As the past week or so of high-volume debates about Iraq has demonstrated, you don't have to have been a supporter of the US invasion of Iraq to be equally wary of the consequences of a withdrawal of US forces, whether you're Juan Cole or Dan Darling. As we've argued repeatedly on this site, the "withdraw" vs "stay-the-course" debate is artificial, although that may be the inevitable way that it's framed for partisan political purposes. The real challenges are how to manage the US military presence, which will inevitably decline in sheer numbers over the next several years, and American diplomatic and reconstruction efforts in order to minimize the risks of Iraq descending into the anarchy of a failed state or a full-scale civil war.

It may come as somewhat a surprise that Sunni political figures are talking about the same issues and sharing similar concerns. Although usually presented in the US media as implacable opponents of any US presence, Sunni leaders aren't necessarily clamoring for rapid withdrawal or even a timetable for exit. That's the picture painted by Robert Collier in the San Francisco Chronicle (via Steve Clemons).

"It's impossible for them or us to fix an exact schedule" for troop withdrawal, said Isam al-Rawi, a leader of the Muslim Scholars Association, a group of 3,000 Sunni clerics. "That is not the important thing right now. There are other steps that are much more necessary to calm the situation."

Largely unnoticed amid the U.S. political debate, al-Rawi and other Sunni leaders close to the insurgency have reached tacit consensus over the broad outline of an interim program to reduce the violence, stabilize the country and thus enable the U.S.-led coalition troops to begin a gradual withdrawal. While differences remain on some points, there is wide agreement on these steps:

• A troop pullout from most urban areas and an end to military checkpoints and raids [...]
  
  
• Overhaul of the Iraqi Army and National Guard. Although the White House and Democrats alike say they want to turn over security duties to the Iraqi Army and National Guard as soon as possible, Sunni Arabs point out that these two institutions are almost completely composed of members of their ethnic enemies -- the Kurdish peshmerga and the Shiite militias. "These people want to humiliate the Sunni," al-Hashimi said. "The Army and National Guard must be professionalized. They cannot be dominated by members of the party militias." [...]
  
  
• Release of prisoners. The number of Iraqi prisoners in American military custody has grown rapidly in recent months, with as many as 15,000 Iraqis behind bars, according to U.S. estimates.
  
  Military officials have admitted that many of the prisoners have simply been swept up in neighborhood roundups. Because there is no formal trial process, the process of vetting prisoners and releasing those found innocent is very slow. Military officials have reportedly expressed worry that the sprawling prison camps are serving as recruiting camps for al Qaeda and the most extremist insurgent groups.
  
  "There are many thousands of prisoners and there is no transparency, there is no accusation list," said Wamidh Nadhmi, the leader of the Arab Nationalist Trend, a secularist group that boycotted the January elections. [...]
  
  
• Amnesty for pro-Baathist, radical Islamist and hard-line nationalist groups, while excluding al Qaeda [and Ba'ath party leaders with blood on their hands such as Saddam Hussein].[...]
  
  
• Negotiations with the "resistance." Sunni leaders have frequently met with U.S. officials in Baghdad to try to coax them to talk with the guerrillas. They draw a line between what they call the "resistance," by which they mean Iraqi fighters who attack only U.S. and Iraqi troops, and the Sunni extremists linked to al Qaeda who have spread terror with car bombs and suicide attacks against Shiite civilians.

Of course, some items on the list aren't exclusively in the control of the Americans. In fact, a close reading of media reports over the past several months suggests that the sentiments of US military commanders on the ground aren't opposed to the items on the Sunni list, at least in broad principle although the devil is always in the details. There's also a substantial overlap between this list and an interesting set of quite specific proposals from Juan Cole today. Like an earlier discussion of options by Brad Plumer, Cole's proposals help sharpen the definition of US objectives and various approaches to meeting those objectives.

As the figleaf of "national consensus" among Iraq's major ethnic groups has dropped away in the final bargaining over the constitution, Sunnis are increasingly calling on the Americans to intervene to protect their interests. Via the CSMonitor today:

[Saleh Mutlak, a lead Sunni negotiator] says he'd despair completely of the process if it weren't for the help of a surprising new ally: the US ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalizad.

"Zalmay is the boss,'' says Mr. Mutlak, who himself has received death threats from members of his own community for participating in the process. "He's played a very good role slowing the other parties down, in talking to those who are asking for too much."
[...]
"We are not getting any impression that they are with this side or with that. We feel they are trying to help our side as much as the other side," says Iyad al-Sammarai, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group whose leaders have been arrested by American forces in the past. "I'm sure [the US] has a feeling that if a constitution is approved only by the Shiites and Kurds, they will not get what they want. What they want is stability."

Still, Mr. Sammarai says it's unclear how much US pressure can bring in this process, or if the desire for fast results will lead the US to sign off on a constitution without Sunni backing. Iraq's interim parliament is at least nominally sovereign, though reliant on the protection of 130,000 American troops.

If the draft is approved by parliament over the objections of the Sunnis, they will try to defeat the constitution in the referendum. But that means getting their voters to the polls in the four provinces where they are a substantial majority.

But if the resistance prevents Sunnis from going to the polls at all, they won't be able to vote down an unsatisfactory constitution.

"We'll appeal to the resistance to let our people vote,'' says Shakr al-Falluji, a Sunni on the drafting committee. "Hopefully they'll listen."

