re: "After 9/11 anniversary: the return of US diplomacy"

Nicholas Burns at the Christian Science Monitor wrote a great piece on the future of U.S. diplomacy.

Money quote(s):

"During these last 10 years, the US has fought two major land wars simultaneously. It has conducted an aggressive, controversial, and dangerous military campaign against terrorist groups from Iraq to the Afghan/Pakistan border to Somalia and Yemen. And America has transformed the way it defends itself from the terrorist threat at home and overseas.

The US has relied on the military to hit back when attacked or even threatened, to place first priority on building up defenses, and to sometimes shoot first and ask questions later. Much of this made sense in the months immediately following the shocking new threat that appeared with such sudden and terrible force in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001."

Students of strategy, grand or otherwise, already know that both military force and diplomacy are only two of the dimensions in which state (and non-state) actors operate.

DIME, anyone?

"(U)nlike the years following 9/11, the most difficult challenges ahead will require greater reliance on a combination of diplomacy and traditional statecraft and all that comes with it. That includes negotiating with odious regimes, threatening and cajoling them – but more often overcoming them through the strength of our political alliances – to get our way in the world.

This return of diplomacy to center stage in American foreign policy will take many different forms.

First, diplomacy is ascendant in the costly, ill-defined, and inconclusive wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that will end not on the battlefield but at the negotiating table. President Obama’s decision to remove combat forces in Iraq and ask the State Department to lead at the end of this year is sensible and long overdue. The US will also need to negotiate its way out of Afghanistan in the next few years as a conventional military victory there is unattainable."

Note the "conventional" qualifier on "military victory" in that last sentence. Still an arguable proposition, not quite a foregone conclusion, and there's lots of room for discussion as to what "conventional" warfare actually involves.

"This renewed commitment to diplomacy is critical for America’s national strategy. It is the most practical and effective way to coalesce with allies and friends as well as to confront foes in the decade ahead. That is why leaders in Washington should make the same commitment to rebuild the State Department as they did with the Pentagon, CIA, and Homeland Security in the years following 9/11. Congress fully funded those three pillars of national security but starved the fourth and equally important pillar – diplomats and USAID professionals."

Strangely, the fourth pillar tends to be the least expensive of them all; which is ironically one reason it's so politically easy to call for cuts in diplomacy and (because they're not actually the same thing) foreign aid budgets.

Let me walk you through that thought: not only are the dollar amounts smaller, but since they tend not to be spent in any congressmen's districts, employing more than a handful of their constituents, there's no immediate political price to be paid by any individual congress person.

It's not that U.S. diplomats and USAID staff don't vote, even when assigned overseas, but they're so relatively few, so difusely dispersed throughout the U.S., that no single politician has more than a handful in their district.

Not only that, but those deployed abroad have to cast absentee ballots, which (along with military overseas ballots) tend to get tossed out on technicalities or only counted long after the election results are actually announced.

"After 9/11, President Bush essentially put the military on the front lines of America’s international engagement all over the world, with the diplomats in reserve. The military became in the minds of politicians and in the public imagination the default choice for dealing with international problems."

And Pres. Bush was, fairly obviously, correct to have done so, disagree though you may with how he prioritized those military campaigns or implemented them.

Of course, even with the military in the forefront, there was action in most of the other dimensions of national policy, if only in support of those military efforts.

"America will face in the next few years the most dangerous and complex set of international challenges in recent memory. As it returns to diplomacy, political leaders at home must also resist the pernicious allure of isolationism so evident on the extreme right and left of the political spectrum. Americans must instead renew their global leadership role as the country moves further away from the tragedy of 9/11 and encounters the more complex times ahead."

Isolationism is a sucker's game, even for relatively insular Americans, and the voters know it. The real question is to what degree U.S. will be engaged internationally and in what arenas.

_____

Who is the writer?

"Nicholas Burns is professor of the practice of diplomacy and international politics, and director of the Future of Diplomacy Project at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He served as under secretary of State for political affairs from 2005 to 2008. Previously, he was US ambassador to NATO."

Also:

"Burns served in the United States Foreign Service for twenty-seven years until his retirement in April 2008. He was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from 2005 to 2008; the State Department’s third-ranking official when he led negotiations on the U.S. – India Civil Nuclear Agreement; a long-term military assistance agreement with Israel; and was the lead U.S. negotiator on Iran’s nuclear program. He was U.S. Ambassador to NATO (2001–2005) and to Greece (1997–2001) and State Department Spokesman (1995–1997). He worked for five years (1990–1995) on the National Security Council at the White House where he was Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia Affairs and Special Assistant to President Clinton and Director for Soviet Affairs in the Administration of President George H.W. Bush. Burns also served in the American Consulate General in Jerusalem (1985–1987) where he coordinated U.S. economic assistance to the Palestinian people in the West Bank and before that, at the American embassies in Egypt and Mauritania.

Professor Burns has received twelve honorary degrees, the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award, the Woodrow Wilson Award for Public Service from the Johns Hopkins University, and the Boston College Alumni Achievement Award. He has a BA in History from Boston College (1978), an MA in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (1980), and earned the Certificat Pratique de Langue Francaise at the University of Paris-Sorbonne (1977). He was a visiting Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in summer 2008."

