greater Muslim world.  So far, that appears not to have happened.

In Syria, as in some other Muslim “countries”, towns and neighborhoods often have developed along sectarian lines.  An Alawite town may sit next to a predominately Sunni town just down the way from a Christian town on the banks of the Euphrates.

When un-uniformed “militia” attack a Sunni town and kill Sunni women and children, the cry goes up in the Sunni community that it was a government-backed or sponsored Alawite militia, whereas it is equally possible that it is tribal or family feuds playing out.

And the simple fact is that there is no way of knowing exactly what has happened.  Was it really a government-sponsored attack, or a tribal feud, or is it a provocation by others who want to create sectarian conflict, as we have so painfully seen in Iraq?

The point here is that it is exceedingly difficult to sort out who is doing what to whom.  American policy makers have little notion of precisely what the “Free Syrian Army” stands for other than the fall of Assad and the Alawites.  And what would that fall bring? Certainly not stability!

The situation is vaguely analogous to Libya where we try to figure out what the 150 tribes and tribal coalitions stand for, or further, what the valley-bound tribal residents of Afghanistan would accept (if anything!) as a central government.  Our Middle East experiences should have shown us by now that US military involvement without sufficient understanding of local realities can be disastrous.

In Syria, one side will ultimately crush the other.  Any peaceful resolution seems remote.

Getting into Syria would be easy.  Getting out, or getting anything positive out of it, simply may not be possible.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Iran Revisited

May 18, 2012 by Haviland Smith

Originally published in The Herald of Randolph

Let’s stop kidding ourselves.  If America attacks Iran or can legitimately be accused of approving such an attack by Israel, the results will be a disaster for us.  Even if Israel goes ahead with such an attack without our approval, the world will be in deep trouble.

It is an unfortunate fact that in matters like this, US foreign policy is normally made on the basis of the domestic political needs and objectives of the party in power.  What that means today is that the Democrats probably believe that it would be political suicide in the face of the upcoming national elections to do anything that would appear to be contrary to the Israeli government’s needs or wishes.

That reality has given the Republicans conservatives the opportunity to attack the Democrats if they do not take on Iran, either through Israel or unilaterally.  In fact, the war cries from the far right are increasingly strident.

Yet, in Israel, relative calm and prudence remain.

Current and former Israeli military and intelligence chiefs continue to maintain that they do not support a strike on Iran and that Iran is not an existential threat to Israel.

A recent Tel Aviv University poll found that 62.9 percent of Israelis strongly or moderately oppose Unilateral Israeli attack on Iran.  That same poll found that 70% of Israelis believe such an attack would be ineffective in “stopping Iran’s nuclearization for a substantial time”.

The International Atomic Energy Agency and the US intelligence Community have both said that Iran has not yet decided whether or not to build a bomb.  In addition, Michael Hayden, the former CIA Director said recently that the CIA under President Bush II determined that an attack on Iran was a bad idea and strongly advised against such an attack today.

Further, American intelligence and military estimates say that at best an air attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would only delay their nuclear program and could “carry unforeseen risks”.

Consensus in the US intelligence and military communities, including former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates concludes that damage would not be great and that Iran would rebuild. “The regime’s resolve to build a weapon, if it so chooses, may only be hardened” and that “If Iran did attempt to restart its nuclear program after an attack, it would be much more difficult for the United States to stop it.”

The more practical military question is whether or not either the US or Israel actually has the weapons needed to have any real impact on the Iraqi nuclear program.  Largely as a result of perceived threats from the United States and Israel, Iran long ago decided the put that program as far out of reach as possible.  That decision lead to burying the program far under ground in locations that are extremely difficult to attack.  That fact makes the construction of an effective weapon technically difficult and requires extraordinary precision in delivery and aim.  It is unclear whether either of these criteria can be met and whether there is any hope of materially damaging the Iranian program.

