This video is a full length, unedited interview conducted as part of an upcoming episode of World View on the militarization of space.
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In the aftermath of the Second World War, the global powers came together to create an intergovernmental organization, the United Nations, that would facilitate diplomacy and “save the world from the scourges of war.” The spirit of the UN Charter was to create an international community that would prevent a disastrous third world war in the nuclear age and establish legal procedures and forums to address the world’s darkest problems. Since then, the United Nations has saved countless human lives and acted as a mechanism for preserving and building peace. However, there are many significant structural problems in the institutions of the international community. Multilateral humanitarian intervention, or the deployment of a multilateral peacekeeping force to halt genocide and crimes against humanity, is one of the most controversial actions of the UN. One should be critical of the effectiveness of Article 27 (3) of the UN Charter which allows the permanent members of the Security Council to veto resolutions for this type of military intervention.
The victors of the war had the most influence in forming the laws for this new international agency and for establishing new diplomatic norms. For example, the Allied powers organized the Nuremburg Trials to hold leaders who committed genocide and crimes against humanity during the war accountable. But because the winners, the Allies, were holding the trials, only Nazi leaders were tried for war crimes. The Allied powers also created the legal structure for the Security Council, and the US especially advocated for the veto power because it was an added protection of American domestic sovereignty. But the veto power has continually inhibited the functions of the Council, especially humanitarian intervention, and conflicted with the spirit of the UN Charter.
Multilateral humanitarian intervention exists to protect those who are suffering from the worst of crimes, crimes which are perpetrated by the victim’s own state. And while the UN recognizes the sovereignty of each of its member states and functions in an anarchic international system with no higher enforcement, if a state were to begin systemically exterminating its own people, the UN has the authority under international law to intervene with peacekeeping forces. Thus, multilateral humanitarian intervention is one of the two exceptions to the UN Charter’s ban on the use of force. The deployment of peacekeeping forces is authorized by the Security Council, who is bestowed with this authority because of Article 42 of the Charter. The permanent five (P5) members of the Security Council, the U.S., the U.K., Russia, France, and China, all have veto power when considering resolutions that authorize multilateral humanitarian intervention. Ten rotating non permanent members also vote on related issues and nine affirmative votes are needed to approve a resolution, but one veto from any of the P5 stops it from passing. This presents a problem when factoring in geopolitics and international relations into how the Council votes.
If a P5 nation decides that an act of humanitarian intervention would not be in their interest domestically, or in the interest of their allies, they can stop it from happening. This hypocrisy has been cited as a reason for a failure of preventing or halting genocide in the Former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Syria among other cases. Some would argue that multilateral humanitarian intervention should rarely ever be used and that the veto power encourages the Council to keep this type of resolution as a last resort. However, because this intervention is only ever considered in emergency situations, delay only means death for those affected. The Security Council veto promotes inaction by allowing a select few states the ability to act in their own interests at the expense of protecting human life.
It’s also important to remember that humanitarian intervention, which is a use of force, is only allowed as an exception under international law. One of the fundamental purposes of the UN is to prevent war and thus the UN Charter bans the use of force in Article 2(4). This law states that “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”. Yet, the UN also codifies two major exceptions. The first is outlined in Article 51, which makes an exception for cases of individual or collective self-defense as no state would have signed a treaty that prohibited them from striking back after an attack. The other exception, outlined in Article 42, allows the use of force with Security Council approval if it is conducted in the spirit of Chapter V or “maintenance of international peace and security”. The UN gave themselves the power to intervene in another state if international peace is at stake. The exact law that details the structure of the Security Council veto on this type of force is enumerated under “Article 27 (3)…[which] establishes that all substantive decisions of the Council must be made with ‘the concurring votes of the permanent members’”; it also requires 9 affirmative votes out of both the 5 permanent and 10 rotating members to move forward with multilateral action, but the P5 are the only states with the ability to perpetuate inaction by dismissing a draft resolution. Historically, Article 27 (3) becomes problematic when most members (9 or more) will agree on a resolution and then one P5 state halts the process.
Syria has become a visceral example of how gridlocked the Security Council can become. The Syrian conflict began in 2011 when the revolutions of the Arab Spring reached Syrian borders. Assad’s regime began using violence against protestors and turmoil swelled. A civil war began, drawing in many other countries and ravaging the country for the last decade. According to the Human Rights Watch “World Report” that covered the events of 2018,
“The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a monitoring group based in the UK, estimated the death toll since the start of the war to be as high as 511,000 as of March 2018. Years of relentless fighting left 6.6 million displaced internally and 5.6 million around the world, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)”.
Despite the desperate circumstances and the mass migration into Europe, the Security Council was again deadlocked. Russia supported Assad’s regime and vetoed any military intervention. The Syrian people have since suffered from the following human rights violations, described in the The World Report, such as chemical weapon attacks, arbitrary detention, and forced disappearances conducted by Assad’s government, as well as indiscriminate attacks by a Syrian-Russian alliance, persecution by non-state armed groups, deaths and displacement from Turkish military offenses, and violations by US-backed and US-Led coalitions; all of these human rights issues contributed to the disastrous displacement crisis. Because Russia has domestic interests in backing Assad, the Security Council remains deadlocked and no legal military intervention can occur. Instead, other illegal uses of force are occurring, and Assad’s regime continues operating with impunity. In a July 2020 UN Report, the Commission of Inquiry on Syria found “fresh evidence of war crimes committed by all sides in the Syrian Conflict”. The conflict and humanitarian disaster continues on. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost and entire cities have been displaced as the veto power halts legal international help.
There are various proposed legal Security Council reforms including: abolishing the veto and then expanding permanent membership to five other states or supporting the resolution “Responsibility Not to Veto” where P5 members’ veto power would not apply to military intervention related to genocide prevention. While these propositions have their own faults, a change to the legal structure of the Security Council is needed to prevent further inaction.
