Arms and influence

Eyeless in Gaza

IN THE NEWS
In many Middle Eastern countries, conspiracy theories are practically a national sport. Sometimes, the conspiracies are even true.

Such is the case with the stand-off in Gaza. The Palestinian militants holding an Israeli soldier hostage probably wanted something more than their ostensible demands, the release of 1,000 Palestinian prisoners and an end to the Israeli assault in Gaza. In fact, they've already succeeded at achieving their overarching goal, yanking the new Hamas-led government from the brink of peace.

Events are following a predictable, awful course. Israeli troops invade the tiny region of the Gaza Strip. Palestinian militants--those who kidnapped Corporal Gilad Shalit, and others who are capitalizing on this opportunity--make hotly-worded declarations. The Israeli Air Force attacks buildings where the most militant elements of Fatah and Hamas live and work. Innocent bystanders are injured, and the attacks damage the electrical grid. The referendum that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas proposed is quickly forgotten. Just as the siege of Arafat's compound temporarily united quarreling Palestinian factions, the current confrontation forces all Palestinian parties into a united front. The crisis erases any chance that Hamas would move towards a begrudging coexistence with its Israeli neighbor.

What we're seeing is, in a nutshell, the fragility of Israeli-Palestinian politics. At any moment, a single hostage, or a single attack, returns both sides to the default position of bloody conflict. If there is any hope for Israel and the Palestinians, it requires leaders on both sides who can respond differently to familiar provocations. Even without Arafat and Sharon, who indirectly collaborate to destroy any policies with the words "peace process" stamped on them, that conflluence of joint leadership has yet to materialize.

Step on a crack

IN THE NEWS
Well, here I am, posting again after several days away. My wife broke her ankle, so I've been unable to find any free time until now to post anything.

Being incapacitated sucks. There's no way around that fact. I know, I've been laid up before, and I can sympathize with the frustration that Queenmommy is feeling right now. It was a completely random accident: someone left grease or oil on the floor where she was working, and her foot twisted at an angle more acute than the ankle was designed to allow.

On the bright side, it gives us a great reason to be together, without the normal interruptions of daily life. At least for me, there's an up side.

Strenghtening the mullahs

IN THE NEWS
We can argue whether the 2003 Iranian offer to put everything on the negotiation table with the United States was just a ploy to entangle American officials in pointless dialogue, or a genuine offer. We can speculate whether the Iranian government would have abandoned its nuclear program, or refrained from making mischief in post-invasion Iraq, if these hypothetical negotiations had occurred. However, what's not controversial is the following conclusion, buried at the bottom of the Washington Post article:

The incident "strengthened the hands of those in Iran who believe the only way to compel the United States to talk or deal with Iran is not by sending peace offers but by being a nuisance," Parsi said.

Postscript: Here's what Stygius says about the same topic.

Missile envy

IN THE NEWS
Without rehashing the history of the last few years, it's clear that the United States has few options for responding to North Korea's planned missile test:

• The United States is clearly in no position to make military threats against North Korea. Attacks launched purely from air or naval forces have little chance of wiping out the North Korean missile program (or nuclear weapons facilities, for that matter).
• With its military overstretched, the United States is in no position to contemplate an invasion of North Korea.
• Even if the US were to abandon Iraq to free up its conventional military strength for an invasion of North Korea or Iran, it is not clear that the Bush Administration would wage war against North Korea any better than it did against Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Building an international coalition against North Korea for either military or economic action will be difficult. Aside from a few countries, such as Japan, with a obvious stake in curbing North Korean military power, most potential allies are highly suspicious and skeptical of the United States (as the ineffectiveness of  rallying a coalition against Iran and Syria show).
• North Korea still cares about economic sanctions, which might block access to hard currency and revive food and energy shortages.
• On the other hand, South Korea—the chief conduit through which the North achieves any economic gains—is disinclined to end the recent thaw in relations between the two Koreas. South Korean public opinion has been very forgiving of North Korean military policies, which makes it difficult to imagine the US government rushing forward, even if it had a freer hand.
• North Korea has already seen how it can whip up a crisis, and get a distracted United States to make concessions.

