When the Graham/Kyl/Levin amendment stripping habeas corpus rights from Gitmo detainees was passed, I wrote a post on the longer-term strategic costs to the US of adopting such a policy. I focused on why access to courts is a hot-button issue across much of the developing world, where the phenomenon of the "disappeared" -- prisoners or people inconvenient to a regime who vanish off the face of the earth -- is all too common. The fate of the "disappeared" is often one of the biggest stumbling blocks when countries try to democratize after the overthrow of a repressive regime. Stories of innocent detainees caught up in the US system with no recourse, their families having no notion of what's become of them, are likely to resonate painfully around the globe. And in the process, undermine US interests, including promotion of democracy.

I presented the case in the abstract. Now hilzoy, in her final post in the habeas series at Obsidian Wings, puts names and faces to the story.

As JC noted in earlier comments here, "that's going to make a good movie one day, although a deeply depressing movie."

My response: "Yes, and it will be a movie that millions upon millions of people in other parts of the world will go to see. And that will be part of how they think about America and Americans. A hundred Karen Hugheses can't compete with that message."

Hilzoy has written the first part of the screenplay for a movie that will be coming to a theater near you. Let's hope that the yet-to-be-written ending is a little more uplifting than what's come before.

[cross-posted at American Footprints (aka Liberals Against Terrorism)]

The Senate has apparently adopted the so-called Graham/Levin compromise on the habeus corpus issue discussed in Eric Martin's recent post. As Eric notes, Katherine and hilzoy at Obsidian Wings have been doing a remarkable public service providing detailed analysis of the issue and the various legislative proposals. I am not going to go over the ground they have so ably laid. Rather, I want to return to one of Eric's themes -- the strategic costs to the US from the ongoing erosion of American "soft power."

In some ways I find the manner in which our legislators are dealing with the habeus corpus matter even more troubling than the highly emotional issue of torture. When considering the rights of a prisoner to challenge indefinite detention without charges, we're not talking about the hard task of drawing lines between acceptable and unacceptable behavior based on modern standards of morality. No, we're talking about something far more fundamental -- a core principle defining the limits on executive power in any liberal political system, regardless of form -- democracy, constitutional monarchy, etc. You know, Magna Carta and all that. Ironically (or should I say tragically), the people who are pushing for a derogation of this core principle are the same conservatives who are on the great global crusade to bring freedom to the oppressed. Heaven knows how they define "freedom" (or for that matter, how they can call themselves "conservatives," given their cavalier approach to ancient legal and constitutional tradition).

I agree with Eric that all of this represents a terrible failure to live up to the standards America preaches to others, a failure which undermines US foreign policy. There is, of course, the erosion of "moral authority" in a broad sense that Eric points to. But the hypocrisy of "do as I say, not as I do" also produces concrete damages to US interests. Take for example the plethora of "democracy promotion" programs being pushed by the BushAdmin and supported enthusiastically by Congress. Most such programs contain, as core elements, projects on "rule of law," "judicial reform" and "sound governance." Although one should never attempt to transfer US legal and administrative practices whole-cloth into other systems, there are a number of basic principles that can and should be transferred and adapted to local circumstances. Among these, some of the most important deal with the need for an effective judiciary to limit arbitrary exercise of executive power against individuals, including prisoners. It's a bit of a challenge for American advisers, helping others to reform their own systems, to justify why other countries shouldn't follow America's own example and start carving out convenient exceptions to principles that are at the heart of liberal democracy.

The damage to the US is not limited, however, to being seen as hypocrites. The Senate's habeus corpus political stunt will be viewed by much of the world as simply part of a cynical pattern, which includes the failure by Congress to tackle the practices of "black sites," "ghost detainees" and "extraordinary renditions." Much of the world is concluding, reluctantly or not, that Americans have abandoned their basic principles and now tacitly endorse the "disappearing" of people by the US government.

Perhaps Americans don't understand that "the disappeared" is the most powerful symbol of political oppression across much of the developing world -- the very regions where the BushAdmin is conducting its freedom crusade against tyrants and extremists, not only in the Middle East but also in regions like Latin America. Perhaps Americans are simply too insulated from what goes on beyond their borders.