One proposed solution is to abolish Article 27 (3) and expand permanent membership to five other states from differing regions of the world. The reasoning behind this solution comes from a historical analysis of the UN structure. During the creation of the UN in 1945, the Council consisted of five permanent members and only six non-permanent members because the total number of members of the UN was only 51. Following decolonization, the number of states in the UN grew and by 1963, there were 113 member states. In response, an amendment to the Charter was made and went into effect in 1965 to add 4 more elected seats of nonpermanent members; this expanded the total number of members in the Security Council to 15. But now, the UN has 193 members and the Charter hasn’t been amended in 55 years; there are no permanent member countries from Latin America, Africa, or Southeast Asia. One solution is to expand the number of states from 15 to 20 and abolish the veto power. This would provide more representation to other parts of the world and reflect the global changes in international relations that have occurred in the half of a century since the last amendment. In addition, this idea could help solve the gridlock problem caused by the veto, which realistically occurs when all countries are in agreement except for one P5 state. The complications associated with this resolution lie in selecting the states that would form this new Council. One scholar described the frustration of diplomats trying to pass Security Council reforms when he states, “Beyond the idea of expansion, any consensus falls apart, with fierce regional rivalries over who might gain new permanent seats making any changes problematic, if not impossible”. The decision of which states can be on the new Security Council has also produced gridlock in moving forward with reforms.
Another possible solution is the acceptance of the “Responsibility Not to Veto” or the RN2V initiative which is associated with the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine. R2P was a paradigm shift in the early 2000s that changed how the international community viewed state sovereignty when faced with atrocious human rights violations; it was in reaction to the failures of the UN to stop the genocides of the 90s, including Rwanda and Srebrenica. R2P claims that the international community has a responsibility to protect citizens of other countries if their states begin to commit egregious human rights violations against them; it thus views sovereignty as a responsibility which could be revoked by the international community on the grounds that the state is committing a crime so atrocious and offensive, they have disrupted international peace. The RN2V is an initiative to eliminate the deadlock of the Security Council veto so that humanitarian intervention can be effectively applied. More specifically, the RN2V requires that “‘[t]he Permanent Five members of the Security Council should agree not to apply their veto power, in matters where their vital state interests are not involved, to obstruct the passage of resolutions authorizing military intervention for human protection purposes for which there is otherwise majority support’”. This initiative has met resistance from most of the P5, but has actually found support from France. The Official French diplomatic website states,
“…in 2013 France launched an initiative proposing a collective and voluntary agreement by permanent members of the Security Council whereby permanent members shall not exercise the right to veto in the event of mass atrocities. The Security Council’s ability to prevent or put an end to situations of mass atrocities is key to its legitimacy. As of September 2020, the political declaration of support to this initiative, carried by France and Mexico, had been approved by 105 countries”.
Like the previous solution of expanding P5 membership, which France also supports, many of the complications lie in the process of implementing these new laws. What will convince the P5 to sacrifice their own power? In addition, the RN2V initiative “explores the interaction of power and law, and the role of secondary rules therein…. Hence, the legitimacy crisis of the Security Council is at the same time a legitimacy crisis of international law”. Circumventing international law, even to provide necessary action, only decreases the legitimacy of these conventions. The ability for the P5 to restrain their own power and reform the Security Council represents the complicated interaction of power, politics, and international cooperation.
In conclusion, the inaction created and perpetuated by the Security Council veto is deadly. While the Allied Powers had the most influence in creating new international norms 75 years ago, future international conflicts ought to have leadership that more accurately represents the current international community and not just the domestic interests of the P5. The evidence for reform is clear. There is already a legal precedent for Security Council veto reform as a result of an increase in membership in the United Nations. There are many case studies where the veto power cost hundreds of thousands of lives, and Syria specifically serves as an example of when human life was lost when military intervention could have stopped militias from systematically massacring their own people. The international community already accepts, as a result of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, the idea of humanitarian intervention for the purpose of stopping or preventing the worst of humanity’s crimes is needed to maintain international peace. However, Article 27 (3) prevents the UN from fulfilling its duties because it codifies the ability for the most powerful states to act in their own interest at the expense of the most vulnerable.
The Syrian case study also presents another dilemma: how society interprets international law. If states and civil society see case after case of deadlock that is only alleviated by illegal uses of force, what precedent does that set for international norms? The validity of Article 2 (4)’s ban on the use of force will be questioned or even disregarded. The cornerstone purpose of the UN is to prevent war, but unless the Security Council reforms its veto power, the status quo for genocide prevention will be inaction until illegal action is taken: the world cannot afford either. Two possible reforms could include abolishing the veto and expanding permanent members or accepting and promoting the Responsibility Not to Veto. Either of these reforms provide solutions, yet may be difficult to instate because they would require the most powerful states to limit themselves.
The issues of the veto power thus represent the broader dilemma of international cooperation. There is no overarching power, only states with individual interests that must work together to solve humanity’s most complex and dark problems. But, reform has occurred before and these necessary changes could save millions of lives. Reforming the Security Council to check the most powerful will increase the validity of the UN and international law in the future, which will help ensure that international aid will not forget the most vulnerable. Beth Simmons perhaps describes this power dilemma and importance of international human rights law when she states,
“No other international legal regime has aimed quite so consistently, explicitly, and universally at improving the quality of human existence… The key question is not whether crime exists – that is an indubitable point. It is, what and how has international law contributed to the chances that human beings will enjoy their rights more fully than would have been the case in the absence of the major human rights treaties?”
While international legal institutions, like the Security Council, need reform, a world without global forums dedicated to protecting human rights would be much worse. Therefore, reforming these institutions is not a sign of failure, but a commitment to the laws that will protect the human rights of future generations.
