Transition Team

NYT on Grameen Bank

2011-03-25T12:54:00.003-04:00

Available here:

"The elephant in the room is the question: If microfinance doesn’t accomplish anything positive, then why are 128 million poor families busy taking loans? Should we assume that poor people simply don’t know what’s in their best interest? Or do we need to look more deeply into the way poor people survive?

That’s what a number of creative researchers are doing today. One example is the collaboration between Daryl Collins, Jonathan Morduch, Stuart Rutherford and Orlanda Ruthven that culminated in the excellent book “Portfolios of the Poor: How the World’s Poor Live on $2 a Day.” The book takes a penetrating look into 300 poor families in Bangladesh, South Africa, and India, with interviews conducted every two weeks to track expenses, earnings and cash flow at a granular level. What the researchers found was striking, and it gets to the question of what it really means for most people to be poor: to live with perpetual uncertainty.

“What the research taught us is that the problem of living on $1 or $2 a day is that you don’t actually earn $1 or $2 every day,” explained Jonathan Morduch. “That’s just an average. Some days you receive $5 and then nothing for two weeks. Life is unreliable. So the challenge for the poor is that you need to put together the right sums to deal with the right challenges in life. And what we saw microfinance was doing for people was offering them a reliable source of money. With microfinance, you get a sum of money that’s promised on the day it’s promised in the amount that’s promised. It’s often the only reliable service that poor people have — and that’s incredibly powerful.”"

NYT: China's new five-year plan

2011-03-25T11:03:00.004-04:00

NYT is reporting on China's new five-year plan, which seeks to shift the engine of economic growth from exports to domestic consumption, largely through letting incomes rise:

"The government pledged to keep prices “basically stable” through 2015, limiting inflation to 4 percent this year, and to raise household income by an annual average of 7 percent, roughly in line with economic growth. That would break from the past 20 years, in which the growth of ordinary workers’ income has regularly lagged behind the growth in gross domestic product, and consumer spending as a share of the economy has dropped to a record low. The report called expanding domestic demand “a long-term strategic principle” and pledged to increase subsidies to low-income households, extend broadband Internet to rural areas and smaller cities, and expand retail sectors like chain stores and online commerce."

In economic development terms, this is called "strategy switching," and the move China seems to be making is something commentators including David Kennedy have been talking about for some time. Get ready for one of the largest markets in the world to become even larger.

Popular support for Iran's nuclear program

2010-02-10T23:10:00.002-05:00

From the NYT:

"Why such strong support for nuclear energy in a country whose natural endowments don’t exactly leave it devoid of energy sources? The history of Iran’s nuclear program is long and tortuous, and there have definitely been periods (possibly including now) when the government was trying to develop nukes. But at the popular level, a separate motivation has taken shape: pride in the technical prowess embodied in the program.

This pride may have grown more intense and nationalistic under Western pressure to constrain the program. Though most Iranians say sanctions already imposed on the country have hurt it, 86 percent of them - and 78 percent of Mousavi supporters - say that Iran should not "give up its nuclear activities regardless of the circumstances.""

Cyprus: further movement toward a political solution

2010-02-08T09:43:00.004-05:00

This article originally appeared in the Harvard International Law Journal.

After numerous false starts, negotiations between the two parties to the decades-old stalemate in Cyprus seem to be moving forward again, this time with the assistance of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who recently made his first official visit to Cyprus. The island nation has been divided into a Greek-speaking south and a Turkish-speaking north since 1974, when a Greek-led coup sought to annex the island to Greece, prompting a Turkish invasion that claimed the top 37% of the island. The north, which calls itself the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), has only been recognized by Turkey, and has lagged behind the impressive economic development of the south, which enjoys broad international recognition and now represents the island in the European Union. UN peacekeepers patrol the unofficial border between the two sides, and the island is heavily militarized.

Previous talks have been derailed by a number of contentious issues; the most serious recent attempt at unification, in 2004, produced an agreement which was subsequently ratified in a referendum by the north but rejected, under the hard-line presidency of Tassos Papadopoulos, by the south. Papadopoulos has since been replaced by the more moderate Demetris Christofias, but the Turkish Cypriot leader, Mehmet Ali Talat, now faces a challenge in upcoming elections from a more hard-line candidate. This has ramped up the pressure for a solution, as has the fact that the ongoing stalemate has dimmed Turkey’s prospects in its own bid for EU accession.

Legal issues relating to the conflict stem originally from the question of whether the 1974 Turkish invasion was justified as a matter of international law. Greek Cypriots argue that the invasion was a clear violation of the UN Charter, which prohibits aggressive war; their argument is supported by the fact that no multilateral body authorized the action. Turkish Cypriots counter that Turkey’s response was justified, as a form of self-defense, by the prospect of the island’s annexation to Greece, and, as a form of humanitarian intervention, by longstanding intercommunal violence directed toward the Turkish-speaking minority. Going forward, both political and legal solutions will be needed to address issues including the division of contested territory, the presence of Turkish forces, reparations for lost property, and power sharing under a proposed federation.

For more information, please click here.

John Yoo explains the torture memos

2010-01-30T08:22:00.002-05:00

Balkinization offers this commentary on John Yoo's recent discussion of the torture memos:

"That is, the torture memos were written not to define "torture" with respect to new situations where the statute was unclear; rather they were written to allow the CIA to get around the legal ban on torture, even to the point of arguing that the torture statute would be unconstitutional if applied to persons acting under the direction of the President as commander-in-chief. The torture memos were not a hypothetical lawyer's exercise to guide future conduct. They were written in order to ensure that members of the CIA would never be prosecuted for torture."

DOJ presents recommendations for Guantánamo detainees

2010-01-22T12:24:00.003-05:00

From the New York Times:

"The Obama administration has decided to continue to imprison without trials nearly 50 detainees at the Guantánamo Bay military prison in Cuba because a high-level task force has concluded that they are too difficult to prosecute but too dangerous to release, an administration official said on Thursday. However, the administration has decided that nearly 40 other detainees should be prosecuted for terrorism or related war crimes. And the remaining prisoners, about 110 men, should be repatriated or transferred to other countries for possible release, the official said, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the numbers."

Without knowing all the facts, I think this is the wrong decision. If the 50 detainees the administration proposes to imprison without trial pose a legitimate threat to the United States, the government should be able to (and required to) present some evidence to that effect, at least in the context of a military commission (which has its own problems, but is better than indefinite detention). Contentious arguments about humanitarian law aside, one of Obama's promises in taking office was to end the "law-free zone" that GTMO had become under the Bush administration. In that context, this feels like a step in the wrong direction.

Karzai seeks reconciliation with moderate Taliban

2010-01-17T16:57:00.005-05:00

From the New York Times:

"Mr. Omer’s remarks suggested the government had a softer line than the Americans on talking to Taliban leaders. "We are ready to negotiate with anyone," he said. "Whoever comes over is welcome."

A spokesman for the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, ruled out any possibility of negotiations with Mr. Karzai's government. "We are united and we will remain united against them," Mr. Ahmadi said in a telephone interview. "There is no differentiation between Taliban moderates and extremists. We are fighting under one name, Taliban, under one leadership.""

Media self-censorship in Mexico

2010-01-14T13:05:00.001-05:00

From the Committee to Protect Journalists:

"Often, it starts this way; the journalist is told how to handle a particular story. Usually it’s a phone call. They’re told that maybe they should ignore the story. Or, maybe they should pump it up to make a person or an opposing criminal or political group look bad, or make another group look especially good. If the journalist doesn’t follow the order they are threatened with death. They know that’s an easy threat to carry out because in

Mexico

almost no one is ever prosecuted for killing a journalist. Then the self-censorship starts. Soon, the journalist doesn’t even need to be told how to handle the stories. He or she knows already. It becomes automatic. It has to be automatic because that’s the way to stay alive."

Honduras institutes ICJ proceedings against Brazil

2009-11-10T20:21:00.004-05:00

This article originally appeared in the online digest of the Harvard International Law Journal.

The interim government of Honduras has filed a complaint against Brazil in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the Court announced on October 29. The complaint arises from events surrounding the surprise return to Honduras of Manuel Zelaya, the deposed president, who entered the country on September 21 and took refuge in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa. Specifically, Honduras charges that Mr. Zelaya and an unknown number of other Honduran citizens have been using the Embassy as a “platform for political propaganda” with the complicity of Embassy staff and thereby “threatening the peace and internal public order of Honduras.” Honduras has requested declaratory and injunctive relief from the ICJ.

The legal bases of Honduras’s complaint are Article 2 (7) of the UN Charter, which reserves to member states matters which are “essentially within [their] domestic jurisdiction,” and the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. As a practical matter, Honduras’s complaint is only one element of a broader political and diplomatic offensive aimed at preventing Mr. Zelaya from returning to power before the upcoming presidential elections scheduled for November 29. It is unclear whether the ICJ will agree to hear the complaint, which was filed by an interim administration that many international observers consider illegitimate. Current efforts toward national reconciliation may also determine whether the case goes forward.

For more information, please click here.

Demise of American grand strategy

2009-11-05T10:19:00.003-05:00

I'd like to point out that I haven't been linking to NYT as much now that I started using Google Reader (don't worry NYT, I still love you). This is from James Goldgeier, writing in CFR about American "strategic drift" since the fall of the Berlin Wall:

"What became clear by the time Bill Clinton became president was that formulating a simple and relevant new strategic purpose for the United States was no easy task. Clinton often harangued his aides for failing to come up with a Kennanesque vision, believing that he needed a replacement for containment to explain his foreign policy to the American people. His top State Department advisers even arranged a dinner in 1994 with Kennan, who was still going strong at age 90. The old master's response to their quest? Forget the bumper sticker, he said, the world was now too complex. Try, instead, he suggested, "for a thoughtful paragraph or two."

Kennan had hit upon a central truth of the post-Cold War world: with no single enemy and a range of diverse challenges--including proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, climate change, pandemics, terrorism, the rise of new great powers, and globalization--there would be no bumper sticker."

Climate change and human rights law

2009-11-05T10:03:00.002-05:00

From Opinio Juris:

"I argue that the solution is to look to the duty of international cooperation, which requires states to try to act as a single global polity to address the global threat of climate change. By providing a basis for the application of the environmental human rights jurisprudence, this approach would allow states some flexibility as to the substance of their joint decisions, but only if they follow procedures designed to ensure full, well-informed participation by those most affected. Moreover, the substance of decisions that result from such processes would not be entitled to complete deference: under no conditions could states allow climate change to destroy the human rights of the most vulnerable."

U.N. Rapporteur questions legal basis of U.S. Predator program

2009-11-04T11:48:00.003-05:00

This article originally appeared in the online digest of the Harvard International Law Journal.

The legality of the U.S. Government’s use of unmanned Predator drones to target militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan has recently come under increasing scrutiny, as a prominent U.N. representative called the American refusal to discuss the program “untenable”. Philip Alston, the U.N. Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions, made his remarks while reiterating requests for the U.S. to provide information on the legal rationale for its use of the drones, the mechanisms it uses to review the program, and the precautions it takes to make sure its air strikes conform with international law.

The debate over the legality of remote-controlled air strikes turns largely on the question of whether the American pursuit of terrorists represents an active armed conflict analogous to a conventional war between nations. As such, the debate over the drones is one example of the broader disagreement which has resulted from the application of international humanitarian law (IHL) to the “war on terror.” IHL, which regulates armed conflict between states, requires the existence of an active conflict, and only applies within the geographic limits of that conflict. Within these limits, IHL authorizes the killing of enemy combatants, including remotely, subject to limitations meant to assure that the use of force is necessary, minimally injurious to civilians, and proportional to expected military gains. Outside a zone of active conflict, however, IHL does not apply, and the U.S. ability to kill individuals without according them due process of law is restrained by a 1976 executive order against assassinations and, arguably, by international human rights law.

While some observers would call Afghanistan a zone of active conflict, far fewer would apply that description to Pakistan, and drones operated by the C.I.A. have been active in targeting militants there, including Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in August. American drones have also targeted militants in Yemen. In extending IHL to cover these strikes, supporters of the program have argued for the application of IHL wherever terrorists are found, not merely within geographically bounded zones of conflict. This is a novel argument, and as such, the use of Predators to target individuals outside the “war zones” of Afghanistan and Iraq arguably represents a violation of international law. It also represents a sharp departure from pre-9/11 U.S. policy, when C.I.A. drones were limited to conducting surveillance and the U.S. Government criticized Israel for conducting targeted killings of Palestinian militants.

Supporters of the C.I.A. program have argued that, whether or not IHL applies to the air strikes, they are lawful under both the UN Charter and the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) as a form of “anticipatory self-defense.” But opponents point to the principles of sovereign equality and non-intervention in the affairs of other states, arguing that individuals outside active war zones should be brought to justice through domestic processes of law. The question of whether the air strikes are proportional under IHL is also debated; the New Yorker reports that the effort to kill Baitullah Mehsud involved a series of 15 air strikes killing more than 200 other people. Finally, the loosening of geographic restrictions on state-sanctioned lethal force raises the uncomfortable prospect of an amorphous, global definition of conflict, which other states or non-state actors could potentially use to target Americans.

The practical value of the C.I.A. program is also debated. While the use of Predators has been credited with eliminating numerous Al Qaeda leaders and sowing confusion within the organization, it has also led to many civilian casualties, which has rallied anti-American sentiment in the very places where the U.S. is trying hardest to win “hearts and minds.” Another criticism of the program is that electing to kill terrorists rather than capture and interrogate them reduces the intelligence the U.S. can gather on its enemies; proponents of this argument point to the potential information value of Saad bin Laden, one of Osama’s sons, who was killed by a Predator strike in Pakistan. Finally, the recent inclusion of prominent Afghan drug traffickers on the list of acceptable targets has led critics to wonder whether there is any coherent policy limiting the use of the drones to individuals who pose a direct threat to the United States.

Whatever the legal and practical arguments for or against the use of unmanned air strikes against non-state actors, they are unlikely to end in the near future. In the rugged, inaccessible areas where many militants operate, the U.S. Government often believes that it has no good alternatives to the drones. Facing resistance to its plans to increase troop levels in Afghanistan, the Obama administration may make remote-controlled warfare an ever more central part of its counterterrorism strategy.

For more information, please click here and here.

Abdullah defends decision to withdraw from election

2009-11-03T14:49:00.003-05:00

In this video from the BBC. Analysis from NYT is here.

HuffPo: Abdullah to boycott runoff

2009-10-31T16:30:00.003-04:00

"Karzai rejected Abdullah Abdullah's conditions for next Saturday's vote, including removing top election officials whom the challenger accused of involvement in cheating in the first-round balloting in August. Abdullah has called a press conference for 10 a.m. Sunday to announce his final decision after Afghans and Westerners close to the challenger said he would withdraw. His campaign manager Satar Murad said the candidate might still change his mind, but that "as of now" he planned to call for a boycott. A clouded electoral picture would further complicate the Obama administration's efforts to decide whether to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan to battle the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies." Full story is here.

Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission finds need for runoff

2009-10-19T20:15:00.003-04:00

The NYT is reporting that Karzai is resisting the Commission's report, deepening Afghanistan's ongoing constitutional crisis. Certification of the results by the Independent Election Commission is expected to lead either to a runoff or to a power-sharing agreement between Karzai and Dr. Abdullah, his closest challenger.

Obama's Nobel Peace Prize: Say what?

2009-10-10T09:14:00.002-04:00

The announcement that a person whom I greatly respect and admire has won a Nobel Peace Prize, you might think, would fill me with a sense of satisfaction. Not so the announcement, on Friday, that President Obama had won this prestigious accolade less than nine months into his first term. Don't get me wrong: I, like many other people who are scratching their heads over this unexpected turn of events, remain a staunch Obama supporter. I believe that, in both foreign and domestic policy, he has been making sensible decisions, setting the right tone, and generally doing as well as can be expected under the (very challenging) circumstances. But let's be honest: Obama's accomplishments to date have consisted of staffing up executive agencies, putting out a few of the many fires left by the Bush administration, and taking preliminary steps toward his other policy objectives. While very arguably the right moves to be making at this time, these are hardly the stuff of Nobel Peace Prizes, and the major challenges of the Obama administration are not only unresolved, but perhaps even unknown.

The Nobel Committee's reasoning in awarding the prize more or less acknowledged the above:

"Announcing the award, the Nobel committee cited Mr. Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples" and said that he had "created a new climate in international politics." In a four-paragraph statement, it praised Mr. Obama for his tone, his preference for negotiation and multilateral diplomacy and his vision of a cooperative world of shared values, shorn of nuclear weapons. "Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the committee said. "His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population."

The suspicion on most sides seems to be that the Committe's decision is less a reflection of the young administration's accomplishments than of Europe's relief to have a new face in the White House:

"For a world that at times felt pushed around by a more unilateralist Bush administration, the prize for Mr. Obama seemed wrapped in gratitude for his willingness to listen and negotiate, as well as for his positions on climate change and nuclear disarmament."

Um, right. As numerous commentators have noted, the prize is likely to represent more of a liability than a benefit for the president as he tries to move forward with his agenda; the perception that he is playing better in Europe than at home will feed right into the Republicans' stock arguments. Having heard so much about the potential for outside intervention in other countries to create political backlash, we may be getting a taste of it ourselves.

Map of Afghan election results

2009-08-27T20:14:00.002-04:00

The Afghan Independent Election Commission's map of preliminary results by province is here. The counting is progressing more slowly than expected; preliminary nationwide results were expected two days ago. Instead, only 17% of the vote has been counted. Within that 17%, Karzai leads Abdullah by 44% to 35%. Thanks to Paul Hamill.

Breaking news: Pajhwok calling election for Karzai

2009-08-22T10:35:00.004-04:00

This doesn't seem to have been picked up by major news services, but Afghan independent news agency Pajhwok is reporting that, with approximately two thirds of the votes counted, Karzai is heading toward an outright victory with 70% of the vote. Official preliminary results are not expected until Tuesday. In the contest between election-rigging and voter intimidation, rigging may have won.

