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Alex Choy

Featured Geopolitics Print Article Russia Vladimir Putin

Putin’s Authoritarianism: Driven by Money

Annually, the Comparative Survey of Freedom evaluates nations’ political rights and civil liberties. Political rights are defined as how “people have a choice in determining the nature of the system and its leaders,” through free, fair, and frequent elections, while civil liberties are the “freedoms to develop views … apart from the state,” through the press, speech, and association. Together, these form the hallmarks of a democratic society.

Under the reformist Yeltsin administration, Russia was rated as “partly free.” However, under Putin, Russia regressed into authoritarianism, as the Kremlin manipulated elections, eliminated countervailing forces by centralizing power around the executive, and instilled fear in the press corps. While some attribute this regression to Putin’s KGB past, I assert that the driving force behind the replacement of competitive democracy with what is termed sovereign democracy is business, as he realizes that in the modern age, there can be no lasting power without wealth — authoritarianism is a means to secure that end.

According to Professor Robert Dahl of Yale University, large-scale democracy requires that the people elect a government through free, fair, and frequent elections; there must be freedom of the press, speech, and association; and all adults must be allowed to vote. Comparing these criteria to the situation on the ground, by consulting quantitative and qualitative evidence compiled by Professor Daniel Treisman of the University of California, Los Angeles, will allow for a nuanced assessment of Russia’s regression.

Free and fair elections are characterized by “certain procedures [and] uncertain outcomes.” Under Yeltsin, this was largely the case as election results reflected a plurality of political views. For instance, during the 1995 parliamentary elections, the anti-Yeltsin Communists placed first, while the Yeltsin-backed party of power lagged in third. In contrast, to keep his party of power, United Russia (UR), dominant, Putin manipulates electoral procedures by silencing troublesome independent constituencies and small opposition parties. Accordingly, consulting Triesman’s research, one observes that in 2007, electoral rules were rewritten, raising the threshold for representation from 5 to 7% and eliminating single-member constituencies by switching to a pure proportional representation system. Furthermore, various opposition candidates were “struck from the ballot on technicalities or invented pretexts.” Only candidates which the Kremlin knows are weak, and will acquiesce, are allowed to run.

Manipulation encompasses not only institutional factors but also the deliberate misreporting of results. Analyzing a graph of the results of the 2011 legislative election by polling station, one would expect to see a relatively normal distribution from all parties. While this pattern is present for the opposition, Putin’s UR shows a fat right tail, and spikes repeatedly at even numbers, such as at 85, 90, and 95% of votes. It is almost as if polling stations were ordered to report certain numbers by some higher authority, ostensibly by Putin himself. While this evidence is circumstantial, it does provide strong evidence of some kind of manipulation, such as ballot stuffing, which might account for the spikes. As a result, while frequent, Russia’s elections are now anything but free or fair, as the party in power operates on an uneven playing field.

Not only has Putin manipulated elections, but he has degraded countervailing forces by centralizing decision-making powers within the executive branch rather than with the (ostensibly) democratically elected legislature. This phenomenon is perhaps most prominently illustrated by the role that the Presidential Administration (PA) — composed of unelected appointees, has as the “command center from which the Kremlin manages politics.” For instance, in 1999, the PA, together with oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Gleb Pavlovsky, created UR, merging Unity with another pro-Putin bloc to form a pro-Putin majority in the Duma. In 2007, PA officials formed A Just Russia (JR), UR’s ‘opposition party, to give off the illusion of plurality and political competition. While JR officially positions itself to the left of UR, it “vote[s] reliably with [Putin] on key issues.”

Consequently, both the frequency of debate and the frequency of vetoes within the Duma have decreased significantly under Putin. Under Yeltsin, “initiatives ping-ponged” in a pluralistic environment of competitive politics. However, the emergence of a pro-Putin majority has since stifled debate, with the former chairman of the Duma, Boris Gryzlov, asserting that the Duma is “not a venue to hold political battles.” As a result, Putin-sponsored bills “become law very quickly” without deliberation or veto. Therefore, while democracies must have elected legislatures that make the laws, but in Russia, “legislation is [no longer] made in the Duma, but by the Kremlin.”

Freedom of speech and, by extension, an independent press are essential because citizens cannot make informed decisions while voting if the government controls all information sources. Under Yeltsin, the press could be considered “generally free.” However, Putin initiated state takeovers of major news outlets, threatening their owners with jail if they did not acquiesce. Aside from major outlets, independent journalists were also intimidated. For example, journalists were handed questions in advance during press conferences and were threatened if they deviated from the script. To make matters worse, several journalists critical of the Kremlin, such as Anna Politkovskaya, have been killed in alleged contract hits. Rather than to “foster conditions favorable for healthy democratic competition,” it is clear that Putin’s Russia has regressed into authoritarianism. But why?

Many attribute this trend to Putin’s nostalgia for his Soviet KGB past, claiming that his goals were always to “roll back the freedoms established by his predecessor [and] to restore the power of the security services.” While there is quantitative evidence for this explanation — by 2002, 33% of government ministers were siloviki (strongmen), this ‘Chekist’ explanation falls short when confronted with the fact that Putin uses the security services as a means to an end, and that siloviki in Putin’s inner circle are not influential because of their formal positions within the security services, but because “they [benefit] from close personal ties to Putin,” as they are his friends. In reality, while Putin is cozy with the Federal Security Service (FSB), he cannot be considered a Chekist in the traditional sense, given his pro-business attitudes, early economic liberalism, careful political maneuvering, and attempts to manipulate election results for appearance’s sake. A true Chekist, primarily concerned with maintaining order with an iron fist, would not bother with such circumspection. So, if Putin is not driven by his KGB past, what explains this trend?

In the wake of privatization during the 1990s, Putin recognized that “in the modern world, there could be no power without” wealth, since one needs to be able to “spend more than one’s enemies” to remain on top. Therefore, the explanation for Russia’s regression can be found in Putin and his associates’ state-owned business ventures such as Rosneft, and specifically the giant state-owned gas company Gazprom, where he serves as an unofficial but de-facto CEO.

Reportedly, for Putin, Gazprom is a personal obsession. He has memorized the details of the company’s accounts and has personally approved all corporate appointments down to the deputy level — even going over the head of Gazprom’s actual CEO in some cases. While there is no direct evidence that Putin owns any part of these companies, his close friends, many of them siloviki billionaires, do, and therefore, by proxy, it can be inferred so does he to an extent. As Treisman asserts, Putin and his circle pretend to be democratic … [retaining] formal institutions” while subverting them to “preserve their power and enrich themselves.” Subsequently, through a lens of business, Russia’s authoritarianism can be contextualized.

The Yukos affair sheds light on why Putin engages in procedural manipulation and has centralized power. When he first entered office, Putin was confronted with the aftermath of Yeltsin’s privatization — a class of wealthy oligarchs, who in their largesse thought they could bend the legislature to favor their corporate interests. In the Duma, these oligarchs financed campaigns and consequently ‘owned’ parliament members once elected. For instance, in 2003, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, owner and CEO of Yukos, the then-largest Russian oil company and Gazprom competitor, had “cultivated a large faction of deputies in parliament—more than one hundred … by some estimates.” Khodorkovsky then used this influence to rewrite proposed laws regarding the mining of hydrocarbons to benefit Yukos while sapping profits from state-owned competitors such as Gazprom and Rosneft and undermining Putin’s ability to shape policy through UR. Retaliating utilizing his siloviki connections, Putin threw Khodorkovsky in jail, and Yukos was nationalized.

Following this episode, it crystalizes why Putin would have subsequently attempted to exercise greater control over the Duma — by cementing a sycophantic UR majority, silencing opponents and independents, and centralizing power around himself and his unelected appointees in the PA to prevent repeat occurrences. In addition, despite promising that under his administration, the “class of oligarchs [would] cease to exist,” the nationalization of Yukos and other firms created a new class of super-wealthy oligarchs, “drawn … from the circle of Putin’s close friends.”

In this environment, Putin realizes that to stay in power, the “vicissitudes of Russian politics” necessitate wealth, and wealth necessitates authoritarian control over all facets of the political system and news media to guarantee it. For example, Gazprom was able to use its immense wealth to branch out into the media business, “buying various publications and taking over [NTV], which muted its criticism of the Kremlin” and helped to stifle internal dissent.

Consequently, why even hold elections and then manipulate results? Would it be more conducive for business to do away with democratic institutions completely?

The answer is no.

In 1999, 68% of Putin voters supported the idea of democracy. Furthermore, after the 2007 presidential election where power was ‘castled’ to Medvedev, Prime Minister Putin announced that “Russia is a country which has achieved democracy thanks to the will of its own people … and it will decide by itself” how democracy will be achieved. Accordingly, Putin plays the game to retain domestic legitimacy in line with managed sovereign democracy, which asserts that Russia is ‘democratic’ but in the face of aforementioned vicissitudes, reserves the right to control how democracy is carried out, to ensure control over “strategically important sectors” of the economy. In essence, control over the energy sector.

Obviously, there are stark differences between the Kremlin’s discourse and reality. The Russian people recognize this — but evidently believe strongly in their country’s democratic potential. Therefore, if Putin were to switch to a ‘harder’ form of authoritarianism, and say, abolish elections — the resultant massive upheaval would threaten the business climate, and resultantly, the performance of Gazprom and Yukos. Observe the recent civil unrest in Moscow over the widening “economic gap between the elite and ordinary people.” While such events only caused a slight drop in Gazprom stock prices, which quickly rebounded, they are merely a taste of the disastrous consequences that could happen. As a result, when practicing ‘soft’ authoritarianism, Putin can intimidate the opposition to secure his wealth and Russian state-owned enterprises’ prosperity, while maintaining outward appearances to appease both domestic and foreign actors.

To conclude, under Putin, Russia has regressed into authoritarianism, which can be explained by Putin’s realization that there can be no power without personal wealth. To guarantee that wealth necessitates implementing authoritarian measures — given the uncertainty of Russian politics and economics. Accordingly, the Kremlin has manipulated elections, eliminated countervailing forces by centralizing power, and instilled fear in the press corps. However, it has not gone so far as to eliminate democratic institutions and continues to hold elections based on sovereign democracy, given domestic popular support for democratic principles.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.

September 1, 2021 0 comment

Featured Geopolitics Middle East Security and Conflict Terrorism United States

With a Nuclear Iran, Does the Jihadi Threat Become Less Salient? A Defensive Realist Perspective.

written by Alex Choy

Note: The purpose of this article is not to discount the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran — indeed, a Middle East devoid of a nuclear security spiral is ideal, and the United States should continue to advocate for denuclearization; but rather, to examine how stability could be formed between Iran and Israel — and why in such a case, non-Iranian backed jihadist groups such as ISIL, would remain the primary threat to regional security, due to gaps in international relations academia.

On January 7, 2020, following the assassination of Iranian General Qassim Suleimani by the United States, Iran launched ballistic missiles at two military bases housing American troops. The New York Times speculated that the missiles were “a deliberate attempt by Iran to claim it had responded, but without provoking” the United States. As evidenced by this behavior, despite its bellicose threats against freedom, Iran remains a rational state actor. As a result, policymakers can contextualize its policies within dominant and deeply institutionalized international relations (IR) paradigms such as realism and its rational actor assumption.

On the other hand, the acts of non-state jihadist groups are unpredictable to policymakers because they are given secondary importance within these traditional schools of thought.

Subsequently, what results is a disconnect between theory and jihadi practice, producing oxymoronic behavior that many experts have deemed “irrationally rational.” While alternative IR theories may help contextualize their motivations, they have not yet fully permeated into mainstream discourse, and jihadism fueled by extremist ideology, regardless of context, remains challenging to confront.

Therefore, I argue that even though jihadist groups such as ISIL do not possess the sheer destructive potential of a nuclear Iran — their incompatibility with realism and resultant unpredictability; makes them a greater threat to regional security than Iran’s nuclear program, which can be interpreted as stability-searching through a lens of defensive realism.

