Arms and influence

Iraq by way of El Salvador

IN THE NEWS
One of the great seductions for a government fighting guerrillas is to use the most direct means possible: kill as many confirmed or suspected guerrillas, as quickly as possible. There are a lot of things wrong with this approach, not least of which it reduces a political, "fourth generation" war into a purely military conflict. It has far worse ramifications, however, when the dirty war becomes the cover under which old scores are settled.

According to recent news reports, that's exactly what's happening in Iraq. If true, this predictable but frightening turn in this counterinsurgency war. Training more Iraqi soldiers and police doesn't necessarily change the political and military battlefield--and, depending on how the expansion of the Iraqi security forces happens, may easily make things worse for Iraqi and US interests. Deploying more green troops, under equally green commanders, into places where they face constant danger won't help win this war. Exacerbating the frictions between Sunnis and Shi'ites really won't help. Appearing complicitous in a dirty war is a formula for complete disaster.

Remembering Ted Westhusing

IN THE NEWS
Many of the national security-related blogs have noted the tragedy of Col. Ted Westhusing, a US Army specialist in military ethics. As sad as his suicide maybe, the news of it has shed a little more light on the problems that the Defense Department's reliance on contractors has created in Iraq. If what Col. Westhusing observed was improper, illegal, and counterproductive, imagine what the Iraqis themselves have experienced in their dealings with contractors.

Whether someone is directly employed by the US government or working as a contractor, that person represents the United States. As Anthony Joes highlighted in the conclusion of his book America and Guerrilla Warfare, counterinsurgency succeeds or fails on the question of rectitude. Without it, neither a beseiged government nor its foreign patron can hope to defeat guerrillas politically--which, in the last analysis, is the real battleground. Lack of rectitude may drove Col. Westhusing to despair, and it can easily drive the US effort in Iraq over a cliff.

The "new" Iraq strategy

IN THE NEWS
It's always worth reading the full document, not the summary, whenever we reach a supposed milestone like the White House's "new" strategy for Iraq. What's immediately obvious is that it's not new, merely a rehash of now-familiar statements about how victory in Iraq is important, we're building democratic institutions, the enemy wants to tear down instead of build up, etc. The most glaring lack of necessary adjustment, however, is probably best summarized in this paragraph:

The Security Track involves carrying out a campaign to defeat the terrorists and neutralize the insurgency, developing Iraqi security forces, and helping the Iraqi government: Clear areas of enemy control by remaining on the offensive, killing and capturing enemy fighters and denying them safe-haven; Hold areas freed from enemy influence by ensuring that they remain under the control of the Iraqi government with an adequate Iraqi security force presence; and Build Iraqi Security Forces and the capacity of local institutions to deliver services, advance the rule of law, and nurture civil society.

Somehow, this is supposed to happen while the US is reducing its military presence, and the Iraqi security forces--as yet to show significant signs that they can operate at the level of ARVN in the Vietnam War--"stand up." Nor is there any clear direction on how an enclave strategy, which requires that a slowly-spreading series of liberated areas remain secure, is supposed to work where US, British, and Iraqi forces have yet to keep any part of Iraq safe from attacks.

It is, at the level of the commander-in-chief's directive to the troops, nothing new or particularly helpful. As another sweep-and-clear operation begins in the Sunni triangle, the strategic map has not changed at all.

What's very striking about the document is its style. It reads like a corporate white paper, and less like a traditional strategy document. As I noted a couple of days ago, it's important to understand how the sub-culture of American corporate executives shapes the way this Administration operates.

Body counts and progress

IN THE NEWS
One of Alexander the Average's recent posts--always better than average--summarizes the grim casualty statistics from Iraq. The conclusion: the number of US, British, and Iraqi casualties are slowly declining. (Or, perhaps, the month-to-month variations don't indicate a trend line getting dramatically worse.) While we've passed the landmark of 2,000 US soldiers killed, the counterinsurgency campaign is, by one measure, not an inarguable failure.