It would be quite an irony if it takes US forces to protect Sunni voters from intimidation, not by Sunni insurgents, but by armed groups of Shi'a and Kurds in and out of the official security forces. But as power and interests continue to shift in a highly fluid and unstable environment, we should expect that the alignment of US interests with various Iraqi groups will similarly shift back and forth. In the best case scenario, Ambassador Khalizad and the US generals will be called on increasingly to side with one group over another, all the while trying to preserve a semblance of "honest broker" status. In the worst case, the US will be caught in the middle of a shooting war.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism

updated from Aug 16 2005 - see below

Not making it onto most radar screens, a peace agreement has been signed in Helsinki between Indonesia and the Free Aceh Movement after twenty-nine years of conflict, and two years after another deal fell through.

Under the agreement, signed in Helsinki and transmitted live across Indonesia, the Free Aceh Movement (Gam) renounces its claim to independence and will surrender the weapons of its estimated 3,000 fighters.

In return, it will receive an amnesty for its forces, the right to form a political party and more than half of the 53,000 Indonesian security forces in Aceh will be withdrawn from the region which bore the brunt of the Boxing Day tsunami.

This time, prospects for the agreement holding are considered far more favorable, in part due to the changes in relations wrought by the tsunami relief and reconstruction efforts. From Heather Hurlburt at Democracy Arsenal, who has several good background links:

Just as the Bush Administration decides to throw in the towel on post-conflict nation-building, there’s some good news from the slow-mo, frustrating, not-with-a-blunt-instrument side of the house where conflicts sometimes actually get resolved and nations get built.
[...]
A peace in Aceh has huge potential significance for the prospects of settling the archipelago’s other simmering conflicts and ultimately for the future of stability, democracy and moderate Islam in the world’s largest Muslim nation.
[...]
It’s great to see the EU in the lead on the security side here; this is why common EU security institutions are good for US interests.

Jonathan Edelstein points to the willingness of the new President to consider far more regional autonomy than did his predecessor, Megawati, who was a centralist in the Suharto tradition. An organic law will clarify the autonomy terms, prior to elections next year. The Iraqi constitutional debates have sharpened all our sensitivities to regional autonomy arrangements, so I found Jonathan's summary of the Aceh deal quite instructive.

Jakarta [will remain] in control of "national security and defence, monetary and fiscal matters, judiciary and policing, and foreign affairs" with other areas of legislation left to the provincial government. This is likely to strengthen the province's application of sharia law, which, as in northern Nigeria, has become as much a nationalist as a religious symbol. Aceh will also have its own flag, the power to manage its national resources and levy taxes, and conduct limited foreign relations including "the right to seek foreign loans and investment." [emph supplied]

Heather sees this as a great opportunity for US public diplomacy:

Now let’s see the US step up (and follow through) on the donor side to help a Muslim nation out. And, press and punditocracy, let’s highlight what just might be a major Islamic peace success in the making. (Remember, Indonesia is the world's one Islamic country where views of the US are improving. Why? Aid after the tsunami.)

UPDATE: Further on conflicts over oil, power and regional autonomy PLS at Whirled View has more thoughts on lessons from Aceh and the cautionary tale of Nigeria.

FURTHER UPDATE: For all you Tom Barnett fans, he points out the connection between the military's unique capacity to respond and the public diplomacy effects Heather commends. Also, though not in so many words, there's a suggestion from Barnett that military-to-military diplomacy can give a government some of the confidence it needs to make the sort of deal Indonesia did in Aceh. The new President is a former general who has, probably not all that gently, brought his old comrades around to seeing the merits of this resolution.

System Perturbation really did lead to a positive security outcome in Indonesia. All that foreign aid streaming in broke down many seemingly unbreakable barriers between the central government and the rebels in Aceh, and now there's real progress in ending that 30-year civil strife. Vertical shock yielding one positive horizontal scenario, and the U.S. military had a real part in making that happen with its humanitarian support and its subsequent efforts to repair military-to-military ties with Indonesia. That's SysAdmin work at its best. How many stories will you read in the mainstream press giving the Pentagon credit on that one? Zero, my friends, zero. But you and I know better.

ANOTHER UPDATE:: While we're on the topic of the US military providing critical support for humanitarian assistance. Did you know that a decade ago Congress authorized the establishment of a center to work on best practices, training and coordination among civilian agencies and the military for disaster management and humanitarian assistance? Well, I didn't.

The Center of Excellence for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance has been up and running since 1996, are based in Hawaii (work closely with PACOM) and have a very interesting website, which tracks lots of "what's going on " in the hard-to-deliver assistance business. In addition to covering civil-military relations and humanitarian assistance they also focus on medical/public health issues. And they run peacekeeping-operations events both in the US and abroad. They act as an information resource center for updates on Afghanistan assistance, tsunami relief, Iraq humanitarian assistance, and Asia-Pacific disease outbreak/surveillance. And they pull together current open source items on their Asia-Pacific Daily Report. The most recent issue (2004) of their journal is devoted to the timely topic "Civilian Issues in Peacekeeping," with one of the articles on experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Howard W French of the NYT shifts attention from the future of China's internal economic and political system, and asks a thought-provoking question about China on the world stage: "What sort of power does China aspire to be?"

Those who fret most about China’s rise... seem to ignore some very basic, and as yet unanswered, questions. No matter how fast its economy grows, can a country make a successful transition to great-power status without real friendships, without associating itself meaningfully with any global ideal, or without bearing a more generous share of humanity’s burdens?