Iran’s nuclear program was born amidst the US-led ‘Atoms for Peace’ initiative, designed to promote peaceful nuclear development. However, with the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Western threat perception regarding Iran’s ‘peaceful’ nuclear intentions skyrocketed. In a recent assessment, an alarmed International Atomic Energy Agency reported that “Iran may have enough low enriched uranium to produce … a second nuclear weapon …” However, Iranian foreign policy is not made by so-called irrational, mad mullahs “hell-bent … to create another Holocaust,” as neoconservative pundits such as John Bolton propose, but by “perfectly sane ayatollahs who want to survive.” Therefore, although Iran engages in combative rhetoric against its neighbor Israel, threatening to ‘wipe it off the map’, it remains a rational actor, and as defensive realism will elucidate — shows “no propensity for self-destruction.”

According to leading defensive realist Kenneth Waltz, states, as security maximizers tend to preserve the existing balance of power by adopting what they perceive to be defensive measures as a form of self-help behavior. They prefer maintaining the status quo because the benefits of expansion are seldom worth the costs. Accordingly, Waltz believes that Iran’s alleged nuclear capabilities, or efforts to gain capability, are not offensive by nature but rather defensive as part of a long-term effort to restore the status quo disrupted by Israeli nuclear ascension. Since the 1967 Six-Day War, with significant financial support from the West, Israel has developed a nuclear triad currently possessing between 75-400 warheads. As a result of its nuclear preponderance, Israel has been able to act with impunity, most recently assassinating a top Iranian nuclear scientist, an action that will likely engender Iranian retaliation.

Following this logic, if a virtual Israeli nuclear monopoly generates instability, then Iran’s ascendence to the nuclear playing field should restore the status quo and ensure stability — albeit through a security dilemma of mutually assured destruction.

Buttressing this assertion is Robert Jervis’ expansion on defensive realism: Offense-Defense Theory, which measures states’ ability to “do well by attacking relative to defending.” Consequently, the world is perceived by states as either offensive or defensive-dominant, when offensive and defensive capabilities are indistinguishable.

Accordingly, given the power imbalance in its favor, the Middle East is currently offensive-dominant as perceived by Israel. In such a world, an emboldened Israel assumes an offensive posture, and as a result, it is doubly dangerous due to the heightened risk of misperception, which might compel Iran to preempt any Israeli action. On the other hand, according to this theory, Iran, which currently views its environment as lending to the defense, reasons that if it gains nuclear weapons, at least enough to mount a successful second-strike, both it and Israel will perceive the world as defensive-dominant, experience deterrence, and experience regional stability, due to the risk of mutually assured destruction.

Subsequently, while Iran’s actions can be interpreted as stability-searching, neorealists do not give much credence to non-state actors, and as a result, are; as acknowledged by leading realist John Mearsheimer — unprepared to contextualize what they deem the ‘irrationally rational’ actions of globally networked jihadist groups such as ISIL, who view all states as apostates — including Iran.

Addressing jihadist behavior’s supposed rationality, such a characterization finds its roots within the rational actor model, where terrorist groups are deemed to be politically motivated unitary actors who undergo a cost-benefit calculus (like states) to maximize political utility. While this is true to an extent, groups like ISIL represent new terrorism, characterized by: “a substantial departure from rationality” at the individual level while remaining strategically rational, hence the description ‘irrational rationality’. In other words, jihadi terrorism “may … be rational [in the sense of serving the political goals of] … terrorist organizations … but that does not make it rational from the viewpoint of the [relatively autonomous] individual recruits.”

This usurpation of the rational actor assumption confounds policymakers, who have historically relied on realism to shape their understanding of world dynamics.

For instance, in the aftermath of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, many realists and liberals (who similarly subscribe to the rational actor model) questioned why aspiring ‘state’ ISIL would take such a large risk by aggravating “one of the more militarily aggressive Western powers … potentially [provoking] a massive retaliatory response?”

While such attacks might be interpreted as a costly political signal at the strategic level, at the individual level, where they are actually planned and executed, motivations prove to be overwhelmingly ideological. For instance, jihadis are fed a prophecy that as faithful Muslims seeking salvation, they will fight and kill infidels “whose defeat … will initiate the countdown to the apocalypse.” The fact that such an ideological explanation is constructivist and does not conform with either the rational actor or unitary actor assumption can explain why existing counterterrorism strategies are counterproductive and why jihadism is so resilient.

Existing counterterrorism doctrine created by realists and liberals emphasizes leadership decapitation, a misguided strategy that further legitimizes jihadists’ radical conceptions, thus contributing to further regional destabilization. Because policymakers perceive jihadist groups as hierarchical unitary actors similar to states, they reason that if prominent figures are assassinated, then the remainders of their organizations will wither. However, despite efforts at institutionalization at core levels, the fact remains that global jihadist groups, such as ISIL, remain fanatical terrorist networks predicated upon ideological motivations, and consequently “unlike a hierarchy, cannot be destroyed by decapitation” given their extensive peripheries.

Having been inundated in zero-sum ideological rhetoric, jihadist cells exhibit a lack of formality, operating relatively “independently of each other, and … [seldomly] report to a central headquarters or single leader for [explicit] direction.” Therefore, their recruits are parochially motivated to continue their missions autonomously, even in the absence of a higher command authority that might have exercised a modicum of restraint.

This phenomenon can be observed following the killing of ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, where despite his death, his radical ideologies persisted and only increased his adherents’ fanaticism regarding apocalyptic prophecies; while rebuffing “advice from [new] central leadership.” This lack of formalization increases uncertainty, which in turn produces organizational instability following a leadership decapitation event. This resultant instability counterproductively threatens regional security through unpredictable and ever-increasing brazen attacks.

In conclusion, Iran is a rational state actor, and policymakers can interpret its nuclear aspirations as stability-searching through a lens of defensive realism. In contrast, ‘irrationally rational’ jihadist groups such as ISIL remain unpredictable at individual levels when analyzed through deeply institutionalized international relations theories due to a disconnect between the rational actor assumption that shapes policy and jihadi reality. Therefore, compared to Iran: a rational actor whose actions can — to a degree, be anticipated as defensive; ideologically motivated, ‘irrationally rational’ jihadists pose a greater risk to regional security simply because policymakers are unprepared to contextualize, and therefore preempt their behavior.

As a result, the existence of a nuclear Iran (alongside a nuclear Israel), does not relegate jihadism to the periphery in the context of Middle Eastern politics — despite ISIL’s recent fall from grace. Instead, policymakers must remain wary of ISIL’s resurgence, which would prove doubly dangerous for all states involved.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.

August 1, 2021 0 comment

Featured Geopolitics History Israel Middle East Palestine Security and Conflict Territorial disputes

Destructive Ambiguity: The Failure of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process

written by Alex Choy

“While … ambiguity may have motivated extremist contingents on both sides to acquiesce, intractable issues were kicked like a can down the road.”

Nearly three decades have elapsed since the signing of the Oslo Accords by Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), yet peace continues to elude the region. The Accords, initially praised as a monumental breakthrough, resulted in mutual PLO-Israeli recognition of each other’s legitimacy – and were intended to serve as a framework for peace that would see the PLO renounce terrorism and affirm Israel’s existence. Accordingly, an interim Palestinian Authority (PA), would be established to govern contested territories for five years before an eventual two-state solution.

While the negotiating climate was initially optimistic, subsequent treaty violations and the Second Intifada have caused a near-complete breakdown in negotiations. Therefore, while I hold treaty violations culpable for stymieing the peace process, I argue that a deeper problem facilitates them: the constructive ambiguity of open-ended agreements which allow certain factions to pay mere lip service to compromise; pursuing instead domestically appealing outcomes on intractable issues such as settlements and ‘the right of return’, or by appeasing extremist factions – all at the expense of mutual trust.

Intractable issues in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict center around the biblically significant and contested Gaza Strip, West Bank, and East Jerusalem. Previously occupied by Jordan and Egypt post-Palestinian Mandate, Israel has occupied these territories since the 1967 Six-Day War, seeing significant influxes of Jewish migrants to so-called ‘settlements’, and reciprocally, significant outflows of Palestinian refugees into surrounding Arab nations. Consequently, the PLO consistently advocated for an end to Israeli occupation from all the territories, and the ‘the right of return’ of refugees under the authority of Security Council resolutions 237 and 338. However, Israel interprets its obligations under these resolutions differently, and maintains that the return of refugees is not explicitly a right, but limited return could potentially be part of a long-term peace deal.

Therefore, before a sustained peace, these intractable issues must be resolved through compromise. To accomplish this, the strategy chosen by diplomats was constructive ambiguity: the deliberate use of ambiguous language when negotiating intractable issues. Used successfully in the past to negotiate Security Council Resolution 242 between Egypt and Israel – proponents reasoned that such a strategy could advance both PLO and Israeli interests by enabling each party to claim concessions, thus achieving an interim conclusion of sorts on intractable issues. In short, constructive ambiguity “is about postponing hard choices.” Accordingly, the negotiating text was then portrayed as an interim ‘framework’ for peace, based on the hope that mutual trust could be fostered gradually through reciprocated conciliatory initiatives.

Nonetheless, amid ambiguities, one critical factor remains steadfast: “For a framework agreement to be credible, it must not only mention the core issues but actually identify how each issue is to be resolved.”

However, Oslo I, which produced The Declaration on Principles (DOP), was “conspicuously silent about the form the permanent status arrangements [would] take.” Its full name, The Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, is fitting, because only two of the treaty’s seventeen articles even hint at a permanent settlement.

The first, Article I, proposes “a permanent settlement based on Security Council resolutions 242 and 338” as the desired endstate of negotiations. Given pre-existing disagreements over interpreting these already ambiguous UN resolutions, because the DOP does not even bother to put forth a definitive interpretation, its vagueness is thereby compounded twofold. The second, Article V, proposes ‘permanent status negotiations’ regarding the aforementioned intractable issues, to be held on a date to be later specified. Therefore, while the DOP’s ambiguity may have motivated extremist contingents on both sides to acquiesce, intractable issues were kicked like a can down the road. Subsequently, this lack of specificity invited leaders on both sides to “interpret the agreements … in a manner that was convenient for them – even if this meant that they would be moving in opposite directions.”

For example, Prime Minister Rabin promised his constituents that “the borders of the State of Israel, during [a] permanent solution, [would] be beyond the lines which existed before the Six-Day War.” Operating based on its victory in 1967, Israel approached subsequent negotiations under the belief that an eventual settlement would entail the retention of East Jerusalem and Palestinian concessions regarding claims to the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On the other hand, the PLO believed that they were negotiating through a pre-1948 lens, and according to Chairman Arafat, expected nothing less than “the dismantlement of occupation and the complete withdrawal of occupation troops from [Palestinian] land, … holy places and holy Jerusalem.”

Furthermore, the two parties maintained their uncompromising positions on the aforementioned ‘right of return,’ and Israel continued to increase its settler population in the West Bank, albeit at a slower pace during 1995-96. Consequently, the sheer incompatibility of their opposing positions, which were allowed to solidify during the ambiguous interim period, only strengthened unrealistic expectations among extremist factions, cementing mutual distrust and divergence from the spirit of compromise.

Former Israeli Labor Party politician Yossi Beilin, suspects that the interim solution was created “so that a permanent agreement would never be reached … [before] another round of elections in Israel, which would allow extremists from both sides to thwart” the peace process. His premonitions materialized with Rabin’s assassination by an ultranationalist and the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, a right-wing Likud politician in 1996. Under Netanyahu, Israeli deviations from the DOP’s object and purpose, increased in latitude, given the Likud’s uncompromising stance on the intractable issues.