What would a post-attack world look like? The first danger would be to all US military and civilian personnel and interests in the Middle East.  Acting through Shia allies throughout the region, as well as Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran would certainly move to make our lives as untenable as possible.  In addition, they would likely close the Straits of Hormuz, shutting down the movement of one fifth of the world’s crude oil to its western markets and creating western economic chaos

In the longer term, an attack on Iran, whether by Israel, the US, or both, is about the only thing that can unite the essentially pro-Western, anti-regime population in Iran against us.  That bodes really ill for the future.  Along with that would come the virtual guarantee that Iran, irrespective of what we think they are doing, or not doing today, will undertake a nuclear weapons program in the future.

There certainly doesn’t seem too much in it for the United States in an attack on Iran.  In fact, it looks like a disaster waiting to happen.  In return for an attack of highly dubious efficacy, we get in return Iranian and Iranian-sponsored attacks on us and our interests, international economic instability and regional chaos.  And we would be a part of this without conclusive proof that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon?

When does America get to define her own national interests?


Posted in foreign policy, Iran, Middle East, Military Polilcy, United States | Leave a Comment »

Whatever happened to talking about a war before launching it?

March 27, 2012 by Haviland Smith

Originally published in Harvard’s Nieman Watchdog

Over the past dozen years, the United States has spent vast amounts of its human treasure and national resources on a series of foreign interventions.  We have now been involved in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, with Syria and Iran and Central Africa representing candidates for the immediate future.

All of this has been and will be done without declarations of war, over the supine body of our Congress, without the agreement of the majority of the American people and without real scrutiny from the press. We have become a nation of onlookers.

In the United States, Congress has the power under the constitution to “declare war”. However neither the US Constitution, nor the law, tell us what format a declaration of war must take.  The last time Congress passed joint resolutions saying that a “state of war” existed was on June 5, 1942, when the U.S. declared war on Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania Since then, the U.S. has used the term “authorization to use military force”, as in the case against Iraq in 2003.

For a variety of reasons, all of which are based on local historical, tribal, ethnic and national realities, our adventures in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya are not turning out as we might have wished.  Despite early warnings from our governmental and academic experts on those areas, it seems clear that any hopes we had for bettering the situations that existed there are likely to fail.  In fact, our military involvement in the region has lead to instability in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, as it almost certainly will if we succumb to local and international pressures to become involved in Syria and Iran.  And now we are told we should become militarily involved in Central Africa.

This is all well and good, but one key ingredient is missing.  We have never had a national discussion about the efficacy of American military intervention abroad.  We have seen two Presidents act in ways that made Congress disposed to support them without intelligent discussion of the activities proposed.

Over the past year, two thirds of Americans have been polled as opposed to our activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. Americans are now faced with the specific prospect of military activity in Syria and Iran and with further future interventions around the world, it is time for America to have this discussion.

First, we need to discuss whether or not we want to conduct such operations at all.  If so, should we act independently of the UN and international coalitions, as stipulated, or unilaterally as many of our hawks and neocons would wish?

We need to have a discussion that defines the specific intervention problem and its solution.  We need to know the precise goal of the intervention, how long it will last and what the likely response to our intervention will be.

Then we need to and how it will be funded.  Are there to be more unfunded interventions like Iraq and Afghanistan at a time when we are already in deep economic trouble resulting from our past interventionist adventures?

Additionally, we need to be reassured that if the intervention involves terrorism, our approach will be limited to police and intelligence work.  We have learned far too much from Iraq and Afghanistan to again involve our military establishment in counterterrorism operations.

If we learn that an insurgency is involved, we need to know how our government plans to avoid subsequent nation building and the export of democracy.  Again, Iraq and Afghanistan provide the wholly negative lesson for us here.

Finally, we must determine whether or not any proposed intervention is in our true national interest and we need to do that in the absence of foreign pressures.

The only way we will learn the answers to these critical questions is through a national discussion of any proposed future intervention.  Our Government isn’t holding such a debate except for a little squawking by individuals now and then.  The media should and could do so, with one or more news organizations making it a front-burner item, interviewing experts and political leaders and staying on the subject.

Posted in Afghanistan, foreign policy, Iran, Iraq, Military Polilcy, United States | Leave a Comment »

Transition to Democracy in the Middle East

March 21, 2012 by Haviland Smith

Originally published in American Diplomacy

Anthony Shadid, the New York Times’ correspondent, died in Syria on February 16, 2012 . An exemplary reporter and student of his subject matter, his last piece, “Islamists’ Ideas on Democracy and Faith Face Test in Tunisia”, appeared in the Times on the following day. In that piece, Mr. Shadid examined some of the issues involved in the evolution of governance after the Arab Spring Tunisian uprising. He paints a picture that considers some of the problems involved in any hoped-for transition to liberal democracy in the region.