Outside observers who fail to take such questions into account are not alone. At least since Deng Xiaoping declared China should “lay low at a time of adversity,” the country’s leaders have seemed seduced by the anachronistic notion that their country, which boasts one of the world’s most vigorously globalizing economies, can best advance by keeping its head down and simply worrying about its own internal development.

French, author of A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, not surprisingly uses China's increased economic profile in Africa as his text for spotlighting the limited scope of China's contributions and ambitions. Some interesting comments as well from several Chinese foreign policy academics.

Within China's top officialdom, a more open debate appears to be is emerging over the tensions between growth and stability. So discerns Eric Teo Chu Cheow, in an IHT op-ed, from a reading of several recent columns appearing in the Chinese press. A recent front page commentary in the People's Daily, on the authorities' commitment to enforcing the law in the interest of stability, took the position that "widening inequality is an inevitable phase of development." By contrast, the threats to social solidarity from a focus on profits by greedy hospitals was criticized by the Health Minister in a newspaper report. And the Culture Ministry is trying to "safeguard national cultural safety" by increasing controls over foreign television programming.

Of course, tensions between growth and stability have long been of concern at the highest levels of Chinese policymaking. Managing those tensions has been a major factor in the methods adopted to introduce reforms into the Chinese economy, especially the penchant for local "experiments" that are tested and, the thinking goes, "understood" before they are allowed to be rolled out on a wider scale or eventually become national policy. What is "new" is that the degree of inequality and threats to stability are becoming more visible and pronounced. Economic growth is no longer producing the sort of significant reductions in poverty levels and infant mortality rates that China enjoyed during its earlier reform periods. The crisis in the countryside over land and incomes -- which could be compared to England's enclosure movement of the 18th century -- and the strains in the cities from China's awesome pace of urbanization are threatening the "Latin Americanization" of China. Reports are increasingly making it into the Western media of local protests over corrupt officials taking land, or working conditions in factories, or degradation of environmental resources, especially water. Indeed, a top agriculture expert astonished (and bemused) many commentators when, in a recent interview, he praised peasants "for their democratic awareness as well as the willingness to fight for their rights." For a useful overview, see Sharif Shuja's The Limits of Chinese Economic Reform (August 2 2005 Jamestown Foundation China Brief).

Eric Teo Chu Cheow suggests that these issues are starting to shape a debate that will have major implications in two key areas: battles for political power inside China's leadership, and the broader trajectory of China's economic, social and political development in the coming years.

These signals point to the tension that currently underlies Chinese society. There is clearly a growing contradiction between the ideological tenets of the Communist Party and Deng Xiaoping's philosophy that "to grow rich is glorious." This ideology-versus-economics debate will ultimately determine the direction of China in the next decades, as social tensions increase in a society that is revolutionizing much faster than Western societies have in the past century.

This growing debate could accelerate in the lead-up to the 17th Party Congress in autumn 2007, at which President Hu and his team are expected to fully consolidate their power. Potential rivals of Hu could exploit this debate to challenge his power, especially if the Chinese economy falters or social stability deteriorates.

This socio-ideological debate is critical not only for China but also for the rest of Asia, where a new socioeconomic model of development may emerge to "complement" the continent's expected rise this century.

As the winds of change sweep through China, it is this philosophical and social debate - and not the yuan revaluation or the Unocal debacle - that will ultimately determine the direction of China's economy and society, as well as its "peaceful rise" and its continuous social revolution.

Asia and the world should pay more attention to this fundamental debate, which could also determine the outcome of Hu's political position at the 17th Party Congress and hence the ultimate stability of Asia's rising dragon.

[IHT article via A Glimpse of the World]

Over at Winds of Change, Dan Darling has noted Sunday's Washington Post article by Robin Wright and Ellen Knickmeyer that, to quote Dan:

basically concludes that the US has failed to achieve its political, military, and economic goals in Iraq and are now revising those goals towards more "realistic" expectations.

Dan's reaction is a lengthy cri de coeur that boils down to "Say it ain't so!" My response is, "Yes, at long last!" Although I sympathize with Dan's sentiments, I'm afraid his remarks illustrate just what a box the White House has created for itself as reality and election rhetoric have steadily diverged. Dan complains, with good reason:

No offense, but if the end-result (goal?) of this whole adventure is that Iraq is left in the hands of yet another dictator, even a benevolent one, I'm going to have to join the chorus of people asking why we've bothered to remain as long as we have. If we were planning to install yet another Iraqi dictator, couldn't we have at least stuck with Allawi, who if nothing else has been a steadfastly reliable CIA asset?

Now maybe all of this is a trial balloon that's being put out by somebody for reasons that are as yet unknown and maybe it's not. If it isn't, then this needs to be disavowed in reasonably short order (which it won't be even if it isn't for reasons I'll explain further down) and if it is then those of us, myself included, who have repeatedly argued in favor of remaining in Iraq in order to accomplish just that based on what we assumed was the administration's goals have every reason to feel betrayed.

Dan makes an impassioned case for why a "cut and run" strategy is dangerous for US interests. Given his personal focus on terrorist groups, he is particularly distressed by the notion that Al Qaeda would benefit from being able to claim to have defeated the US in Iraq. Without saying it in so many words, he also fears a sort of "Iraq syndrome" that would inhibit the US from intervening with force where necessary to deal with terrorist threats. In addition, he worries:

Another likely outcome of this process will be that the Arab reform and democratization project will be dead. The "Muslim democracy = Islamists" script has already been written for Iraq and will be held up as proof of the futility of democracy in the Middle East if not in the Muslim world as a whole.

