A Voice in the Wilderness

         Secretary Gates’ call to service yesterday at Duke University should be required reading by not only the nation’s youth, but by the country’s Age of Aquarius decision-making generation that drives us into international quagmires of the first order. His comments echoed many of the sentiments and arguments voiced by a minority over the last decade: that the military is marked by exhaustion; that too few serve in armed forces asked to do far too much; that those who do serve are increasingly becoming a community onto themselves; and that citizenship should bear with it the responsibility and privilege of service. Yet, one wonders if Gates enters the fray too late in the game, if the secretary’s comments serve as a one-off public soliloquy (rather than as the initiation of a sustained campaign for change,) and if the United States will ever confront the basic means-ends mismatch we’ve constructed.

         In his speech to the Blue Devils, Secretary Gates went further than any other contemporary political leader in highlighting the multiple dangers inherent in our civil-military environment. The All-Volunteer Force (AVF), which Gates marks as a “remarkable success” (while simultaneously identifying the hallmarks of its failure,) was not built for the types or durations of conflicts in which we’re presently embroiled. Voluntary service, while possibly noble, turns out to be quite expensive, and has the added disadvantage of being either hidden from or ignored by an overwhelming percentage of Americans. In short, for all of his lauding of the AVF, a discerning reader is left at the end of Gates’ speech wondering “Now how exactly is this better than the draft?”

History should identify Gates as one of the country’s better secretaries of defense, but his elaboration on the state of American civil-military relations did not go far enough. In the end, we will only begin to correct the deficiencies in our foreign policy and in our civil-military relations when a much greater percentage of the population shoulders the costs of our misadventures; when—as Gates himself highlighted—war is no longer an “abstraction” for the elites and the common folk who return a disengaged political class to Washington every two years. Democracy and disengagement are polar opposites, and with rights come responsibilities. A volunteer force is a fine tool as a standing army during a time of peace, but democracies require national service during times of war. 

Forgetting Whom They Serve

       While conducting some research this morning, I stumbled upon a disturbing Israeli press article that hasn’t yet received too much coverage in the American press. Over the last few days, a couple of American press outlets have reported about Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s offer to freeze settlement construction in return for Jonathan Pollard’s clemency. What I haven’t seen in the press is the crux of the Israeli Haaretz article—that Representative Barney Frank (D, Massachusetts) and colleagues are circulating a petition to President Obama appealing for the same.
       Frank’s and friends’ justification for clemency (the body of the press release was provided by Representative Frank's office and is copied below) would be laughable if it wasn’t so disgusting. Representative Frank first justifies such clemency based on “…the vast disparity between Mr. Pollard’s sentence and the sentences given to many others who have been convicted of similar activities,” although the true extent of Pollard’s espionage (mainly for Israel, but also reportedly for South Africa) has never been publicized. Even worse, Representative Frank cites clemency as being needed “…as a strong indication of the goodwill of our nation towards Israel and the Israeli people.” Lest anyone forget, Israel is the recipient of billions of dollars of American taxpayer-provided aid annually, and has been provided overt and tacit American security guarantees since 1973. Israel’s thanks has been the Pollard affair, weapons negotiations with China, and intransigence in the Middle East peace process. (To be fair concerning the latter, however, the Palestinians are hardly the best of negotiating partners.)
       One wonders if we, the United States, are getting full-value from our relationship with Israel. More immediately, one wonders whether Representative Frank and company have completely forgotten which country’s interests they are sworn to protect. Pollard is an individual duly convicted of espionage in a court of law. His crimes were so damaging that the judge in question (who was privy to a classified damage assessment provided by the Secretary of Defense) disregarded a plea agreement in the matter, and sentenced Pollard to life in prison. Representative Frank’s petition is unconscionable.

(c) 2010 Richard Wrona

Body of Press Release Regarding Representative Frank's letter to President Obama Regarding Jonathan Pollard

WASHINGTON -- Congressman Barney Frank, Congressman Bill Pascrell, Congressman Edolphus Towns and Congressman Anthony Weiner announced today that they are circulating a letter in the House of Representatives, seeking other Members to join them in asking President Obama to extend clemency to Jonathan Pollard, the former civilian defense officer who is serving a life sentence for passing classified information to Israel. 

The letter notes that they are not questioning Mr. Pollard’s guilt, the process by which he was convicted and sentenced, nor the necessity of punishing those who engage in espionage on behalf of allied countries.  Rather, the appeal for clemency is based on the vast disparity between Mr. Pollard’s sentence and the sentences given to many others who have been convicted of similar activities, even with countries that unlike Israel are or have been adversaries of the United States.

The letter also notes the positive impact that a grant of clemency would have in Israel, as a strong indication of the goodwill of our nation towards Israel and the Israeli people.  This would be particularly helpful at a time when the Israeli nation faces difficult decisions in its long-standing effort to secure peace with its neighbors.