“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.
This article is the third of five pieces from our summer series for 2020. The theme this summer is “Challenging Narratives.” In the coming days and weeks, The Generation will publish more articles where our writers challenge various notions to provide new and different perspectives on the debates and events shaping your world.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unparalleled in global notoriety for its controversiality, complexity, and seeming intractability. Even the term “Israeli-Palestinian conflict” itself is contested: some advocates of the Palestinian cause prefer that “Palestine/ian” come first or dispute the use of the term “conflict,” which implies a generally equal balance of power, preferring instead to focus on the word “occupation.” The geopolitics of Israel and Palestine are probably unique in the sense that they provoke unparalleled intensity of rhetoric and emotion from Western observers, including those who identify as Jewish/Israeli or Arab/Palestinian, and those with no clear personal stake in the conflict’s outcome.
In light of this, it goes without saying that that this essay is in no way intended as an all-encompassing or definitive statement on the conflict, the content or validity of competing Israeli and Palestinian narratives, or an ideal resolution. Instead, it is a response to the proliferation of simplistic, one-sided, and often factually misguided opinions. In that spirit, let’s challenge some narratives.
Broadly speaking, two historic and political narratives — Palestinian and Zionist — have solidified in opposition to each other, and the gulf of understanding between these two narratives presents a serious obstacle both to the chances of Israeli-Palestinian peace and to the complete understanding of the dispute by international observers. I will present each narrative on the conflict, discuss important weaknesses of both, and provide a synthesis.
The Palestinian Narrative
What I will, for the sake of argument, refer to as the “Palestinian narrative,” is as follows: Zionism, the ideology which advocated pre-1948 for the establishment of a Jewish state in the Palestine region and post-1948 for the maintenance and support of the existing Jewish state of Israel, was not a national liberation movement but a settler-colonial movement. This narrative, drawing heavily on the academic tradition of anti/post-colonialism, argues that because Zionism was advocated primarily by European Jewish intellectuals whose families had not lived in the Middle East for centuries and was effectuated by the mass migration of largely European Jews to the Palestine region, the dynamic was one of European colonialism.
Also important to advocates of this theory was the support of Western countries in the establishment and defense of Israel following the Second World War, which is used as evidence of Western imperialist collaboration, the colonialist views of prominent Zionist thinkers, and the fact that many of these prominent Zionists explicitly conceived of their state building project as a colonial one.
Because the final goal of settler colonialism is total territorial domination and the complete replacement of the indigenous people, critics argue that Israel is an inherently expansionist and genocidal entity whose telos is the utter destruction of native Palestinians. Accordingly, the state of Israel in its current form — as an explicitly Jewish state in Palestine — is considered to be racist, colonialist, and illegitimate.
Article 22 of the Palestinian National Charter, adopted by the Palestine National Council in July 1968, reads: ‘Zionism is a political movement organically associated with international imperialism and antagonistic to all action for liberation and to progressive movements in the world. It is racist and fanatic in its nature, aggressive, expansionist, and colonial in its aims, and fascist in its methods. Israel is the instrument of the Zionist movement, and geographical base for world imperialism placed strategically in the midst of the Arab homeland to combat the hopes of the Arab nation for liberation, unity, and progress.”
The Zionist Narrative
The “Zionist narrative” provides a different account of history. Zionists (including the vast majority of Jews today) argue that the Jewish people are not European interlopers but in fact a diasporic indigenous ethno-religious group derived from ancient Judeans who lived and worshipped in Judea, modern-day Palestine, before forced expulsions by the Assyrian, Babylonian, Hellenic, and Roman Empires. Zionists point to the central role of Jerusalem and Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, in Jewish culture and theology before and after expulsions in antiquity.
Although Ashkenazi Jews, those of Central and Eastern European diasporic descent, were the primary architects of Zionism, modern day Zionists point out that not all Jews have this European background. For example, Mizrahi Jews, those whose families remained in the Middle East after the destruction of the Second Temple of Jerusalem in 70 CE and many of whose families were expelled during expulsions and evacuations from Arab-majority countries after 1948, today constitute slightly over half of Israel’s population.
The Zionist narrative rejects the notion that Zionism and Israel are colonial in nature, arguing that Israeli Jews are equally indigenous to the region, that Zionism is a national liberation movement pursuing justified self-determination, and that Israel is a pluralistic, liberal democracy whose 20% minority of Arab citizens enjoy full political and legal rights.
The Israeli Proclamation of Independence justifies the establishment of Israel by specific appeal to asserted Jewish indigeneity, beginning, “The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books. After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.”
Key issues of dispute
There are many points of tension between the Palestinian and Zionist narratives of the conflict, but here are two important questions for which different sides present different answers.
First, are the Jews indigenous to the Palestine region, and if so, does that indigeneity create a right to a Jewish state in Palestine? And second, is it true that the Zionist project was and/or is colonial in nature, and what are the consequences of either determination?
While both of these questions may seem highly abstract and retrospective, their repercussions on the conflict are profound. As long as the parties in the Israel-Palestine conflict hold firmly to drastically different accounts of history, they cannot easily reach consensus on what constitutes present reality. And with that kind of epistemic gap, a lasting peace settlement is essentially impossible.
The Indigeneity Question
The question of Jewish indigeneity is, like all of the fundamental questions underlying the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, deeply contested. The status of indigenity is generally understood to apply to people who self-identify as members of groups which can claim historical continuity with a given territory prior to colonial or settler contact, who can be classified as having distinct religious, cultural, social, and linguistic practices, and who self-identify as indigenous.