For me, Dan's strongest argument, which he doesn't flesh out, is that leaving Iraq as a "failed state" would present a considerable threat not only to Iraq's neighbors but to the rest of the world.

The balance of Dan's remarks, and the bulk of his concern, address domestic politics and his fear that the Bush Administration and the GOP have concluded that politics trumps US interests in Iraq. He cites a series of posts that our co-blogger, Eric Martin, has published on this site [Liberals Against Terrorism], which offer plausible evidence that the US electoral calendar is influencing Iraq exit strategies.

Undoubtedly, some in the GOP hierarchy are political cynics who would like to time a reduction in troop levels with the 2006 elections. However, too much can be made of electoral politics. It would be a mistake to see the Post article as a trial balloon or the maneuvering of dissident bureaucrats within one part of the Administration or another. The recent rumblings in the media are, in fact, reflecting shifts to a more realistic and sober set of objectives -- shifts we've been tracking for a number of months. It may be news to the Post and the NYT, but not to close observers of the Bush's second term Administration.

As I argued earlier regarding the GWOT/GSAVE ruckus, the White House is "out on a limb" with its continued attachment to the politics of "war" all the while developing a far broader, longer-term and, shall we say, more nuanced strategy for combating the threats from Islamist extremism.

To mobilize a considerable part of the American public, Bush and his team oversold an idea that was questionable at the outset but has by now certainly outlived its usefulness. The Administration now has to engage in a sleight-of-hand -- it must shift goalposts and policies to ones that are far more realistic, promising and sustainable internationally, while maintaining the unquestioning loyalty of a critical domestic constituency whose support is premised on that core idea.

The President is facing an even more acute version of the same problem in Iraq. The original justifications for the invasion have gone by the boards, and the "feel-good" moments of being treated as liberators were long-gone by the time the Bremer/Sanchez duo departed Baghdad. The rationales used for the November elections were to transform the Middle East through a successful democracy in Iraq and to fight terrorists to keep them from attacking us at home. Neither rationale remains terribly satisfactory to a growing portion of the American public, as Dan outlines in his post.

A recognition of the need for clearer and more realistic objectives in Iraq, and of the urgent imperative to realign military, reconstruction and diplomatic operations with those objectives, appears to be shared across major parts of the Bush Administration's policy apparatus -- OSD, CENTCOM and State. One assumes NSC is at least participating in the rethinking and reorientation. But either the President is truly disengaged from what his key Cabinet officers and generals are doing, or the disconnect between rhetoric and reality has rendered their communication strategies brittle and increasingly vulnerable to any bit of bad news.

Pace Bill Kristol, it's not just that "Rummy doesn't want to fight to win." The generals know they've got all they can handle just to hold the finger in the dike until they can stand up an Iraqi security structure that won't disintegrate. It's not simply a matter of training. As General Barry McCaffery reported to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee a month ago:

[M]uch remains to be done [with the Iraqi Security Forces]. There is no maintenance or logistics system. There is no national command and control. Corruption is a threat factor of greater long-range danger than the armed insurgency. The Insurgents have widely infiltrated the ISF. The ISF desperately needs more effective, long-term NCO and Officer training.

The generals are acutely aware that time isn't on their side -- the clock is ticking because the military can't sustain the presence it currently has in Iraq. The Number One threat or vulnerability McCaffery identified was:

Premature drawdown of U.S. ground forces driven by dwindling U.S. domestic political support and the progressive deterioration of Army and Marine manpower. (In particular, the expected melt-down of the Army National Guard and Army Reserve in the coming 36 months) [emph supplied]

Nor is State abandoning democratic values in preference for an arbitrary and artificial political timetable, pace Larry Diamond's sorrowful complaints. In the Post article cited by Dan, Diamond mourns: "We... don't have the time to go through the process we envisioned when we wrote the interim constitution -- to build a democratic culture and consensus through debate over a permanent constitution." Yes, as Eric, Swopa and others have pointed out, democracy can't be rushed and it's easy to be cynical -- it would be mighty embarrassing for the White House and mighty inconvenient for military deployment plans if the referendum and elections are postponed. But time truly is of the essence for the Iraqis as well. As Zalmay Khalizad said today on one of the Sunday newsfests:

"One of the big problems in the current situation in Iraq is that there is a lack of agreement about the future among the important Iraqi communities," he said. "And I look at the constitution as a national compact, an agreement among the various communities about the future."

Diamond's dashed hopes -- to "build a democratic culture" -- were predicated on the major groups committing to the broad outlines of the sort of basic compact Khalizad is talking about.

Further, until some core agreement can be reached, there's no hope in bringing critical portions of the Sunni insurgencies into the fold. Until a compact is reached -- which is sufficiently sustainable to survive the referendum process -- both the Iraqi government and the US military are pretty much engaged in day-to-day management of a low-intensity civil war. Delay is the enemy -- it benefits both insurgents and the political and economic groups using unsavory methods to vie for power within the new system. The constitutional drafting process is forcing the issues from the realm of political rhetoric -- demands and threats by leaders speaking to their respective communities -- to the difficult world of hard bargaining. They will likely not get everything thrashed out by Monday, and a postponement of the draft wouldn't be surprising. But they'll be a lot closer than they were and will have a better idea of where the ultimate dealbreakers are. Maybe they'll never get there and civil war is their only future. But before we worry about developing a democratic culture, the basic bargain has to be struck.