Having listened for a decade to the premise — from some of our more conservative (and hopeful) national politicians — that our military activities in the Middle East were part of the process of bringing democracy to that region, perhaps it is time to more thoroughly examine that premise.

In its broadest sense, today’s Middle East and North African national borders were established or codified under British, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese colonial rule in the 19-20th centuries for the advantage, convenience and profit of the colonial powers. The region under discussion here includes Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Algeria and Morocco.

Those borders ignored or cynically exacerbated many sectarian, tribal and national issues, which were of major importance to the local populations. The arbitrary l948 sectarian division of colonial India into India, Bangladesh and Pakistan; the virtual ignoring of tribal issues in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere; the further ignoring of other sectarian issues in Islam; and discounting the importance of nationality issues for Kurds, Persians, Arabs, Central Asians and Turks in virtually all of the post-WWII states that emerged out of the European colonial era, all stand as examples of the indifference of the colonial powers to issues that ultimately would create major differences and difficulties in the region.

Independence from Imperialism
Regional independence from European imperialism began with Afghanistan in 1919, with the largest number of nations gaining that independence after World War II. It all ended with Bahrain, the UAE and Qatar in 1971. It is worth remembering that in no one of the 20 countries involved, with the possible exception of Turkey, was imperial rule replaced by anything resembling democracy.

Post-war US policy was dictated by our Cold War imperatives and by the existence of abundant and inexpensive regional energy resources. Seeing Soviet communism as a threat to the status quo, we actively supported kingdoms, dictators, strongmen and just about anyone else who was anti-Soviet and could maintain stability for us. We sought to replace any regional regime that looked as if it might add an element of instability as in the cases Iran and Syria, which were destabilized under the active interventionist policies of the Eisenhower administration, creating situations with which we are still dealing today.

American Regional Foreign Policy
Much of America has long believed that we have the best existing economic (market) and governmental (liberal democracy) systems. This belief has been sufficiently widespread that it has quite often been the cornerstone of our foreign policy. Coupled with an inherent American tendency to evangelize, we have often sought to spread our systems around the world and to combat those systems that were not compatible with it.

The problem with this approach is that it does not sufficiently take into account already existing, foreign, governmental, economic and belief structures. It never asks, as can most recently be seen in the neoconservative authorship and continuing support of our invasion of Iraq, whether the ground abroad is sufficiently fertile for the establishment of democracy.

This American exceptionalism, which is fine for us at home, is unfortunately coupled with a poor to nonexistent understanding of the way the rest of the world works and why it is not necessarily a reflection of America.

Unfortunately, we are not favorably viewed in the region. Over the past 65 years of our post-WWII involvement there, we have hardly endeared ourselves to local populations. We have everywhere supported despots and dictators against the wishes of their citizens. We have stationed foreign (US) troops against Muslim law on holy Muslim soil in Saudi Arabia. We are seen by regional locals to have been biased in our support of Israel. And now we are, again in contradiction of Muslim law, killing Muslims across the region.

As If that were not enough, the Bush administration hectored the Palestinian Authority to hold free elections in 2006. They did so and the result was the election of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The administration immediately refused to recognize Hamas, saying it was a “terrorist” organization. This proved beyond doubt to the citizens of the region that the United States was just another hypocrite. If elections we call for do not go our way, we don’t recognize their validity.

We are just now withdrawing from Iraq, still heavily engaged in Afghanistan and, if some would have their way, soon to be involved in Iran and maybe even Syria. And all of this without any real discussion of our own vital national interests or expectations for the region. Do we want to support monarchies across the region? Or, consistent with our Cold War policies, do we want to support any ruler or government that provides stability, irrespective of the manner in which it is provided? Do we want Democracy? How is that working out anywhere in the region? Iraq is problematical, as is Egypt where the military establishment owns a significant share of the economy and has a vested interest in the status quo.