However, I'd caution against concluding too much from the raw numbers. They are, after all, just casualty statistics. Whether it's the Vietnam War, and people are concluding from the body counts that everything is going great, or the Iraq War, and people look at the 2,000 mark and conclude the situation is hopeless, the rule is the same: Never conclude anything from casualty figures alone. Even if we were fighting an attrition war against a conventional adversary, you could not judge who's winning by just these numbers. If you believe relative casualty statistics are the ultimate determinant of victory, then Rome would still be governing the barbarians, or Great Britain would still have its empire.

The "credibility gap," another echo of the Vietnam era, plays a critical role here. During the Vietnam War, US civilian and military planners, along with their South Vietnamese counterparts, did revamp the strategy to the point where the National Liberation Front could not fully recover from its losses during the Tet Offensive and the North Vietnamese Army was blocked more effectively from operating in South Vietnamese territory. However, by then the US public was so outraged at the gap between the "light at the end of the tunnel" pronouncements and the apparently awful situation in Indochina that voters didn't want to hear about how the US government was finding new lights at the end of new tunnels.

The political integrity of the Iraqi government is equally important. During the Sandinista insurgency, the FSLN guerrillas regularly suffered grievous casualties at the hands of the National Guard. The casualty numbers would have indicated that the Sandinistas were beaten. However, when the Guard decided it couldn't support the Somoza regime any longer, the government collapsed and the Sandinistas seized the moment, Leninist-style.

Numbers are important, but one statistic alone is not an indicator of success or failure.

COINTELPRO nostalgia

We've now learned a few important details about the US military's expanded role in domestic surveillance since 9/11. Like so many other aspects of the Bush Administration's "homeland security" strategy, this change is both ineffective and unnecessary.

Before getting into the pros and cons of the decision, let's first take stock of what else is supposed to be happening to prevent another 9/11-like attack. The US federal government is supposed to be funneling money to state, county, and city law enforcement to add personnel, equipment, and training. The Department of Homeland Security is supposed to help coordinate domestic counterterrorism efforts. Critical in these joint efforts is information sharing, since the 9/11 bombers could have been identified as a threat if someone had been able to pull the disparate pieces of information scattered across flight schools, FAA, local police departments, the FBI, into a coherent mosaic. Federal agencies are supposed to be better trained, staffed, and equipped to patrol the sensitive areas for which they already bear responsibility, such as airports.

So why, therefore, was there any discussion of giving the Department of Defense any responsibility for domestic surveillance at all, particularly after the sordid history of COINTELPRO? The answer, I would argue, lies somewhere in the Bush Administration's modus operandi. Hold on for a few minutes while I discuss American corporate culture before getting back to what the Pentagon should and shouldn't be doing.

While there is no single key to understanding the Administration or Bush himself, I think it would be a mistake to overlook George W. Bush's history as a businessman before he became governor of Texas or the president of the United States. He spent a significant part of his adult life, even as the owner of the Texas Rangers, immersed in the subculture of the corporate boardroom. It would be surprising, therefore, if he did not emerge from that world with some of it still clinging to him.

One of the untold stories of American business is how badly executives can run a corporation. You can reconstruct this part of American economic history through business journals, books on how to be a more effective manager, and the content of various management training courses. All of these exhortations tell you what, as a corporate executive, you should be doing—which, of course, implies what many in the audience are not doing.

Out of many bad habits of bad managers, I'll single out one that's relevant to this discussion. When an organization goes through a crisis, top decision-makers often respond by picking favorites and assigning new responsibilities to them. The favorites have the aura, whether justified or not, of getting the job done. Therefore, you give more jobs to them, especially ones that other parts of the organization seem to be bungling. If the favorites can't make better progress in their new areas of responsibility than their predecessors, the favorites and their executive patrons can always argue that the predecessors screwed things up so badly that it will take a long time to fix the problems. In this fashion, the favorites can easily escape responsibility, and in fact can enjoy a complete lack of accountability for a long time. The crisis doesn't pass, frank discussion of what's working and not working is difficult in the poisonous atmosphere that playing favorites creates, and the organization overall suffers. The dynamic usually starts when the managers think they don't have the time or need to look carefully into the origins of the crisis (or if there's even a real crisis at all). Instead, they look for someone to blame, or they treat the crisis as so extraordinary that old methods have to be thrown out entirely.

