Arms and influence

Iran, the world's party-poopers

IN THE NEWS
Just when you felt you could enjoy a moment like the Iraq election, here comes the Iranians, vowing that they'll never give up their nuclear ambitions.

Don't get too alarmed by this single news item. It's the larger picture that's truly frightening. The Iranian government will continue to slide back and forth on the nuclear question. On some days, they'll tantalize their allies and opponents with promises that they'll suspend further uranium enrichment. On other days, they'll spit at the world's feet and disavow any earlier promises they made about slowing or reversing their nuclear program. The mullahs know how valuable leverage is, far beyond what power they'll get once they do develop nuclear weapons. Iran is perfecting its strategy of nuclear deterrence and compellence, well in advance of actually getting nuclear weapons. In many ways, that development is far more significant even than the warheads themselves.

Iran, nukes, and leverage

IN THE NEWS
The Washington Post carried this article yesterday about Iranian intransigence with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Aside from the IAEA's grumblings, similar unhappy noises are coming from the same European governments who had previously been praising Iran for its willingness to work with the Agency. At issue are magnets than can be used for enrichment uranium, acquired during a confidence-building period when Iran was supposed to be shutting down its enrichment program.

How does Iran get away with it? All the great powers (China included, to some degree) want Iran's nuclear program shut down. The armies of the United States and Britain are parked next door in Iraq. Even before the Iraq invasion, the US Navy and Air Force have been poised to strike, if needed at Iranian targets, if needed. So how hard can it be to get the Iranians to play along?

Very hard, apparently. If you're read some earlier posts in this blog on leverage vs. hard power, you'll understand why. If you look at just the US-Iranian relationship for a moment, ever since the hostage crisis--in fact, while the Shah was still in power--Iran has always had more than we wanted than vice-verrsa. Today, the Iranians have the ability to...

• Shut down their nuclear program.


• Reduce or cut off support to terrorist groups, including ones operating in Iraq against Coalition forces.


• Influence the swirling Shi'ite politics in Iraq.


• Adjust their rhetoric against the Saudi regime during a very sensitive time for the royal family.


• Influence world oil prices.

And we have...Not a lot of cards to play. The Iranians know that we can barely hold ground in Iraq, so any threats of invading Iran are hollow. So, too, are any naval or air strikes, which can't be effectively sustained to the degree that the NATO maintained its successful air campaign against Serbia. In other words, our hard power has bought us little with the Iranians--but it has supplied Iranian-supported groups like Ansar al-Islam with handy American targets.

Of course, our hard power is also working against us politically in Iran. The Iranian regime didn't "get the message" from our invasion of Iraq; instead, the theocracy took a very sharp turn to the right (as defined in Iranian terms). Among other ways the noose of oppression is tightening, the Guardian Council removed 2400 reformist candidates from the ballot in this year's parliamentary elections. While this crackdown started almost immediately after the reformists' 2000 electoral victories, it has accelerated since the US drumbeat for war and the invasion of Iraq. Not surprisingly, the mullahs, already afraid of what the reformists represented, are now fighting hard to resist foreign pressures that might threaten their control.

The Iranians may reverse themselves. Their public stubbornness may be temporary, a negotiating ploy to get something from one of the involved parties (the Europeans, the Americans, or the IAEA). Whatever the outcome, this incident highlights, yet again, the limits of our own hard power, and the reasons we shouldn't rely on it too much.

Showing your hand

THEORY
Power—especially the hard variety—is something that by nature has a limited quantity. In fact, by using power, you give all kinds of evidence about how much you really have. Once the OPEC countries demonstrated how they could use oil prices as an economic weapon, the United States learned how vulnerable it was to this tool of extortion, and could it could defend itself through improved gas efficiency, the maintenance of a strategic reserve, and other measures.

The limits of military power, of course, are sometimes the easiest to measure. The Nazi war machine, as fearsome as it was, reached its limits at the English Channel and the Volga River. The frontier of Roman power in Britain had a very visible marker, Hadrian’s Wall.

Governments often choose, however, not to expend their military power to their furthest limits, or even at all. Withholding force maintains the mystery of how much you really have—a question that you may not be able to answer accurately yourself, and certainly don’t want to learn in the worst possible way. Threatening attack, or escalating attack, therefore can be more effective than throwing all the firepower you can at an enemy.