The letter will be circulated in Congress for a period of time, and then sent to President Obama, most likely by the middle of October.  

Storm Clouds on the Distant Horizon

       Two interesting news articles serve as data points for the increasingly diverging paths and trajectories of the United States and China. While the United States suffers from economic fatigue, domestic political polarization, and war weariness (and its accompanying military exhaustion and lack of innovation,) China marks achievement after achievement in the economic, political, military, and diplomatic spheres. Once more, China’s increasing assertiveness in international politics—particularly regarding East and Southeast Asian issues—bodes ill for the protection and advancement of American national interests.
       In an article from yesterday’s New York Times (“Amid Tension, China Blocks Vital Exports to Japan,”) we are treated to the most recent example of China’s adherence to the tried-and-true principles of power politics. As a result of an impasse with Japan regarding the detainment of a Chinese fishing captain (which, arguably, acts as a foil for larger Sino-Japanese maritime disputes,) China is leveraging its near-monopolization of rare earth elements to pressure Japan. Rare earths are vital to many high-tech products and absolutely essential to advanced weaponry. China’s near-monopoly of the world’s current rare earth supplies, combined with its de facto embargo of the elements’ export to Japan, serves to not only pressure Japan, but—indirectly and deliberately—the United States.
       While Chinese assertiveness and dynamism grow, the United States gets fatter and weaker. Contrasting the NYT’s article is one by the National Journal highlighting American youths’ inabilities to meet the basic standards of military service. While the Chinese increasingly throw their economic, diplomatic, and military weight around to consolidate the country’s position as East Asia’s dominant player, American teens and twentysomethings can’t seem to get their weight off the couch and from behind the Xbox, in order to meet what would have been once considered laughable standards of physical fitness. Army officials frantically search for innovative ways to make hardy soldiers out of increasingly flabby and brittle young Americans.
       Make no mistake—power in terms of political stability, material wealth, economic vitality, favorable geographic position, global access, and military power is still the coin of the realm in international politics. Power gains and maintains influence through persuasion and, if necessary, coercion. Regardless of recent missteps over the last decade, the United States is looked to not only because of the desirability (by some) of its political and cultural characteristics, but because it is the most powerful actor in the global arena. (No offense to our Kiwi brethren or northern neighbors, but few people in the world have the same expectations of New Zealand or Canada, countries with very similar political and social systems to the United States, but exponentially different measures of power.) As we continue to forfeit individual elements of our nation’s power, and as actors like China maintain a near-opposite track, we should be contemplating the ramifications.

Misperceptions Abound

     It is hard to determine whether one should be more concerned by what Secretary Clinton did or did not say during yesterday’s speech at the Council on Foreign Relations (http://www.cfr.org/publication/22896/conversation_with_us_secretary_of_state_hillary_rodham_clinton.html.) Clinton, in attempting to build upon tenets found in the administration’s National Security Strategy, displayed a disconcerting disregard for the world as we know it (vice the world as we would like it.) If the points highlighted in her speech are meant to be the foci for American foreign policy, there is little chance that we can hope for anything more than the drift we have experienced over the last two decades. And with drift, American power and influence diminish.
     Clinton’s speech revisited two important aspects of the NSS—first, that international power is dependent on U.S. national renewal; second, that international diplomacy matters, and that the way toward international diplomacy is through the reinvigoration, refurbishment, and/or development of international institutions. Few would argue with Point #1, although many might take issue with the current administration’s approach to its accomplishment. Point #2’s focus on international institutions, however, is dangerously misguided. Mrs. Clinton’s emphasis on such institutions relied overwhelmingly on the modifier “shared”—as in “shared problems”, “shared aspirations”, “shared commitments”, and “shared responsibility”. In doing so, she assumes that other countries, even U.S. allies, conceive of problems, goals, and a desired future in the same way that she does. Few things are further from the truth. In fact, while we fund a defense budget that is larger than the next 14-15 largest defense budgets combined, most NATO allies fail to allocate even their self-imposed minimums on defense spending. While we take for granted that individual liberty and democracy motivate nations and leaders (and, therefore, should undergird new and improved international institutions,) other countries hold sacrosanct the concepts of sovereignty, self-determination, and varying interpretations of justice. While we assume a “new American moment” and the necessity of American leadership, other states collaborate to develop new institutions that limit American power and wholly omit an American presence. (Witness, for example, the developments of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.)
     Secretary Clinton saved her most damning comments for the end of her speech. They are worth reading in the original:

       But there's a legitimate question, and some of you have raised it, I know, in print and elsewhere: How can you try to manage or at least address and even try to solve all of these problems? But our response, in this day where there is nothing that doesn't come to the forefront of public awareness: What do we give up on? What do we put on the back burner? Do we sideline development? Do we put some hot conflicts on hold? Do we quit trying to prevent other conflicts from unfreezing and heating up? Do we give up on democracy and human rights? I don't think that's what is either possible or desirable, and it is not what Americans do, but it does require a lot of strategic patience.