I've worked long enough in the private sector to have second hand knowledge of this dynamic, as well as first-hand experience in multiple organizations. Many decision-makers avoid making this mistake, but enough succumb to its temptation to make it a distinctive part of American business culture. In short, bad managers often play favorites, with disastrous consequences.

Now, back to Bush, the Department of Defense, and domestic surveillance. It doesn't take a great leap of logic or evidence to say that, after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration saw the US military as the answer to many problems. The efficiency, effectiveness, and professionalism of the services made them a logical candidate to lead US counterterrorism, at a time when shadowy foreign characters were clearly plotting the deaths of as many Americans as they could kill, in as spectacular a fashion as possible. The Pentagon became the favorite, while other agencies clearly got less attention and praise from the Bush team in general, and the president in particular.

The post-9/11 crisis is not as clear in hindsight as it seemed at the time. Although thousands of civilians died, Al Qaeda was not poised to follow up with a series of new attacks. What the available evidence indicates is not that a new chapter in the history of warfare opened, but an old one suddenly gained new prominence. The eagerness with which the Bush Administration proclaimed that history had somehow changed, and therefore all the old rules were off, should have caused wider concern at the time. Instead, the public and Congress turned a blind eye to things that should have been scrutinized and challenged.

The habits of an ineffective manager, therefore, got free play. The Pentagon accrued more responsibilities for intelligence gathering, abroad and (we now know) at home. Congress, the press, and other parties did not ask the question of whether or not the US military, armed with these new responsibilities, could have done anything to stop the 9/11 attacks. The short answer is, they would not have. Mohammed Atta's team did not do anything that might alert base commanders that an installation or military personnel were at risk. What, then, should the military be doing beyond force protection with these expanded powers?

That question is as old as the United States itself. It's easy to forget how an issue that seems quaint in hindsight, the proper mix of regular and militia troops, was in fact a bitterly contested issue during and immediately after the American War of Independence. The men and women who gave birth to an independent, democratic nation worried that regular troops would become an instrument of a national tyranny. The excuses were the same as now: threats from within and without. Then, the swarthy barbarians Americans feared were Native Americans. Now, they're Islamist terrorists. Only if the states maintained their own militias could the new American republic avoid a Caesarist coup at the point of the regulars' bayonets.

More importantly, perhaps, than the fear of a hazily-defined enemy was the very real problem that the militias were far less effective on the battlefield than regular troops. Throughout the war, American generals struggled with the problem of how best to deploy a mix of regular and militia forces. Put the militia troops in the wrong place on the battlefield, and the American line could be turned—and the war could be lost in the process.

However, there was always more to the American War of Independence than the skill and organization of the troops that fought. Good generalship was just as important, as George Washington showed on many occasions. The colonist's fortunes often turned on Washington's ability to exploit an opportunity, such as his surprise winter offensive in 1776. Just as often, the war depended on less dramatic moments in Washington's tenure as commander, such as holding the Continental Army together, or recovering from his own mistakes (for example, the decision not to retreat earlier from New York).

Other decisions critical to the colonists' success had nothing to do with military matters at all. For example, the reprisals against Tories, real or suspected, might have been far worse. With their independence and lives at stake, the Sons of Liberty might have decided it was better to burn Tory-dominated towns. (At the time, Washington had to defend himself from charges that he ordered New York burned.) The Continental Congress might have issued arrest orders for influential people suspected of supporting the British cause. The "homeland security" strategy of the time could have been far more repressive, with easy justification: until the Treaty of Paris, there was no assurance that the British government wouldn't simply keep sending troops to the colonies until it finally hunted down and finished the Continental Army.

Now, as then, military affairs are only part of the war effort. Soldiers have a job to do, as do FBI agents trained to handle criminal conspiracies from organized crime syndicates to terrorist groups, the people who inspect cargo offloaded at American ports, the local police who know the community better than any federal agent…You get the idea. Shoveling responsibilities at the US military can only dilute their effectiveness, not get the overall job of counterterrorism done better.