For instance, Netanyahu lifted the partial freeze on settlement building in the West Bank and authorized the opening of an ancient tunnel that led to the Western Wall in Jerusalem, which was interpreted by Palestinians as “a declaration of war on the peace process.” Reciprocally, the inability, or rather, unwillingness, of Arafat to wrangle extremist Hamas resulted in numerous terrorist attacks in response to perceived Israeli provocations.

Later that year, tensions came to a head when Likud politician, Ariel Sharon, visited the religiously sacred Temple Mount, also known as the Haram al-Sharif, which is claimed by both Jews and Muslims. As Sharon asserted Israel’s sovereignty over the holy site, he was met with violence and condemnation by Palestinians, who labeled the incident as yet another Israeli provocation to “kill the peace.” Subsequently, the violence, which became known as the Second Intifada, only escalated with the brutal retaliatory killings of two Israeli Defense Force (IDF) soldiers. In turn, the killings were met with overwhelming force by the IDF, who reoccupied territories that they had previously vacated during redeployment five years earlier.

As a result, no progress was made at the Taba Summit: a last-ditch effort to broker mutual concessions in July 2000, and when Sharon was elected Prime Minister in 2001, he did not resume negotiations – given the extent that mutual trust had deteriorated. Furthermore, with Arafat’s death in 2005 and Hamas’ ascendence within the PA to fill the vacuum, negotiations have since reached a diplomatic impasse that remains unresolved.

In summation, while constructive ambiguity was needed to bring parties to the bargaining table, it proved destructive rather than constructive – and has since stymied the resolution of intractable issues by empowering factions to pursue unilateral interests, rather than compromise.

Therefore, instead of gradually building mutual trust, the Oslo Peace Process eroded it. Even before the Second Intifada, the Israelis did not believe that Arafat was capable of abandoning his militant origins, due to Hamas terrorist attacks, and the Palestinians doubted Israeli sincerity due to Likud hardliners. Therefore, for future negotiations to be successful, parties must approach negotiations wholeheartedly, ready to make specific concessions on the spot that are spelled out explicitly in binding legal text.

Ambiguity over intractable issues, while convenient in the short term to give the illusion of progress, merely enables extremist factions in their efforts to topple the entire house of diplomatic cards – thereby creating a larger, and more complicated mess to further alienate parties.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.

April 27, 2021 0 comment

Middle East Military National Security Security and Conflict Terrorism United States

Hoodwinked: How the Bush Administration Deceived the American Public

written by Alex Choy

“Let’s keep in mind the fact that this war’s going to happen regardless of what [CURVEBALL] said or didn’t say. The Powers That Be probably aren’t terribly interested in whether [he] knows what he’s talking about.”

In 2003, the United States invaded Iraq on the pretext of preventing Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from proliferating and distributing weapons of mass destruction (WMD). However, no evidence of a WMD program was ever found, resulting in national controversy. To quell negative public opinion, the Republican Bush Administration commissioned Judge Lawrence Silberman and Senator Charles Robb, who were also Republicans, to form the Silberman-Robb Commission (SRC) to investigate why an Iraqi WMD program was purported to exist. The SRC, along with the Republican-majority “Phase I” Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) investigation, placed the blame squarely on the intelligence community.

However, with the release of additional archival documents such as the SSCI’s “Phase II” investigative report, a declassified Department of Defense (DoD) memorandum and drafts of a CIA White Paper, there is now empirical evidence that the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence ex-post-facto to justify an invasion of Iraq, and that it may have gone even one step further by attempting to influence postwar investigations in order to obfuscate its complicity.

Prior to the SRC, as a result of the United Nations’ (UN) efforts to monitor Iraqi disarmament post-Gulf War, Americans already possessed a keen awareness of Saddam’s penchant for WMD. The UN defines WMD as nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. This article is concerned with the latter two. During its investigations, the UN discovered that Saddam had fired rockets “containing botulinum toxin, anthrax simulant, and aflatoxin,” and had utilized chemical nerve agents against the Kurds during the Iran-Iraq War. Furthermore, as illustrated by a 1997 New York Times article that discussed Saddam’s lack of cooperation with UN weapons inspectors, it was widely rumored that Iraqi factories which supposedly produced household goods were being used to proliferate WMD in violation of UN Security Council Resolutions. In 2003, these suspicions came to fruition when Secretary of State Colin Powell proclaimed to the UN that he had ‘credible’ evidence sourced from CURVEBALL, an Iraqi scientist turned informant, that Saddam had resumed WMD production. Powell’s costly signal, and the decade-long schema buildup that preceded it, hoodwinked many American citizens into believing that the threat of Iraqi WMD was credible.

Made publicly available by the Bush Administration, the SRC had concluded that the purported existence of Iraqi WMD proliferation was a major intelligence failure. According to their report, not only was the intelligence community unable to collect ‘good’ intelligence but it “failed to convey to policymakers … information casting serious doubt” regarding CURVEBALL’s reliability before Secretary Powell crossed the Rubicon and placed American credibility on the line.

According to the SRC, the intelligence community’s failure to do so was because of their tendency to promote intelligence in line with pre-existing theories and, consequently, discredit intelligence that contained contradictory information. Interestingly, the SRC also reported that they found no evidence that the intelligence community had attempted to politicize, or in other words, change its analytical judgments on intelligence in response to political pressure. Working off of this explanation, the SRC reasoned that the intelligence community’s failure to notify Secretary Powell, if not politically motivated, was perhaps an attempt to maintain cognitive consistency. Nevertheless, it is essential to realize that while the SRC was commissioned to uncover the ‘truth’ as to why an Iraqi WMD threat was purported, its investigation was not comprehensive, because it was “not authorized [by the Bush Administration] to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received.”

The “Phase I” SSCI report, which was compiled during a Senate Republican majority, largely corroborated the SRC’s findings through oral records and internal emails to and from a CIA whistleblower who was the only American intelligence official ever to have physical contact with CURVEBALL. According to the whistleblower, he had serious concerns about CURVEBALL’s reliability, and as a result, had significant reservations with the Bush Administration using his intelligence as the backbone for an American claim regarding Iraqi WMD. However, when he attempted to bring his concerns to policymakers, his supervisors in the intelligence community were dismissive, replying in an email: “Let’s keep in mind the fact that this war’s going to happen regardless of what [CURVEBALL] said or didn’t say. The Powers That Be probably aren’t terribly interested in whether [he] knows what he’s talking about.” While many Democrats took this as evidence of politicization, the Republican-majority SSCI concluded the contrary, and claimed that “customization of [intelligence] analysis is the essence of the professional practice, not a defilement of it (i.e., politicization).” As a result, while the “Phase One” SSCI report did vaguely allude to external influences on prewar intelligence assessments, it still attributes fault solely to the intelligence community, thereby perpetuating the facade of intelligence community negligence and policymaker innocence.

On the other hand, the 2008 “Phase II” SSCI report, compiled during the Obama Administration, and a Senate Democrat majority, challenged the findings of both the SRC and “Phase I” SSCI report, by illustrating how the Bush Administration made claims regarding Iraqi WMD that were not substantiated by intelligence. Up to this point, even though the findings of the SRC had been questioned extensively by independent journalists such as Thomas Ricks in his book Fiasco, such claims were based largely on un-cited oral reports, instead of official documentation. The 2008 SSCI Report concluded that Bush Administration claims of Iraqi WMD “portrayed the intelligence as more certain than it was, and did not convey [in its public statements] the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community.” Therefore, the Bush Administration was guilty of manipulating intelligence to fit its Munich Script narrative of Saddam as an unappeasable warmonger who was hell-bent on unleashing WMD on the West.

For instance, it was determined by the “Phase II” SSCI, that statements made by the Bush Administration in 2003 regarding Saddam’s intent to give WMD to al-Qaeda, contradicted the intelligence that had been conveyed to them. The SSCI did so by comparing the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) with several Bush Administration public statements regarding Iraqi WMD. Prepared for the Bush Administration by the intelligence community, the NIE had asserted that Saddam did not have nuclear weapons and was unwilling to conduct terrorist attacks on the US in the fear that “doing so would give the US a stronger case for war.” Therefore, Bush Administration claims to the contrary, were unsubstantiated. In addition, regarding Secretary Powell’s speech to the UN, while Powell had asserted to the international community that “most US experts” believed that the aluminum tubes reported by CURVEBALL were for nuclear weapons, intelligence experts within the Department of State and Department of Energy were found to have repeatedly emphasized to the Bush Administration that they were “not clearly linked to a nuclear” use. Therefore, the “Phase II” SSCI was able to officially establish that the Bush Administration did have the necessary intelligence required not to go to war with Iraq over WMD, but deliberately went beyond that intelligence in public statements.

Furthermore, by comparing a recently declassified Office of the Undersecretary of the DoD for Policy (OUSDP) memorandum, to a draft of a CIA White Paper on Iraqi WMD that was a predecessor to the 2002 NIE, there is now evidence that not only did the Bush Administration ‘go beyond’ the available intelligence, but it actually politicized it. Comments made in the OUSDP memorandum match up with alterations on the White Paper drafts, suggesting that intelligence assessments were rewritten to favor a case for Iraqi WMD.

Bureaucratic politics, and the OUSDP’s status as an Executive Branch department, suggest that the White Paper was rewritten to avoid antagonizing the Bush Administration, which was inundated by the Munich Script view of Saddam. For example, the first draft of the White Paper, released in July 2002, does not include any mention of the aluminum tubes purported to be nuclear in nature, perhaps because the CIA determined CURVEBALL, who had provided the intelligence, to be unreliable. However, the OUSDP memorandum dated September 2002, does include the assessment that aluminum tubes were “to be used for the construction of high-speed centrifuges for uranium gas enrichment.” Subsequently, the final draft of the White Paper, released in October 2002, also makes a note of said aluminum tubes, commenting that “Iraq’s aggressive attempts to obtain [them were] of significant concern.” Therefore, while the 2008 SSCI determined that Bush Administration WMD claims were ‘somewhat’ substantiated by the final drafts of intelligence products, the recent discovery of the OUSDP memorandum and CIA White Papers begets the question:

How much of the intelligence was manipulated a priori and ex-post-facto to conform with Bush Administration narratives?

Finally, a more in-depth analysis of the addendums to the “Phase I” SSCI Report, when combined with the evidence above, suggests Bush Administration efforts to manipulate and obfuscate the postwar investigation by exerting political pressure. After the “Phase I” SSCI corroborated the SRC’s findings, SSCI Democrats and intelligence officials accused the SSCI Republican majority of prevaricating the investigation to help obfuscate Bush Administration culpability. In her statement, Senator Diane Feinstein asserted that the SSCI did not “acknowledge that the intelligence estimates were shaped by the Administration.” Subsequently, in her opinion, the issue of Bush Administration involvement would require additional investigation; sentiments which resulted in the 2008 “Phase II” SSCI.Similarly, Senator Richard Durbin considered both the SRC and “Phase I” SSCI report to be incomplete, citing that the “responsibility for problems related to prewar intelligence … should not be confined to … the intelligence community, but to … the White House.”

Given his dissatisfaction with the “Phase I” SSCI investigation, Durbin emphasized that “nor should the intelligence oversight committees of the Congress, which are supposed to scrutinize intelligence analysis as part of their oversight mandate, be excluded from criticism.”To strengthen his argument, Durbin enlisted the opinion of former CIA Deputy Director Richard Kerr, who questioned: “what did [Senate Republicans] do to systematically look and see if … the subjects [of their investigation] were appropriate?”Therefore, according to Senate Democrats, by failing to investigate the Bush Administration, the SSCI failed to fulfill its duty to the American people. Because the President is not only the head of the nation, but the head of his political party, it is not unreasonable to strongly suspect that a concerted effort by his political party to obfuscate investigations that could implicate him of wrongdoing, were done at his request, or the very least, acquiescence.

