Wikileaks Strikes Again

This week Wikileaks, the website dedicated to publishing classified documents, began release of thousands of “diplomatic cables” which transmitted information and assessments from US embassies around the world to the State Department. As was the case when Wikileaks published videos of US troops in Iraq killing unarmed civilians and US military battlefield assessments from Afghanistan, the US government reacted with strong language calling the release “ an attack on the international community” and a “reckless and dangerous action” which endangered diplomats, intelligence professionals and people around the world.

Thus far the damage seems to be mostly political and diplomatic. Dispatches from embassy officials which classified foreign leaders as “Robin to Putin’s Batman” (Dmitry Medvedev), “Flabby old chap” (Kim Jong Il), “the crazy old man” (Robert Mugabe) and “penchant for partying” (Silvio Berlusconi) will probably not endear these officials to the leaders that they must interact with.

The general theme that seems to run through the dispatches when they are compared to stated US policy is that if their lips are moving US diplomats and administration officials are probably lying. This is not a new revelation. In his book “A Peace to End All Peace” which the chronicles the efforts of Britain and France to carve up the Ottoman Empire after WW I. David Fromkin describes British diplomat Mark Sykes as “an innocent: he believed people meant what they said.” Everyone in the diplomatic game will now be more skeptical of what they are told.

Media pundits have made a big deal of the dispatches which describe efforts by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, UAE, and Bahrain to encourage the US to start a war with Iran. This release will likely cause serious issues for these undemocratic authoritarian regimes whose policies do not reflect the views of their people. While the governments have expressed grave concerns about the threat of a nuclear capable Iran, a recent University of Maryland/Zogby International poll shows that 57% of those polled in these Arab countries believe that if Iran acquired nuclear weapons it would be a positive outcome for the region. 77% of those polled believe the US poses the biggest threat. (Right behind Israel at 88%)

The good news is that, thus far, the Obama administration has resisted these calls for war. Let’s hope that common sense continues to prevail.

Marching Toward Fourth Middle East War

A year ago President Obama announced his so called “surge and exit” plan for the “war of necessity” in Afghanistan. At the time, I opined in this space that, faced with a bunch of bad options, Obama had picked the wrong one. (This post is here.) Obama’s plan was to surge 30,000 troops into Afghanistan for 18 months and then begin a drawdown. I expressed that, faced with the deteriorating situation on the ground, the 18 month timeframe was unrealistic and the most likely outcome was that the military commanders would show enough progress to persuade Obama to deploy more resources and extend the timetable. Unfortunately this prediction has become the reality. This week in Lisbon, Obama will propose extending the NATO combat role until 2014 and, since our NATO allies are reducing their troop commitments, more of the burden will fall on the US.

Now, two years into the Obama presidency, it remains unclear what the strategic objectives in Afghanistan are and what the face of victory looks like. The stated objective is to deny al Qaeda a base of operations in Afghanistan from which to attack US interests. The problem with this plan is that al Qaeda has not been in Afghanistan for nine years. They have moved their base of operations to Pakistan and have opened franchises in Yemen, Somalia and Algeria. Faced with this reality, the US is escalating its attacks and deployments in Pakistan and Yemen (Can Algeria be far behind?) creating a fertile recruiting environment for al Qaeda. (This story is here.)

As if this were not enough, in this month’s midterm elections, the angry American electorate, exhibiting great cognitive dissonance, returned to power the same people who created the problems that made them angry in the first place. Already asserting their newly found power, Republican hawks have begun to propose a package of carrots and sticks to pressure Obama to attack Iran. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has recently said, “If he (Obama) decides to be tough on Iran, beyond sanctions, I think you’re going to see a lot of Republican support for the idea…”. (This story is here.)

All of this has happened far from the view of the American voter. Only 7% of the voters said Afghanistan was important to them in the election. Over the past few decades several phenomenon have contributed to insulating the general public and their political representatives from the consequences of the most important decision that they must make, whether or not to take the country to war. The advent of the professional military means that only a small portion of the population is directly affected by the wars. Increasingly we are seeing the development of a professional military class where son follows father and daughter follows mother. They are isolated from the rest of the population who go about their business unaffected. We have effectively created a fourth branch of government that, backed by their supporters in the military-industrial complex, has enormous influence and is politically unaccountable. This trend is troubling to me.

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan,Iran,Obama

A Modest Proposal for Iraq

During my conversation with Nawef Masawi, then Hezbollah’s Foreign Minister, he described how democracy in Lebanon functioned. He said that Lebanon’s democracy is “not a democracy of figures (individuals) it is a democracy of communities.” (The conversation is here)

In the Taif Agreement of 1989 which ended Lebanon’s long and brutal civil war, power was distributed by a sectarian distribution of offices and seats in Parliament based on a 1932 census. The 128 Parliament seats are allocated 64 to Christians and 64 to Muslims. The President must be a Christian, the Prime Minister a Sunni Muslim and the Speaker of Parliament a Shia Muslim. This distribution reasonably reflected the 1932 demographics, but, as a result of ongoing emigration of Christians, the Christian representation in government far exceeds their proportion of the population. However, nobody wants to reopen the old sores of the civil war and revisit the agreement.

As Masawi points out, the system results in a government based on decision by consensus. When, in 2008, under pressure by the Bush administration, Prime Minister Siniora tried to override the consensus and attempted to curb the power of Hezbollah, major political unrest ensued. The crisis was averted when the Emir of Qatar brokered the Doha Agreement which awarded Hezbollah a ”blocking third” in the cabinet. This effectively gives them veto power on major decisions.

The result of this system is a very weak government in Lebanon which has difficulty getting anything done. However, the system has remained in place for 20 years with little sectarian conflict. No confessional group is incentivized to try to gain complete control as there is no way to increase their number of seats in Parliament. They are limited by the sectarian allocation.

A similar system might work well in Iraq. Allocation of seats and cabinet positions resulting in a distribution of power among Sunni Arabs, Shia Arabs and Kurds, based on population with major decisions, such as allocation of oil revenues, requiring a super majority, would result in a weak central government forced to govern by consensus. Such a system would probably be acceptable to all of the regional and extra regional players who are trying to influence the outcome.

Since the March 2010 elections, Iraq has experienced political gridlock as no group has been able to establish a coalition to form a government. Outside parties have been exerting pressure to protect their interests and the interests of their client groups. The US has tried to insure that their western oriented Sunni and Kurdish allies come to power and that major US oil and construction interests have the upper hand in future contracts. Iran wants a weak Shia dominated government which will not repeat the Saddam Hussein military adventures and will not allow the US to have a threatening military presence right on their border. Saudi Arabia wants to protect the interests of their Sunni Muslim brothers. Syria and Turkey also have strong national interests in the Iraqi outcome.

Under a consensus system, nobody would get everything that they want, but they might get enough to stop interfering and allow the system to function.

Technorati Tags: Lebanon,Iraq