In many ways, this definition fits the Jewish people, who, despite enforced diaspora, claim religious, linguistic, ancestral, and genetic ties to the land of Israel and have a distinct culture. Indeed, an argument can be made that Jews, having lived outside of Judea as persecuted minorities in European, Middle Eastern, African, and Asian nations for centuries, can lay claim to the term indigenous. And, the imperial domination of the Levant by Assyria, Babylon, Greece, Rome, Arab Caliphs, Crusaders (briefly), Ottoman Turks, and the British Mandate for Palestine parallels the imperial and colonial oppression of other, unambiguously indigenous peoples.
However, the issue is more complex. Converts to the Jewish faith are considered full members of the Jewish people, and qualifying converts to Judaism can also claim Israeli citizenship under the Law of Return and emigrate, even if they have no Jewish ancestry at all, a fact which complicates the traditional indigenity paradigm. Moreover, a majority of Jews in late 19th and early 20th centuries were not living in modern-day Israel, but mostly scattered across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Most of their ancestors had not set foot in the Levant for over two thousand years. Can indigenity expire over the centuries? Certainly, when European Jews emigrated en masse in the 20th century, many Palestinians interpreted the new arrivals not as long-estranged neighbors but as Western interlopers. This raises the question: is indigenity required for a state to be legitimate? Can a state founded on colonialism — as some consider Israel to be — ever be considered as legitimate and recognized as having authentic ties and rights to its land?
If, however, we accept the argument that Jews are indigenous to Judea, then does this suggest a right to self-determination, and thus to a Jewish state? Article III of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples reads, “Indigenous peoples have the right to self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” Self-determination, being the capacity and right of a group of people to exercise independent sovereignty and political decision-making, would suggest a right to a state.
The Colonialism Question
Early intellectuals of the Zionist movement were open about their vision for a colonial project in Palestine. Theodore Herzl, founder of modern Zionism and the Zionist Organization in the late 19th century, corresponded with English colonialist Cecil Rhodes, inviting him to partake in the colonial establishment of a Jewish state. Ze’ev Jabotinsky, theorist of Revisionist Zionism, argued that the Jewish state should come about not through the carefully-courted endorsements of European powers, but by mass immigration of Jews to Palestine to establish a power base and force the issue. Jabotinsky wrote in 1923, “Zionist colonisation must either stop, or else proceed regardless of the native population. Which means that it can proceed and develop only under the protection of a power that is independent of the native population – behind an iron wall, which the native population cannot breach.”
However, the question is more complicated than these quotes might suggest. For one, the paradigm of settler colonialism has traditionally been applied to European countries who exported their residents to other continents like Africa in the hope of enriching and strengthening the host colonial nation, establishing dominance over new territory, and displacing and replacing indigenous peoples. The Zionist project, while in some respects arguably colonial, was not an attempt by a foreign state to occupy and consume indigenous land, because there was no Jewish state at all prior to the establishment of Israel. In fact, the most consequential wave of Jewish emigration to Palestine immediately preceding Israeli statehood was that of European Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors, many of whom migrated from displaced persons camps. It is thus difficult to describe the immediate circumstances of Israel’s founding in 1948, as opposed to the political writings of Zionist leaders in prior decades, as some sort of pre-meditated Western endeavor. Indeed, the United Kingdom’s policy with respect to Jewish emigration and Zionism, as expressed in the 1939 White Paper issued by the Chamberlain Government at the urging of Arab Palestinian leaders and in fear of Arab revolts, had been to severely restrict Jewish emigration, condition future Jewish statehood on Arab approval, and tamp down on the purchase of Palestinian land by Jews. Unfortunately, while this policy may have preserved political stability in Palestine on the eve of World War II, it also had the side effect of denying Jews from escaping Europe in the 1940s a safe haven.
Further, depending on one’s views of the indigeneity of Jews to the Levant, the colonialism debate raises the question as to whether or not a group of people indigenous to a land can subsequently colonize it, or whether their return and reestablishment of sovereignty should instead be characterized as a national liberation movement. Critics of Israel might find a parallel example of indigenous repatriation as colonization in Liberia, which began as a settlement founded by the American Colonization Society (ACS). The ACS sought to voluntarily “repatriate” free African Americans to Africa in the first half of the 19th century and was successful in sending tens of thousands of freedmen to what is now the nation of Liberia. However, Liberia developed quickly into a very unequal society, in which Liberians of American descent, known as Americo-Liberians, ironically established a politically and economically dominant planter class and ruled over the “native” Liberians. This example differs from Israel, however, in that there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael since the earliest days of Jewish people, and in that Jews have ties to that specific region, whereas ancestors of Americo-Liberian colonists were not from Liberia specifically but the African continent generally.
In recent decades, the military occupation of the Palestinian West Bank and growth of Jewish settlements, both unauthorized and government subsidized, into the West Bank has been understandably interpreted as expansionist and even colonial in nature, bolstering the claims of those who characterize Israel in its entirety — both within and beyond its internationally-recognized borders — as a colonial entity. Recently, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s promised but not delivered de jure annexation of much of the West Bank was similarly described by critics as colonial Zionism’s inexorable next bite into Palestinian land.
Synthesis
So, the Palestinian narrative of Israel as a totally foreign settler colonial state is undermined by Jewish claims to indigeniety and mismatches between the settler colonial model and the facts of the conflict’s history. And, the Zionist narrative of Israel as an exceptionalist national liberation project is challenged by the unmistakably colonial elements of Zionism’s intellectual history as well as Israel’s prolonged occupation and creeping de facto annexation of land theoretically reserved for a future Palestinian state.
In early July, leading liberal Zionist Peter Beinart, a longtime defender of a two-state solution, declared that he no longer believed that two states were feasible, instead suggesting a single state or two-in-one federation to ensure full political equality for Palestinians. Others have rejected this suggestion, arguing that a single state governing two groups with incredibly deep historical grievances and, assuming that a single state would provide a full right-of-return for Jews and Palestinians alike, a substantial Palestinian majority and Jewish minority would lead only to worsened conflict.