In conclusion, while the recent release of select archival evidence has confirmed that the Bush Administration politicized intelligence to justify an invasion of Iraq, the available evidence only strongly alludes that it interfered with postwar investigations, because much of the empirical evidence, if it even exists, remains classified. While this means that such suspicions cannot yet be confirmed, they remain a salient issue because if true, they call into question the efficacy of checks and balances. With the ever-expanding war powers of the executive, a Presidency that wages war on false premises and then is not held accountable, has the potential to erode the fabric of our democracy.

Furthermore, while this article focused on the negative actions of a Republican administration, this does not mean that Democrats are free of blame either – as debates over presidential war powers and interventionism cross party lines and have been abused by both parties alike, as evidenced by airstrikes in Syria during the Obama Administration under the auspices of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). As a result, with the eventual declassification of additional documents, supplementary investigations will be of the utmost importance.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.

March 20, 2021 0 comment

Middle East Military Security and Conflict

The Gulf War: Overcoming the Collective Action Problem

written by Alex Choy

The havoc unleashed by the 1991 Iraqi annexation of Kuwait marked the first major international crisis in a unipolar post-Cold War world. For the first time since the inception of the United Nations, a member nation had been fully annexed by another, part of Iraq’s plan to become a Middle East hegemon. Previously open to neoliberal free markets, Gulf oil reserves were held hostage, generating an international uproar. Following the failure of peaceful negotiations, a robust US led, yet UN-sanctioned coalition deployed to the Saudi Arabian desert, forming a Desert Shield which would later transition to a Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait. Despite stemming from decades of self-serving conflict, the Gulf War remains the high-water mark of post-Cold War international cooperation, serving as the premier example of how skillful domestic diplomacy can unify a multinational response and overcome the collective action problem against hegemonic aggression.

If state actors want to preserve the sanctity of international law, they must oppose aggression by other actors. Traditionally, because the complexities of multilateral conflict make collective action difficult, the opportunity for a punitive international response to an aggressor is limited. Threatening to undermine the existing global order, the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was a textbook case of said aggression. Fortunately for Kuwait, as the declining Soviet Union pursued a non-interventionist foreign policy, the UN found itself armed with a newfound capacity for action. No longer would collective security be stymied by a bipolar struggle for supremacy. Instead, the world was on the brink of a New World Order, where under American leadership, “diverse nations [would be] drawn together in common cause to achieve … peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.” Multilateral intervention in Kuwait would be the first step in codifying this idealist liberal worldview.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, by 1980, American dependence on foreign oil was a staggering 42 percent of total consumption. As a result, securing the availability of Persian Gulf oil imports, and by extension, maintaining Gulf regional security, was paramount to American foreign policy. To achieve this, the US initially relied on the monarchies of Iran and Saudi Arabia to serve as the ‘gatekeepers’ of American interests in the Middle East. However, this arrangement was abrogated following the Iranian Revolution, which saw the instability-generating rise of Ayatollah Khomeini, an anti-Western cleric who viewed the revolution in Iran as the start of a broader Muslim uprising that would sweep the Gulf clean of Western imperialists and their collaborators.

Given Khomeini’s unnerving rhetoric, it was no surprise that when conflict erupted between Iraq and Iran in 1980, those with economic interests in the Middle East threw their support behind Saddam Hussein, fearing that a victorious Iran would “slice through Iraq to the oilfields of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia” and capture the world’s oil reserves. In a true display of realpolitik, nations of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and the West, funneled billions of dollars into Iraq to protect the global oil trade. Subsequently, the US also adopted the Carter Doctrine, which established that America would use force to defend its national interests in the Persian Gulf.

When Iraq and Iran negotiated a ceasefire in 1988, Saddam found himself with a dangerous surplus of foreign debt and offensive military capabilities. The Iran-Iraq War had seen the Iraqi economy’s rapid militarization, with about 21% of the Iraqi labor force serving in the armed forces by 1988. Naturally, such a sharp increase in the number of military personnel resulted in an equally sharp increase in military expenditures, which the Iraqi government financed by taking out numerous high-interest foreign loans. By the end of hostilities, it is estimated that Iraqi foreign debt was $80 billion. Having ‘sacrificed’ his country to protect the GCC nations, Saddam was enraged when repayment was demanded, as he had viewed the GCC financial contributions not as loans, but as endowments. From that point on, Saddam grew increasingly paranoid of a conspiracy to weaken Iraq. He accused Kuwait of intentionally producing oil in excess of OPEC quotas to lower the oil price to harm Iraqi profits, thereby engaging in economic warfare.

Angered and humiliated by the continued degradation of the Iraqi economy, Saddam invaded Kuwait on August 2^nd, 1990, expecting that the kingdom’s wealth would provide a quick solution to his country’s economic crisis. What Saddam did not expect, however, was the broad-based multinational response that would stand in his way.

Having established pre-invasion “that disputes [between Iraq and Kuwait should] be settled peacefully and not by threats or intimidation,” the Department of State immediately dispatched UN Ambassador Pickering to draft a resolution condemning Iraq. The UN’s newfound capacity for productive discourse, combined with the exceptionally heinous nature of Saddam’s violation of international law, resulted in the Security Council’s swift and unanimous issuance of Resolution 660 calling for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. While Ambassador Pickering was in New York, Secretary of State Baker was in Moscow, drafting a joint US-Soviet statement condemning Iraqi aggression. Given the international scope of the conflict, a statement from both superpowers sent a powerful message of unity to the world, thus preventing the exploitation of Cold-War divisiveness by Saddam.

However, despite unprecedented US-Soviet cooperation, the international response in the early stages of the conflict was plagued by impediments to collective action, namely among the Gulf states. Wary of previous instances of foreign intervention that only proved to exacerbate regional tensions, the League of Arab States wished to resolve matters in-house, and pressed Washington to support what Yasser Arafat described as: an “Arab solution [and] not an international one.” A far cry from the unconditional withdrawal spelled out by Resolution 660; an Arab solution would likely involve Iraqi appeasement and Kuwaiti concessions specifically regarding Iraqi claims over Kuwaiti islands in the Gulf, thereby emboldening Saddam in the process. Following a call from British Prime Minister ‘Iron Lady’ Thatcher, urging President Bush “to [not] go wobbly,” Bush strengthened his resolve and deemed that anything less of an unconditional withdrawal was unacceptable, proclaiming that Iraqi aggression would not stand. Pressured economically by the West and internally, by Western-friendly members such as Egypt; the Arab League finally capitulated and passed its own resolution condemning Iraq and calling for its unconditional withdrawal.

Up to this point, the Bush Administration had exhibited hesitation and uncertainty regarding direct intervention in the Gulf. While Saddam’s invasion was no longer a fait accompli, it was not obvious what the US should do next. The Iraqi occupation of Kuwait had already secured Saddam a substantial portion of the world’s oil reserves, and his troops stationed on the Saudi border stood poised to double that figure. Therefore, similar to the threat posed by Iran a decade earlier, Saddam’s aggression threatened not only the collective good of state sovereignty, but the stability of global oil markets as well. As a result, defending Saudi Arabia as per the Carter Doctrine would be the first course of action. However, at the time, it was uncertain if Saudi King Fahd would even permit US troops to defend his country, given the Arab League’s history of apprehension towards foreign intervention. Ironically, following a diplomatic mission made by US Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, it was revealed that Fahd actually welcomed Western protection and was worried about a lack of American commitment. As a result, within hours, President Bush appeared on national television to announce Operation Desert Shield, a “wholly defensive” deployment of over 500,000 US troops to the Saudi Arabian desert made only after “unparalleled international consultation.”

With Desert Shield underway, Ambassador Pickering and the UN Security Council continued to deliberate, formulating resolutions to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait. In accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter, Resolution 661, which was ratified without incident on August 6th, imposed a full economic embargo on Iraq, while Resolution 665 authorized a naval blockade. Determined to exhaust peaceful options before resorting to force, the Security Council hoped that an economic war of attrition would ultimately compel Saddam to capitulate. Ultimately, although the trade embargo successfully crippled an already struggling Iraq, economic warfare did not seem to faze Saddam, who grew obstinately uncooperative.

In response to Saddam’s stubbornness, President Bush started to advocate for a resolution authorizing direct military intervention to present Iraq with a final, unmistakable display of UN resolve. Bush’s calculated decision to pursue a UN Resolution instead of unilateral action under Article 51 of the UN Charter was due to the importance of framing a use of force decision in a way where it would not be viewed as “a cowboy operation.” Consequently, while the US could count on cooperation from the permanent five, ‘P5’ members of the Security Council (minus China) in ratifying such a resolution, the real challenge lied with the approval of the ‘non-aligned,’ temporary members of the Security Council, which in 1990 included Colombia, Cuba, the Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Yemen, and Zaire. With 7 out of 15 possible votes, these nations represented a potential veto to a proposed resolution, giving them serious bargaining power.

As a result, drafting a resolution authorizing punitive military action was complicated. The wording could not be so strong as to constitute a declaration of war, nor could it be ambiguous, which would translate to a lack of resolve. In the end, Resolution 678 was adopted with 12 votes for, two votes against, and one abstention. While the Resolution did not expressly authorize military force, it did give Iraq a deadline of January 15^th, 1991, to willingly withdraw from Kuwait before the UN would be authorized to use “all necessary means” to ensure compliance.

As per a strategy of sticks and carrots, many of the non-aligned members who were initially opposed to such a resolution had agreed to ratify under the threat of economic penalty or were convinced to do so following the inclusion of a “pause of goodwill” clause, which would afford Iraq a final opportunity to comply peacefully. Members who had voted against the revolution, namely Yemen and Cuba, had emphasized their concern over the ambiguity of the “necessary means” clause, citing that such a statement gave the US too much leverage. In exchange for their stubbornness, they were punished by the immediate cessation of World Bank, IMF, and US aid. China, the Council’s lone abstainer, did so in exchange for an easement of economic sanctions levied following the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

With the possibility of military action now extremely likely, and given America’s status as a military superpower, it was accepted by US policymakers that the US would have the most boots on the ground during a peace enforcement mission. However, as the American presence in Saudi Arabia became increasingly protracted, the high costs of sustaining force projection were met with domestic belt-tightening. American generals, predicting that a war would last months and result in tens of thousands of casualties, projected costs at roughly $70 billion. As a result, to minimize the financial strain on taxpayers, it became imperative to secure the support of a broad-based coalition. Such a coalition would not only provide much-needed funding but would also further increase the legitimacy of any military actions taken, eliminating rumors of an Orientalist dynamic to the conflict. As a result, securing financial and military commitments from other nations, or ‘burden sharing,’ became the focus of US efforts.

Working in conjunction with Ambassador Pickering, Secretary of State Baker embarked on an international fundraising mission, nicknamed the ‘Tin Cup Tour.’ Traveling to nine countries over 11 days, Baker secured about $61 billion, covering more than 80% of the war’s total cost. The lion’s share of the contribution, roughly $36 billion, came from the oil-rich GCC nations of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates, who had the most to lose if a US withdrawal were to occur. According to Baker: the GCC “weren’t going to argue over dollars,” since they needed American troops.

Citing that their constitutions had forbidden foreign military intervention, Japan and Germany contributed roughly $16 billion to the war effort as measures of good faith, dispelling any notions of freeloading. In addition to securing financial assistance, Baker secured unexpected military contributions from several nations through a series of quid-pro-quo deals. Most notably, in exchange for eliminating a $7 billion debt, Egypt pledged 45,000 troops, the largest commitment made by a non-Gulf member of the Arab League. In addition, Syria, a longtime US adversary, also pledged troops in an attempt to improve relations with the US. Baker’s efforts had brought “the conservative Saudi monarchy, the militant Syrian regime, and the moderate Egyptian regime” together to fight against Iraqi aggression.