The Middle East today
The unfortunate fact is that the region has virtually no experience with Liberal Democracy. Its history of non-governmental political organization is severely limited. The region is mired in tribalism, sectarianism, brutally imposed secularism or Islamic law, dictatorships and monarchies. None of these are steppingstones to Democratic governance. We have tribes almost everywhere, significant military power in Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran and Jordan, to name but a few and Islam everywhere.

In the most evolved post-Arab Spring states, Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia, “free and democratic elections” which must never be mistaken for the actual existence of Liberal Democracy, have brought Islamic parties to the forefront. That is to be expected, as the Islamic parties, even in Turkey where they were once marginalized, represent the only non-governmental political organizations that exist and have existed under pre-Arab Spring governance. They have the membership, organization and funding to outcompete all the opposition, including those on Tahrir Square who believe, without quite knowing what it really means, that they are seeking something called “democracy”

What they all are seeking, whatever they may be heard to say, is self-determination and if we wish to stay on the right side of whatever is to come in this important region, that is what we must support.

The preconditions required for the successful establishment of Democracy
Democracy doesn’t simply spring up, particularly in countries with little to no history of self-rule. It has certain preconditions. To be successful, it must have the active, unfettered participation of the people as citizens in politics and civil life. It requires national and regional tolerance of pluralism, a general and equal right to vote, free and fair elections, the rule of law, unbiased courts, a guarantee of basic human rights to every individual person vis-à-vis the state and its authorities as well as to all social groups, particularly religious institutions,

In addition, it requires a Constitution providing for the separation of powers (executive, legislative and judicial), freedom of speech, press and religion and, particularly, good governance which stresses the public interest and the absence of corruption.

How do these preconditions stack up against today’s regional realities? The answers may be found in the region’s sectarian, tribal and national realities most of which can be found in all of the region’s 21 countries.

In the sectarian world, Muslims tend to believe in and be content with Islam. There may be glaring deficiencies from our point of view, but by and large that view is not shared by Muslims. The Koran and its attendant writings, the Hadith and Shariya, provide the believer with a complete blueprint for life. An essentially content group of Muslim believers cannot be viewed as ripe for conversion to democracy as many of democracy’s basic tenets are diametrically opposed to the teachings of the Koran. Besides that, conversion attempts have been going on since the 11th century crusades and continue to this day with the Bush administration’s policy of bringing democracy to Islam. Muslims are used to us. Many call us the 21st century Crusaders.

Ongoing tribalism is another factor that inhibits receptivity to democracy and Tribalism has never not been a factor in a region where tribes have always been the basic building block of society. Tribalism exists throughout the Middle East and in its extremes, Afghanistan, for example, it brings with it an ingrained distrust of central governance and a drive to keep it as weak as possible.

In its subsequent state of evolution, tribalism supports ethnic alliances, essentially macro-tribal groupings. This can be observed in the Arab, Kurdish, Persian and Central Asian groupings that exist willy-nilly in the region. And thanks to the European colonial powers, these groups, which are only edgily compatible at best, have been corralled into “nations” which over the years have owed their existence to iron-fisted rule that forbad their disintegration. Hardly the underpinnings needed for liberal democracy.

A swift transition to democracy?
Almost all of our politicians, both past and present speak glowingly of a transition in the Middle East to “democracy”. However, there is nothing in past history or contemporary reality that could logically argue that the region is ready for such a transition. Unfortunately, when American politicians speak of “democracy” this way, they are lecturing a short attention span American audience that takes them to mean that we will see a “democratic” Middle East in the near future.

Both the Bush and Obama administrations speak thusly about Iraq, yet Iraq shows every sign at this moment of falling into what has been for many students of the area, predictable, protracted internecine strife. The most recent impediment to strife after Saddam, the US military, has now left, opening the country to very old antagonisms. Afghanistan does not meet any of the criteria for the future successful growth of democracy and we will probably have to make do with some form of Taliban governance.