In order to understand how profoundly "the disappeared" resonates as an idea, perhaps one has to have lived or worked in the developing world, watched closely the politics of countries after authoritarian or totalitarian regimes have been overthrown, or followed carefully the various "reconciliation commissions" that often accompany attempts to democratize. Although abusive treatment and torture of political prisoners is usually an issue in these countries, their biggest hurdle is often the trauma associated with massacres of civilians (usually by paramilitaries) and the thousands of people who simply have disappeared into an opaque system run or sanctioned by the authorities. Some of the "disappeared" are found when their jailers are overthrown, but others are never to be heard from again. The families and friends of the "disappeared" know full well that a key factor in the "successful" operation of these systems of political oppression is the unenforceability of detainee rights such as habeus corpus.

America is connecting itself with practices that are associated, in the minds of hundreds of millions of people, with the most odious of tyrants and the worst of authoritarian regimes. No matter how skillful US public diplomacy may be in the future, it's going to take an enormous amount of effort and considerable time to overcome this self-inflicted damage.

The Senate should be ashamed. And that includes Democrats, although they do get marks for crafting a compromise that removes the worst of Graham's original proposal. Logrolling over pork is one thing, but there's no excuse to treat matters with important constitutional and foreign policy ramifications as an exercise in sausage-making. It is the height of irresponsibility to legislate this way -- tossing together a half-assed provision as somehow a sop to the Admin and its supporters on the torture debate, and tweaking the language in backrooms and hallways over the course of a couple of days, with no hearings and no real debate, on such a fundamental issue.

Marty Lederman at Balkinization offers one of the few attempts I've found so far in the blogosphere to look at some of the possible implications of the Graham/Levin deal. The dearth of analysis isn't surprising, of course, given how quickly the issue sprang into the public domain and how rapidly it's being disposed of. Lederman jots down a long list of questions that sprang to his mind on a first reading of the compromise. After reading the list, it's hard to fault Lederman's conclusion:

My initial, seat-of-the-pants impression is that this is a blunderbuss solution that cries out for careful and deliberate consideration and debate by congressional committees, where experts can weigh in and various questions can be examined and answered. Alas, that doesn't appear to be a realistic option any longer.

And then Lederman asks the same question I asked myself:

Is it nevertheless worth enacting this "compromise" now if that's the cost of enacting the McCain Amendment prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment? I'm not sure.

I'm not sure either, but I'm strongly tempted to say, "no, that's a trade with the devil." We already have 90 senators on the record against torture with no exceptions, the military has made its anti-torture policy official, and John McCain is on the cover of Newsweek. It's time to draw a line on the issues of detainee status and treatment that have been overshadowed by the "torture debates."

Perhaps the strongest argument for opposing the Graham/Levin compromise is that habeus corpus for detainees shouldn't be addressed in isolation from the host of other legal and practical issues that have arisen from the BushAdmin's handling of terrorist suspects, both within and outside the US, both citizens and non-citizens. It is long past time the US had a coherent, consistent and transparent program that addresses the difficult problems presented by detainees, including how to deal with the dilemma of an open-ended GWOT. Until that happens, however, the courts have been the only force imposing a few limits on this President. And now the Senate proposes to take away much of the courts' already limited authority over these matters. {It's unclear to me whether Hamdan and Rasul will be affected by Graham/Levin. The military trials have just been suspended until after Hamdan is decided, after a district court ruling on Monday suspended the Hicks trial.}

As one of the commenters at Balkinization noted:

After 9/11 Congress authorized "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001." Then they went back to passing Highway bills and giving out farm subsidies. If we are left with a bad law, it will be because appropriations is the only thing Congressmen want to do any more. The history books may call this the War on Terror, or they may call it the "War on somebody Congress was too lazy to name carried out by means that Congress was too lazy to define."

Craven idiots!@#@! Indeed, the history books are not going to be kind to them. Andrew Sullivan quotes Churchill:

In a telegram on November 21, 1943, Winston Churchill defined a fundamental difference between the Anglo-American way of war and that of our enemies. Churchill wrote: "The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgement of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

nadezhda quotes the Medium Lobster:

Guilty until proven dead. After eight centuries of ossified due process and doddering dedication to the rule of law, it's refreshing to see Western democracy make the bold leap forward to locking people up forever without charges or legal representation.