_____

As the Foglio's might say, he's a "schmat" guy.

9/9

re: "re: "This Week at War: Rise of the Irregulars" "

Robert Haddick at Small Wars Journal ("facilitates the exchange of information among practitioners, thought leaders, and students of Small Wars, in order to advance knowledge and capabilities in the field") turns a frequent criticism on its head.

Money quote(s):

"Last week, the Washington Post's David Ignatius discussed how the line between the Central Intelligence Agency's covert intelligence activities and the Pentagon's military operations began blurring as George W. Bush's administration ramped up its war on terrorism. In his column, Ignatius took some swipes at former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for exceeding his authority by encroaching on turf legally reserved to the CIA. The Defense Department also was criticized for taking on too many diplomatic and foreign aid responsibilities as well. Ignatius expressed concern that without clearer boundaries separating covert intelligence-gathering from military operations, "people at home and abroad may worry about a possible 'militarization' of U.S. intelligence."

Ignatius missed the larger and far more significant change that continues to this day. In order to survive and compete against the military power enjoyed by national armies, modern irregular adversaries -- such as the Viet Cong, Iraq's insurgents, the Taliban, and virtually all other modern revolutionaries -- "civilianized" their military operations."

Read the whole thing here.

re: "Obama says 'War on Terror is over' while resurrecting LOST Treaty"

Crush at Blackfive doesn't think much of the new National Security Strategy.

Money quote(s):

"(W)ar as we know it is over. Through soft power, the United States has reinvented conflict into a feel good, region-building contingency operation where soldiers become ambassadors rather than warriors - seeking to win over our enemies rather than defeat them."

Winning hearts and minds (as the saying goes) is a perfectly reasonable way to defeat an enemy, for some values of defeat. After all, any way you make someone no longer an enemy, means he's no longer your enemy. But that's just a couple of arrows in the national quiver, not the whole of our national security toolbox. Or we'll be a very vulnerable one-trick pony.

"(O)ne can't declare war on terrorism (calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear, intended to coerce or intimidate governments or societies ... [to attain] political, religious, or ideological goals) any more than you can declare war on L-shaped ambushes. I concede that the Global War on Terror is not the best name for our current conflict. But the same argument could be made about World War II. Ultimately, what the war is called is pointless. The important thing is that it is brought to a quick, decisive, and favorable end, and as of yet there is no light at the end of the tunnel."

"This is clearly not a war against Islam. The fact that our leaders continue to bring this up is an insult to everyone's intelligence, and pandering to our enemies. Members of the Islamic religion - the jihadists - are at war with us, whether we acknowledge it or not. But if one were to read the Qur'an, one would find that jihad is a pillar of Islam, not something that was taken out of context by misunderstanders of the so-called "religion of peace" or created by George Bush and Dick Cheney in order to justify their diabolical scheme."

If this was a "war against Islam," it's surely the most incompetently-run war against Islam since the Children's Crusade. Not getting a lot of traction against Islam when we seem to be propping it up more often than not.

&

"The puss-nut diplomats and think tankers that came up with this s--t should be called pirates and turned in to the Russians. Since before Moses was a corporal, civilizations protected themselves by instilling "fear" among those who seek to subjugate or eliminate their culture - as jihadists do today."

re: "Autopsy of the Effort to Expand Membership in the Visa Waiver Program"

NoDoubleStandards at Calling a Spade a Spade ("Rants of a Foreign Service Officer on the things that matter to you -- and matter to you not at all") shared some analysis.

Money quote(s):

"The 9/11 Act fundamentally changed (at least temporarily) the philosophy underpinning VWP. Prior to the passage of the law, VWP was a fairly effective tool facilitating travel of citizens from countries deemed low risk as sources of illegal immigration for economic reasons. The 9/11 Act made security the paramount concern. The Bush administration pushed the idea that citizens of countries who had been allies in the "War on Terror" who do not pose a threat to our national security should be allowed to travel visa-free to the U.S."

re: "Language Shortfalls at the State Department, Revisited"

Domani Spero at Diplopundit ("Blogging the Foreign Service: Just one obsessive observer, diplomatic watcher, opinionator and noodle newsmaker monitoring the goings on at Foggy Bottom and the worldwide available universe.") posted an excellent piece on State's linguist shortfalls during wartime.

Money quote(s):

"(A)ssignments in hard locations like Afghanistan and Pakistan are usually “unaccompanied” and have one-year durations. Given that we’re seven years into the Afghan war, even if we reduce the number assigned to that region to 5 FSOs in each of the last 6 years, that still amounts to something like a 1 ½ tour for those qualified speakers. I suspect that almost all of those 18-language qualified employees would have done their second tour in the region by now.

Isn’t this the same old story that happened to the Arabic speakers sent to Iraq? At a certain point, you run out of qualified speakers. What do you do? Make people do repeat tours for a second, third, fourth time? Or maybe give others 3.5hours of Arabic training and send them off to battle sheep, the electric grid, water wells, etc. in the provinces of Baghdad. Only this time they’ll do this now in the rural areas of Afghanistan?"