     This failure—one might even argue refusal—to prioritize American interests and threats is the single biggest indicator of continuing American drift in international politics. Even in the best of times, states must prioritize those efforts fundamental to their interests. In the worst of times (and, given our national economic situation and an overstretched military, we are dangerously close to such times,) prioritization is absolutely essential. As a past post attempted to highlight, what coherent appeal to U.S. national interests possibly supports the prioritization of crises in the Democratic Republic of Congo before Mexico’s instability? What reality prioritizes Albania’s national defense (given that Albania is a NATO member) before the requirement to maintain and advance U.S. freedom of action in the global commons (maritime, space, etc?) I know of none, but it seems that all possibilities, fanciful or not, are equally important to the United States Government.

A Better, Bad Choice

       The Democratic Republic of Congo is a modern-day nightmare. After more than a decade of conflict, the country’s eastern region is known for its seemingly unending human misery. Mass murder, forced displacements, and the horrible distinction of being the world’s “rape capital” embody Thomas Hobbes’ description of life in an anarchic world, (i.e. nasty, brutish, and short.) Reports this week of hundreds of women, girls, and babies being gang-raped by rebels and tribesmen within miles of a United Nations peacekeepers’ camp only serve as the most recent chapters in an epic tragedy. (“Congo mass rape numbers rise to 240—UN,” BBC)
       Yet, policy Realists (and I consider myself one of them) realize that the United States has few national interests threatened by eastern DRC’s horror. Particularly when one considers its importance relative to American global interests and threats to those interests (combating al Qaeda, nuclear weapons proliferation, a rising China, and Mexican instability to name but a few,) eastern DRC legitimately garners little attention. Could any American political leader credibly argue that, in an economic downturn with all of the attributes of a double-dip recession, we have more funds to spend on foreign adventures? Could the President really address the nation and say that even one brigade of U.S. troops (an element of a few thousand servicemembers) would be better allocated to DRC than to Afghanistan or even the United States’ southern border?
       Americans, however, are directly addressing the insecurity in DRC, albeit in a way that is completely ineffective. In addition to millions of dollars of aid that we provide to DRC’s thoroughly corrupt government (“Corruption Perceptions Index,” Transparency International,) the United States provides over 27% of accessed contributions to the United Nations’ peacekeeping budget. (“United Nations Peacekeeping,” UN) The United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) budget for July 2010-June 2011 is $1.369 billion dollars. (“United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” UN) This year, whether they know it or not, U.S. citizens will be providing over $371 million to fund MONUSCO peacekeepers.
       Unfortunately, we would do just as well to burn the money. MONUSCO and its predecessor, MONUC, have been worse than worthless. In the most recent gang-rape incident, not only were U.N. peacekeepers in the DRC ignorant of and/or unresponsive to atrocities occurring so close to one of their camps, but they may have turned a blind eye to rebels’ construction of road blocks that would fly in the face of the U.N.’s peace enforcement mandate. (“UN ‘was not told about DR Congo mass rapes,” BBC) Even worse, previous U.N. peacekeepers in the DRC have actually contributed to greater insecurity in the region through their own sexual abuse of Congolese children. (“Peacekeepers’ sexual abuse of local girls continuing in DR of Congo, UN finds,” UN)
       One reason for MONUSCO’s lack of effectiveness has to do with its composition. MONUSCO, like most U.N. missions, is overwhelmingly manned by militaries unable to provide security even within their own countries’ borders. As an example, Pakistan—although unable to pacify its western regions and address jihadist threats emanating from the same—contributes over 10,000 troops to U.N. peacekeeping missions. One need only list the top five troop-contributing countries (Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, and Egypt) and then study said countries’ fragility to see a possible negative correlation between a regime’s competence and its troop contributions.
       Given the lack of vital U.S. interests at stake, some might argue that it would be best to ignore the DRC; that close to $400 million could certainly be better spent on reducing the deficit, on education, or on a host of other domestic issues. I am very sympathetic to such arguments. However, advocates and bureaucrats get a vote, and are—in many cases—more influential than appeals to the national interest. The twin themes of “We can’t simply ignore it” and “It’s only…” (as in “It’s only $300 million dollars when the government is spending trillions”) will hold decisive sway.
       If one assumes that the United States will continue to fund peacekeeping efforts in the DRC and other unstable regions, American citizens should get a better return on their investments. One possible avenue to improved efficiency and effectiveness may be the employment of private military/security companies in these endeavors. An idea entertained in the past by pundits and policymakers, the employment of PMCs might address insecurity on the ground, and do so in ways that are far cheaper than supplementing the Pakistani and Bangladeshi defense budgets. Examples from the 1990s of PMCs’ employment by Angola and Sierra Leone demonstrated, if nothing else, that such contracts can be effective at bringing about a modicum of stability. Moreover, a scheme by which the United States Government hired PMCs that were then seconded to the United Nations (as an alternative to future peacekeeping budget contributions by the U.S.) might allow for a greater level of legal accountability than presently exists for troops coming from countries with nascent, non-existent, or corrupt judicial systems.
       Employing PMCs entails a number of second- and third-order consequences that must be considered and mitigated. Legitimizing the privatization of force is not something to be taken lightly, although the United States seems to have established significant and haphazard precedent with its contracts supporting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. From the narrow perspective of increasing security in eastern DRC, and recognizing that the situation is of little relative threat to U.S. national interests, there hardly seems to be a better alternative. PMCs may be the better, bad choice that we need, especially when compared to endless, ineffective, and harmful U.N. missions.