Despite Saddam’s best efforts to exploit the Coalition’s diversity to his advantage, both through the use of Western hostages and linkage to the controversial Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, as the January 15^th deadline neared, a broad-based coalition of 34 nations stood unwavering, ready to take the fight to Saddam. Under the unified command of US General Norman Schwarzkopf, Coalition forces began Operation Desert Storm on January 16^th to affect “the immediate, complete, and unconditional withdrawal of all Iraqi forces from Kuwait” to restore Kuwait’s legitimate government. As per ‘Shock and Awe’ doctrine, Coalition aircraft, flying from bases in Saudi Arabia, quickly gained air superiority and bombed the Iraqi Air Force into submission. Following the airstrikes, ground forces overwhelmed Iraqi positions, pushing Iraqi troops out of Kuwait and back into Iraq, ending the war in just 42 days.

Holistically, the Gulf War was a resounding success. Saddam’s hegemonic aspirations were checked by a broad-based multinational coalition that would have been unfathomable a decade earlier, made possible by skillful US diplomacy, and legitimized by a series of UN Resolutions. While critics have since argued that Desert Storm planners ignored the long-term political implications of an invasion, such criticisms were made with the benefit of hindsight and do not find fault in the diplomatic process itself. As a result, despite the Gulf War’s changing legacy, what remains true is that it was a remarkable episode of international cooperation. The initiative exhibited by domestic leaders such as President Bush, Ambassador Pickering, and Secretary Baker, in conjunction with other world leaders, serves as a shining example of how unilateral diplomacy can be utilized to overcome collective action problems on an international scale.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.

January 13, 2021 0 comment

Middle East Military National Security Security and Conflict Terrorism United States

The Ramifications of Afghanistan Reconstruction, and Security on the Peace Process

written by Alex Choy

“I don’t think it is responsible to the American taxpayers to leave it like it is. We need a way forward.”
– Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld

Following the Battle of Tora Bora, while the Bush Administration remained steadfast in its commitment to maintaining a light footprint in Afghanistan; taking into account the destabilizing nature of regime change, it began to recognize that the US needed to ‘do right’ from a humanitarian standpoint to preclude an environment conducive to extremism. However, given Afghanistan’s decimated infrastructure, and deteriorated security, it was evident that ‘doing right’ would involve the same extensive, expensive and resource-intensive nation-building that the Bush Administration was reluctant to provide. Therefore, the issue of reconstruction presented yet another contradictory policy prescription, the lasting effects of which, specifically regarding building the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), have continued to stymie the peace process.

But why was the Bush Administration reluctant to engage in nation-building in the first place? In a previous article, I established: “[Bush] held a personal aversion towards protracted involvement, and an aversion towards using conventional forces to engage in … risky nation-building that would tie “up US troops indefinitely,” and stir up anti-American sentiments.”

Given the above, why on the one hand, did the Bush Administration speak of a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Afghanistan, and on the other, condemn nation-building?

In a Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) interview, senior Rumsfeld advisor Marin Strmecki explained that the Administration was only “against [nation-building] in the sense of [the US] being [it’s] preeminent and dominant force.” Therefore, the point of contention was not reconstruction per se, only the potential unilateral commitment that it entailed. Essentially, the Bush Administration was willing to ‘talk the talk,’ setting impressive objectives, but was reluctant to ‘walk the walk’ and put forth the necessary resources. As a result, to address the issue at hand and assuage fears of protracted unilateral commitment, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was established.

In addition to hunting anti-Afghan forces and developing the Afghan Government (GIRoA), a large part of ISAF’s mission was to create a self-sufficient ANDSF. Regarding the latter, under a lead nation approach, the US was assigned the responsibility of developing the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Germany, the Afghan National Police (ANP). However, just as how a lack of strategic clarity prevented systematic planning at the national level, the broad-based coalition of ISAF fared similarly. For instance, German officials reported that they believed their role in ISAF was simply to serve as short term advisors; “they did not believe [that they] entailed full responsibility for developing … the entire ANP.” Of course, this view ran contrary to the Bush Administration’s intent for urging the establishment of ISAF in the first place, which was to maintain a light footprint by spreading the burden of reconstruction between multiple nations. Furthermore, reflecting fears of protracted involvement; pre 2004, ISAF was relegated to Kabul to primarily train and advise, with a ragtag ANDSF in charge of securing the remainder of the country.

Consequently, the Bush Administration took nearly unilateral control of ANDSF development, fearing that deteriorated security would threaten Afghan elections and by extension, an expedient handover of responsibility to the newly formed GIRoA. However, it soon became evident that the ANDSF would need to mature significantly before shouldering the full burden of Afghan defense. Therefore, to bridge the gap while ANDSF forces were trained, the US commitment in Afghanistan, and in turn, the intensity and frequency of combat operations, were steadily increased. To reflect the new US-centric effort, a new military command, the Combined Security Transition Command–Afghanistan (CSTC-A) was created to train the ANDSF. On the other hand, to minimize the duration of a US presence, the Bush Administration also sought to rapidly expand the ANDSF on a condensed timeline, prioritizing quantity over quality.

With the Iraq War siphoning attention away from Afghanistan, and the Bush Administration’s contradictory prescriptions towards reconstruction guiding a reactionary, rather than proactive approach at the policy level, the stage was set for a Taliban insurgency. In response, ISAF’s mission was expanded beyond Kabul, a decision that some leaders opposed, given their interpretation of ISAF’s role within the train-advise-assist paradigm; with the latter component holding secondary importance. For instance, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said: “We [Canada] are supporting the expansion of ISAF, and we will work to convince other nations to send troops here… but will we put more troops? We do not have the intention, and we are not able to do this at this moment.” With this dysfunction, ISAF’s efforts to stabilize Afghanistan were “akin to punching an adversary with five outstretched fingers rather than one powerful closed fist.”

For the ANA, training capacity was increased from two to five kandaks (battalions), while basic training was reduced from 14 to 10 weeks. For the ANP, despite a reported 34,000 ‘trained’ Afghan police officers, only 3,900 had been through the prescribed eight-week basic course, with the remainder only having attended a two-week introductory course. The rapid expansion of the ANDSF led to them becoming “miserably under-resourced,” and according to General Barry McCaffery, such circumstances were a “major morale factor for the force.” However, despite these issues, the ambitious Bush Administration continued to push for rapid expansion, threatening the GIRoA with reductions in funding if they did not comply.

Undertrained and underequipped, the ANDSF did not stand a chance against a resurgent Taliban during the latter half of 2008. Infamously, one such attack overran a US Combat Outpost in Kamdesh, resulting in the tragic deaths of eight US Soldiers and 27 wounded, following their betrayal by the Afghan Local Police (ALP) and abandonment by their ANA contingent.

Despite these signals, expediency, rather than responsibility, would continue to characterize US policy under the Obama Administration, as the President called for a short ‘surge’ in activity “to weaken the Taliban and improve the ANDSF,” before a 2014 withdrawal. The surge, which was intended to bring the war to a quick end, incentivized corruption by flooding the rentier state with a tsunami of cash, digging Afghanistan deeper into a kleptocratic grave. For example, Afghan civilians reported prolific extortion by ANDSF forces, with “two-thirds of police checkpoints charging illegal tolls” in 2013. Subsequently, in a survey conducted by ISAF between 2010 and 2012, Afghans ranked corruption as one of the top three reasons why they “choose to support the Taliban instead of the government.”

Subsequently, with the end of the surge and scheduled drawdown of offensive combat operations in 2014, ISAF was dissolved, and Operation Resolute Support (ORS) was initiated to achieve ‘peace with honor’ by handing over responsibility to the GIRoA and ANDSF. Accordingly, US troop numbers dropped to just 16,100 advisors, from a peak of 100,000 combat troops in 2011.

Unsurprisingly, the drawdown emboldened insurgent forces and instead of proving their self-sufficiency, the ANDSF suffered major failures, most notably the fall of Kunduz City in 2015. According to eyewitness accounts, during the battle, “a chaotic environment quickly spread and government officials, ALP commanders and … ANA officers fled to the … airport, leaving [the city] effectively leaderless.” This scene, reminiscent of South Vietnamese soldiers’ actions during the fall of Saigon, was certainly a reality check for policymakers.

For many in the US Government, it became evident that forcing western solutions onto a largely illiterate population had created unsustainable dependencies on foreign assistance. During the surge, the tsunami of funding and military advisors for ANDSF development created a force that was “a carbon copy of US doctrine” and Afghan commanders were “addicted to air support,” a combat enabler inorganic to their organization. Given the pressure generated by the Obama Administration’s hard deadline, indigenous solutions were replaced with western ones, and a blind eye was turned towards corruption, because doing so was expedient given the time constraint. Former US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Senior Advisor Barnett Rubin explained: “We did what we knew [in Afghanistan] … not what needed to be done.”

If the surge incentivized corruption and produced a deficient ANDSF, why wasn’t it remediated under the Obama Administration?

As the 2014 deadline neared, the top-down pressure from the Obama White House to report success up the chain of command, outweighed demands for accountability. For instance, ANDSF trainers were encouraged by their commanders to bolster ANA and ANP competence assessments in order to present Washington with a facade of higher numbers of combat-ready units. In a 2015 interview with SIGAR, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn questioned: “So, if we are doing such a great job, why does it feel like we are losing?” Answering his own question, he remarked, no “commander is going to leave Afghanistan … and say, you know what, we didn’t accomplish that mission. So, the next guy that shows up finds it screwed up.” By placing a time constraint on ‘winning,’ the Obama Administration inadvertently stymied a chance for victory, and peace. Consequently, as of 2020, American and Coalition advisors remain in Afghanistan, and despite efforts to broker a negotiated settlement, the Coalition’s resolve seems to be shrinking, while the Taliban’s grows.

Enter the current administration.

Addressing his generals, President Trump reportedly exclaimed: “You guys have created this situation. It’s been a disaster. You’re the architects of this mess in Afghanistan … you haven’t been able to fix it, and you’re making it worse.” Judging from the equanimous American acceptance of the capture of Saigon due to the widespread popularity for a withdrawal from Vietnam, given the similar public support for a withdrawal from Afghanistan, the President has little to worry in terms of blowback in the form of domestic opinion. However, in regard to international prestige and credibility, some critics of the peace deal, such as Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, claim that by withdrawing, “the US will cast further doubt on [its] willingness to sustain a leading role in the world.” Such qualms may be a victim of the sunk cost fallacy and ‘press-on-itis,’ which is the unwise tendency to persist with a plan that is failing, especially after considerable investments have been dedicated.

Mark Hannah, a senior fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation puts it succinctly:

“We’re going into the 20th year of this war where people who were not even born on Sept. 11 are being called to serve [in Afghanistan],” Hannah said. “I think there’s a sense that … the original motivation for going into Afghanistan in the first place has receded into the rearview mirror.”

During the the 2020 Democratic Presidential Debates, Rep. (D-Hawaii), combat veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee: Tulsi Gabbard, asserted that “we [the US] are no better off in Afghanistan today than we were when this war began,” and promised to bring all US troops home within her first year if elected President.

It is time for policymakers to join Rep. Gabbard and President Trump in making a bipartisan and definitive assessment of whether the sheer prospect of remaining embroiled in a never-ending quagmire will tarnish America’s international reputation more than coming to a negotiated settlement ever will.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.

October 4, 2020 0 comment

Europe Geopolitics Russia Security and Conflict Vladimir Putin

Will Putin Rescue Lukashenko from the Jaws of Death?

written by Alex Choy

Authoritarian leader of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, is currently confronted with massive protests over accusations of winning a rigged election. Previously praised by Belarusians for bringing stability to their former Soviet republic, as Lukashenko enters his sixth consecutive term in office, Belarusians rallied by political challenger Svetlana Tikhanovskaya have demanded new, free and fair elections.

In response, an embattled Lukashenko announced that protesters would have to kill him first.