Sometimes, withholding force doesn’t work. Johnson may have thought that the North Vietnamese would have understood how bad things could get if the war continued to proceed up the escalation ladder, so keeping military action at the lower rungs made sense on paper. It didn’t succeed, however, in forcing the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table—though later action, such as the US response during the Easter Offensive, did work. In the 1990s, US air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs and the Serbian government did bring the enemy to the bargaining table, without having to deploy US ground troops.

If you can withhold some or all of the force you can exercise, it’s usually a good idea. Fighting on every front, exercising all of your strength, trying every strategy you have—once you’re done, you’re done.

PRACTICE
We’ve currently reached the limits of US military power at the current level of mobilization. After deploying a limited force in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US military has cycled through as many units as it could, kept the Guard units in theater for as long as possible, and cancelled the planned rotations of regular units. Short of a draft, we have no further military strength to bear, unless we start “drawing down” forces in Korea, Europe, or other areas.

The US military has approximately 500,000 active duty (regular) troops, supported by 700,000 reserve and Guard units. Approximately 130,000 are stationed in Iraq, with another 50,000 in Korea, Afghanistan, and Bosnia.

We can feel how badly overextended we are now. In particular, we feel the pinch in areas where we can least afford it. Many units critical to the Iraq and Afghan wars come predominantly from outside the regular units. Approximately 95% of the psychological warfare and civic action specialists, for example, are not regulars. Logistical units, too, often come from the Guard and reserves, which was one of the temptations of “outsourcing” logistical duties to “contractors” (mercenaries) who are increasingly skittish about doing their business in Iraq.

We have, in other words, shown our hand. Not only do we know the limits of our power, so do are adversaries. The North Korean government continues to thumb its nose at us over its nuclear weapons program. Any possible threat to go to war with them over nuclear proliferation—as we did in 1994—is not what it used to be.

Reality doesn’t fit the Richard Perle and David Frum theory: fight a war to show how powerful we are; threaten war with other adversaries; if they aren’t impressed with our power yet, use it on them, too. Repeat this process as often as necessary to end the threats to us.

Leave aside the backlash this approach might create, and the certainty that, even if we were to reinstate the draft, we could not fight every war, everywhere that we feel threatened. The problem of “showing our hand” alone is good reason not to go this route. Our enemies will learn how much strength we have, and how to fight us. (For example, there’s good evidence that the Iraqi insurgents learned from how the Taliban and al Qaeda adapted to US tactics in Afghanistan.)

Showing your hand is a lousy way to play poker, and it’s an abysmal way to protect vital national interests.

Power and anti-politics

THEORY
One of the exciting things for me about writing this blog is how the "official" posts are coming together naturally to form a single, extended argument. Each post adds its piece to an overall picture that has more coherence than I expected, to be honest.

One thing that I'm especially pleased to see is how the discussion naturally comes back to the first principle of war: military action must create a desired political outcome, or else the whole enterprise of war is meaningless.

I'm not altogether happy to keep returning this point, though. On my cynical days, I'll say to myself, "Having to make such an obvious point is a sure sign how far civic education has fallen in this country." On my optimistic days, I'll tell myself, "To be fair, Clausewitz had to labor to make the same obvious point in his age. War involves a lot of confusing details, so it's always hard to get to the heart of the matter."

These recent postings on power and leverage meshes nicely with the earlier points about war aims. Another reason that power isn't a good guide to understanding international relations, or making decisions about what to do as a nation, is that power often steers people in the wrong direction. Power exists to be used, and the more urgent the situation, and the greater the power at your disposal, the more temptation to use it. Power also plays to an equally bad temptation to judge leaders (a requirement of a democratic society) based on their intentions, not their actions.

Many US citizens felt baffled and outraged that Truman didn't use the atomic bomb in Korea. It seemed inconceivable that, while Americans were being killed in bloody fighting with the North Koreans and Chinese, we didn't use the ultimate weapon--especially since our enemies couldn't retaliate in kind. Power was available to be used; if Truman didn't use it, there was something wrong with Truman.

Johnson had the same problem in reverse. "Doing something" in Indochina seemed to be sufficient for many people. Escalating the air war in Operation ROLLING THUNDER, or introducing US combat troops in ever-increasing numbers, made sense to people who wanted to keep the Vietnamese domino from falling. Johnson was doing something against the North Vietnamese; therefore, he was doing the right thing.

