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.

American Blood and Chinese Profit

     Here's a perfect example of the lack of vision, strategic thinking, and attention to detail of our "professional" political class. Lest anyone forget, at least 4,357 U.S. military personnel have died in Iraq since the beginning of the war, and the country has spent billions--if not trillions (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/ AR2008030702846.html)--in Iraq. While the historical parallel is certainly not perfect, can anyone imagine the United States allowing a similar economic initiative by the Soviet Union in West Germany in 1951?

     Our elected officials and bureaucrats dishonor our fallen and do a disservice to our future generations. One of the most basic functions of a national government is to plan and implement a foreign policy that adequately represents a country's interests in international politics. Foreign policy is not charity. If our representatives and government professionals can not tie each any every expenditure--qualitatively or quantitatively--to the protection or advancement of American national interests, it is a wasted effort and/or the pursuit of a personal or bureaucratic agenda. The American public deserves better. Until we demand better, however, expect more of the same.

Iraq signs mega oil deal with BP and CNPC

BAGHDAD, November 3, 2009 (AFP) - Iraq on Tuesday formally signed a deal
worth 14 to 20 billion dollars with Britain's BP and China's CNPC to
almost triple production at a giant southern oilfield, an AFP
correspondent reported.

The venture is expected to boost production at the southern Rumaila
field from the current one million barrels per day to around 2.8 million
bpd over its 20-year duration.

Rumaila is already integral to Iraq's oil output, contributing almost
half of the nation's current production of around 2.5 million bpd, and
is estimated to have further reserves of 17.7 billion barrels.

BP and CNPC are projected to invest 14 to 20 billion dollars between
them and the companies have agreed to accept payment of two dollars per
additional barrel produced at Rumaila.

The Iraqi cabinet approved the contract two weeks ago.

Once an Eagle--a must read for all

Recently, I had the opportunity to re-read one of my favorite books--Anton Myrer's Once an Eagle. For those not familar with the book, it "is the story of one special man, a soldier named Sam Damon, and his adversary over a lifetime, fellow officer Courtney Massengale. Damon is a professional who puts duty, honor, and the men he commands above self interest. Massengale, however, brilliantly advances by making the right connections behind the lines and in Washington's corridors of power....A study in character and values, courage, nobility, honesty, and selflessness, here is an unforgettable story about a man who embodies the best of our nation--and in us all." (from the bookcover)

You need not be associated with the military to appreciate either the story or the underlying themes. In that vein, I've included some of my favorite quotations from Myrer's incredible work:

"Because once the eminent heads of state in all their infinite wisdom decide that it [war] must be done, once the drums begin to beat--there is nothing ahead but fear and waste and misery and desolation. Nothing else. Once the engine has started it must shudder and rumble to the very end of its hellish course, come what may. And you and I and a few million others are the ones who must cling to the machine as it grinds along. (pg 299)

"Sam, do you honestly believe people are going to stop being greedy and resentful and full of pride and prejudice? Do you think they will quit hating and fearing--do you think the lordly heads of government are going to abandon their methods of seizing and holding power, of gaining advantages over their neighbors? Why should they change? What should cause them to abhor the only rules to the game they know? And even if they were to do so, do you believe for one minute their own citizens would let them get away with it?" (pg 335)

"It seems to be our [American] history: we are indifferent, unprepared--then all of a sudden we're shocked, roaring with righteous wrath, ready to rush off into battle with our pants down..." (pg 337)

"War: war was not an oriflamme-adventure filled with noble deeds and tilts with destiny, as he had believed, but a vast, uncaring universe of butchery and attrition, in which the imaginative, the sensitive were crippled and corrupted, the vulgar and tough-fibered were augmented--and the lucky were lucky and survived, and they alone." (pg 344)

"The businessman goes for his profits and most of the time he doesn't see where it's leading; and things go from bad to worse, you remember how it was, and he pulls the country along with him, the politicians and the churches and the newspapers and everyone else, and finally somebody says the word, the terrible word there's no going back from--and the businessmen go right on piling up their profits, and the politicians rant on and on about that last full measure of devotion...but it's the little guy--the clerk and the farm boy and the carpenter--who's left hanging on the wire with his guts all over his knees." (pg 439)

"I've been detailed for this, honey. That's what it is. Like a soldier who's drawn outpost duty beyond the front lines. He's just drawn the detail, that's all. He didn't ask for it, it was laid on him--maybe because his platoon leader thought he was more alert or competent or careful than the others, or maybe the sergeant had it in for him and stuck him with it, or maybe it was just the luck of the draw. But that doesn't matter--there he is: he's drawn the obligation, he's out there, and what he does during those hours will mean the lives of all the rest. And so he's got to do everything in his power to prepare himself for that moment." (pg 513)

"That's what they know--that some must lead and others must follow, but that leadership is an obligation and not a mark of caste." (pg 644)

"There they lay, far from the fields of home, two crossed sticks and a dogtag, killed in a moment of heroism or cowardice or ignorance or ignominy, but all of them killed in the fragile splendor of their young manhood; and to some heart ten thousand miles away their present moldering was a source of immeasurable grief. And to others--even to many standing here in the still, heavy air--it was nothing at all." (pg 819)

"There, in that outpost, on that three-square-feet of ground, was where the real war was being fought, no matter who denied it; and how that private did tonight--whether he had the hardihood and the craft to resist exhaustion and debility and slumber and kill the weary, sick, resourceful enemy who sought his life--would decide who would win this war, and nothing else." (pg 931)

"If you could bottle it [the smell of the battlefield], Beaupre thought savagely, swallowing, fighting the hot clutch of nausea with all his might, trying not to breathe, trying to look without seeing. This smell. If you could bottle it, store it in some tanks just outside Washington or New York City or Chicago; and then when the drums began to beat, when the eminent statesmen rose in all their righteous choler and the news rags and radio networks started their impassioned chant, if you could release a few dozen carboys on the senate floor, the executive offices of DuPont de Nemours, Boeing and Ford and Firestone, the trading posts on Wall Street; and seal off the exits. Repeat every three hours as needed. Rx. By God, that would take some of the fun out of it" (pg 1074)

"A man was only one man, one meager entity, but he was so many divergent things to other men." (pg 1161)

"No. I don't know. That's not the problem. It's us. Here. It's got to come to a head. Between those who want us to be a democracy--a real one, not a show-window one--and those who want us to be a Great Power. In caps and with all the trimmings." (pg 1172)

"But that's how it goes. People are going to go on being scared and vindictive and greedy and forgetful and everything else they happen to be. And all you can do is keep on going yourself, do what you can, and hope for the best." (pg 1173)

"But I can respect the patriotism of men from other lands--who are every bit as loyal and self-sacrificing and earnest as we are ourselves. They do not happen to believe what we believe; but have we given them irrefutable proof that our way is the only way for all the rest of the world? --a world that is not as much in awe of us as we'd like to think." (pg 1244)

"...the only thing I've learned in sixty-five years, only one: the romantic, spendthrift moral act is ultimately the practical one--the practical, expedient, cozy-dog move is the one that comes to grief. Yes. Remember that. Joey, if it comes to a choice between being a good soldier and a good human being--try to be a good human being..." (pg 1288)

Read the book. It is more than worth the time and effort.