The North Korean government certainly knew the likely American response—which says a lot about the predicament in which the United States finds itself. Russia and China are likely to have more effect on Kim Jong Il's plans than the United States.

Plots within plots

IN THE NEWS
First, the necessary warning: before drawing too many conclusions about the Sears Tower plot, it's worth waiting until more information is available. When the Departments of Justice or Homeland Security have made similar announcements, they have not turned out to be quite as dramatic a story as previously believed. When President Bush revealed an alleged plot to crash an airliner into the Library Tower in Los Angeles, later details proved this "plan" to be nothing more than a notion that Khalid Sheik Muhammed conceived, but never took anywhere.

If the basic story proves to be correct--seven men plotted to destroy the Sears Tower, and asked Al Qaeda for help--hats off to the people in law enforcement who detected and stopped this plot. The United States is a big country, and it's be surprising indeed if would-be McVeighs and Attas did not exist. While their numbers may not be large, it only took a few men to destroy the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

The Los Angeles Times article includes interviews with people who lived or worked near the warehouse in which the suspects claimed they were organizing a karate school. According to these accounts, these were pretty spooky characters--which makes one wonder if, like the arrests of terror suspects like Eric Rudolph, government deserves less credit than the average citizens who passed along tips. Again, we can't say much until more information is available.

As much as Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez normally makes my skin crawl, I have to give him credit for making the following statement:

"Today, terrorist threats may come from smaller, more loosely defined cells who are not affiliated with Al Qaeda, but who are inspired by a violent jihadist message, and left unchecked, these homegrown terrorists may prove to be as dangerous as groups like Al Qaeda," he said.

While the babble on 24 hour news stations may obscure this basic point, it's an important one to keep in mind. Future terrorist plots against American targets will not come from Al Qaeda, which may itself have little to offer local groups who ask for help. The next 9/11-like plot will be hatched in Miami, not Iraq--and the people blowing up Americans in Iraq may have no connection whatsoever with their counterparts in Miami.

The India deal

IN THE NEWS
I'm catching up on a backlog of topics, including this trio of interesting articles in the Armed Forces Journal about India. I'm trying to keep an open mind about the Bush Administration's India deal, but both the goals and means are murky. Was it necessary to give some sort of nuclear assistance to broker a deal with the Singh government? What, exactly, do we gain from this new arrangement? Has anything significant, besides the commitment to transfer nuclear technology, changed?

Unfortunately, after reading the three AFJ articles, I'm even less clear on the answers to these questions, except one: the case for helping the Indian government with dual-use nuclear technology seems even less convincing than before.

What, exactly, is the US government trying to achieve? India and the United States, as one author convincingly argued, already had strategic reasons for improving relations. The Indian government wants to continue, and if possible accelerate, its economic growth and modernization. Clearly, the Singh government also wants to use the United States as a lever against Pakistan. With US foreign policy commitments straddling both Pakistan and India, Pakistani leaders have less confidence of American backing in future confrontations over Kashmir and other contentious issues. Competition with China also factors into India's foreign policy, but it's not as clear how important that element really is.

As India reaches in the direction of the United States, the US also has reason to return the embrace. American officials may be interested in off-shore labor and the large Indian market, but the national security concerns are just as important. India's military potential is not matched by its actual combat capabilities. India's push to modernize and expand its military gives the United States some considerable leverage. US officials can use that political capital to keep China off-balance, obstruct economic and military cooperation between the Iranians and Indians, reduce the reliance on Pakistan as a regional ally, and maybeeven score a few political points during a low point in US relations with the developing world. As India and China modernize, competition in the world oil market has intensified, so improved diplomacy with India may be a necessary part of any strategy for lowering world oil prices.

And then we come to the nuclear question. The reasons for India to ask for nuclear assistance are clear; the reasons for the United States to agree are not. President Bush's commitment to bypass the rules of the Non-Proliferation Treaty undermines what few effective international safeguards exist, while giving countries like Iran wiggle room they should not have. If the United States can ignore the NPT for India, why can't Russia do the same for Iran? I'm not sure that the risk of a nuclear arms race between India and Pakistan, or India and China, or all three simultaneously, is as high as some have claimed, but it certainly does exist.