Resurgence or spasm?

IN THE NEWS

A lead article in today's Washington Post notes a disturbing change in strategy for the Taliban. In 2005, suicide bombings, a new phenomenon in this insurgency, raised both the level of casualties (significantly higher than in 2004) and the shock value of the attacks. While the situation in Afghanistan is nowhere near as perilous as in Iraq, the escalation leads to the natural question, Is the tide turning against the Karzai government and its NATO allies?

My answer is, Not necessarily. Suicide bombings are not a de facto sign that the Taliban is doing better, even if this is evidence that it is collaborating with Iraqi insurgents. Taken alone, neither the number of casualties nor the fact of foreign assistance is significant. Suicide bombings are a cheap way to increase casualties, since you don't have to limit the scope and frequency of violence as much as if you cared whether the attackers returned home. As long as you have a ready supply of willing martyrs, you can afford to be more ambitious—for a while.

It's unclear from the press accounts about suicide bombings in Afghanistan how big the pool of prospective bombers is. If there are not many native Afghanis willing to die for the Taliban, or if the supply of foreign-born suicide bombers is low, you would expect a dramatic rise in the number of attacks and casualties. Once the new tactic has run its course, the violence would hit a ceiling, or perhaps even subside.

That's an entirely plausible reading of these attacks, given what we know of the Taliban movement. The Taliban replaced the mujahideen's rule of capricious violence and rampant corruption with its own regime of capricious violence and unrelenting repression. When NATO forces invaded in 2001, many people who once welcomed the Taliban were overjoyed to see them go.

However, the Taliban proved resilient enough to survive through four years of civil war, in part because of the ethnic strands that, like the history of Afghanistan in general, weave through events. The Taliban is a predominantly Pashtun organization, which already caused some suspicion among many non-Pashtuns when the movement first took form in the 1990s. Once in power, the Taliban never lost its overwhelmingly Pashtun complexion. Although it would be unfair to call them yet another clan, led by yet another set of warlords, the Taliban would not have survived had they not been able to use their Pashtun connections to their advantage. Although ideologically and rhetorically pan-Islamic, the Taliban has never completely shed its parochial character.

In other words, there's a lot of bad feeling between the Taliban and the vast majority of the Afghan population—including many Pashtuns who felt that the Taliban betrayed its promise to replace the mujahideen with a just Islamic state. Suicide bombings may alienate the Afghan population further, while the Taliban gambles that these attacks will dramatically change the political situation in Afghanistan or the United States. Certainly, suicide bombings have not shattered the government's control over previously secure areas. In that critical sense, Afghanistan has not followed the same course as Iraq, where a typhoon of violence dramatically changed the political and military situation in the entire country. As long as the United States and other allies of the regime in Kabul keep their focus on Afghanistan, this kind of dramatic reversal is unlikely to occur. The more Iraq remains a distraction from Afghanistan, the more likely it will.

The white phosphorous controversy

IN THE NEWS
The recent flurry of questions, announcements, and more questions about the US military's use of white phosphorous munitions in Iraq (and in Fallujah in particular) clarified some important points, and managed to confuse quite a few more. Here's some background on this weapon and why it's being used--again.

As by know you've probably heard, the US Army and Marines used white phosphorous (WP) grenades extensively during World War II. The weapon proved effective enough to remain in the American infantry's arsenal during the Korean and Vietnam wars. At the time, the "effectiveness" of white phosphorous (or "Willy Peter," as the GIs nicknamed it) was well understood and respected. WP burns at a high temperature for a limited period and creates a great deal of smoke, giving it both an offensive and defensive purpose.