Come August, however, Israel suspended plans for annexation of the West Bank in exchange for the normalization of diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates, followed swiftly by normalization with Bahrain. Despite the objections of Palestinians, it appears that Arab states are abandoning the “Arab consensus” that resolution of the Palestinian question be a prerequesite for diplomatic ties with Israel.
There is no panacea for the conflict, but whatever form peace takes when and if it finally arrives, it will depend on the ability of Israelis and Palestinians to appreciate the complexities of their own national narratives and consider the alternative narrative with empathy and respect. Unless each group can acknowledge the other’s national story and claim to the contested territory, there can be no peaceful resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
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.
This article is the second of five pieces from our summer series for 2020. The theme this summer is “Challenging Narratives.” In the coming days and weeks, The Generation will publish more articles where our writers challenge various notions to provide new and different perspectives on the debates and events shaping your world.
Outer space has been called the “new frontier” since the 1960s, but today is being named the “new arena” for an arms race. With the United States, Russia, and China coming to a head in space weaponry and lacking cooperation on arms control treaties, the destruction of the “new frontier” amidst an arms race is increasingly likely and should worry the international community.
Each year, reliance on space-based technology for defensive and civil purposes increases dramatically. Among leaders and civilians alike, this has fostered the idea that space is a linchpin for bettering humanity. Since space exploration began in the 20th century, however, the attempt to protect space as a global good has been achieved with limited success. Conversely, states have been investing into developing space-based technologies that are congesting outer space and fueling a foreseeable and disastrous conflict.
In the world of arms control, the “security-insecurity paradox” is of chief importance here: it dictates that as one country secures itself through weapons or force, it conversely incentivizes other states to double-down on their measures to secure themselves. This is what leads to an arms race. Today, this has caused many observers to speculate that some of the world’s most advanced and deadliest weapons will be created in outer space.
The change in narrative on outer space can be broken down into three timelines: the 1950s Space Race, China’s entrance into the space arena in the early 2000s, and the 2019 creation of America’s Space Force.
The Space Race
Beginning in 1955, leaders of the Soviet Union and the United States would pit their engineers and astrophysicists against one another in a war of scientific achievement. Each nation having a penchant for success made significant breakthroughs: the Soviets sent the first satellite, animal, and man into space, while America was crowned victor ” of the race by landing the first man on the moon.
The race synergized space programs and the era’s political movements, effectively reinvigorating two countries following the tumultuous first half of the 20th century. Crucially, this enabled politicians to utilize space for political favorability by cultivating a sense of national superiority and using space as an emblem of strength and ingenuity. Space began to be viewed as the nexus of modernity and heroism, and became a durable platform for prosperity.
Different branches of the Soviet’s and America’s military were used to realize space exploration, from missile deployments for launching satellites to monitoring spacecraft. This is to say, since humankind’s first foray into the stars, space has always been militarized. Yet, it has not been overtly weaponized. John Logsdon, a space historian at George Washington University, commented that the difference in militarizing and weaponizing space is “a somewhat fuzzy line that has not yet been crossed.” This is largely due to the Space Age being incredibly fertile in producing new treaties, chief among them being the 1966 Outer Space Treaty. This is to say, the conflict that ensued during the Cold War caused an increase in international cooperation to form regulations preventing another arms race from occurring.
These agreements established a cultural taboo of deploying weapons in outer space. Though a convoluted flaw in this taboo is that it does not condemn a country for funding and manufacturing efforts to create space-based weapons. Indeed, that endeavor has become a marker for modernity and excellence because the overwhelming majority of states have not reached a level of technological advancement to create space-based weapons. The key takeaway from this era is the creation of a global acceptance of space as the vanguard for human longevity, the intertwining of space and politics, and the loophole enabling the blueprints for a future arms race.
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China joins the Pantheon
When the Soviet Union was dismantled, the components of its original space agency were either shut down or reconstructed as private operations in the transition to the newly formed Russian space agency. At this point, Russia had taken a backseat in the militarization and weaponization of space. However, America’s blueprint for space weaponry continued and materialized in Ronald Reagan’s 1988 Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars,” which was designed to strike nuclear missiles from space. At a hefty cost of $170 billion, this initiative would have certainly enhanced the security dilemma by forcing other states to create their own anti-ballistic missiles. Ultimately, the SDI only served as a propaganda tool as the plan for its creation was eventually dropped. Following this, NASA’s funding started to significantly decrease and instead, the US private sector had heavily invested into space.
While funding for scientific improvement continued, competition remained relatively calm until 2003. A new-found urgency to resecure space came in the wake of China’s space agency, the China National Space Administration (CNSA), successfully launching its first crewed spaceflight. This made the CCP the third country in the world to send humans into space, challenging America’s preeminence in this field. Since then, the CPP’s capabilities have grown markedly.
The People’s Liberation Army steers the CNSA and ambitions a civilian expedition to the moon and a Chinese-built space station. Accordingly, China’s space activities function to uphold their national interests, with their recent plans outlined in their 10th defense white paper (DWP), entitled “China’s Military Strategy.” Published by the State Council Information Office and approved by the Central Military Commission, it details that China “implements a military strategy of active defence.” Since 2011, the CNSA has made significant progress on its space-based infrastrures to secure its economic and militaristic accomplishments, including taking necessary steps to launch high-density carrier rockets.
Xi Jinping is set on surpassing America as the dominant force in space. While the CCP may espouse peaceful rhetoric as they pursue what they’re calling “defensive measures,” their increase in satellites concurrent with their enhanced funding in space weaponry is leaving Washington officials worried. The Pentagon warned that China has created space-based anti-satellites aimed directly at America’s space infrastructure. What’s more, China is pursuing a broad range of confrontational actions, including creating electronic warfare weapons, such as lasers for blinding military imaging satellites and frequencing-interrupting technologies to obstruct satellite communication and GPS systems.