Mr. Lukashenko, often referred to as Europe’s last dictator, was elected in 1994 as part of Belarus’ first national election post-Soviet dissolution. A year after taking office, he won a questionable referendum that gave him the power to dissolve the legislature, and in the following year, created a legislature and judiciary subordinate to himself, essentially giving his decrees the force of law. As a result, except for the 1994 election, Belarusian democracy has not seen the light of day.

Not only did Lukashenko consolidate his power domestically early on, but he also sought closer ties with Russia. In 1999, Lukashenko and then Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a treaty intended to reintegrate the two nations by creating a confederation known as the Union State, in which the two nations would remain sovereign but would share a government. Although the date when full integration would occur was left unspecified, on a visceral level, the Belarusian flag and national seal had already been altered to reflect Soviet-era designs, borders were opened, and the Russian language was elevated, while Belarusian was suppressed. In the power-political arena, ‘oil was traded for kisses,’ as Russia granted Belarus significant energy subsidies to prop up its anemic economy, in exchange for its geopolitical loyalty as a strategic buffer against NATO.

However, let us get one thing straight: Belarus is not a Russian client state, at least not from Lukashenko’s perspective. He has long played Russia and NATO against each other, taking part in NATO programs to alleviate Western sanctions, while welcoming Russian assistance, much to Putin’s dismay. As a result, Belarusian-Russian relations have soured. The Union State remains unfulfilled, and as Lukashenko continues to demonstrate his willingness to stray from the Kremlin’s expectation that he be a willing Russian stooge, Putin’s frustration towards him has naturally increased.

For instance, concerning Russia’s ongoing conflict with Ukraine, Lukashenko has refused to side with Russia, citing Article 18 of the Belarusian Constitution, which stipulates Belarus’ goal of neutrality. In retaliation, Putin slashed subsidies, making their return contingent on the Union State’s fruition. Recently, Lukashenko has accused Russia of attempting to bully Belarus into full integration, and in July, Russian mercenaries were arrested in Minsk, accused by Lukashenko of being a part of a Kremlin plot to install Tikhanovskaya in power. However, Lukashenko’s accusations are nonsensical, since Tikhanovskaya herself opposes closer ties with Russia.

So why is Putin so interested in creating a Union State?

Previously, the fruition of the Union State would have created a new powerful leadership post, a position that Putin, who was barred by term limits from remaining as Russia’s President after 2024, could have filled legally, thereby exerting dominance over both nations. However, in July, Putin was able to win a questionable referendum, allowing him to skirt the term limit restriction and remain in power until 2036.

From a balance of power standpoint, his interest lies in creating a consolidated Russian Eurasia, a motive in line with Russia’s previous annexations of Crimea and Georgia. Consequently, having secured access to the Black Sea, Putin set his eyes on the Baltics and the strategic Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which is cut off from Belarus, and by extension, the Russian mainland; by a narrow sliver of the Polish-Lithuanian border known as the Suwalki Gap. Should Putin attempt to forcefully ‘bridge the Suwalki Gap’ to reconnect Kalinigrad to the Russian mainland, Russian troops would have to travel through Belarusian territory. Therefore, such a scenario is contingent on Belarusian acquiescence, or Russian ability to ensure compliance through a unified government.

Regarding the Suwalki Gap, LTGEN (Ret.) Ben Hodges, former Commander of US Army Europe, asserts: “Deterring any potential action [by Russia] — or even the threat of action — against Suwalki is therefore essential for NATO’s credibility and Western cohesion.” Through a military Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP) in the Baltics and Poland, NATO can reassure its defensive commitment while deterring Russia. On the other hand, should NATO fail to counter Russia’s move to ‘bridge the gap,’ such a scenario would drastically undermine NATO’s credibility to provide collective security, essentially rendering the alliance meaningless. This in turn, would invite further brazen Russian aggression. Therefore, the risk of Russia’ bridging the gap’ not only lies with the Baltics being cut off from the rest of NATO, but threatens the very existence of the organization itself; a possibility which no doubt entices Putin.

As part of EFP, the Trump Administration recently announced the redeployment of 1000 soldiers, and the relocation of V Corps Headquarters from Germany to Poland. In response, Lukashenko placed his military on ‘high alert,’ citing the ‘threat’ to Belarusian territorial integrity. According to Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, Lukashenko’s efforts are “to divert attention from Belarus’s internal problems … with totally baseless statements about imaginary external threats.”

As boasted by Belarusian state news media, Lukashenko was able to secure Putin’s promise that “comprehensive [military] assistance will be provided to “ensure the security of Belarus in the event of external military threats.” However, it is essential to note that this ‘comprehensive assistance’ falls under the premises of Belarus’ membership in The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), a Russian-led military alliance, and Putin has not explicitly expressed his endorsement of Lukashenko remaining in power if he cannot deliver on the Union State.

But the real question remains: Given the imminent risk posed to the Lukashenko, will Putin intervene in Belarus?

The short answer is, probably not, unless a change in Belarusian leadership involves an abrupt shift towards the West and away from Russia. The current spate of protests are primarily anti-Lukashenko and lack the anti-Russian sentiment present during the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine. While Putin has leveraged hyper-nationalist ethnic Russian ‘compatriots abroad’ to undermine sovereignty in ex-Soviet Bloc nations in the past, given the existing semi-union, it is far less costly for Putin to achieve a Union State through soft power alone, rather than through military force. Therefore, if Putin chooses to send his ‘little green men’ to Belarus to prop up the existing government, Belarusian public opinion will turn solidly against Russia, viewing such an attempt as an effort to silence the voice of the people.

Having said that, should Tikhanovskaya continue to rise in popularity and place the possibility of a Union State in jeopardy, Putin’s best option would not be to intervene militarily, and certainly not to call for new elections (that Tikhanovskaya could win). Instead, he should attempt to back a transfer of power from Lukashenko to a member of the Belarusian elite, such as pro-Russian Viktor Babariko. Babariko, who intended to run for president in the 2020 Election, was arrested by Lukashenko in July. According to an unofficial internet poll conducted by popular Belarusian news site Tut.by, over half of respondents were ready to support Babariko over Lukashenko.

On the off chance that Putin chooses to intervene militarily and back Lukashenko, there is no doubt that he will expect Lukashenko’s full and unbridled cooperation towards achieving Belarusian-Russian integration. Putin certainly has not been subtle in signaling these wishes, recently telling Lukashenko: “I expect that your statesmanship will facilitate the further development of mutually beneficial Russian-Belarusian relations … as well as the further enhancement of cooperation within the Union State.”

Given his motivations, Putin’s cost-benefit calculus is no doubt firing on full cylinders. As a result, as events continue to unfold, one can only wonder if he will choose his course of action wisely, and if he does not; how NATO forces will counter if faced with a potential Suwalki Gap scenario.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.

September 4, 2020 0 comment

Middle East Military Security and Conflict Terrorism

Pakistani Power Politics: Subversion, Deception and India in the GWOT

written by Alex Choy

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.

For years, Pakistan, a ‘shadowy hand’ in Central Asian politics, has covertly aided the Afghan Taliban while nominally maintaining its status as a US lynchpin in the Global War on Terror (GWOT). Obfuscated by bureaucratic red tape, Islamabad’s infidelity was only brought to the public eye after the raid on Usama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, which was suspiciously just around the corner from the Pakistani Military Academy. It is clear that Pakistan suffers from its share of devastating terrorist attacks, and for those who adhere to the liberalist school of political thought, or the diametric Cold War perception of America and its allies versus all things evil, this begets the question: Why does Pakistan play both sides? Perhaps fatalistic to some, the answer lies within neorealism and its conception that states are primarily concerned with the balance of power, and will engage in self-help behavior to not only preserve the status quo but will exploit ‘allies’ to acquire it, as long as the cost-benefit calculus reports a favorable outcome.

Pakistani interest in Afghanistan is rooted in the Indian-Pakistani power struggle. Fearing encirclement by India and its allies, Islamabad has consistently sought to cultivate a friendly Kabul government. According to former Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani, Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), sought to cultivate a post-Soviet Afghanistan “so beholden to Pakistan” that no Afghan “would ever question Pakistan’s right to dictate to Afghanistan.” An Afghanistan beholden to Pakistan would not only but would cease long-standing border disagreements, which originated with the 1893 Partition of Afghanistan and former British India, but would also provide strategic depth in the event of an Indian invasion. Therefore, as India ramped up support for more secular Tajik groups such as the Northern Alliance, Pakistan, fearing a potential Afghan-Indian ‘pincer’ that an Afghanistan beholden to India could achieve, countered Indian influence by creating and cultivating the Pashtun Afghan Taliban. Subsequently, by the late 1990’s, with the support of the ISI, the Northern Alliance had been virtually defeated and the Taliban were firmly rooted in Kabul.

Enter 9/11:

On the surface, for Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf, 9/11 marked an opportunity to repair diplomatic relationships with the West that had deteriorated since his ascent to power by military coup, and Pakistan’s crossing of the nuclear threshold. As a result, with his fingers presumably crossed behind his back, Musharraf publicly pledged his country’s “unstinted cooperation in the fight against terrorism” and agreed to provide intelligence and logistical support for Coalition operations in Afghanistan in return for US aid and a normalization of relations. Reciprocally, at a joint press conference held in November 2001, President Bush called Musharraf a “strong leader” of a “strong ally.” However, under the surface, “the way [Musharraf and the ISI] saw 9/11 was that it disrupted their little plan” for altering the regional balance of power in their favor. Because the Afghan Taliban had been elevated to a US enemy on par with al Qaeda for harboring Usama bin Laden, and the Northern Alliance was now a US ally, 9/11 thwarted Pakistan’s ambitions to fill the post-Cold War Afghan power vacuum. As a result, Musharraf’s support for the GWOT would prove to be only nominal.

By November 2001, Musharraf was nervous, and revealed his true intentions regarding Afghanistan when he warned President Bush of the “anarchy and atrocities” that would follow Northern Alliance control of Kabul, insisting “that the Pashtuns … be involved in a postwar political settlement.” While Musharraf was not wrong regarding the negative implications of ‘thuggish’ Northern Alliance warlords, it is clear that his motivations for ‘warning’ the US laid not within helping win the GWOT, but in regional power politics. Consequently, when US SOF and Northern Alliance fighters captured Kabul and encircled the Taliban holdout of Kunduz, Musharraf realized that given the presence of the US, Afghanistan, at least for the time being, could not be beholden to Pakistan. Subsequently, the ISI evacuated hundreds of Taliban and al Qaeda leaders from Kunduz in an operation pejoratively termed: ‘The Airlift of Evil.’ As Coalition forces looked on helplessly from afar, what was sold to the Bush Administration by Musharraf as a “minor extraction [of Pakistani ISI personnel], turned into a major air bridge” of US adversaries. In a calculated gamble, Musharraf chose to bide his time.

Prior to the airlift, the Bush Administration was well aware of Pakistani support for terrorists. According to declassified State Department cables that predate 9/11, US foreign policy decision makers were aware that “large numbers of Pakistani nationals [had] recently moved into Afghanistan to fight for the Taliban … with the tacit acquiescence of the Pakistani Government.” The existence of such documents raises the questions: Why didn’t the Bush Administration confront Pakistan? Why weren’t they more wary of Musharraf’s true intentions? In reality, while the US was aware of Musharraf’s double-cross, it could not easily address the threat without jeopardizing Pakistan’s cooperation in other areas of greater geopolitical strategic interest, such as the security of Pakistan’s nuclear program or support for covert US operations in the Middle East and Central Asia. At the height of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), if the US were to have taken corrective action, a destabilized Pakistan with nuclear capabilities would have proved disastrous.