Clearly, this argument is nonsense. The United States tried many military measures in the Vietnam War. Some worked; some didn't. Success could only be judged by outcomes, whether you looked at gross and perhaps misleading statistics like relative body counts, or more important but less measurable results like the effort to win "hearts and minds." Military power sometimes does help win a population's allegiance or acquiescence: as Johnson himself famously said, "If you have someone by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow." However, we have to return yet again to that obvious point that, sadly, can't be stated enough: you have some idea how force will create the result you want. Perhaps you think that attrition warfare will break the enemy's spirit. Perhaps you believe that a careful program of securing the villages from NLF infiltrators will impress and reassure peasants who don't really support the Viet Cong, but have good reason to fear them. Both are testable propositions; both rest on some theory of what kinds of military operations will create the right political outcomes, and the steps needed to get from A (now) to B (the future after the war).

I'm using the Vietnam example, obviously, because it's a classic case of how a country believing too much in its own power can come to terrible grief.

PRACTICE
I dedicate some time each week on the discussion boards for other blogs. It's a great way to meet people, including those who support Bush's policies. I use the opportunity to speak directly with the pro-Bush crowd to see if we can find some common ground, a place where the screaming will stop and a true meeting of minds will begin. It's my democratic duty to both practice open-mindedness and encourage it in others.

Happily, it's usually a lot easier to have a discussion with someone on the other side of the aisle than you might expect. It all depends on how you engage with them. The first question I always ask is some version of, "What would have to happen for you to decide that Bush wasn't worthy of re-election?" Phrasing the question that way--pointing to the political outcomes they want, and how we get there--not only gets the real conversation started, but also keeps it on track. (And it's damn hard for all of us, myself included, to stay on track. The issues raised by 9/11, Afghanistan, and Iraq are complex, and they stir some very primal feelings.)

I've noticed a pattern when this approach has failed. A significant segment of the pro-Bush correspondents on the message boards fall back on the statement, "Bush is taking a tough stance on terrorism. He's serious about doing something, so that's why I support him."

Obviously, this statement has its echoes in what people once said about Johnson in Vietnam: He's doing something, making a stand, etc. It's a dangerous philosophy, since it lets the noisy exercise of power drown out any discussion of its consequences. The statement, He's doing something, has a talismanic quality for many people, to the point where further discussion is actually impossible.

I've heard the very same people say something like, We like Bush because of his values. Now, I like people, too, because of their values. My wife and daughter are both noble people, as are many of my friends, co-workers, and acquaintances. What often makes our lives decent fulfilling is the faith in one another that we're struggling to do the right things, even when we misstep.

However, I don't know the human heart all that well to begin with, and far less in people I don't know personally. I don't know Bush, just as I didn't know Clinton. I can't say what values dear to these two men really are--despite how much I've read about both Bush and Clinton, or as often as I've seen them speak. I can say, with certainty, that I don't care what their values are. I do care about what they do as presidents.

That's politics, as Weber said. You judge policies by their outcomes, politicians by the results of their actions. That's an excruciating truth for a politician to face, since you might sincerely intend to build a bright future for everyone, but end up being the architect of a complete disaster. (Insert your favorite calamity here.)

I always cringe whenever I hear someone likes a politician primarily or completely because of that person's values. This sentiment isn't just irrelevant to politics; it easily mutates into anti-politics. If you think that sentiment trumps ability, intentions eclipse actions, then the exercise of power is just a kind of statement of values. The more you exercise power, the more sincere you are. Anti-politics, thereforce, has its own terrible consequences--but its practitioners just don't want to look at them. Anti-politics is a flight from responsibility, disguised as virtue.

Postscript: Niccolo Machiavelli's list of helpful hints to Lorenzo de Medici fits into this discussion. The Prince has a dark reputation, but it's actually just a book on how to govern well, whatever your motives. (Machiavelli made his own values clear in his other famous work, The Discourses, an argument for republicanism with an early version of a separation of powers.) The Prince is filled with good advice about politics, applicable to any age. For example, to be an effective ruler, he argues, it doesn't matter how virtuous you are; it's how virtuous you appear to be. Centuries of readers have mistaken that statement for cynicism, but Machiavelli wasn't a nihilist. He wanted a good society, based on just principles. He also knew that good intentions weren't enough to get there.