In Tunisia and Morocco we see moderate Islamists winning elections. In Egypt, the moderate Muslim Brotherhood is running into the Egyptian military juggernaut, which because of its large holdings in the Egyptian economy, are vested in the status quo. Further, the fundamentalist Salafi Muslims are waiting in the wings. In Libya, none of the western powers that supported the struggle against Qaddafi wants to stay around. They have all left and Libya with its 140 tribes and tribal groupings and its old jealousies and rivalries, as it is likely heading for internal trouble. Syria will stop being a problem only after the current minority sect Alawite regime or the protestors are gone. There really is nothing but bloodshed in the offing, regardless of who “wins”. Retribution will likely be the name of the game.

It is an unfortunate fact that our military presence and activities in the region have not helped at all. When we face what are truly insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan, not terrorism as claimed by both the Obama and Bush administrations, we present local populations with impossible choices. They must choose between a foreign military force whose true motives are unclear to them and their own people who are fighting against the foreigners. As we are now seeing, there is little reason to support the foreigners and every reason to support their fellow citizens.

There is no magic democratic wand for the Middle East. The absolute best we can hope for are moderate Islamist regimes. The worst will be fundamentalist regimes of the type supported by the Saudi Salafis. We need to get the notion of a democratic Islam in the short term out of our heads and focus on supporting moderate Islamists. Only they have any possibility of successfully confronting Islamic extremists and ultimately evolving into liberal democracies. The timelines for that kind of change are likely to be measured in decades at best and centuries at worst.

In the interim, we might want to concentrate on proving to a skeptical Middle East and greater world that our systems work for us Americans, let alone anyone else. What has happened to that “Shining City upon a Hill”?

Posted in foreign policy, Middle East | Leave a Comment »

In Search of an American Intervention Policy

March 16, 2012 by Haviland Smith


What Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us and what Syria and Iran can teach us further is that American needs to have a robust debate on if, why, where and when we should be involved in future foreign interventions.

In 2001, solely as a result of the events of 9/11, the United States invaded Afghanistan.  There were some Americans who spoke out against that invasion, largely on moral grounds, but in the main, we understood why we were doing it and agreed with that invasion.

In the longer run, as is now becoming painfully clear to the average American, absent repressive governance, the bitterly tribal Afghanis are so resistant to any central government that they are unlikely to achieve any kind of unity.  The likely result is instability.

When we had wiped out Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, we shifted our aim to Iraq and for reasons still largely unknown to the American people, we invaded there.  In our rationale for that invasion, we painted Iraq as “a regime that developed and used weapons of mass destruction, that harbored and supported terrorists, committed outrageous human rights abuses, and defied the just demands of the United Nations and the world”.

None of those reasons passed muster with us.

Although most of our governmental and academic experts on the region said that would not work, the Bush administration implemented the plan.  Since then, we have seen no sign of ultimate success.  Sectarian and national differences within that country make unity illusory, as many experts told us in 2003.  How can we expect Sunni, Shia, Arab and Kurd to get together when they have never previously done so except when coerced?  The likely result is instability.

Our next Middle East adventure was in Libya where we became involved primarily with air support for the anti-Ghaddafi rebels.  In the case of Libya, we were ultimately “successful” in that the rebels did bring about the demise of Ghaddafi.  In the longer run, we are seeing the effect of centuries-old tribal realities – about 150 of them – which split the country and make non-coercive, central government extremely difficult, if not impossible.  The likely result is instability.

Now, the pressure is on here at home for us to “do something” in Syria.  “Do something” apparently ranges in the minds of Americans from Invasion, through air support, to the creation of “safe zones”, but the fact is that we really don’t know what to do.

In Syria sectarianism is at work.  It is a country ruled by a 12% minority Shiite government of Alawites, over the the 74% majority Sunnis.  Since its beginnings in 1963, it has not been a happy arrangement.  The people don’t like either the Baath Party or the Assad family.  Unfortunately, that’s about all they have in common.  There is no indication that those rebellious Syrians have anything much in common when it comes to what sort of post-Assad, post-Alawite government they would support.  Given the extent of anger on both sides, it is probably safe to assume that the losers in this ongoing

struggle will exit Syria in coffins.  There seems to be little hope for a triumph of either reason or humanity.  The likely result is instability.