As a result, to avoid national embarrassment, the Bush Administration refused to placate Pakistan, and publicly denied any such evacuation. From that point on, Musharraf and the ISI were confident that they could ‘hedge their bets’ between US and terrorist demands, because President Bush did not “ask the hard questions, and frankly, neither did the people working for him.” For the duration of the Bush and Obama Administrations, it seems that despite intermittent demands that Pakistan cease and desist its assistance to the Afghan Taliban, the US accepted the relationship as a necessary evil. Subsequently, for the duration of OEF, the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents were given sanctuary in Pakistan, as the nation itself, funded by US dollars, fought its own internal war on terror against an ‘unfriendly’ Taliban: the Tehrik-i-Taliban (TTP). For too long, the US has allowed Pakistan to have its cake and eat it too.

In 2018, the Trump Administration suspended 1.3 billion dollars in security assistance to Pakistan, citing its support for terrorists. In 2019, with the entrance of a new Pakistani government, led by Prime Minister Imran Khan, bilateral talks between the US and Pakistan were held in the Oval Office. When asked by a reporter if he would restore aid to Pakistan, President Trump replied: “The problem was Pakistan — this is before you [Khan] — Pakistan was not doing anything for us. They were really … subversive. They were going against us … To be honest, I think we have a better relationship with Pakistan right now than we did when we were paying that money. But all of that can come back, depending on what we work out.” With a new rapport established, four days later, $125 million in military aid was re-pledged to Pakistan.

It is essential to recognize the actor-observer bias. While it is easy to simply denounce Pakistan as a state sponsor of terror, which it is, one must recognize the root causes of its actions. To reiterate: Pakistan supports the Afghan Taliban because it understands that a Kabul beholden to Islamabad shifts the balance of power in its favor, or at the very least, helps it maintain the status-quo against a much larger India. Therefore, winning the GWOT depends on relieving tensions between India and Pakistan as much as it does by preventing the Taliban from overthrowing the Government of Afghanistan (GIRoA). At the same bilateral talks, when asked by Prime Minister Khan if he would serve as a mediator between India and Pakistan, regarding territorial conflict in Kashmir, President Trump replied: “It’s impossible to believe two incredible countries … can’t solve a problem like that. But if you want me to mediate … I would be willing to do that. In response, Prime Minister Khan thanked President Trump and expressed his sincere desire for triadic talks.

In retrospect, with the planned US withdrawal from Afghanistan, and recent peace talks with the Taliban, it is clear that by evacuating Taliban and al Qaeda leadership in 2001, Musharraf and the ISI were correct in their assertion of the US’s limited resolve, and have kept the Afghan Taliban on retainer, ready to pounce. One can only hope that for the sake of Afghanistan, the GIRoA can withstand a reinvigorated Taliban offensive, this time without direct help from Coalition ground forces. President Trump’s use of an unconventional mixed bag of carrots and sticks on a new Pakistani Government will hopefully be enough to exact a real change in Pakistani foreign policy towards Afghanistan; following a reduction in tensions between India and Pakistan. While India has since rejected offers of mediation, it is in the US’s interest to sell such offers, perhaps through linkage, with vigor.

July 23, 2020 0 comment

Middle East Military Security and Conflict Terrorism United States

Countering Violent Extremism in the Global War on Terror

written by Alex Choy

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.

Despite being re-christened as ‘countering violent extremism’ by the Obama Administration, the Bush Administration’s Global War on Terror (GWOT) is nearing its twenty-year mark. While the GWOT has undergone several rebrands, it’s overarching goal to defend the homeland has endured. However, what these deliberate attempts at rebranding do illustrate are variances in the approaches of different presidential administrations. This article will analyze how public opinion, personal schemas, and bureaucratic politics shaped the Bush and Obama Administrations’ efforts to combat terrorist insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan. I argue that the dysfunctional Bush Administration, haunted by previous foreign entanglements, embarked on a sweeping, yet externally focused, enemy-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign that neglected target-state domestic considerations. Subsequently, while the Obama Administration attempted to remediate with a more restrained, internally focused surge of population-centric COIN, constraints imposed by a war-weary public suffocated meaningful progress.

Within US military doctrine, there are two main paradigms of COIN: enemy-centric, and population-centric. The latter views the population of a target state as “the sea in which insurgents swim,” and reasons that if the target state’s civilian population and its surrounding environment can be controlled, pacified and stabilized, insurgents will be deprived of their support networks and subsequently will either be exposed or neutralized. Essentially, it is victory by winning the hearts and minds of civilians through nation-building. On the other hand, the former views insurgencies as unitary actors, and counterinsurgency as “more akin to conventional warfare [that] focuses on the defeat of the enemy as the counterinsurgent’s primary task.”

Post-9/11, despite the imminent threat of another attack, the Bush Administration would find it challenging to reconcile retribution with the ever-present ‘Vietnam Syndrome’ plaguing the nation. Georgetown Professor Elizabeth Saunders classifies leaders as either internally or externally focused. She asserts that internally focused leaders are interested in a target state’s domestic considerations and are resultantly more inclined to undertake nation building operations. Conversely, externally focused leaders are more likely to pursue strategies that aim to resolve a conflict with minimal involvement in a target nation’s domestic affairs. While Bush is frequently associated with unilateral interventionism, it is critical to recognize that he was externally focused. Accordingly, he held a personal aversion towards protracted involvement, and an aversion towards using conventional forces to engage in population-based COIN, because he believed that such an approach involved risky nation-building that would tie “up US troops indefinitely,” and stir up anti-American sentiments.

As a result, while it was evident that the public would support a use of force decision, the question at hand was: What form would a retaliatory use of force take? According to a public opinion poll, 17 percent of Americans would have opposed the use of force by conventional US ground troops. Representing Americans still afflicted with Vietnam Syndrome, the presence of this population reinforced President Bush’s schemas on risk aversion. Therefore, anticipating public opinion, President Bush decided on what he thought to be a militarily successful policy to end the war quickly and limit US involvement. The plan would be to take an externally focused, enemy-centric COIN approach, where small teams of special operations forces (SOF), supplemented by local Northern Alliance fighters, would hunt al Qaeda and the Taliban without engaging in nation-building to maintain a light footprint. After eliminating the Taliban and al Qaeda, the US would exit Afghanistan and hand over full authority to Northern Alliance warlords to form a new US friendly Afghan Government (GIRoA).

While this approach looked good on paper, enemy-centric COIN did not consider target state domestic considerations and contributed to the formation of a destabilizing insurgency. Unbeknownst to the Bush Administration, which was “woefully deficient in human intelligence” as per its external focus, the Taliban regime had actually been a source of regional stability, and Afghan civilians had been thrilled with Taliban rule, because it had ended the “corrupt and predatory behavior of warlord” society.In fact, pre-invasion, the Taliban did not want to fight the US and had even offered to extradite Usama Bin Laden (UBL), to a neutral third party. However, because the Bush Administration did not understand Afghan domestic politics, it viewed the Taliban and al Qaeda as a monolithic bloc, resulting in a missed opportunity for cooperation. Furthermore, while instant gratification was achieved by harnessing Northern Alliance manpower, the destabilizing effects of legitimizing warlords as authority figures became evident when the Northern Alliance allowed the escape of UBL at Tora Bora, and after it was discovered that the majority of the newly formed Afghan Government had ties to the criminal underworld.

Targeting al Qaeda and its Taliban hosts was part of the Bush Doctrine, a major innovation to existing US foreign policy. The Bush Doctrine emphasized that “any nation that continue[d] to harbor or support terrorism … [would be considered] a hostile regime,” and that preemptive strikes would be pursued unilaterally if multinational support could not be garnered.As a result, even though the Taliban had not been directly involved with 9/11, harboring UBL had elevated them to an enemy on par with al Qaeda. However, the Bush Doctrine presented a major contradiction to the President’s schemas on risk aversion. This was because its mastermind was not Bush, but Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld’s deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. According to Pentagon insiders, Wolfowitz was more avant-garde on matters of foreign policy, while Bush was inexperienced. This enabled him to take control of policy and “push the whole Bush team to the right,” while Rumsfeld was left free to pursue bureaucratic interests.Wolfowitz, who was a firm believer in the ‘Munich Script,’ believed that dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein could not be pacified.Therefore, to garner support for regime change, he portrayed him as a dangerous state sponsor of terrorism. Accordingly, the US would expand the GWOT into Iraq, despite being warned that doing so “would undercut the [actual] US counteroffensive against terrorism” in Afghanistan.

Despite its ineffectiveness, the Bush Administration would remain externally focused and would retain enemy-centric COIN due to selfish bureaucratic politics. Even though Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz had witnessed firsthand the failures of minimalist operations in Afghanistan, because they had developed personal ownership for the light footprint approach, admitting the need for a more intensive, internally focused approach would have been “an admission of personal fail[ure].” Subsequently, when confronted by dissenters who were subject matter experts, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were disingenuous and dismissive, labeling them as ill-informed.Therefore, to protect their own credibility and prestige, they refused to challenge pre-Afghanistan assumptions and update their externally focused approach to an internal one. Consequently, during the Iraq War, lacking an understanding of Iraqi domestic conditions, the Bush Administration practiced de-Ba’athification and disbanded the Iraqi Army, despite being advised that Iraqi government institutions should be kept intact, “because [they] could serve as a unifying force in a … highly diverse and fragmented society.”As a result, a vast pool of unemployed, humiliated and antagonized men would join insurgencies.

By adhering to the Bush Doctrine but remaining externally focused, the Bush Administration proclaimed an ambitious endstate but displayed an unwillingness to commit, creating a disconnect between discourse and reality. The origins of this discrepancy are most prominently illustrated by the Bush Doctrine’s legislative vehicle: The 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). The AUMF granted the President the authority to use force against those who “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the terrorist attacks on 9/11.As opposed to a Congressionally ratified, traditional declaration of war, the ambiguous wording of the AUMF indicated that the Bush Administration was about to embark on a crusade against not just al Qaeda, but an entire belief system. Therefore, the GWOT would “not end with a signing ceremony on the [USS] Missouri,” but with the utter destruction of extremist ideologies.Accordingly, while the AUMF was designed to provide hardline retaliation towards terrorists, its ambitious, carte blanche nature clashed with the Bush Administration’s aversion towards protracted involvement, resulting in policy mismatch.

In sum, the Bush Administration’s approach to the GWOT was contradictory and shortsighted. It attempted to juggle an aversion to protracted involvement, with an ambitious goal that would require a lasting commitment. What resulted was an enemy-centric approach that neglected domestic considerations and fueled destabilization. Foreign Area Officer, Gregory Roberts, maintains that “an open-ended goal necessitates an open-ended commitment.”Simply put, having proclaimed an ambitious goal, leaders must work towards that goal without limitation. Conversely, if there are second thoughts, a definitive policy update must be issued, lest ambiguity be generated. If a policy update is not disseminated, bureaucrats cannot form a unified strategy and may pursue organizational and personal interests instead. The Bush Administration never released a strategic update, and as a result, mixed messages prevented progress because “everyone was just thinking in terms of what [they] could do in the short term” to better organizational and personal standing.

By 2008, the American public, which was war-weary but reluctant to admit defeat in the GWOT, led the Obama Administration to combine a hard deadline for withdrawal, with an internally focused surge in US efforts. Upon entering office, President Obama inherited a renewed insurgency in Afghanistan that was exacting increasing tolls on public opinion, as well as a conflict in Iraq, where plans were already underway for a hasty withdrawal. As a result, he took the drawdown in Iraq as a blessing, and was determined to refute the Bush Doctrine and refocus onto Afghanistan, a conflict he deemed “a war of necessity” that was true to the original mission of the GWOT.In a speech at West Point, President Obama remarked that under the Bush Administration, “commanders in Afghanistan [had] repeatedly asked for support … but these reinforcements” never arrived thanks to the amorphous nature of Bush foreign policy. However, because Obama was determined to counter the atrophy of reconstruction efforts; under his watch, the requested troop increase would be fulfilled, to support a new internally focused, population-centric COIN strategy of clear-hold-build and transfer.