The argument that nuclear power plants would decrease the competition for oil sounded fishy to me, and after reading the AFJ articles, I'm really not convinced. The Indian government's earlier projections about future capacity from nuclear power have proved to be optimistic to the point of silliness. Any nuclear plants will take years to build, and they will not necessarily address the energy demands that are driving India to import more oil. (Cars, not light bulbs, drive that increased demand.)

Meanwhile, the Indian government has other ways to meet its military and economic goals without nuclear technology. The United States can help with all of them, from modernizing the Indian military's equipment to supporting important economic reforms. Nuclear weapons may even make some of India's problems worse, not better. The more robust India's nuclear arsenal, the more it may depend on nuclear brinksmanship instead of conventional military strength in dealing with Pakistan. Nuclear power may help the Indian government avoid making hard decisions about the rest of its energy policy.

Prime Minster Singh might have been surprised that President Bush agreed to the request for nuclear assistance. While the short-term steps toward rapprochement may not have been clear, the long-term interests would probably have compelled the two governments to find creative solutions in any case. In contrast, nuclear technology transfer is a short-term approach that delivers no advantages to the United States. In fact, the Bush Administration's India deal removes a potential carrot that it might have continued to dangle, even if American officials never planned to give it to the Indian government. The United States may have lost more leverage than we gained, and the Administration has certainly jeopardized the NPT when it should be strengthening it.

Of course, the India deal fits the Bush Administrations modus operandi: short term fixes instead of long-term solutions; bilateral "special arrangements" instead of lasting, multilateral commitments; desperate lunges instead of patient diplomacy. Perhaps Singh did know what to expect from Bush.

Snakes on a sub

IN THE NEWS
Ever since the goofy, pre-release buzz about Snakes on a Plane started, something has been tickling my memory about the basic plot. I couldn't remember who had done something like it before, and the memory finally clicked into place today. The unacknowledged, absent father of Snakes on a Plane was a TV movie from the 1970s, Fer-de-Lance, in which poisonous snakes get loose in an American submarine.

How did the snakes get on an attack submarine in the first place? Who cares, as long as you can enjoy the unintentional hilarity of actors trying to be extremely serious about one of the most absurd situations in movie history. If I remember correctly (I was a kid when I saw Fer-de-Lance), the movie had all the ponderous melodrama of other Seventies disaster movies like The Poseidon Adventure. Man, I wish Netflix had a copy of this turkey, to fill the void on those rare nights when Walker Texas Ranger isn't on the Hallmark Channel. (And if that isn't weird enough...)

The Alliance for Something

IN THE NEWS
Between the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Iraq, there was a brief discussion within media and policy circles about a "Marshall Plan for the Middle East." Given the obvious differences between Europe in the 1940s and the Middle East today, it was easy to dismiss the idea. The Middle East is far less economically developed, and democracy is far too infrequent. A Marshall Plan-like investment in countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen looked like a bad investment, so people quickly discarded the idea.

However, the Marshall Plan may have been the wrong starting point. Later in the Cold War, the United States pondered what to do about a troublesome region that was also economically undeveloped, bereft of democracy and the rule of law, and the source for far more bad news than good. Revolutionaries capitalized on the weakness of regimes and the discontent within societies. Escalating revolutionary and counterrevolutionary violence was the predictable result. The revolutionaries in this region made common cause with America's enemies, threatening US interests on the periphery.

The region in question was Latin America, and the first vigorous respose the United States made to these problems was the Alliance for Progress. Far from ignoring the differences between Europe and Latin America, the Kennedy Administration made a practical case for focusing American attention and resources on countries that faced more intractable problems than, say, post-war Italy and France.

Like the Middle East today, every country in the Middle East was not alike. For example, there were extremes of wealth and poverty both within societies and between countries. Relatively cosmopolitan countries like Argentina--very European in some aspects, if you squinted a bit--contrasted sharply with vastly poorer countries like Honduras. Within even the poorest countries, wealthy elites defended their privileged position versus a large, itinerant population. While the sons and daughters of this elite attended American and European universities, the average person endured privations that were practically unthinkable in New York, London, and Paris. Sound familiar?