And finally, let’s move on to Iran where American pro-war activists and the Israeli government are clambering for the invasion of a country which has not yet decided, according to the US and Israeli governments, whether or not to build nuclear weapons, where the Supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has referred to nuclear weapons as a sin and where, in 2005, he issued a fatwa forbidding their production, stockpiling and use.

Given the other salient realities of Iran and their unquestioned ability to harm our interests in the region, one has to wonder why we are so intent on an attack. In addition, there are current Iranian overtures for talks and the fact remains that any attack on Iran will be the only event that will unite the fractious and unhappy Iranians under its current leaders, which is certainly not in our interest.

The real issue here is whether or not Americans want to be involved in such activities at all and if we do, how will we decide where to intervene?  Is it in our national interest?  Should we involve ourselves in Syria, Iraq, or, as President Obama seems to wish, in Central Africa?

The American people have never had that discussion.  With a war-weary population and before we rush off to some new “worthy” intervention, the discussion simply has to take place.

Posted in Afghanistan, foreign policy, Iran, Iraq, Middle East, United States | Leave a Comment »

In the Middle East, history teaches us what not to do, over and over again

March 10, 2012 by Haviland Smith

First published in Harvard’s Nieman Watchdog

COMMENTARY | March 01, 2012

The only way to achieve our goals in the region is to relentlessly promote self-determination, support moderate Islamists — and not expect miracles, writes a former CIA station chief. Trying to impose our ways, as we should know by now, will only be counterproductive.

The national boundaries created in the Middle East by European colonial powers in the 18th and 19th Centuries ignored traditional, long-standing tribal, sectarian and national realities. They stand as examples of European indifference to issues that ultimately have created major difficulties in the region. Partly as a result of this indifference, Western activities are not favorably viewed in the region in this post-Arab Spring era.

Over the past 65 years of our post-WWII involvement there, America has hardly endeared itself to local populations. In striving for regional “stability”, we have everywhere supported brutal despots and dictators against the wishes of their citizens. We have stationed foreign (U.S.) troops against Muslim law on holy Muslim soil in Saudi Arabia. We are seen by regional locals to have been biased in our support of Israel. And now we are killing Muslims across the region.

Local populations generally do not support terrorists, but when we combat what are really insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan — not terrorism as claimed by both the Obama and Bush administrations — we present local populations with impossible choices. They must choose between a foreign military force whose true motives are suspect and their own people who are fighting against the foreigners. As we are now seeing, there is little reason to support the foreigners and every reason to support their fellow citizens.

As If that were not enough, for years the Bush administration hectored the Palestinian Authority to hold free elections. They finally, reluctantly did so in 2006 and the result was the election of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The administration immediately refused to recognize Hamas, saying it was a “terrorist” organization. This proved beyond doubt to the citizens of the region that the United States was just another self-centered hypocrite. If free elections promoted by us do not go our way, we don’t recognize their validity.

We further prove our bad intentions and insensitivities with Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, waterboarding, Koran burning and errant drone strikes.

The unfortunate fact is that the region has virtually no experience with liberal democracy. Its history of non-governmental political organization is severely limited. The region is mired in tribalism, sectarianism, brutally imposed secularism or Islamic law, dictatorships and monarchies. None of these are steppingstones to democratic governance. There are tribes almost everywhere, significant military forces in Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran and Jordan, to name but a few, and Islam everywhere.

What they all are seeking, whatever they may be heard to say, is self-determination and if we wish to stay on the right side of whatever is to come in this important region, self-determination is what we must support.

Democracy doesn’t simply spring up, particularly in countries with little to no history of self-rule. To be successful, democracy requires the active, unfettered participation of the people as citizens in politics and civil life. It requires national and regional tolerance of pluralism, a general and equal right to vote, free and fair elections, the rule of law, unbiased courts, a guarantee of basic human rights to every individual person vis-à-vis the state and its authorities as well as to all social groups, particularly religious institutions,

In addition, it requires a constitution providing for the separation of powers (executive, legislative and judicial), freedom of speech, press and religion and, particularly, good governance which stresses the public interest and the absence of corruption.