UPDATE:Katherine at Obsidian Wings has a recap of the various votes in the Senate as well as some thoughts about the unseemly CYA by the GOP that the political bargain between torture and habeus amendments seems to represent. One bright spot, there were 14 Senators who couldn't bring themselves to vote on any version of a bill to strip habeus: Baucus, Biden, Bingaman, Byrd, Dayton, Durbin, Feingold, Harkin, Kennedy, Lautenberg, Leahy, Rockefeller, Sarbanes, and the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Arlen Specter.

[ cross-posted at American Footprints aka Liberals Against Terrorism]

Praktike points to the hot new trend in US diplomacy, pragmatism! He attributes this outbreak of reality-based policymaking to a confluence of good and bad factors -- the good news, the departure of the "crazies" from key positions in the second BushAdmin; the not-so-good news, the constraints on US options produced by Iraq and other mistakes of the first BushAdmin.

This new found pragmatism seems to be producing some progress in isolating both Syria and Iran. The formula in both cases combines a multilateral approach with a focus on issues around which a consensus can be built rather than insisting on maximalist positions.

I'd add to that list another area where there has been a shift in approach -- bilateral relations with major countries. In the cases of China, India and Russia, the BushAdmin2 seems to be repositioning the US agenda away from a bunch of disconnected (and sometimes inconsistent) issues toward more multi-dimensional relationships.

• The central theme of Singh's visit to the US was the broadening and deepening of inter-connected economic and security aspects of the US-India relationship.
  
• There have been a flurry of notable China initiatives in preparation for the (Katrina postponed) Hu trip -- Zoellick going to Beijing in August explicitly to launch a multi-dimensional relationship-building exercise; Rumsfeld's recent trip focusing on increasing the range of military contacts and improving communications on a number of levels; and Snow's attempt to expand the agenda beyond exchange rate regimes to the financial sector more broadly.
  
• Russia has received less attention, but one could argue a similar shift is underway toward relationship-building and a greater focus on economic and political integration of Russia in Western structures. There is certainly a greater emphasis on finding ways to collaborate, or at least not create competitive frictions, in post-Soviet space where Russia will continue to be a major presence. (See the interesting remarks (pdf) on enriching the US-Russia relationship by Thomas Graham, the NSC's Senior Director for Russian Affairs, at an AEI forum on Russia in October. Without giving Putin a "free ride," Graham displayed considerable appreciation of the political and economic challenges the Russians face. The Russophobes and democromanes in the audience must have been disappointed.)

One of the most frequent critiques of the BushAdmin1's approach to diplomacy has been its embrace of "unilateralism." And certainly prak's examples of the more pragmatic diplomacy of the BushAdmin2 include a new acceptance of the potential usefulness of multilateralism. But it seems to me, if we also look at the adjustments being made by the BushAdmin2 in bilateral relations, we are seeing something beyond pragmatism or multilateralism. There seems to be at least a hint of a structural shift in the way the US is defining the sources of its political power and how it is deploying that power in the diplomatic arena. Some of this shift may be simply tactical -- forced on the BushAdmin2 by circumstance. But hopefully some of the shift also reflects a greater appreciation by Bush himself of the merits of a less polarizing approach to the politics of diplomacy.

In The Politics of Diplomacy, James Baker's memoirs as Secretary of State, Baker tells the story of how he was able to translate the rather formidable skills he had developed in the domestic arena to the international stage. For Baker, and for his close partners Scowcroft and Bush41, diplomacy was anything but a zero-sum game.

By contrast, the approach to the politics of diplomacy adopted by the hardliners in the BushAdmin1 was a Rove/DeLay winner-take-all style, based on assumptions about how a polarized structure can be used to augment power. What are some of the factors I'd point to as polarization politics?

• They regularly turned differences of opinion about means into irreconcilable disputes by choosing to emphasize maximalist positions and preferring no solution to compromise -- with John Bolton starring as Dr No, the poster boy of polarization. They converted disagreements into ideological battles ("we don't do business with evil dictators," environment), and they turned differences of degree into stark opposition ("you're either with us or against us.")
  
• They used campaign-style techniques to personalize and demonize foreign public figures, both political leaders and international civil servants, who dared to raise questions.
  
• They preferred constructing smaller coalitions over building broader consensus. And then they publicly displayed carrots and sticks -- bilateral deals to gleefully reward supporters and openly punish those countries who failed to support them.
  