To return to the various sources of Dan's angst about realism intruding into Administration policy. First, isn't it time we face up to the fact that the Iraq war was never part of a "war on terror" nor was it about fighting terrorists in Iraq to avert another 9/11. This confusion, shared by an unfortunately large number of US troops, has probably been responsible for a number of the difficulties the US has faced as an occupying authority in treatment of civilians and detainees. The idea that we'd "rather fight 'em there than here" is both nonsense and morally repugnant, to put it politely. True, we are now forced to fight terrorists in Iraq. But that's not because we're preventing them from attacking the US, but rather because they're trying to prevent a functioning country from emerging. Of course, in the sense that the US has a strong interest in the future of Iraq, fighting the terrorists is protecting the US. And I share some of Dan's concerns about the manner in which the US withdraws from Iraq producing a psychological victory for jihadists. But those are not the ways that President Bush employs the claim that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terror.

Second, except for the Jacobins and dreamers, the war has never been about "the march of freedom" in the sense of creating a liberal democracy in the Middle East as a beacon to the region. I'm not one of folks who think that Muslims or Arabs can't be democrats. I for one wanted to see elections for an interim government as early as possible instead of the CPA taking total charge. I also welcomed the January elections as a critical but small step toward a better future for Iraq and Iraqis (although not, I might add, as a vindication of the decision to go to war in Iraq).

But I also recognize that reconciling the tensions among democratic institutions, freedoms, rule of law and cultural norms is a massive undertaking for any society -- the US itself is engaged in perpetual adjustments to manage those tensions. When you add to the mix the number of circles that the Iraqis have to square -- most notably regarding federalism and the role of Islam as a source of civil law -- we shouldn't be surprised at the way things are turning out. For me, the source of never-ending surprise is that so many Americans still think that they can dictate the results of what has to be a sustainable bargain among the Iraqis themselves.

Although not yet articulated by the President, the US now has far more focused objectives, which are starting to be reflected in policy on both the military and civilian sides. This isn't about the US "winning the war." It's about creating the basic conditions for Iraqis to make a decent life for themselves and not present a threat to others. The way I would define the strategic objective of the US presence in Iraq was well summed up by Gen McCaffery in his Foreign Relations Committee testimony:

The point of the US war effort is to create legitimate and competent Iraqi national, provincial, and municipal governance.

That may not sound like a glorious reason to fight. It doesn't sound like a "noble cause" that would satisfy Cindy Sheehan -- although maybe it would, if it were stated clearly. But it's actually an extremely ambitious goal, which to achieve will take enormous ongoing expenditure of blood and treasure as well as political and military resolve. As I discussed earlier regarding adjustments in counterinsurgency strategies, it will also require constant flexibility and adaptation of American strategic ends and operational means. And that's assuming the Iraqis themselves can come to a consensus on what sort of governance they want, or at least will accept.

In a great comment posted by jonnybutter, he warns me of the dangers of political naivete. But I'd nonetheless like to see Bush make the case I've outlined rather than remain trapped in his obsolete political rhetoric. It's what Joe Biden means when he says Bush needs to "level with the American people" before they lose patience. Unlike Biden, I wouldn't have gone into Iraq in the first place. But now we're there, US interests are indeed at stake. We've got a long, difficult road ahead that will necessarily require adjustments. Thank goodness, US policies have been shifting to reflect reality on the ground.

My political concerns are the opposite of Dan's -- that Bush will "stay on message." Is America really going to be better off if the President and the antiwar folks manage between them to further polarize the Iraq war even though there's a significant common ground that could be built around the very policies his Administration is beginning to pursue? Bush is doing a disservice to the rest of his Administration, the troops and the country by clinging to meaningless sloganeering to maintain the loyalty of his base. There are centrist Republicans and large numbers of Democrats in Congress who don't buy the Bush rhetoric but are pleading to work with his Administration on realistic policies. My fear is that they will become increasingly isolated in the center -- treated as defeatists by Bush partisans and as out-of-touch hawkish elites who have betrayed liberal ideals by those who want out of Iraq yesterday. As a wartime President, Bush should be pulling people together by defining the true challenges and real limitations we face, explaining how and why our policies are adapting to circumstance, and specifying what we're really there to achieve. Unfortunately, I don't think we're going to see that sort of leadership out of this President.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism

"Best Practices in Counterinsurgency" is the title of an article in the May/June issue of Military Review (pdf, published by CGSC at Leavenworth). It's written by a co-author of an Army study of Special Operations Forces during the first six months of Afghanistan. Kalev Sepp reviews 17 insurgencies over the past century as well as looks at features of 36 others and summarizes factors that tended to characterize successful and unsuccessful counterinsurgencies.

Other analysts and historians would undoubtedly come up with a somewhat different list, but it's a useful starting point for refining both goals and methods to achieve them. [For those who can't get enough of counterinsurgency more generally, the article is also a useful companion piece to Kingdaddy's ongoing series on insurgency strategies pursued by different types of revolutionaries.]

Successful

• Emphasis on intelligence.
  
• Focus on population, their needs, and security.
  
• Secure areas established, expanded.
  
• Insurgents isolated from population (population
  control).
  
• Single authority (charismatic/dynamic leader).
  
• Effective, pervasive psychological operations
  (PSYOP) campaigns.
  
• Amnesty and rehabilitation for insurgents.
  
• Police in lead; military supporting.
  
• Police force expanded, diversified.
  
• Conventional military forces reoriented for
  counterinsurgency.
  
• Special Forces, advisers embedded with
  indigenous forces.
  
• Insurgent sanctuaries denied.
  

Unsuccessful

• Primacy of military direction of counterinsurgency.
  
• Priority to “kill-capture” enemy, not on engaging
  population.
  
• Battalion-size operations as the norm.
  
• Military units concentrated on large bases for
  protection.
  
• Special Forces focused on raiding.
  
• Adviser effort a low priority in personnel assignment.
  
• Building, training indigenous army in image of
  U.S. Army.
  
• Peacetime government processes.
  
• Open borders, airspace, coastlines.

With all the recent noise about the timing of US withdrawal from Iraq and the growing disconnect between White House rhetoric and what the US military is actually planning to do, the pundits are losing sight of changes that have been going on for some months that don't involve aggregate force levels or the simple metric of number of Iraqis trained. These changes are affecting both the work being done to build Iraqi security forces and the current counterinsurgency operational priorities of the US forces.

This checklist seems to me to capture a lot of the adjustments the US military has been making that have been emerging over the past nine months or so. From a broader policy standpoint of what the US should be trying to accomplish in Iraq and what resources are required, the list is also a handy guide for major vulnerabilities that may need addressing promptly or, unfortunately, may no longer be reparable.

Personally, I think we should applaud the adjustments the generals are continuing to make in Iraq -- and vocally encourage more of them. By now we already know about the disastrous consequences of trying to run an occupation on the cheap, refusing to plan for "winning the peace," and failing to remember lessons from other occupations and counter-insurgencies. Surely we don't need to point to every change in goals or methods as evidence of incompetence or worse. That just creates incentives for an overabundance of caution, not making changes when needed, and other CYA behavior.

The Iraq debacle will fuel debates for decades to come about when/whether/how to engage US forces in the future. But in the meantime, for what to do in Iraq now and in the coming years, we should be trying to get out of the current political dynamic, where both Bush supporters and opponents treat any deviation from plan as evidence of failure. The debate between "stay the course" and "withdraw" may be real at the political level but as a practical matter it's a phony one. As I've noted on a number of occasions, the Administration has been rapidly shifting goal posts (yes, adopting a lot of what Kerry was saying), but it's trapped in its own political rhetoric. We may relish watching the Bushies deservedly squirm, but just as hope is not a plan, neither is schadenfraude.

True, simply reacting to rapidly changing circumstances by devising a different "plan" every few months can deteriorate into chickens running around without heads. But adjustment to changing circumstances -- at both the strategic and operational levels -- is a good thing. Failure to adjust -- or failure to communicate adjustments to both the public and the troops who have to execute -- is unhealthy.

The dynamic nature of both policy and military strategy, and their interconnections, demands flexibility and adaptation. Pierre Lessard, in "Campaign Design for Winning the War... and Peace" (Parameters, Summer 2005) gives some historical perspective.

But even steady policy is no guarantee of a correspondingly unalterable military strategy. [...] Indeed, in World War II, Allied military strategy experienced no less than eight major decisions involving significant repercussions for theater- or operational-level commanders between 1942 and 1945, or about once every five months. Thus, military strategic objectives are rarely enduring, and campaign design must be sufficiently agile to adjust to their fluctuations.

A competent leadership (both civilian and military) should be clarifying its objectives and showing how it can learn from mistakes and adapt to changing circumstances. A responsible opposition should demand no less.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism

I already went ballistic on the first report about Gen Byrnes getting the ax for marital indiscretion. So my outrage meter can't really go much higher. This Huffington Blog entry from Margaret Carlson just confirms my conviction that we've got a "values crisis" on our hands.

But here's what grabbed my attention. Way down in the [NYT's] piece, we learn that the officer appointed to determined if Byrnes should be court-martialed for a consensual affair is Gen. Dan K. McNeill. The Army has it wrong. If anyone should be court-martialed, it should be Gen. McNeill. Two prisoners were murdered on his watch and he covered it up.

I came to know McNeill when he was just a Lt. Gen. commanding forces in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2003, oversaw Bagram prison and then, the polite word is misled, officials about what happened to two innocent prisoners there. He claimed the two died of natural causes. Both were murdered.

McNeill kept stonewalling even after an autopsy showed that there'd been no natural causes in the death of a peasant named Dilawar. Rounded up in a bad sweep of Khost, Dilawar, who had never been away from his parent's home and was innocent of any animosisty towards America, much less violence, was hung from the ceiling of his cell for five days in between bouts of interrogation where he was kicked and beaten so badly the coroner's report said his leg had turned to pulp.

After natural causes became suspect, McNeill claimed Dilawar had died from coronary disease.

After McNeill left Afghanistan, a new inquiry was reopened in Washington (thanks to a New York Times investigation). Low-level soldiers and MP's have been indicted; some are on trial now. But guess what? McNeill was promoted to full general.

And now he sits in judgement of Byrnes.

Let's be clear what I'm not arguing about. It's a discussion for another day whether the US military should consider modifying its code of conduct when it comes to highly personal matters that don't directly involve one's job performance. Nor am I questioning the right of a superior to discipline a subordinate for disobeying an order. Finally, I am not endorsing Carlson's view that Gen McNeill should be court-martialed. I have no informed opinion. Most of the military's snowstorm of investigations on detainee treatment have taken a narrowly legalistic approach, looking for direct orders and smoking guns. I am willing to believe that the investigators didn't ignore glaring grounds for prosecuting McNeill.

The juxtaposition of Byrnes/McNeill has far more serious implications for our society's values than the actions in either case, taken in isolation. One of the purposes of conduct standards for officers is to promote confidence in the military's leadership -- confidence essential both to subordinates' willingness to follow and to civilians' trust in the judgment and competence of the military's leaders. Discipline in any specific case is a matter of discretion within a broader system of conduct. Confidence in the way standards of conduct are enforced -- that discretion will not be "abused" -- is essential to confidence in the system as a whole. Discretion is abused when those with power or with privilege of some sort are able to escape discipline applied to others. But discretion is also abused when discipline (or lack of discipline) fails to be proportionate, not only to the specific offense but to other disciplinary decisions.

There's been a lot of talk about accountability or lack thereof in the military's handling of detainee abuse and torture in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo. "Command responsibility" is certainly an important element of ensuring integrity of performance, as I've learned in some detail from Phil Carter. Setting abstract ethics to one side, in purely instrumental terms, failure to hold higher-ups accountable is corrosive for morale and discipline up and down the line. Cover-ups, lack of candor and shoddy excuses, which go hand in hand with lack of accountability, drive a poisonous credibility wedge not only between military leadership and those they lead but between the military and society at large.

But the enforcement of conduct standards is not simply a matter of punishment, or weeding out people who don't meet the standards. Just as with rewards, such as promotion, disciplinary actions are also an important means to collectively define and reaffirm, within the military and for society more broadly, the types of behavior and results that are valued. Specific decisions about how to enforce the standards necessarily reflect a priority of values -- how seriously an institution's leadership holds certain values and how they try to reconcile values that may conflict.

Both promotions and disciplinary actions speak louder than words when it comes to communicating which values are most important to the military's current leadership. And the current leadership is saying that conflict with a superior over one's sexual behavior is a terrible, terrible thing. But you don't even blot your copybook if you're involved in command failures that include murders on your watch and the destruction of the military's public credibility on sensitive matters important to the nation's security. Apparently "necessities of war" as defined by the Secretary of Defense overrides all other values if you're a senior enough officer, even if it doesn't serve to absolve underlings. I certainly hope the Byrnes episode is not simply a display of the growing obsession with "sexual morality" as the touchstone for American "values."

So whether the military means to or not, it's sending out three strong messages. The lives of foreigners who get caught up in our war against terrorists are less important than an officer's marital indiscretion. Little guys will take the fall when things get messy. And our values don't actually reflect principles of ethical behavior and integrity, they're whatever the political masters of the day determine.

Somehow one of America's most important institutions has lost perspective on what's important. And it's lost sight of the fact that its actions speak far more loudly than words, reflect on our country as a whole, and are being heard round the world.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism

[Wood's] only hope of making the cut was a birdie on the par-5 18th, and he delivered a booming drive under pressure that left him a 7-iron to the green. A two-putt birdie gave him a 69 to make the cut on the number at 4-over 144.

Not pretty, but somehow, someway, didn't you just know he'd do it?

Ex-WorldCom CFO Gets 5-Year Term

A federal judge Thursday sentenced former WorldCom Inc. finance chief Scott D. Sullivan to five years in prison for helping to direct an $11 billion accounting fraud that drove the telecommunications giant into the nation's largest bankruptcy.
[...]
Sullivan got $700,000 in salary and a $10 million bonus and exercised nearly $10 million worth of WorldCom stock options in 2000, the judge said.

China Banker Gets Suspended Death Sentence

A former president of state-owned Bank of China's Hong Kong branch received a suspended death sentence Friday for embezzlement in an apparent effort by Beijing to help restore faith in its scandal-plagued banks as they prepare to sell shares abroad.
[...]
He was convicted of embezzling 14.3 million yuan ($1.8 million) with others, plus another 7.5 million yuan ($930,000) for himself, Xinhua said. It said Liu also was convicted of taking 1.4 million yuan ($170,000) in bribes.
[...]
On Friday, Bank of China's executive vice president said its long-anticipated offering could take place as early as this year.

US reconstruction efforts in Iraq are widely seen as critical elements of US policy, not only to improve the lives of Iraqis but as "pacification" tools -- to convince ordinary Iraqis that their lives will be better if they don't support the various forces opposing the US forces and the Iraqi government. Yet after billions of dollars already spent and far more billions allocated for reconstruction, the process is not going well, to say the least.

Most of the criticisms of Iraq reconstruction are aimed at poor planning and implementation by the US government and contractors -- inordinate bureaucratic delays in contracting and execution of projects, poor-to-nonexistent results in the most critical sectors such as utilities and the oil industry, sky-rocketing costs as security problems continue to mount, inadequate employment of Iraqis, etc.

Criticism from a different and refreshing perspective is offered by Cpt Christopher Ford, a Command Judge Advocate for a Brigade Combat Team in the 1st Cavalry Division stationed in Baghdad, in a recent article in Parameters. He describes how the design of reconstruction programs and the spending of project funds fail to work as effective "carrots" within an integrated counter-insurgency strategy. Several of his points echo comments I've made elsewhere, such as the need to think about not only how to "buy" supporters in a given locale, but how those supporters will "stay bought," as well as the importance of using reconstruction programs as a method for strengthening the capacity of the Iraqi government.