Accordingly, the US is viewing these measures as threatening, with the Secretary of Defense Mark Esper directly labeling China’s efforts as a textbook example of the “weaponization of space.” The US Space Command has emphasized its mission to “defend against and deter threats,” which, as the security-insecurity paradox that dominated the Cold War geopolitical landscape tells us, can be seen as teetering on the edge of a cosmic arms race.
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President Trump Signs the Space Force
The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act established the United States Space Force as the sixth independent branch of the military and currently the only independent space force on Earth on December 20, 2019. Its purpose is simple: provide and sustain space operations for America’s national security interests and deter aggression to, in, and from outer space.
As previously stated, since the start of space exploration, the “new frontier” has always been militarized, meaning President Trump’s militaristic mobilization is not novel by any means. However, the Space Force’s singular focus on space operations is what sets it apart and has, accordingly, sent China and Russia to the drawing board. The stakes are high: with China challenging America’s satellites, and America now doubling down and bolstering its own military capacity, worldwide communication and transport systems, which regulate hospitals, food, and water supplies, are at risk. Just as daunting, Russia has followed China’s lead in creating GPS and satellite jamming technology, ostensibly in the name of “defensive purposes.”
The reality is that all three goliaths – America, China, and more recently Russia – are combining their military endeavors with their objectives in outer space. Space has become not just a scientific waterfall, freeflowing with experimental capabilities and life-altering discoveries, but also offers attractive military advantages, most notably first-strike capabilities through the use of missiles.
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Final Verdict
It is too early to claim that the Space Force has disrupted peaceful space activities. But one thing is for certain: America’s Space Force will meet its Russian and Chinese counterparts in the coming years. As military history has shown, once one nation takes advantageous steps to defend itself, it simultaneously puts at odds other countries’ national security objectives and prompts a doubling down on endeavors to sway the advantage back in the threatened state’s favor. The Space Force, while most immediately a threat to China and Russia, is likely to create a domino affect, to borrow from the Cold War vernacular, by prompting Beijing and Moscow to construct their own space forces, which in turn will threaten the many nations currently seeking a claim in outer space, chief among them being India, Israel, Japan, and the greater European Union.
With the 1967 Outer Space treaty remaining the sole, overarching treaty in place, both the international community and the private sector are, on paper, more capable to curtail certain laws and regulations based on modern inventions omitted from this shamefully outdated treaty. The transition from the “new frontier” to the “new arena” for an arms race is increasingly likely, as the focus on space as an environment for scientific advancements has been taking a back seat to militaristic and hawkish endeavors. In the coming years, the United States, China, and Russia need to reposition and reevaluate their “defensive” actions while working alongside the international community at large to construct an up-to-date treaty on the uses of outer space. Additionally, following in the footsteps of nuclear-based treaties, the US, China, and Russia, as the world’s vanguards in space and military activities, need to construct a treaty regulating their military endeavors and improving confidence-building measures in order to protect one of the world’s most sacred and reliance-based goods.
Introduction:
History often serves as a potent force in global affairs. Its power over them can be comparable to DNA: an unseen, ancient, highly complex structure composed of even smaller units that all form to cast immense influence over the actions an organism takes and how it interacts with its environment.
Events of the past permeate deep into the collective memory of any nation. Just like DNA, the nature of history’s effects on contemporary geopolitics can depend on evolution or manipulation. Even when centuries or decades old, history can form a powerfully deep-seated narrative that winds up shaping and influencing the behavior of a state, even in the face of contemporary realities that may dictate otherwise when developing foreign strategy.
Relations between South Korea and Japan provide a case-in-point in this regard. While the powerful logic of realism lays the rationale for a robust security alliance between the two in the face of a rising China, historical memory and nationalistic fervor evoked from past trauma leave the two disunited and disengaged, and keeps their relationship fractured, even when their security rests on their ability to work together to maintain the balance of power in the region.
The History Problem, in Brief:
The origin of the current contention between South Korea and Japan can be traced back to the brutality of Japan’s empire – an entity which ceased to exist nearly eight decades ago. Throughout the course of modern history in the East Asian region, the Korean peninsula has often sat exposed and abused as a result of global imperial competition and expansion. Imperial Japan was responsible for systematic brutality during its occupation of the peninsula from 1910-1945. Among the detestable policies of the Japanese occupation were forced labor and the Japanese military’s use of Korean “comfort women” as sex slaves in wartime borthels. Many of the victims of these brutal and exploitive policies are still alive today to tell their stories.
To this day, the suffering Koreans endured still permeates deep into the relationship held between their nation and Japan, even in the face of a mutual benefit in leveraging the power of cooperation against a rising China. The starkest indication of these contentious historical grievances bubbling back to the surface is illustrated with the path the two governments have taken in the past two years.
In October 2018, South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled that a Japanese steel company, which helped perpetuate forced labor over half a century ago, must compensate Korean workers for their unpaid duties. Japan argues vehemently that cases under this purview have been addressed under a 1965 treaty between the two countries which effectively normalized relations. Furthermore, a 2015 agreement designed to mend the “comfort women” wound has ignited sharp backlash from hardline nationalists in both countries, further limiting avenues for officials to ease the growing tension.
The escalatory measures taken by both sides have manifested into several other facets of the bilateral relationship. Trade and intelligence sharing have become tools for showing dismay with one another. Prominent examples include export controls Japan placed on industrial chemicals vital to South Korea’s semiconductor industry and South Korea’s recent threat to exit an intelligence-sharing pact with Japan. China and Russia also took their own measures to compound trouble: a joint military flyover into a chain of islands contested by South Korea and Japan in 2019. The result was an alarming military confrontation in which South Korea fired dozens of warning shots at the encroaching warplanes.