Even if the Alliance for Progress had failed to "fix" the deeply-rooted problems of Latin America, the program kept American foreign policy focused on the region beyond momentary crises. The Kennedy Administration had a specific program in mind, and a national security rationale for pursuing it. The American public could rally behind this program, which indirectly gave Americans reasons to stay "engaged" with Latin America, despite its knotty problems.

The United States always suffers from a low attention span in foreign affairs. A superpower always finds it challenging to stay focused on any one region for very long, while troubles brew in other parts of the world. While Latin America dropped off the radar in the 1970s, it came back with a vengeance in the 1980s. A President as different from Kennedy as Ronald Reagan was could pick up where the Alliance for Progress left off, with the same consensus about why Latin America matters (even if Reagan's approach to handling Latin America was far different than Kennedy's).

Without something like the Alliance for Progress, the disappointment in Iraq may turn into a larger impatience with the Middle East. The problems within and between countries like Iran and Iraq, Egypt and Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Syria are, in fact, deeply-rooted. The United States cannot topple these problems with a single swing of an axe. Framed correctly, however, the challenge of the Middle East can become exactly the sort of challenge Americans are willing to face--even when the successes are not always easy to identify.

The Iranian freeze

IN THE NEWS
One of the many sad things about the Iranian nuclear program is what it means for the Iranians themselves. Going nuclear helps a government stay in power, no matter how odious it may be. Political upheaval directed against a regime with its finger on the nuclear button is, needless to say, a scary situation that most interested parties would like to avoid. In other words, the internal opposition to the Iranian theocracy now faces a harder time getting support from abroad, on top of some hesitation among some of potential allies within Iran.

Emotions are not your friend

IN THE NEWS
A lot of people were struck by this exchange between CNN news anchor Soledad O'Brien and Michael Berg, the father of Nick Berg, the most famous victim of Al Qaeda in Iraq. It's clear what O'Brien had expected to say: Yes, I'm happy that the infamous leader of the terrorist organization that killed my son is now dead himself. When Berg gave a much different answer, O'Brien seemed to be completely at a loss, trying to give cues to a guest who ignored them. Berg wasn't following the script handed to him, in which the grieving father proclaims righteous vengeance and, perhaps, finds that "closure" thing.

Whether or not you agree with Berg's position on the Iraq war, I think we can all agree that, almost five years after the 9/11 attacks, most news outlets still cannot cover terrorism effectively. The problem with the US news media is worse than their incompetence: the Soledad O'Briens of the news babblescape are making the work of terrorists easier.

Terrorists seek to generate emotions--usually fear and despair--far beyond what the actual loss of life would normally merit. According to the Center for Disease Control, an estimated 75,766 "alcohol-related deaths" occurred in the United States. Taking these numbers at face value, even though over 25 times as many Americans died because of alcohol than 9/11, Americans are more afraid of terrorists than drunk drivers. Some distortion of the ratio of fear to risk is unavoidable. Any terrorist attack will change the emotional compass of a country, particularly in the wake of dramatic events like the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks.

The important question, of course, is how much that emotional compass is out of whack. It is not impossible for Americans to keep terrorism in proportion. FoAmericans, by and large, handled Oklahoma City far more soberly than 9/11. The Oklahoma City terrorists were near at hand, small in number, and quickly apprehended. The threat of future attacks from racist, Christian Reconstructionist groups has not dropped to zero, but American society did not come to a screeching halt.

The kind of terrorist who might execute future 9/11-like attaclks are not hear at hand, not as easily apprehended, but still relatively small in number. The responsibility of people in the media (not to mention the government) is, therefore, to keep terrorism in its proper perspective. It is a serious problem, like cancer and AIDS, that demands practical solutions. Even though the lives of our loved ones may be at future risk, we should not turn practical discussions into the theater of uncontrolled emotion.

The sting of fear, the roil of rage, the thrill of vengeance--these feelings are, at different moments in grappling with terrorism, unavoidable. These emotions are not, however, the measure of success, nor are they our friends. Even moments of celebration are dangerous, since terrorist can quickly turn them into something else. Victory in counterterrorism is, ultimately, the dramatic reduction of risk. While that story may not provide the kind of emotional melodrama that Soledad O'Brien was trying to create, it's the story that Americans need to hear.