The Worst Platitude

Platitude—a banal, trite, or stale remark (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

     For almost a decade, we have been informed that we are a “nation at war” by two presidents, scores of legislators, and countless candidates for public office. President Obama’s Oval Office speech last night was simply the most recent refrain in a litany that is not only inaccurate, but pernicious to the health of the American society and—in particular—American civil-military relations.
     In fact, as the president’s somewhat schizophrenic talk demonstrated, we are a national population that increasingly sees war as something done by “the other”. While their sacrifices are lauded, military servicemembers seem to be seen as a separate population, a distinct group that does the work of war so that “we” may work “to secure…the dream that a better life awaits anyone who is willing to work for it and reach for it.” Unfortunately, the military as a separate entity is increasingly becoming a reality. It is viewed as noble, honorable, self-sacrificing, but distant.
     Fewer and fewer Americans serve in the military, or even know anyone who serves as a soldier, sailor, airman, or marine. While President Obama highlighted “the nearly 1.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq” (one questions whether this number is accurate, or truly accounts for the multiple deployments of many of our servicemembers,) that number pales in comparison to the population eligible to serve who are not serving. Statistics from 2008, the most recent year’s data available on the Census Bureau’s website, prove illustrative. In that year, the American population stood at just under 300 million, 44% of whom—by rough estimates—are of the modern era’s military age. Assuming that President Obama’s 1.5 million number counts individual Americans (rather than individual deployments,) compare 1.5 million in seven years to 131 million Americans possibly eligible in one year. In fact, our military service/participation rate in this country has held steady at less than 2% of the population throughout the duration of conflict since the 9/11 attacks.
     Additionally, military members are increasingly distinct geographically, economically, and culturally. Citizens of the Southeast join the military to a disproportionate degree, while citizens from the West and Northeast are far less represented than their percentages of the national population. By one estimate, “nearly half of all Army recruits come from military families.” (“The Military Should Mirror the Nation,” The Wall Street Journal.) Numerous studies over the last ten years have highlighted that the military’s officer corps tends to be far more conservative than the general population. Disturbing trends, beginning with President Clinton’s first national campaign and most recently demonstrated in Rolling Stone’s article about General Stanley McCrystal and the antics of his staff, show an increasing political outspokenness by both active and retired officers.
     Instead of requiring greater sacrifices by the American population, the government’s answer to wartime demands has been outsourcing, specifically the use of private security and military companies to augment a strained military force. Over the last few years, contractors have outnumbered servicemembers in Iraq, and armed contractors have outnumbered the contingents provided by any of our coalition partners. Reports indicate that contractors are involved in everything from protecting diplomats, to interrogating personnel captured on the battlefield, to participating in covert operations executed by special operations forces. In 2005, one Department of Defense entity even began to refer to contractors as a “fifth force-provider” akin to the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. (“Institutionalizing Stability Operations Within DoD,” the Defense Science Board.)
     Combine an increasingly-distinct military, an overreliance on contractors beholden to shareholders, and a lack of oversight by the legislative branch (“When Congress Checks Out,” Foreign Affairs,) and we have a recipe that is potentially fatal to key aspects of the American democratic experiment. Our entire system of government is founded upon the necessity of government held accountable to an engaged citizenry, and upon systems of checks-and-balances and separations of power that prevent any one government entity from gaining a disproportionate share of power. When the citizenry and Congress abdicate their responsibilities, giving the executive branch near-exclusive control of a detached military and contractors, we chip away at these very foundations.
     We are not a nation at war, but we should be. If we have decided that no threat is so dangerous as to merit such participation, mobilization, and collective sacrifice, then we have already resigned our country to the world’s history rather than its future.