"You know what’s going to happen – it happened before when we fumbled into Baghdad. There will be a mad scramble at the Hill to find out more about this language deficit. We don’t have enough people to go; it’s not like this is really news. But Congress will be shocked and the CRS or the GAO will be tasked to review the language shortfalls at the State Department, again."

"State’s philosophy is to hire officers with a wide range of skills that it believes are predictors of success in the Foreign Service. It does not hire exclusively for skills that State can train, such as foreign languages. As a result, State’s primary approach to meeting its language requirements is through language training, primarily through classes provided at its training arm, the Foreign Service Institute (FSI)."

&

"Our current universe is everything about risks. The current enemy stretches the globe like a giant octopus, with tentacles in many different hot spots around the world. Do you think our opponents in the "war of ideas" will wait quietly until we’re done and ready to counter them?

If there is ever a time when State’s hiring and recruitment philosophy needs an extreme makeover, that time is now. State does not have the luxury of time for training its officers from scratch whether in functional, regional or language areas. It needs to speed up, and it can't speed up using the same old SOPs from an outdated era. "

(Bold type added for emphasis. - CAA)

re: "Not To Compare Bataan To Baghdad, But…"

Robert at Expat Yank ("One American living in the south of England") reminds us about the nature of the enemy. And does so exceedingly well.

Money quote(s):

"(F)or years we have endured bemoanings about “lack of proof,” unfair trials and above all, “torture.” And not just from every released prisoner (Allied forces have evidently “tortured” EVERY captured jihadist) and their lawyers. We’ve also heard it endlessly from many politicians, “activists” and much media.

Ironic all that. For coalition behavior towards this enemy in the War on Terror, 2001-2009, had actually been far better than its behavior in any previous conflict. In fact, it has inarguably been the best treatment ever meted out policywise to captured enemy in all of human history.

Consider this: imagine any enemy held previously engaging in a “hunger strike“? Those held in the past didn’t hunger strike: that’s a “privileged captive’s” jail tactic."

U.S. service members are given some training on how they are expected to conduct themselves if taken prisoner. Unlike our enemy, that indoctrination does not include how to wage lawfare against our captors by making false accusations of mistreatment.

"(A)fter page upon page of Mr Hastings’s having shared numerous examples of Japanese mistreatment (to be polite) of Western and Chinese PoWs and civilians. They ran the horrific gamut from of course starving and working them to death, to beheadings, tying them to trees and bayoneting them, leaving them to drown in the sea, kicking them into latrines and drowning them in excrement, casually pushing them over cliffs, and even subsequently noting how Japanese doctors engaged in the murderous vivisections, without anaesthesia, of eight living (at least, they were at the outset), captured U.S. pilots.

Another source tells us, for example (and no doubt Mr Hastings would not be surprised), of two downed U.S. pilots having been plucked from the sea and “rescued” by Japanese submarine and interrogated — but not harshly. Yet after questioning, their personal effects were parcelled out among the crew and the unfortunate PoWs (men captured in uniform, clearly engaged in military activity against another military) were taken up on deck, (and without even a “military tribunal” finding) weighted down with water-filled gasoline cans, and thrown overboard. And the barbaric list could go depressingly on."

Whole library shelves can attest to the barbaric treatment received by Allied prisoners of Imperial Japan. As it happens, my own family included a Baatan survivor. I grew up listening to his stories, when he would tell them. It's the sort of thing that forever innoculates one from developing an overly-optimistic or romantic view of warfare or defeat.

"(D)id any of that sort of treatment regularly happen at the hands of coalition forces in Iraq or to Guantanamo detainees? For example, was Khalid Sheik Mohammed “waterboarded” (which would have likely been considered a holiday “swim” to many an American or Briton tortured by the Japanese) . . . and then removed to shark-infested waters by U.S. submarine and unceremoniously tossed into the ocean?

During WWII, Western media rightly made much of Japanese atrocities. Yet today Western media has almost nothing to say of the last eight years’ enemy’s."

"(W)hile the Japanese were indisputably brutal in the extreme, even they never reached the all-encompassing depths of depravity and viciousness of the current enemy?"

"(I)nsofar as this blog is aware, not a single coalition serviceman, over the last eight years, has been released alive willingly by the current Islamist enemy.

That bears repeating: not one.

Nor are any now held alive anywhere."

&

"(H)ow such now almost Spartan-obsession to leave no one behind stems from the foreknowledge that every single one captured might just as well be tallied with the rest of the dead?

However one gets there, that means the current Islamist enemy has murdered 100 percent of coalition military personnel (primarily Americans, Britons, and Australians, coincidentally enough) who have fallen into their hands. No enemy has ever engaged in such barbarity in the entire history of warfare. That is to say nothing of the fate of nearly all Western non-combatants who’ve been taken.

Thus the most damning perspective of all is almost universally overlooked. That level of murderous brutality makes Japanese atrocities pale in comparison. And it makes Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and a few hours in a dog pen, look like child’s play.

Do we even want to think that in this conflict the Islamist enemy is even more inhumane that WWII Japanese? One suspects we’d rather not."