Unlike its predecessor, the Obama Administration encouraged and did not discount input from subject matter experts before deciding on a new strategy. During the Bush Administration, concerns “bubbled under the surface … but never went public, or into a formal dissent.”However, under the Obama Administration, for the first time, a US commander in Afghanistan felt comfortable to publicly describe the situation as deteriorating, and to recommend a complete strategic overhaul.This commander: GEN Stanley McChrystal, asserted that the principal problem facing Afghanistan consisted of two threats, the first being a resurgent insurgency, while the second was the weakness of GIRoA institutions. He argued that such conditions would “generate recruits for the insurgent groups.” Therefore, he recommended the revision of internally focused, enemy-centric COIN, into a “comprehensive and fully resourced mission focused on protecting the population.”According to McChrystal, population-centric COIN would involve clearing contested areas, securing them to create opportunities for local-based governance, and then developing the area economically to achieve lasting stability after a proper transfer of authority.

Furthermore, President Obama’s approach to conflict decision-making was substantially more analytical than that of his predecessor. While the Bush Administration was marred with contradiction, discounted expert opinions in favor of personal schemas, and was steered by bureaucratic infighters such as Paul Wolfowitz; the Obama Administration’s decision to turn to an internally focused population-centric approach was characterized by centralized control and careful deliberation. While former Bush Vice President Dick Cheney accused him of ‘dithering,’ Obama instructed his vice president, Joe Biden, to play devil’s advocate and “ask the toughest questions [he could] think of” to challenge any pre-existing assumptions.Nor would Obama allow others in his Administration to dictate policy as Wolfowitz had under the laissez-faire Bush management system. For example, when McChrystal attempted to ‘goldilocks’ him into approving an unrealistic troop increase, Obama called him out.The surge strategy that was produced collegially, would feature a troop increase and population-centric COIN to rectify the Bush Administration’s blunders, but Obama’s deadline.

While internally focused, population-centric COIN was intended to be the be-all-end-all strategy for ‘countering violent extremism,’ by instituting a hard deadline for reconstruction in Afghanistan; the breeding ground for al Qaeda and the Taliban, the Obama Administration demonstrated a lack of commitment to what should have been treated as an open-ended goal. Overwhelming Afghanistan with a tsunami of US aid to meet the deadline, the surge fueled destabilization by incentivizing GIRoA corruption. For example, as part of the build phase, Quick Impact Projects (QIPs) to develop infrastructure, were intended to increase Afghan confidence in the GIRoA. However, because the surge’s prevailing strategy was that “money expended equals success,” corrupt GIRoA contractors exploited the system because they knew the money would keep flowing.Subsequently, Afghan civilians ranked corruption as one of the top three reasons why they continued to support the Taliban.

Despite its shortcomings, the Obama Administration would retain the surge strategy until the end of its second term. However, this time, retention of an ineffective strategy would not be because of senior policymakers’ fears of losing prestige, but would be because of prestige-hungry junior players, anxious to demonstrate rapid progress towards the 2014 deadline. To do so, impartial third party evaluations of missions were substituted with self-assessment, thereby making “everyone involved look good” and to make it look like the surge was having its intended effects.Furthermore, because progress was only measured quantitatively, in terms of patrols conducted, villages cleared and dollars spent; junior bureaucrats were enabled to paint misleading pictures of personal and organizational success. Just as the ‘body count’ metric had misled President Johnson decades prior, the surge’s shortcomings were obfuscated from Obama.As a result, despite the Obama Administration’s efforts to legitimize the GIRoA and build Afghan infrastructure, insurgencies returned to Afghanistan in the summer of 2015, forcing US troops to once again engage in offensive rather than reconstruction missions.

After continuing to receive positive reports, but seeing little progress, President Obama would have experienced cognitive dissonance and subsequently updated his internally focused beliefs regarding population-centric COIN. As a result, with the 2014 rapid expansion of Daesh in Iraq and Syria, the Obama Administration returned to a more enemy-centric COIN strategy of targeted drone strikes against insurgents. Drone strikes did not differentiate between friend or foe, and exacerbated civilian casualties, thereby eroding what little trust remained between target state civilians, their governments and the US. With the end of the Obama Administration, COIN and the GWOT had been brought full circle, with little to show for it.

In conclusion, despite its attempt to shoot a trajectory completely opposite the Bush Administration to combat terrorist insurgencies, the Obama Administration still fell victim to the same pitfalls of bureaucratic politics and public opinion that had been the impetus for such problems under the previous administration. While the Bush Administration’s external focus and dysfunctional laissez-faire management system led to the pursuance of destabilizing enemy-centric COIN, the Obama Administration’s internally focused and collegially brainstormed population centric COIN, could not eliminate violent extremism either. However, what is clear, is that no matter the difference in strategy, leaders must treat the fight against terrorism as an open-ended goal and require from themselves, an open-ended commitment. As both the Bush and Obama Administrations have demonstrated, if constraints are placed on COIN to reconcile public opinion, target-state destabilization will follow.

June 14, 2020 0 comment

Geopolitics Military Security and Conflict Terrorism

The Proliferation of Undeclared Warfare

written by Alex Choy

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.

The post-WWII international order has seen the relationships between states become more numerous, complex, and interdependent. In this new age, international institutions such as the United Nations (UN) and the Geneva Conventions have attempted to regulate how wars are initiated and fought. Naturally, these efforts have caused considerable friction with members of the international community, such as the United States, where many believe that the ‘right’ to go to war is an extension of state sovereignty. However, in recent decades, despite a hawkish foreign policy, the US has stopped issuing formal declarations of war. This change is not due to the domestic electoral costs of declaring war; rather, it is the result of the beneficial legal flexibility the US gains when it intentionally fails to formally classify hostilities as war while operating under the constraints of international law.

One outdated argument suggests that the lack of declarations of war is because domestic electoral costs are too high; politicians shy away from declaring war in fear of not being reelected. Proponents of this argument believe that the human cost of losing loved ones will translate into a negative voter opinion towards those who declared war. However, the fact of the matter is that whether America’s conflicts are declared or not, the majority of voters do not take into account foreign policy when placing their ballots. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara once mused about going “to war without … arousing the public ire.” In recent decades, his musings have become a reality. New technology and advances in medicine have minimized the domestic human toll of conflict. For instance, in ongoing conflicts, 10 % of US soldiers have died from their wounds, compared to 30% during the Second World War. Additionally, the overall number of soldiers exposed to direct combat has decreased, given the proliferation of unmanned drone strikes. The US’s ability to wage limited war has resulted in a constituency that is detached from American foreign policy. Therefore, an argument solely based on the electoral costs of declaring war is not sufficient.

Regarding the jus ad bellum conditions under which states may declare war, the UN Charter prohibits the use of force “against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” except in cases of individual or collective self-defense. The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) enforces this through punitive resolutions that impose compliance costs ranging from economic sanctions to the use of force. However, given that the US is a permanent ‘P5’ member of the Security Council with veto power, UNSC resolutions regarding alleged US aggression are thereby nullified. Therefore, to hold the US accountable, less powerful nations can supersede the authority of a US veto by convening a special emergency session of the UN General Assembly.

Given the implications of blatantly violating the Charter, to fly under the proverbial radar of the UN, the US has altered the way it advertises military intervention to the international community. The precedent for doing so was established when President Truman sent US troops to Korea without a declaration of war and under the authority of an international UN treaty instead. Terming the conflict, a police action, Truman explained that under the Take Care Clause of the Constitution, international treaties “are laws of the land, and it becomes the President’s duty” to execute them faithfully.The distinction created between war and police action is poignant. While a declared war is “designed to crush and conquer another nation,” a police action is simply a limited military intervention to punish perceived aggressors and to restore the status quo.

To this day, the US has continued to use the convenient ‘police action’ model to justify military intervention abroad. For instance, when questioned about the lack of a war declaration in Vietnam, Secretary of Defense McNamara explained that doing so would imply a “dedication to the total destruction of the enemy,” when US forces were only concerned with restoring the status quo established by the 1954 Geneva Accords. In the same interview, he also acknowledges that doing so would “significantly reduce the flexibility” of US forces to bring North Vietnam to the bargaining table, given the illicit insertion of US special forces into neutral Cambodia to disrupt Viet Cong supply lines.

Post-Vietnam, with the introduction of the War Powers Resolution, which enables the presidential deployment of troops for up to 90 days before seeking a Congressional Authorization of Military Force (AUMF), these so-called police actions became even easier to conduct. Conflicts such as the 1983 invasion of Grenada, the 1990 invasion of Panama, and the 2003 invasion of Iraq have been authorized in this manner, claiming target nation noncompliance with existing international treaties. Concerning these operations, US officials have maintained that the absence of a formal declaration of war is not what makes military intervention unlawful. Rather, “the only relevant legal question is whether … [intervention] is justified.” Therefore, by painting its military incursions as ‘police actions’ and refraining from official declarations of war, the US generates the plausible deniability necessary to justify that it is not waging war, but merely ‘policing’ to enforce international treaties.

Regarding jus in bello conduct during hostilities, the 1949 Geneva Convention regulates the actions, strategies, and weaponry of military personnel during armed conflict. It does this by establishing standards of international human rights law (IHL). For example, captured military personnel are classified as prisoners of war (POWs) and cannot be tortured. In this context, the wording is critical since the existence of a state of war between two nations determines whether or not the Geneva Conventions apply, and therefore, whether or not war crimes have occurred. Consequently, in non-interstate conflicts, IHL does not apply to insurgents, since they are classified as unlawful combatants instead of military personnel. The useful implications of this distinction are illustrated by the US’s controversial Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

At Guantanamo, captured insurgents were subjected to ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ during the post-9/11 scramble to bring its perpetrators to justice. Due to their classification as unlawful combatants, the insurgents occupied a legal gray area. In the context of IHL, declaring war is akin to crossing a line of no return. On the one hand, if a state issues a formal declaration of war, then it is forced to abide by IHL. On the other hand, when a state does not, it retains the legal flexibility necessary to justify noncompliance. Accordingly, if the US had issued a formal declaration of war against terrorists, it would have implicitly acknowledged their political legitimacy and, thereby, their POW status. However, because it did not, military and government interrogators were able to implement techniques that would have otherwise been illegal in the context of IHL.

With the recent killing of Quasem Solemani and subsequent Iranian missile strikes, the AUMF has again come under attack, with Representative Joe Kennedy III calling for its repeal. Kennedy reasons that by repealing the AUMF, legislators can redeem themselves by rescuing the power to wage war from Presidential abuse. However, while Representative Kennedy’s qualms are valid, it is essential to recognize that in the modern age, a world where insecurity is generated by threats from non-state actors, Congress is institutionally incapable of the celeritous decision making that such threats require. On the other hand, the President, by nature of his office, possesses the resources necessary to gather and analyze intelligence via his National Security Council and Joint Chiefs of Staff, and therefore can act and respond to national security threats expeditiously.

Crises have illustrated that small, simple working groups focused solely on foreign affairs; i.e., the President and his Cabinet are better suited to address threats to national security than large, complex bureaucracies; i.e., Congress, which is primarily focused on domestic concerns. In addition, the introduction of the War Powers Resolution by Congress implicitly acknowledges the Congressional shortcomings regarding use of force decision making, and was designed to remedy Congressional indecision. Therefore, on top of the legal leeway that waging undeclared war affords, official declarations of war are anachronistic and only serve as a national security risk.

By not formally declaring war in an environment governed by carefully worded international guidelines, the US can afford itself flexibility when dealing with threats. As a result, when the US engages in hostilities without prior UN approval, it attempts to disguise its violations of the UN Charter by labeling its military intervention as something other than war, such as a ‘police action.’ While this is a risky endeavor, it has paid off tremendously, allowing the accomplishment of policy objectives and ensuring national security while walking the fine line between violation and compliance of international law.

April 14, 2020 0 comment

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