The offensive purpose is, of course, what has received the most attention during the last two weeks. WP helped solve a tactical problem, how to kill enemy troops in fortified positions, such as stone buildings and concrete bunkers. Small arms fire wasn't sufficient, particularly since a soldier trying to fire around the corner of a building or through the slit in the face of a bunker exposed himself to fire from the enemy, hidden behind the protective shield of concrete and steel. Fragmentation grenades weren't always effective, particularly in the topography of a building, either intact or reduced to rubble. Too many obstructions blocked the trajectory of the grenade fragments, an acute problem when an infantryman might not know where in the pile of rubble or the shadowy corners of a building the enemy was hiding. Artillery and air strikes, of course, could pulverize a fortified position, but it was too unpredictable. The munitions might not land on target, and the artillery or aircraft might not even be available in the first place. Even when a bomb or shell hit the building exactly where it was supposed to, that didn't ensure that it would break conveniently break open or collapse in the manner intended.

Therefore, WP munitions became a necessary part of the American GIs equipment, to deal with well-entrenched defenders in situations like these. The WP grenades, when detonated, would burn hot enough to quickly kill enemy soldiers in a particularly ghastly way, or make them afraid they might be killed in another second or two. The smoke often made the close confines of the fortified position unbearable, and it often disoriented soldiers to the point where they were unsure which direction an attack might be coming. Not surprisingly, American soldiers could induce panic among German and Japanese soldiers with only a few WP grenades--often enough to get the enemy to retreat or surrender.

The United States and other combatants used other weapons, such as flamethrowers, in these situations. However, WP still had an important advantage over many of these alternatives: smoke that obscured the enemy's vision, allowing American troops to advance through open ground that otherwise might be deadly to cross. WP therefore complemented the standard (and more widely available) smoke grenades, which did not have the same ability to burn and suffocate defenders. Unlike flamethrowers, WP did not force troops equipped with them to carry a large tank of highly flammable material in places where a stray bullet or shell fragment could rupture the container. Unlike artillery and close air support, WP was available when and where the infantry needed it, and it was reasonably accurate when thrown.

However effective WP may have been, from Vietnam to Iraq, there was no compelling reason to use it. With minor exceptions like Somalia, the wars that the United States fought didn't pose the tactical challenges that required WP.

However, that didn't mean that these battlefield scenarios passed out of the US military's institutional memory. Far from it: even before the invasion of Iraq, US military planners understood that the increasing urbanization of the world meant that, on average, US troops would be fighting in cities more often than they had in past decades. "Urban warfare" became the shorthand for the operational, tactical, and technical challenges in future wars.

Not surprisingly, the US military has been regularly experimenting with new and old weapons with urban warfare in mind. Some of these have been deadly, such as the thermobaric variant of the Marines' Shoulder-Mounted Assault Weapon (SMAW). The SMAW not only can create a shockwave capable of killing and wounding the enemy, but also burns over a wide radius. Some of the new tools of urban warfare are quite unlike the SMAW. The recent rage for non-lethal weapons arises from the same concerns that gave birth to the SMAW: how to fight in urban centers. These weapons, designed to entangle, disorient, stun, or blind the enemy, are designed to avoid the sort of civilian casualties inevitable when fighting in densely populated areas. Clearly, the US military has wanted the right tool for the right job: WP, thermobaric weapons, and equally deadly tools when the risk to civilians is lower; non-lethal weapons when enemy soldiers are entrenched among innocent bystanders.

Clearly, WP is right on the boundary of acceptability drawn at the end of World War I, when the world as a whole decided that chemical and biological weapons should never again be used. There are only two differences between WP and mustard gas worth mentioning: the range of deployment and the long-term effects.

Artillery gunners tried to disperse a chemical agent that killed people in a horrible way over as wide an area of the enemy's trench line as possible. In contrast, soldiers tossed WP grenades with more discretion and accuracy--and far fewer casualties, both intended and inflicted. The size of the chemical arsenals themselves created a problem, how to safely identify and dispose of stockpiles after the war ended.

WP also did not have the same long-term effects as mustard gas, chlorine gas, and their ilk--and for far fewer people, given the narrower range of deployment. The unfortunates who survived WWI chemical attacks often lived with life-long damge to their their lungs, skin, eyes, nerves, and other vital parts of their bodies. The legacy of chemical munitions, which most Europeans could see in the ravaged bodies of friends, co-workers, and family members, reinforced the taboo against their use.