But there is no magic democratic wand for the Middle East. The absolute best we can hope for are moderate Islamist regimes. The worst will be fundamentalist regimes of the type sought by Salafis. We need to get the short-term notion of a democratic Islam out of our heads and focus on supporting moderate Islamists. Only they have any possibility of successfully confronting Islamic extremism and ultimately evolving toward liberal democracy in the long term.

In the interim, we might want to concentrate on proving to a skeptical Middle East and greater world that our democratic systems actually work here at home, let alone anywhere else.

Posted in foreign policy, Middle East | Leave a Comment »

Leaving Afghanistan

February 28, 2012 by Haviland Smith

Reasonably careful attention to the news media, shows that writers and talking heads are increasingly surprised that things are not going our way in the Middle East. Recently a number of commentators have expressed surprise that Iraq looks to be sliding toward chaos and indignation at the recent killings of some of our advisor/soldiers in Afghanistan.

We have now been in Afghanistan for over a decade. That is twice as long as we were involved in World War II – and longer than any foreign war in our history. We went to Afghanistan to redress the attack of 9/11. We then completely took our eyes off the ball and invaded Iraq, an act that may well turn out to be the greatest foreign policy gaff in the history of the United States.

We went into Afghanistan on the premise that we were fighting the Global War On Terror (GWOT) and in fairly short order we had completely eliminated Al Qaeda from the Afghan countryside. By 2002, GWOT/Afghanistan was all over. In 2003, we invaded Iraq, destroying whatever planning continuity we may have had for Afghanistan. And guess what happened. As time dragged on, the struggle in Afghanistan ceased being a counterterrorism program and became a counterinsurgency with Afghan people rising up against us. The Bush administration avoided acknowledging that. They purposefully continued to call it counterterrorism. It’s easier to get sympathy and support fighting terrorists than it is fighting insurgents.

The problem here is that, according to the US Army’s own experts, a counterinsurgency program requires 25 troops for every 1,000 indigenous residents, which would have meant a commitment of 850,000 US troops to effectively combat the Afghan insurgency. So, by 2011, ten years in, we were fighting an insurgency with a force that was one eighth the size required by the facts on the ground.

How did we manage to get to the point where we are so roundly disliked by the Afghans? A look back on our behaviors in Afghanistan show a pattern that clearly was not designed to win Afghan hearts and minds. The torture and abuse of Afghan prisoners at Bagram began in 2002 and came to public light in 2005. Helicopter and drone attacks have regularly caused collateral civilian damage. Afghans have seen American soldiers urinate on Afghan dead. And most recently, we have been burning Korans, which is an incredible sacrilege in Islam.

This is certainly not to say that we have purposefully committed these acts. Clearly, the haze of war, cultural ineptitude and plain old stupidity are co-responsible. What is fact, however, is that we are the foreigners in Afghanistan and we have been there for over a decade. The average Afghan, if he remembers at all, thinks we came to get rid of Al Qaida. And we did, by 2002 at the latest. So they ask, why have we stayed?

Are these American troops perhaps here for some other reason? Are they here as the new Crusaders to occupy Afghanistan? Are they here to bring us Afghans a new form of government – democracy, for example? If that is the case, we Afghans are uninterested. The point is that, having been given absolutely no good answers to their questions, and given the fact that Afghanistan has been invaded innumerable times in the past, they simply have to be suspicious of us and our motives. Even the roundly disliked Taliban is preferable to the foreign occupiers.

The Afghan people have never supported a strong central government. Quite the opposite, they are tribally and nationally diverse people. They are Pushtun, Tajik, Hazara, Uzbek, Amak, Turkmen, Baloch and many others. They have survived over the years by keeping power at home in their valley, being suspicious of everyone not in their tribe and keeping Kabul at arm’s length.

There is no news here. This is the way the Afghans have always been and may always be. What is sad is the fact that Americans who really understand Afghanistan have known this forever. In the process of getting mired down in Afghanistan, many of those experts spoke up and predicted quite accurately what the future held for the US in Afghanistan.

Of course, the problem is that our politicians didn’t listen to them. Do they ever? Did they on Iraq? They went ahead with their plans for their own internal domestic political reasons and in doing so, proved conclusively how wrong they were.