• The issues they focused on were a set of pet peeves or hot-button issues for various parts of their domestic political constituencies that didn't add up to a coherent agenda -- anything-but-Clinton dissatisfactions, long-standing grievances, hostility to Lilliputians and munchkins, moral/religious battles, debates over the use of "scientific" evidence in policymaking.
  
• They ignored the stuff that Baker was so adept at managing -- cross-issue linkages that contribute to the general political atmosphere in the society of nations, both within multilateral institutions and in bilateral relations.
  
• They sacrificed long-term credibility for short-term tactical gains.
  
• And they seem to have relied on the Rove theory of bandwagonning -- look like you're unstoppable, and those vacillating on the sidelines will jump on board.

These patterns are reminiscent of the BushAdmin behavior especially in the House of Reps, where the GOP has become infamous for gratuitously sticking nonessential bits into legislation that reduce the size of the majority voting for a bill. They focus on red-meat issues to keep the base mobilized. They don't go looking for accommodations that could pull Democrats into supporting an initiative. Those who are on their team get well rewarded through assignments, pork, campaign funding and the support of the RNC machinery. Those who cross them are punished -- and sufficiently openly as an example for others who might be tempted to act independently. At the presidential level, who needs wide but shallow public support when narrow but deep support produces 51% and the power to dictate the agenda. And their agenda is incoherent -- a wishlist of pet peeves and rewards for various parts of their base. And as for demonizing those who challenge the Administration and sacrificing credibility for short-term gain...

I certainly don't see the moderation of approach in BushAdmin2 as evidence of repentant hardliners, although one could argue that grappling with the complexities of the future structure of the US military has forced Rumsfeld to adopt a more pragmatic set of priorities. Certainly, Iraq has left them little leverage to continue with a polarization approach. Bandwagonning has also demonstrably ceased to be a plausible theory. They can no longer credibly threaten a small-coalition approach to issues like Iran and NKorea -- the "coalition of the willing" would be the US and who else? And the US by itself is now tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan. The management of key relationships rather than red-meat issues is coming back into vogue, whether China, India, Russia or France. Making nice to international leaders who don't agree 100% with White House talking points is coming into fashion. And "spin" is no longer much of an option because they've repeatedly shredded their credibility.

All told, it looks like the Baker-type approach to diplomatic politics has finally managed to win some breathing space. If the Latin America trip is any indication, however, this isn't a diplomatic style that comes naturally to Bush. The limited game plan the US displayed for the Latin America Summit suggests that in areas where Condi or Zoellick aren't personally heavily involved, the WH/NSC/State apparatus isn't yet geared to play the Baker political-style game.

[cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism]

Praktike points to a fine post by John Ikenberry on the so-called battle of the Wilsonians on the issue of intervention for humanitarian (including democracy-promotion) objectives. I agree with prak that Ikenberry sums up the liberal internationalist worldview quite nicely. But it's a bit too abbreviated on the Bush-era "neocon" front.

The Ikenberry piece is part of a debate over "liberal interventionism" that's raging across a number of venues. In addition to the Ikenberry post, see especially the Rosenfeld/Yglesias "incompetence dodge" article, Stephen Holmes' review in the Nation of books by Paul Berman and David Reiff, a number of posts on TPMCafe's America Abroad including a contribution by Reiff, and this week's salvo on Darfur from TNR by Richard Just, with a first reply from Yglesias.

Prak had some useful thoughts on the debate awhile back. And I've been chewing on this discussion for awhile and hope to write something in the coming days. But before we get to Wilsonian family feuds (left vs right and within the left) about when/where/how/why to intervene, it's vital to distinguish more carefully between two very different worldviews on the right that are too frequently lumped together as "neocon."

Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay make the important distinction between the true neocons (Wolfowitz, Eliot Abrams, Kristol and Kagan) and the assertive nationalists (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bolton). They shared an objective - Saddam and Iraq - and a desire to use US power now, but not a common philosophy. Daalder and Lindsay remind us that the real power in the BushAdmin is sitting with the assertive nationalists, not the neocons.

To shorthand the Daalder/Lindsay argument, the neocons seem to see the US at a unique, but fleeting, moment in history -- the hegemonic moment -- and want to take advantage of this moment to shape the future world order. A strange blend of super-optimistic (the US can change the world) and pessimistic (but the window of opportunity won't be open long). The assertive nationalists want to sustain US permanent hegemony and believe that can be done by continually asserting US power to eliminate enemies and dissuade potential competitors.