Never let it be said that the US Army doesn't try to learn from other disciplines or examine new ways of thinking about what they're doing. Cpt Ford's analysis reads as if it were written by someone with hands-on experience in political and economic development programs in developing countries. He pays attention to getting incentives right, gaining local buy-in, and building local institutional capacity.

The principles underlying Ford's recommendations apply to promoting sustainable political and economic change, whether the change is occurring in a peaceful environment or one of considerable political violence. And successful political and economic change is precisely what's involved in shifting the attitudes of key elements of a population from one of passive "neutrality" towards counter-insurgent forces -- which plays into the hands of the insurgents -- to one of "support" for the counter-insurgent forces. This isn't "winning hearts and minds" but rather persuading segments of the population that it's more in their interest to be with the authorities (Iraqi and, by association, US forces) than to remain passively neutral.

Cpt Ford's article covers other ways he would adjust US counter-insurgency operations so as to better "target a population’s neutrality to defeat an insurgency," especially distinguishing among different ways to use force. Although the rest of the article makes interesting reading, here's the bit I especially liked on getting the carrots right. He also makes an interesting argument about the efficacy/feasibility of involving civilian agencies in reconstruction in Iraq (see especially footnote below), which would equally apply to the US military's relationships with non-US agencies involved in reconstruction, such as the World Bank or other foreign donors.

The “carrot approach” presumes first a goal and second a motivating factor to encourage the people to work toward that goal. In Iraq, the goal is a supportive population that resists insurgent activity and fosters stability, and the motivating factor is billions of dollars of reconstruction projects. As noted earlier, the fallacy of this approach as frequently applied in Iraq has been threefold: (1) reconstruction projects are not incentive based; (2) the reconstruction process is not holistic in nature; and (3) the reconstruction process often undermines the authority of the Iraqi government.

Most critical, perhaps, is the general failure to establish the link between behavior and reward. Often, the reconstruction projects in a particular town or section of a city are not initiated as a reward for the peaceful nature of that geographic locale. Indeed, reconstruction projects are more frequently targeted at the most restless locales in an effort to persuade the people in those areas that the coalition is the better of the two sides because it provides projects and employment. This tactic provides little incentive for the people to turn against the insurgents and risk their lives for the benefit of the coalition. By merely remaining passive, they reap the benefits of the projects while maintaining their personal safety from the insurgent threat.

A more effective system would treat reconstruction projects as an incentive through which the incentive-giver can influence the activity or behavior of the population. Adopting this approach would require a cessation of all reconstruction projects in sectors or cities that present a level of violence above a threshold established by the local commander. The population would be given notice that the projects have stopped because the security situation does not permit their continuation.

The impact of reconstruction projects is often further diluted by awarding construction projects to those individuals claiming to represent the community, often Sheiks, Imams, or prominent businesspersons. The extent to which these individuals represent the people, or have the ability to control the people, can rarely be quantified. A stated goal of operations in Iraq is the restoration of the rule of law. Awarding contracts to allegedly well-connected persons simply widens the wealth gap, increases resentment toward the coalition, and strengthens the positions of people of unknown character. More critically, this process undermines the power of the government because the coalition is empowering nonstate actors (Sheiks, Imams, etc.) to act in a state-like manner—executing infrastructure projects, building and staffing medical clinics, maintaining security, and providing disaster relief. The reconstruction focus should shift from trying to appease powerbrokers to empowering the Iraqi government.

The way to achieve this end involves selecting construction companies based on competency not connections, managing fewer projects to ensure better quality, and training and empowering local and national governments to execute their own reconstruction projects. Further, just as the Iraqi army and police are provided with extensive military and police training, the Iraqi government should be furnished with reconstruction training. This latter point highlights the third issue with reconstruction assistance: the piecemeal nature of the reconstruction.

During the course of operations in Iraq, the vast majority of the reconstruction was, and continues to be, conducted and administered by the military. The Department of State and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have also contributed significantly to the reconstruction process, though their efforts have been limited at times due to the security situation and, initially, because of organizational obstacles.** The Iraqi government has participated on a somewhat diminished scale due to their lack of resources and lack of institutional skill and knowledge. The participation of the State Department and USAID largely has been a component of security and coordination, whereas the participation of the Iraqi government has been a function of resources and ability. Closer coordination between all parties and an emphasis on assisting the Iraqi government would produce more reliable projects, spread the wealth across the population, and empower the Iraqi government.

** The US Agency for International Development is the government agency charged with “long-range economic and social development assistance.” Despite this charge, the US military has taken the lead in both planning and executing reconstruction projects. The oft-stated reason is that only the military can operate in the present security situation. This is a common fallacy. The Department of State and USAID can develop and manage a comprehensive reconstruction program immaterial of the security situation. At the strategic level, the threat is minimal, and at the tactical level, military units are eager to support embedded USAID staff. That is not to say military participation is improper. 10 U.S.C., sec. 3062, and Department of Defense Directive 5100.1 specifically contemplate military participation in the advancement of US national policy.

[UPDATE] Just to clarify, I'd have a number of questions for Cpt Ford before I endorsed all of his specific recommendations. But I do think he's asking the right questions and thinking about the process in the right way.

cross-posted at Liberals Against Terrorism