Power and context

THEORY
It's important to expand a bit on the topic of power and context. Power--hard or soft--depends hugely on the context. The hardest of hard power, military force, doesn't always work, and isn't even always appropriate. Having a large, well-trained, well-equipped military like that of the Soviet Union gave that country the power to defeat Nazi Germany. That was no small feat, and the USSR could easily have lost the war.

The Germans might have seen their defeat coming, had they not been influenced by the clumsy Soviet campaign against Finland. Although the Soviets won a marginal victory against the Finns in the Winter War of 1940-1941, it was such a messy, protracted affair that Hitler concluded, If the Soviets has this much trouble against the tiny Finnish army, what hope to they have against the Wehrmacht?

Hitler's calculation was solely based on military power, measured as if it were an absolute quantity. He was wrong. (There were a lot of reasons why the Winter War and the Great Patriotic War, fought by the same Soviet army, were very different struggles, not just larger and smaller versions of the same conflict.) Equally wrong too, were the Soviet leaders who concluded that their intervention in Afghanistan decades later would be an easy victory, pitting Soviet helicopters, tanks, and artillery against guerrillas with small arms.

Power, therefore, is merely a tool. Whether it's the right tool for the job at hand, and whether you use the tool correctly, are completely separate questions. Again, that makes me a bit more sympathetic to the concept of leverage as a way of explaining how nations effectively condut their foreign policies, since you have to qualify power to the point of making the concept almost meaningless.

There's a similar pair of competing ideas in the software industry. A software development company sells components, such as accounting software, e-mail systems, word processing tools. The customer, however, is looking for solutions: to solve a particular business problem, what's the right set of components to buy? The company whose problem is, I need to find ways to reduce corporate risk, isn't really looking for an e-mail system per se. Instead, what it wants is some way to prevent employees from sending company confidential information to people outside the firm. Not understanding the difference between components and solutions is one of the chief problems in the software industry today.

Power is like component technology. A battleship or a gold reserve is a component of national power. The use of leverage is like use of software to solve business problems. The critical question is, Will this battleship or this new e-mail server actually fix the problem? Not, Do I need something new and shiny?

PRACTICE
Recently, Fresh Air's Terry Gross interviewed Richard Perle and David Frum, two neoconservative pillars of the Bush Administration, about their new book, An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. Perle and Frum summed up their approach in the following way:

• The United States shouldn't be afraid to use its military power. In fact, it regularly has to, to demonstrate that it can and will fight wars.


• Therefore, invading Iraq could be justified on the grounds that, by showing both US determination and capability, other enemies of the United States would fall into line with our demands.


• If this demonstration effect--their term was, "getting the message"--didn't work with, say, Syria, it was then important for the United States to attack Syria, in turn. War isn't the first resort exactly, but it's necessary in these cases to ensure everyone "gets the message."

In Perle and Frum's view, hard power almost sounds like the only power that matters. The fear it instills also sounds like the only form of leverage the United States can have with Iraq, Syria, Iran, North Korea, and other nations.

It's not a thesis that I agree with, but it's a thesis. It's a testable proposition, too, and the Bush Administration has already identified Iraq as the test case.

Let's take them at their word. Don't assume anything about whether the war in Iraq must be a victory or a defeat. Just ask yourself, If this is the theory behind the Bush foreign policy, is it working? For example, did we frighten Libya into opening its weapons factories to inspection and agree to pay reparations for tbe Lockerbee bombing? Or was diplomacy, using a variety of types of leverage, already moving Libya in this direction for the last several years?

Assume nothing. Go back, look at the record, and see if the Iraq war is primarily responsible for Qadaffi's dramatic confession and contrition. If you think the answer is yes, it's also worth looking at a cost/benefit analysis for this approach, two costly invasions (Iraq and Afghanistan) for the sake of a massive "demonstration," versus smaller-scale, direct attacks pinpointing the countries whom we want to influence (like Libya).

I'll say this much about my own opinion on the subject: I hope that Perle is as smart as he sounds. Perle is an articulate, clever, well-educated person, who chooses his words carefully. The name of the venture capital firm in which he is a managing partner (along with Henry Kissinger) is Trireme Partners LC, a nod to classical history. (A trireme is an ancient Greek warship with three banks of oars, hence the name.)