The two groups share a focus on the ability to project military power as the main measure that matters in the international system. Both view international/multilateral entanglements as Lilliputian efforts to constrain US power. And with their focus on military power, they naturally devote more attention to states than to other types of transnational actors in other domains of international activity.

In structural terms, both neocons and nationalists prefer an international system composed of the US at the center of a sort of hub-and-spoke system of bilateral relations among states, managed by the US. The neocons are, however, more relaxed about cross-linkages among the spokes as long as the US retains the ability to shape those cross-linkages, whereas the assertive nationalists are highly suspicious of any linkages that don't go through the US hub.

By contrast, liberal internationalists increasingly see the structure of the international system as a network of a host of state and non-state relations along a number of dimensions (e.g. economic, cultural, technological, legal/regulatory -- see especially Anne-Marie Slaughter's New World Order). US institutions are the most important nodes (more links, both strong and weak) and therefore have the most influence over the general shape of the network, whether that influence is exercised through deliberate leadership or by default, and whether for good or ill. Liberal internationalists see the US role as helping to shape the network towards a more robust system through the continuous promotion of positive linkages that integrate the various bits of the network. Where linkages are disruptive, they need to be modified to the system's advantage or eliminated. Where a given node is the source of a large number of negative or disruptive linkages, the node may have to be modified directly (regime change, humanitarian intervention) or eliminated (Al Qaeda). In Clinton's terms, "manage interdependence"; in Tom Barnett's terms, "promote connectivity."

As for domestic entanglements that would constrain the executive branch, the neocons are more "ends justify the means" in the context of the hegemonic moment and the GWOT. The assertive nationalists are simply fans of untrammeled executive power as the essential permanent instrument of US power. Both tend to view the exercise of power by the executive, both at home and abroad, as "good" simply because America itself is virtuous -- the US always wears the white hat, at least as long as Republicans are in charge.

George Packer, in Assassins' Gate, has some interesting insights as to why both groups were uninterested in or unconcerned about "nation-building" throughout the 90s and in Iraq. But for different reasons. Again, shorthanding a fairly complex intellectual history traced by Packer. The neocons are indeed much more concerned about the nature of domestic political and economic regimes than the nationalists. But they've consumed too much of their own "freedom" kool-aid, as if simply removing constraints will produce a "default" democracy and free markets (the "creative destruction" approach). And 90s nation-building exercises were dismissed in their entirety as being too associated with the effete Lilliputians at the UN and Clintonian "fecklessness." The notion that there were positive lessons to be learned from people with first-hand experience wasn't seriously contemplated.

The nationalists are much more of the Jeanne Kirkpatrick school. In any event, a pre-invasion concern with nation-building would have raised all sorts of additional organizational and resource hurdles to the going-to-war process. So both groups were united in their desire to keep potential intermeddlers (both domestic, read State Dept and parts of the CIA, and international) out of the post-invasion process.

To extend the contrast between the two conservative approaches to BushAdmin views on humanitarian intervention, first Ikenberry and Daalder/Lindsay would warn that it's a mistake to focus too much on Iraq as a centerpiece of a debate over when to intervene. Humanitarian concerns, and even democracy promotion, were simply not why the BushAdmin went to war.

More broadly, although humanitarian concerns aren't major drivers for either neocons or nationalists, some of the members of the BushAdmin may indeed be true believers in "democratic peace" theory. (Here I'd probably put Rice, though she's certainly not a true neocon and she has a greater appreciation for other dimensions of national power than military.) But the guys in charge who have really been driving the train, Cheney and Rumsfeld, aren't of that persuasion. Certainly, neocons and nationalists would agree that like-minded regimes are easier to live with than those with significantly different political and economic systems. But for the nationalists, "democracy" and "tyranny" are mainly useful labels to tag friends and enemies as the occasion merits (a common weakness shared with the neocons) within a system designed to maximize the ability of the US to dissuade and defeat enemies.

So in future debates about intervention, we'd do well to recall that, although the assertive nationalists may have borrowed a bit of neo-Wilsonian rhetoric, this is not actually a battle within the Wilsonian family.

[cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism]