by Daniel Korski | Nov 17, 2008 | North America
The rumour that Barack Obama may appoint Hilary Clinton as his top diplomat has filled the Sunday papers. Personally, I think she would be a better Defense Secretary or a nominee to the Supreme Court, although she is bound to do well as Secretary of State too.
If she were given the State Department, she is more likely to follow Colin Powell’s management style -– which a place like Foggy Bottom sorely needs –- than emulate Condi Rice’s neglect of the department. At the same time, she is likely to play a key role in foreign policy, unlike General Powell, as President Obama is compelled to focus on the economy.
It is just that I think Senator Clinton would do better at the Pentagon. She supported the Iraq War, which will make her better at coaxing the military into a draw-down of forces and a shift of focus onto Afghanistan. Though the officers and soldiers will accept the democratic transition from Bush to Obama, a military that has gone to war twice, suffered both casualties and reputationally, and seen itself as the sharp end of U.S foreign policy for eight years will need to be helped to make the switch by someone they trust. With her hawkish views, time on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and work on Unified Action, a large U.S military exercise, the New York senator is well placed to take this role on.
(more…)
by Daniel Korski | Oct 30, 2008 | Conflict and security, North America, UK
No issue has been the source of greater trans-Atlantic division during the last eight years than international law and counter-terrorism. The policies associated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror” — including detention of “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo Bay, coercive interrogation rising to a level that most Europeans would see as torture, the holding of prisoners in secret “black sites” or their rendition to countries that are know to use torture — have undermined the U.S reputation as a supporter of international law, alienated European publics and, arguably, worked as a recruiting sergeant for the very people the policy has aimed to defeat.
With an Obama administration now likely, many Europeans can’t wait to see Guantanamo Bay closed and for the U.S to adopt a different, less kinetic counter-terrorism policy.
But Europeans would do well not to get too ahead of themselves. The Illinois Senator has made clear that if he is elected he will continue to target terrorists where necessary. Last year, Senator Obama said he would “wage the war that has to be won”, with a strategy that includes “developing the capabilities and partnerships we need to take out the terrorists” while also “engaging the world to dry up support for terror and extremism”.
In other words, his administration is likely to adopts what Anthony Dworkin of the Crimes of War Project calls a “a mix of crime and war”, a hybrid model that combines existing legal norms from American constitutional law and the laws of armed conflict. In an essay, Dworkin – son of noted American legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin – lays out what Obama’s counter-terrorism policy will likely look. For example, an Obama administration may restrict all US personnel, including CIA agents, to those interrogation techniques listed in the Army’s interrogation field manual.
But Dworkin goes further, underlining that an incoming administration is likely look to its European allies for tangible assistance. For example, if the US closes down Guantanamo Bay what should be done with those detainees – around 50 – that the US would like to release, but who cannot be returned to their home countries because they would be likely to be tortured? “The US will look to Europe to absorb some of these men”, says Dworkin. He suggests that European governments should offer to take symbolic numbers of these prisoners, for example the Uighurs, as long as the U.S takes some ex-prisoners too. This could serve as the opening of a new chapter of trans-Atlantic cooperation on counter-terrorism.
The key, though, to success is for Europe to make small positive steps rather than making unrealistic demands and expecting them to be acted on immediately, like demanding that the U.S immediately join the International Criminal Court. Instead, Dworkin suggests beginning with “a wider reaffirmation of common principles”.
This, the war-crimes fighter thinks, could include the following principles: no one can be held for an extended period without charge except in situations of national emergency or armed conflict; no prisoner should be held for an extended period without his name and place of detention being publicly confirmed; no prisoner should be subjected to torture or cruel and inhuman treatment; no one should be transferred to any country where they face a real risk of being tortured; no one should be transferred to another country if they will be detained without due process.
Such declaration, to work, would – in my view – have to be wrapped together with a clear reaffirmation of the need to confront terrorism and not only through judicial means. But to my mind, Dworkin is beginning to do what few others have until now, namely lay out a practical way forward for trans-Atlantic counter-terrorism policy.
by Charlie Edwards | Oct 22, 2008 | Conflict and security
William S Lind suggests that beyond Afghanistan, the Fourth Generation future belongs neither to al Qaeda nor to the Taliban but to two more sophisticated models, Hezbollah and the Latin American drug gangs (I would add other criminal networks and piracy too). He writes:
Both can fight, but fighting is not primarily what they are about. Rather, both are about benefiting their members with money, services, community, identity, and, strange as it may sound, what passes locally for good government. Even the drug gangs’ governance is often less corrupt than that of the local state. Both of these 4GW models can fall into the fatal error of alienating the local population, but the tendency is not inherent. While Hezbollah is religiously defined, it seems to appeal well beyond the Puritans, which means it can give orders Puritans will not obey. The drug gangs’ principal faith is in making money, and few faiths are more broadly latitudinarian. In Iraq as elsewhere, the fading of the al Qaeda model is being balanced not by the rise of a new state but by the adoption of other models of 4GW. So far, as best I can determine, no foreign intervention in a Fourth Generation conflict has succeeded is re-creating a real state (you can add Ethiopia in Somalia to the long list of failures).
With that in mind it is depressing to read that the newly appointed commander of Nato’s anti-piracy patrol off the coast of Somalia says it will be difficult to defend ships from pirate attacks. This at a time when Nato is sending seven frigates to support US navy vessels already there, and India and several European countries have said they will also mount anti-piracy patrols.
“The time that a pirate unveils himself to the time that he’s onboard ship is such a short period of time,” says Admiral Mark Fitzgerald
Cynics might suggest that this is a careful piece of expectations management (think about the failure of SOCA as another example of how a Government over promises/ but under delivers), but it’s no wonder that NSAs (non state actors) are able to leverage considerable influence in proportion to their size and capabilities when the bureaucracies are not necessarily constrained by current laws/rules but by process of implementing them. The rules of engagement are still being debated by Nato – and if I were a betting man I would suggest that such rules are unlikely to be in place before the NATO task force has to respond to its first attack.
In his interview with the BBC Admiral Mark Fitzgerald also raises a rather more worrying issue*. Given how busy the sea lanes are, he asks: How do you prove a guy’s a pirate before he actually attacks a ship?
Some possible suggestions below:
*TiC
by David Steven | Oct 20, 2008 | North America
Andy McCarthy:
Obama professes a love for this country. One needn’t doubt his sincerity to grasp that what he loves is a vision of America, not America as she is. The object of his affection is not our Unum [as in E Pluribus Unumh- the motto on the US seal], the glorious inheritance we Many cherish through generations past, present, and (one prays) future. For The One, that One earns only disdain. Eroding it has been his life’s work.
Move through Obama’s career as a community organizer, his embrace of ACORN, his radical associations: the common denominator is a purpose to break down the Unum at its foundations, what he calls the “grass-roots.” For America, he plans an atom bomb. Or, to be precise, an atoms bomb: countless communities in cities and towns across the land, organized along the Marxist principles of Saul Alinsky into socialist enclaves. Each atom smothers the individual freedom and enterprise that have defined the American character, replacing them with welfare states that prize dysfunction and reward the rabble-rousers.
To be sure, there is an Unum that Obama sees. It is in his mind’s eye — clearer on the horizon now than when he began his project 23 years ago. It will arrive when the atoms reach critical mass and finally devour the hollowing carcass of our present society…
For Obama and his allies, capitalist democracy is an abject failure, habituated to racism, relentless in its materialism. It is an ironic critique: The senator and his fellow travelers are driven by nothing if not a crass materialism: They see themselves entitled to society’s benefits without the burden of its toils. They are, moreover, such prisoners of their own racism — have you ever heard anyone else describe his own grandmother as “a typical white person”? — that race has become their unified field theory for all of life’s disparities. It is a stubborn theory, heedless of the fact that, in our free society, members of all races, ethnicities, and economic classes move up and down the ladder of opportunity by the yardstick of merit.
Obama will tolerate no such yardstick. He derides the very core of what makes American society exceptional: individual liberty. Freedom. “We have this strong bias toward individual action,” Obama ruefully told De Zutter — and note the crafty shift: his choice of the amorphous action instead of the value-laden freedom, lest the listener realize just what is at stake. “You know, we idolize the John Wayne hero who comes in to correct things with both guns blazing. But individual actions, individual dreams, are not sufficient. We must unite in collective action, build collective institutions and organizations.”
Of course, we already have collective institutions and organizations. They are the branches of a limited government, designed by our Constitution precisely to promote individual liberty and national security. They are the churches, synagogues, PTAs, neighborhood clubs, and other social organizations by which each citizen may freely set the balance between his personal fulfillment and his interaction with fellow citizens. They are the arts, the sports arenas, the charities, the congeries of fulfillment for those who know the personal is not the political. That is American democracy, ourUnum.
In this article for the National Review, McCarthy – a former federal prosecutor who led the case against the 1993 WTC bombers – weaves together every insane, paranoid, and self-serving myth (racial, ideological and otherwise) about who Obama is and what he plans for America. You should read the whole thing and weep.
Ross Douthat has a good take on the wilderness his fellow right-wingers are driving themselves into. They should all take time to see what happened to the British left, after Thatcher drove it insane. Or compare the dark night of the Tories, after Blair accomplished the same trick.
Once you start frothing at the mouth and ranting in public, it’s a long hard road before you’re fit to be in polite company again…
by Daniel Korski | Oct 16, 2008 | Conflict and security, Cooperation and coherence
Developing effective indigenous forces has turned out to be one of the most important counter-insurgency tasks , whether in Afghanistan or Yemen. Yet it is a task that both the U.S and NATO allies struggle with.
The U.S Army is therefore thinking about creating standardized units to undertake the training tasks while in Britain, the head of the army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, has argued that the British army needs to be restructured, grow bigger, and acquire new peacemaking and reconstruction skill, including by establishing specialized reconstruction units as part of eight “organic” manoeuvre brigades.
But what is lacking is a NATO “chapeaux”, which could help build capabilities elsewhere, ensure greater interoperability and guarantee that the new security assistance mission is a priority for all NATO allies. Creating a 2000- person NATO Military Advisory Force supported by a Military Advisory Centre,would be the next logical move to achieve this. Read more about this idea in this article in World Defence Systems