I leave it up to you decide whether these are distinctions without a difference, or acceptable limits to the usage of a weapon, WP, designed with the same purpose as a bullet or bomb. Whatever your conclusion, you can probably see how hyperbolic some recent statements about WP have been. Most notably, white phosphorous is not a weapon of mass destruction. Real WMDs, such as nuclear weapons and biological agents, are designed to kill as many enemy soldiers and civilians. In fact, one of the defining features of WMDs is their express design to inflict mass casualties, and by extension, mass terror. The center of gravity for these strategic weapons is normally the political will of the enemy population, or even the existence of a functioning economy or government. The intended target of WP, a battlefield weapon, is the enemy soldier.

At the same time, there are extremely disturbing aspects of the Pentagon's admission that it used WP in Fallujah. US commanders knew that many civilians were trapped in Fallujah. In that cause, who exactly authorized the use of WP, and under what guidelines? How many civilians died from WP munitions? Is WP part of some official tactical doctrine that includes safeguards to prevent civilian casualties, or is this another hurried response to a conflict that has spiraled out of control? And why, given the obvious sensitivity of the issue, did the Pentagon and the White House first try to deny something that, later, they would inevitably have to confirm? (Actually, the answer to that last question may be, Force of habit, given how many times during the Iraq War the Bush Administration has been dragged down the same road from denial to admission.)

The most important factor for deciding whether the use of WP was justified or not may be the nature of the conflict itself--the distinction between America's wars that does make an enormous difference. In WWII, there was no "hearts and minds" struggle. Nations conquered by Nazi Germany were eager to be liberated, and their citizens understood the grim cost that they would have to pay to be freed. When Allied bombers attacked German U-boat pens on the French coast, French civilians died. When Allied troops fought for control of cities like Caen, Salerno, and Arnhem, innocent bystanders often fell to stray bullets and bombs. However tragic these casualties were, they were understood as the unintended consequence of attacks designed to defeat the German military--even when it meant attacking factories, rail lines, and other economic targets.

Iraq is, of course, not the same. Defeating insurgents requires more than just military skill. The normal formulations for finding, fixing, and finishing enemy soldiers need to be modified, and perhaps at some levels of strategy, rejected altogether. Winning temporary military control of a building, a street, and an entire city may in the long run be meaningless, no matter how hard the fight to win them was. Aside from moral implications, the political backlash, in Iraq or in the United States, is the proper measure of whether use of WP or any other weapon was justified.

Guerrillas and terrorists often try to goad their enemies into rash, counterproductive responses. The use of white phosphorous munitions in densely-populated Fallujah just may turn out to be the most recent example of this strategy successfully applied.

History takes a hand

IN THE NEWS
It's beginning to feel that history is taking a hand where individuals are failing. The debate over what really drives events, human beings or forces beyond their control, posits a false choice. Talk to people in positions of power and they'll often tell you how powerless they sometimes feel. On the other hand, there are historical moments that definitely would not have played out the way they did, had not particular people occupied important roles. For example, while Germany was undoubtedly going to make Europe go through some rough times while the Germans elbowed their way to the great power table, there's no doubt that Kaiser Wilhelm II and Adolf Hitler steered Germany in a particular direction that, had someone else been at the helm, it probably would not have taken. Hitler especially symbolizes in the minds of many students of history not only a monstrous evil, but the principle that, at times, extraordinary circumstances give unusual individuals extraordinary opportunities.

Hitler's golden moment was the simultaneous weakening of German politics and the traditional European balance of power. The Weimar Republic failed to capture the allegiance of enough Germans willing to support it through hard times. French and British power proved incapable or unwilling to check German economic and military expansion, and the Soviet Union nearly opted out of Europe altogether. Hitler, whom Sebastian Haffner noted had an eye for the weaknesses of others, understood that much less stood in his way of his ambitions than his enemies and allies believed.

After enjoying the freedom to reshape Germany and unleash a war of choice, not of necessity, Hitler eventually ran aground on the hard, rocky reality of Germany's military limits. Having rapidly defeated his enemies prior to Operation Barbarossa, Hitler assumed that he would have as easy a time defeating the Soviets, who had seemed inept in their brief war with Finland. However, the German blitzkrieg met its match, not just in the Red Army, but in the vast territory of the USSR. Where the blitzkrieg worked well in the more limited confines of France, Norway, Poland, and other Nazi conquests, it could never be effective in completely running the enemy to ground in the Russian and Ukrainian steppes.

While I could discuss other "golden moments" and the extraordinary people, devils and saints alike,  who took advantage of them--Napoleon, the Founding Fathers, Martin Luther King, Augustus--I hope the point is clear. "Golden moments" open different combinations of military, political, and economic possibilities. In some cases, the moment comes to a satisfactory close, when leaders and citizens turn what was once in flux into new, enduring realities, such as American constitutional government after the American War of Independence. At other times, the mistakes made by the very people who once successfully exploited the "golden moment" brings that chapter of history to a cataclysmic finish.

There was a golden moment in 2000. The Cold War had ended, but it was hard to describe what followed as an "international order." Some antipathies--for example, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict--survived the Cold War, and new conflicts, such as the Balkan civil wars, erupted. The United States was the sole superpower, but it was clearly not able to dictate what it wanted to the Chinese, the Saudis, or even its German and French allies.

Meanwhile, inside the United States, the traditional balance between Republicans and Democrats wobbled. Perhaps more importantly, the Democratic Party's leaders seemed baffled by the new, energetic constituencies on the right, such as the Christian fundamentalists, conservative radio and TV opinion-makers, and the sub rosa coalition of financiers like Richard Mellon Scaife and the attack groups they funded. Add an electorate increasingly uninterested and unimpressed by politicians, and the stage was set for George W. Bush.

Bush seized the moment to, among other things, try to grab the Middle East by the throat. If you sweep aside the obviously fallacious arguments for invading and occupying Iraq--the phantom WMDs, the nation-building campaign to be headed by a man who campaigned against nation-building, the fictional link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden--you're left with what the neoconservatives clearly wanted: a chance to both erase the obnoxious Ba'ath Party regime and re-write the regional politics of the Middle East in the process.

However, while the United States did well militarily, first against the Taliban and then against the Iraqi Army, it soon reached the limits of its own military power. The Bush Administration's hopes evaporated in the hot, dusty streets of Baghdad, Karbala, Mosul, Najaf, and other Iraqi cities, where it proved incapable of dealing with a relatively small but exceptionally violent insurgency. The golden moment passed, and now the US government has to operate without the freedom of action it once had. The Bush team itself is under political siege, with increasing pressure not only coming from the usual sources, but now from a growing list of Republican politicians and notables unhappy with the stock answers it receives whenever they ask questions about Iraq.

Some of Bush's allies are also facing harder times. The second intifada flourished because Arafat and Sharon both worked hard to keep any negotiated peace from occurring. Now, the Likud has split, with Sharon defecting to create a centrist party. Since no level of reprisal has stopped suicide bombers from killing Israelis, Sharon knows that his political survival depends on taking steps--or, at least, appearing to take them--that the Likud Party would never tolerate. Most Israelis and Palestinians have known that the political destruction of either side in this conflict was never likely. Now, both sides may be more willing to act as though they believe it.

When "golden moments" pass, events may be less dramatic, and progress slower. However, the end result may be more enduring, since the accumulated work of many hands might do a better job than the hurried efforts of a few decision-makers. Many leaders who seize these "golden moments" find how devious history can be.

Where once they felt themselves masters of the globe, they suddenly face a world much different than the one they tried to engineer. Alexander the Great's empire died with him, leaving behind new "successor" states unlike anything Alexander had conceived. When Napoleon's empire collapsed, the nations of Europe committed themselves to balance of power arrangements designed to stop future Napoleons in their tracks. France itself survived and prospered, even without the French imperium. So, too, might the United States survive and prosper, even if the world in a decade looks very different from the one George W. Bush tried to create.