George W. Bush’s great Neoconservative Middle East experiment is drawing to an end, leaving a deeply fractured America, with trillions of dollars of debt wasted on military adventures we rationally never could have concluded in our favor.

 

Posted in Afghanistan, Military Polilcy, terrorism | Leave a Comment »

Attack Iran?

January 13, 2012 by Haviland Smith

Originally published in Harvard’s Nieman Watchdog

By Haviland Smith

It’s difficult not to notice that there is a growing crescendo here at home which appears to be encouraging the United States to attack Iran.  Backers of this campaign, at least until recently, have been limited to the Neoconservatives who would like us to invade everywhere and who got us into the Iraq invasion, parts of the Israeli government, and those American supporters of Israel who never question anything the Israelis do.

However, to the amazement of many who do follow this kind of story, the game changed late last year with an article in “Foreign Affairs” which purported to explain “Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option”.  And this from one of the most venerated, serious, foreign policy publications in the world!

So, what’s wrong with this notion of attacking Iran?  Perhaps it’s best to look at it strictly in terms of American national interests, because that is what US foreign policy is supposed to reflect, particularly in matters of war.

Even if Iran is actually in the process of developing a nuclear weapon, which, incidentally, they and the International Atomic Energy Agency both say they are not, how does that represent an existential threat to the United States?  The Iranians do not have the required rocketry to deliver it here.  Even if they did, the decision to do so would involve Iranian acceptance of the fact that the inevitable retaliatory strike would destroy most of Iran.  If you are among that group of Americans who think of the Iranians as ignorant ragheads, think again.  These are educated, intelligent, sophisticated people.  They may be annoying, but they are anything but suicidal.

Furthermore, irrespective of the exhortations of the current Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Netanyahu, the same is true for Israel, since Israel’s nuclear arsenal and delivery systems leave little to be desired in terms of their effectiveness.  Retaliation, either from Israel or the US, for a strike on Israel would essentially eliminate Iran and the Iranians know it.  Nothing we have learned since the Cold War has invalidated George Kennan’s “containment policy”.

The value of nuclear weapons in foreign policy remains valid only as long as those weapons are not used.  Once used, once the damage is done, they are irrelevant.  No one can say precisely what is likely to happen if we or the Israelis are somehow stupid enough to try a preemptive attack on Iran, but it is worth looking at the possibilities.

Iran presides over the 34-mile-wide straights of Hormuz and probably can shut them down for long enough to create economic chaos in the rest of the world.  Where the Iranians are not stupid enough to initiate nuclear war, they most certainly would retaliate conventionally against an attack on their own country.  Such an attack, originating from the West or Israel probably represents the only thing that could unite the Iranian people behind the Ayatollahs.  Shipping through the Straights carries 20% of the world’s crude oil.  Its denial to worldwide markets, particularly in these times of economic stress, would be catastrophic. How does gasoline in the range of $15-20 a gallon appeal?

Iran is the 18th largest country in the world.  It has a population that exceeds 77 million, a standing army of over 500,000 backed by an active reserve of over 600,000.  The military is well-equipped and well-trained.

Iran has Shiite connections throughout the Middle East.  They constitute 36.3% of entire regional population and 38.6% of the regional Muslim population.  The Shiite majority countries are Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Bahrain, homeport of the US Fifth Fleet.  Shiite Muslims constitute significant portions (20% or more) of the population in Lebanon, Yemen, Kuwait, Turkey, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

Through these Shiites, Iran has the potential to cause all kinds of trouble for us and our interests in the Middle East, most emphatically including our naval assets and troops in the region.  Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Mahdi army in Iraq and the Shiite majority in Bahrain represent only a partial list of the troubles Iran can cause us through the Shiite populations of the region.

Unless the US has some unknown, magical weapon to deploy against Iran that will prevent Iranian retaliation after a raid on their nuclear sites, it would appear that we suffer from a real tactical disadvantage in the Middle East when it comes to planning an attack on Iran.  Unfortunately for us and the rest of the world, that tactical disadvantage has almost limitless potential to morph into a strategic, worldwide, economic disaster.

An attack on Iran is a really bad bet, whether initiated by us or by the Israelis.

Posted in foreign policy, Iran, Israel/Palestine, United States | Leave a Comment »

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