In any dramatic time like today, people grab at historical analogies. The one I'd mention to Richard Perle, if I had the chance, is the Peloponnesian Wars, in which triremes were one of the key weapons. The Peloponnesian Wars were a great tragedy for many reasons, including the ugly spectacle of democratic Athens turning into a bully, savaging both its enemies and allies alike. The Peloponnesian Wars ended badly for Athens, in part because its heavy-handed approach to its national security drove many city-states into the Spartan camp. The climax of the Wars was the misguided adventure in Sicily, when Alcibiades, an outrageously popular but ultimately reckless leader, led Athens and its allies to squander its troops, ships, and wealth. Even if the Sicilian expedition had been a success, it would have contributed little to the central conflict with Sparta. Sicily was a sideshow that cost Athens the overall war. Simultaneously, the larger war unleashed an ugly side of Athens that its citizens would have denied, either denying that they were as harsh as their critics claimed, or justifying their harsh actions as the harsh necessities of war.

Athens wasn't fated to lose the Peloponnesian Wars. Like most Greek tragedies, it contributed enormously to its own downfall. And that's my historical analogy of the day.

Power is only potential

THEORY
Power is one of many tools used to engineer a political outcome. We usually think of these tools in terms of power, but a more useful concept is leverage.

Power implies coercion, the use of military force or economic power to persuade, compel, overwhelm, or crush. Undoubtedly, the United States today has all the instruments of "hard power" that define it as a superpower: an enormous economic capacity; an advantageous place on the world map, bounded by oceans to the east and west, and friendly nations to the north and south; the biggest and most capable ground, air, and naval forces in the world; scientific and technological sophistication.

There are other tools for a nation to get what it wants, such as moral authority or a good reputation. Thinkers like Joseph Nye like to call these tools "soft power", used primarily to attract or entice, rather than compel.

I'm not a big fan of the hard power/soft power distinction. I find the term leverage, which encompasses both types of power, as a more useful idea. Nations have levers that they can pull to persuade other countries, but leverage is something highly dependent on the situation and how expertly you use these levers. Where power implies an engineering problem--apply this much economic power here, and that much military power there--leverage implies a more psychological or political challenge.

Take, for example, the "tail that wags the dog" problem. The United States had enormous power relative to South Vietnam. Yet, South Vietnam had enormous leverage over the United States, since a string of US presidents from Eisenhower through Nixon declared that South Vietnam was the domino that would not fall to communism. That commitment eliminated most of the leverage the United States had over any regime in Saigon, no matter how inept or corrupt it was. US ambassadors like Lodge and Bunker could fume at their South Vietnamese allies, but at the end of the day, leaders like Diem, Minh, Ky, and Thieu knew the US would continue supporting them. Without the credible threat of leaving the
South Vietnamese to their fate, the United States often felt like a "pitiful, helpless giant" (Nixon's phrase).

Power only describes potential. Leverage describes what you can actually do.

PRACTICE
The Iraq War provides a staggering number of examples where our power is less relevant than our leverage--and we don't have enough leverage to control the situation. The original war plan--"shock and awe" that would topple the Baathist regime with our impressive hard power, followed by a peaceful transition--didn't work out, needless to say. The postwar reality confounded the United States because it found itself having little leverage over people whom we had expected simply to go along with whatever we asked.

The most recent and embarassing example is Ahmed Chalabi. Since the 1990s, Chalabi cultivated a close relationship with the neoconservatives with whom he shared an interest in toppling Saddam Hussein. With Hussein gone, the United States now faces two problems:

• We weren't the only country with whom Chalabi was building ties and making promises. In fact, Iran seems to have figured highly in his "relationship-building" efforts.


• Chalabi is now ignoring his earlier promises to the United States, such as making an immediate detente or rapproachement with Israel.

Is this outcome surprising? Hardly, in terms of the leverage we don't have with Chalabi. We declared him the best hope for the next leader of Iraq; funneled him money, intelligence, even the files the Baathist secret police, the Mukhabarat, kept on people whom Chalabi can now blackmail; we helped install his family in key positions, including a pivotal role in negotiating post-war contracts; and even approved his nephew, Salem Chalabi, as the head of the tribunal that's slated to try Hussein and other Baathist leaders.

So what now does Chalabi have to lose by thumbing his nose at the United States? Practically nothing. Our "hard power" is worthless in this situation. In fact, it's worse than worthless, since it helps make us look like the proverbial "pitiful, helpless giant" next to the Iraqi version of Ngo Dinh Diem.