In April 2020, Japan’s reluctance to consider the idea of adding South Korea to the Group of Seven Club prompted an official in South Korea’s presidential office to state that “Japan’s level of shamelessness is in the world’s top tier.” Japanese firms have also been exiting the South Korean market at an accelerated rate due to a protracted trade war and an anti-Japanese boycott movement in South Korea that shows little sign of abating.
These actions have been the consequence of bottom-up and top-down negative engagement with Korea’s and Japan’s traumatic history. In short, these two dynamics feed into one another. From a domestic standpoint at the elite level, it is often politically expedient for politicians to evoke nationalistic sentiment by taking polarized, hardline stances on the historical contention held between the two. To many experts, Japan’s tough stance against South Korea stems from “apology fatigue,” the idea that Japan has done more than enough to apologize for its past atrocities and that South Korean backsliding on official agreements demonstrates an insincere desire to truly reconcile the relationship. It is the result of a younger, more nationalisitc generation of Japanese born after World War II who now equate apologizing with “selling out” Japanese pride, history, and culture.
What Realism Dictates:
Under the lens of the International Relations theory of realism, Japan and South Korea possess a mutual interest in working together to balance against a rising China and to collectively confront a nuclear equipped North Korea in a cohesive manner. Professor John J Mearsheimer captures this dynamic most eloquently in his book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, when he states: “In a world where there is no agency to protect them (states) from each other; they quickly realize that power is the key to their survival.” Power, in other words, can also be gained by working together to balance against a mutual threat. In regards to a state like China, its principal aspiration is to become a regional hegemon in the Asia-Pacific. A hegemon is best defined as a “state that is so powerful that it dominates all the other states in the system.” For China, pursuing this goal means eroding the United States’ ability to serve as an offshore balancer in maintaining the status quo in the region. It becomes clear that this is a scenario neither South Korea or Japan wants.
Realism dictates that Japan and South Korea diffuse their historical grievances and opt in for a strategy that is based off of sheer pragmatism. It requires a tenable level of rapport and cooperation in order to confront China as a collective whole. As long as South Korea and Japan’s relationship remains frayed, it enables China to exploit the division and further assert itself as a dominant force throughout the region.
The Path Going Forward:
The United States must use the extensive diplomatic leverage it has with both countries to facilitate dialogue, forge compromise, and cultivate a renewed focus on maintaining stability in the region. If South Korea and Japan continue to depart from one another, the ability of the United States to maintain its foothold in the region will be threatened. To effectively balance against China, the United States needs its regional allies to hold a united front against Chinese expansion. China thrives from an alliance structure that is left fractured and divided between two consequential allies of the United States.
Political leaders in both South Korea and Japan have a duty to mitigate the domestic forces seeking to demonize the other. This means refraining from taking the politically expedient route of partaking in divisive activities. Just as this example has demonstrated, leaders must balance the broader national interest with their own electoral desires to a reasonable degree. Japan ought to strike a more prudent tone when engaging with the history issue rather than framing the expression of any semblance of contrition as a humiliation of Japan’s national pride. There is a middle-road between being overly apologetic and showing a sense of sympathy for the pain many South Koreans still feel. South Korea, for its part, should abide by past reconciliation agreements and truly seek to make peace with the past. The boycotting of Japanese goods while allowing anti-Japanese sentiment to continue moving along a directionless path of outrage will not help either side come to terms with the past, nor will it serve their broader interests in the present. Both need to come to grips with reality: the past should be forgiven but not forgotten. It should not become a tool for stirring-up nationalistic backlash at the cost of failing to confront current international realities that have far greater consequences for the security of both countries. In the end, pragmatism and sensibility must prevail because regional stability rides on it.
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.
President Bill Clinton, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk after signing documents whereby Ukraine agreed to dismantle all of its 1,800 nuclear warheads, Jan. 14, 1994, at the Kremlin in Moscow. Photo courtesy of the NPR.
The nuclear proliferation puzzle has long been thought of in relation to national security: states will build the bomb when they are placed in a significant military threat to which all other alternatives fail to suffice. Yet, Ukraine provides a counterfactual to security considerations by disinheriting one of the most powerful arsenals in the world amid military threats.
After the dismantlement of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly-formed state of Ukraine was “born nuclear” by inheriting about 4,000 of Moscow’s nuclear weapons, granting it the third largest arsenal in the world. This included some of the most technically-advanced weapons of the time: long-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and strategic bombers. Yet, in 1994, Ukraine committed to full disarmament.
The history of disarmament in Ukraine can be reinterpreted to explain why states, or more currently terrorist organizations, seek to develop nuclear weapons. This explanation is tied to long-term international security objectives and current foreign policy efforts to dismantle nuclear weapons entirely. This article will better explain the path to nuclear achievement and challenge conventional ideas of why states build the bomb by illuminating multiple causalities in that process.
Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Center for International Security, Scott Sagan, believes states build the bomb for three reasons. He refers to the first as the “security model,” which alerts us to states seeking nuclear capabilities when they face a significant military threat. This is the case with North Korea, whose nuclear accumulation is most considerably a reaction to America’s long desire to overthrow the Kim regime. There is little quarrel against the security model as the best explanation to many past and present nuclear buildups: the United States, the Soviet Union, China, Israel, and Pakistan almost immediately acquired nuclear weapons after facing security threats. Yet, the delay between security stimuli and nuclear buildup in some cases points to a flaw in reasoning that states build their arsenal simply for national security. India, for example, developed their arsenal nearly a decade after China had, and as Ukraine will exemplify, security threats alone are not always enough to motivate the creation of a nuclear arsenal.