Turkey at the crossroads

IN THE NEWS
The November issue of Current History has an excellent article about the strained relations between Turkey and the United States. The Iraq invasion has thrown a spanner into the works: where once the two NATO allies cooperated closely on maintaining the no-fly zone in northern Iraq, curbing attacks by Kurdish radicals, and dealing with Afghanistan during and after the 2001 invasion, Turkey and the United States are now at odds over many of these issues.

For example, the over-extended counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq has shifted resources away from helping the Turks deal with the PKK, a Kurdish independence group responsible for bombing vacation resorts and other targets in Anatolia. The current government of Turkey, formed by the Justice and Development Party (AK) after the November 2002 elections, has been trying to deal with the Kurdish problem while reassuring the  army, the chief guarantor of a secular Turkish government, that the AK has no intention of imposing Shari'a law on the country. The Justice and Development Party's leaders need the army, but it can't let it operate without constraint. While the generals may want to deal with the Kurdish problem directly, they already created a major diplomatic incident during one botched covert operation against the PKK. The Justice and Development Party's inexperience has contributed to this messy situation, making it harder for the Party to collaborate with the military and the United States.

However, these are the unavoidable side-effects of recent events, such as the invasion of Iraq and the election of the Justice and Development Party. Much of the strain between Ankara and Washington, however, is eminently avoidable, as the Current History article explains. For example, the American request to position ground forces in Turkey to open a northern front in the 2003 invasion of Iraq was clearly a mistake. The northern front wasn't militarily necessary, as US military leaders themselves admit, and it created a highly-charged situation in both Turkish politics and US-Turkish relations. (See the article or other sources for details.)

The biggest fault line in the relationship falls along the Bush Administration's policy of pre-emptive war. Turks are outraged over the US claim that, even when there's only a whiff of a future threat from a country, it reserves the right to attack it. The choice of Iraq as the first exercise of this principle has also antagonized the Turks. If most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, why not put Saudi Arabia on this list? If the point of US foreign policy is regime change, when will the Administration put more pressure on Israel to grant the Palestinians their own state? Given the Iraq invasion was originally justified on the basis of WMDs that didn't exist, might the United States blunder into another war, with even more bad consequences for the US relationship with Turkey? And why can't US leaders stop making dumb statements about how Turkey, a steadfastly secular regime since 1922, is a model Islamic state?

The good news is that a change in US doctrine can dramatically improve relations with Turkey. The bad news, of course, is that the Bush Administration, lashing out against increasing criticism against its post-9/11 foreign policy, doesn't seem inclined to reconsider.

Crossing Jordan

IN THE NEWS
The bombings in Jordan represent one of the scariest escalations in the two violent years since the invasion of Iraq. The invasion opened the door to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, once confined to operating as a leader in Ansar al-Islam in the northern corner of Iraq, to operate on a much larger stage, against a ready-made supporting cast of American adversaries. Without asking permission from the Al Qaeda leadership, he christened his new organization Al Qaeda in Iraq, instantly gaining the cachet of the world's most notorious network.

As of last week, he has taken his  production of terrorist theater to a new audience: the rest of the Middle East. Jordan is an ideal next stop, since it handily combines all the anxieties of the Middle East in one neat package:

• Jordan is one step away from Israel, already beseiged by the second, more bloody intifada.
• The majority of the Jordanian population is Palestinian, which instantly suggests the question, Were any Palestinians involved in these attacks?
• The attacks are designed to send the message that peaceful, stable, and moderate regimes cannot provide safety to its citizens.
• The attacks may also be an attempt to lure the United States into becoming more entangled in the politics of neighboring countries, to the detriment of the overall American war effort. In this respect, Al Qaeda in Iraq may be trying to construct as messy a regional war as the US faced simultaneously in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos.

The attacks may backfire. In fact, they may already have. Jordanians have already turned out en masse to denounce the attacks. The one operative captured, Sajida Mubarak Atrous al-Rishawi, may have information that can be used against Al Qaeda in Iraq. However, there may still be a great deal of justifiable anxiety in Amman, Tel Aviv, and Washington--not to mention Cairo, Riyadh, Ankara, and other capitols.