The second “domestic model” is a street-light perspective on nuclear weapons. This invisions nukes as a political tool for credibility; for example, despite conventional perceptions that India built their arsenal in response to China becoming nuclear in 1964, Prime Minister Indira Ganhi instead reacted to domestic pressure to commence a nuclear program. An act of nuclear proliferation can divert turbulence within a state to gain public support. In this sense, bureaucratic actors created conditions that promoted the acquisition of nuclear weapons through bottom-up activity that propagated extreme views on foreign threats while lobbying for political favorability. The case of PM Ganhi shows her motivation for creating India’s nuclear arsenal stemmed from its conference of legitimacy and national prestige.
The last point is the “norms model.” Simply put, if nuclear weapons adhere to a state’s identity, that state will likely want to build an arsenal, given it has the capacity to do so. For example, France emerged from World War Two significantly weakened, and thus vigorously explored ways to reestablish their strength. The best path was through nuclear weapons, and once created, France paraded their arsenal vibrantly on the global stage. Today, quite literally, entire parades dedicated to displaying nuclear weapons in Pakistan, North Korea, and India exemplifies the close relationship that nuclear weapons have with nationalism and identity. On the opposite spectrum, if nuclear weapons defy a state’s image, nuclear arsenals will be avoided, as is the case with Canada.
Let’s suppose these reasons as to why states build nuclear weapons can be reinterpreted into why they don’t build, or in Ukraine’s case why they relinquish, their arsenals. Ukraine is quite puzzling from both a realist and a domestic politics perspective: Russia’s hegemonic behavior, burgeoning tensions over Crimea, and growing public support between 1992 and 1993 for keeping nuclear weapons, even in spite of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, make an anti-nuclear position unlikely. Though, that’s exactly what happened.
In large, the NPT is credited for this result in four critical ways. As I delineate, I will compare these scenarios to those of the present, or cases that are predicted to ensue. Early in 1990, Ukraine tried to accede the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state to separate itself from the Soviet Union and buttress their claim to national sovereignty. This was an expedient blueprint to independence that the majority conservative communists voted in a 355-4 adoption of the NPT. In the future, Hong Kong may adopt a similar tactic of establishing sovereignty vis-à-vis treaties if they continue to seek detachment from China.
Moreover, international prestige granted through the NPT also seeded Kiev’s anti-nuclear position. Pro-NPT officials insisted that this endeavor would enhance Ukraine’s soft power by separating it from what we call “rogue states,” such as modern North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. NPT norms birthed the idea that new nuclear weapons states were unstable threats, which by the 1990s effectively meant that they received international condemnation. Thus, Ukraine’s adherence to the NPT defanged their potentiality as a rising state, and instead invited partnership and security assurances between themselves and the members of the NPT. Moreover, joining the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state granted Ukraine the assurance of protection by nuclear weapon states in the treaty – a similar phenomena to the security assurances present in NATO.
Pipelining from this were economic pressures, which Ukraine certainly faced from America, and more generally NATO. The West maintained that failing to follow the NTP’s norms and regulations would result in economic restrictions, made easier by the NTP’s mobility and coordination of collective sanctions. Today, we can relate this to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a 25-year nuclear agreement which limited the scope of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
Last, the NPT created a sense of international responsibility. Ukraine was satisfying the global commitment to peace, which was being renewed at the conclusion of the tumultuous 20th century. Critically, America offered financial support for relinquishing Kiev’s arsenal, which made the negative proliferation decision a far easier endeavor and helped secure Ukraine’s position as a cooperative state. We may relate this today to China. Though the political future of a post-COVID China is uncertain, I think Beijing may be one to keep an eye out in this regard. The Trump administration is fighting to see China join the New START treaty as China continues to expand technologically and militaristically. Though, China’s long disapproval of joining has made this unlikely. In a world in which China may bear the international brunt of COVID’s spread, adopting this treaty may be a counterbalance as it would assume China as committing to shouldering a responsibility of international peace.
What’s of value with these four reasons is imaging Ukraine’s renunciation without the NPT. Though some case may be made for that, it’s nonetheless hard to imagine it being any easier. Nuclear treaties may be thought of as an investment into furthering the nuclear taboo and mediating the security dilemma. As was the case in the 1960s, testing nuclear weapons and acquiring an arsenal granted positive international recognition. Yet, today’s taboo causes immediate condemnation of any state attempting to do so. This signifies the progress of the nuclear taboo, and scholars today tend to view the NPT as a way to further it into one that eventually chastises the mere possession of nuclear weapons.
States build the bomb for many reasons, and at the same time, as Ukraine exemplified, states may also relinquish their arsenal for multiple purposes. No single policy can expedite creating a nuclear free world, nor advance international security measures. It suffices to say that multicausality best explains the nuclear existence present today and the troubles that policymakers face when formulating antiproliferation measures. What Ukraine’s deviation from conventional perceptions on the security dilemma shows is that future scholarship needs to be driven by comparative studies to determine the conditions that states fall under when acting against the nuclear taboo, and more presently should expand to single actors and organizations.
As Sagan puts it: “a focusing on how different governments assess the nuclear potential and intention of neighbors, on why pro-bomb and anti-bomb domestic coalitions form and gain influence, and on when and how NPT norms about legitimate behavior constrain statesmen will be extremely important.” For certain, the world may see a Ukrainian repeat in the future, but at the same time, the current nuclear tongue cannot dismiss the possibility of a rogue actor or state dismantling the nuclear taboo. It is thus imperative that scholars continue to expand their theories and look more deeply into the desire to acquire nuclear weapons and what shape that may take on in the coming decades. Moreover, we may look at the NPT’s furthering of norms as the argument for continual enhancement of the treaty and continuing to create new, comprehensive laws and regulations agreed upon by both nuclear and non-nuclear weapons states.
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.