Abdullah for Afghanistan

2009-08-19T19:38:00.008-04:00

For whatever it's worth, I want to go on record as endorsing Dr. Abdullah Abdullah for president of Afghanistan. Elections are scheduled for tomorrow and the BBC is reporting that voter registration cards are on sale in Kabul for $10. Compare that, by the way, to the Lebanese elections, where political parties were offering expats round trip airfare in return for their votes.

As a foreigner, I'm not sure whether I'm formally entitled to an opinion, but I have one. As my friend Graeme said, if you approve of the way things are going in your country, vote for the incumbent. If you don't, vote for someone in the opposition who isn't crazy. I think both Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani fit this bill, and Abdullah seems to be the only opposition candidate who is polling well enough to potentially send the election to a runoff.

Elizabeth Rubin's recent NYT piece offered a revealing glimpse of Karzai's descent into cronyism, remoteness, and the politics of self-preservation:

"Other close friends of Karzai describe his leadership style as a kind of three-card monte where you never know which card will appear. One card is tribal. “His father was head of the tribe, and in tribal culture you depend on loyalty of individuals rather than institutions,” said Ali Jalali, his former interior minister and a friend from refugee days in Pakistan. “You always try to be a patron to people close and loyal to you.” The second is the factional politics of resistance in Peshawar, where mujahedin leaders organized their resistance to the Soviet occupation. “Jihadi politics is mostly wheeling, dealing, no strategy, all tactical,” Jalali continued. “Please people here. Break promises there.” And the third is democracy. He cherishes the values of democracy but has no faith in its institutions. “How he reconciles these competing demands creates his style of leadership,” Jalali said. In reality, said another friend, “he sees human rights, freedom of the press, the law, the constitution as chains around his hands and legs.”"

Against this backdrop, Abdullah has been running on a platform of change which has borrowed rhetorically from the Obama campaign:

"I'm asking you to believe not only in my ability to bring about necessary change and hope in our beloved country, Afghanistan, but I'm also asking you to believe in your own potential to change the course of our history."

Specifically, Abdullah advocates devolution of power from the imperial presidency crafted by Karzai and his international backers, including through the direct election of provincial governors and a greater role for the parliament. He also advocates national reconciliation through a more meaningful dialogue with the Talibs and other extremist elements, although as numerous observers have pointed out, that is likely to be easier said than done.

While fake voter registration cards proliferate, the Taliban has stepped up violence in the lead-up to the election and plans to attack polling stations, which is likely to disproportionately affect the Pashtun south (see here for discussion of recent polling). Under these circumstances, not only the outcome but also the legitimacy of the election and its chance of producing a result which will be broadly credible to the Afghan people all seem to be anyone's guess.

Countdown to the Afghan elections

2009-08-03T23:21:00.006-04:00

Presidential elections in Afghanistan are now only a few weeks away, scheduled to take place on August 20. Within the past few weeks, a challenger to the deeply unpopular president, Hamid Karzai, has emerged in Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, an optometrist and former foreign minister. As the NYT is reporting, Abdullah has been drawing crowds across the country by giving voice to widespread discontent over corruption and incompetence within the Karzai administration. Most interesting to me are Abdullah's policy positions on parliamentary and local governance, which match my observations and also parallel some of Thomas Barfield's recommendations:

"Today, Dr. Abdullah, with a diplomat and a surgeon as his running mates, is seen as part of a younger generation of Afghans keen to move away from the nation’s reliance on warlords and older mujahedeen leaders and to clean up and recast the practice of governing. To do that, he advocates the devolution of power from the strong presidency built up under Mr. Karzai to a parliamentary system that he says will be more representative. He is also calling for a system of electing officials for Afghanistan’s 34 provinces and nearly 400 districts as a way to build support for the government."

The significant power built up by Karzai, reflected in the constitution and implemented in cooperation with then-ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, has come at the price of both the Afghan parliament and local governance. The parliament, to which my friend Michael Metrinko served as a liaison, has been largely marginalized, including in the lawmaking process, while Afghanistan's 34 provincial governors, appointed directly by the president with no direct accountability to their constituents, represent a constant source of corruption and mismanagement.

Although Karzai's popularity has been hovering around a dismal 30%, he is still seen as the most likely winner of the upcoming election. This is partly because of the widespread fraud which is expected to accompany the process; in combination with security concerns, this will likely serve to keep people away from the polls. Karzai also benefits from his ability, as the recipient of international aid money, to strike alliances with influential power-brokers, to campaign on the international dime, and to control state-run media. Interestingly, he ducked out of a recent debate with Dr. Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani on Tolo TV, an independent station, leaving an empty lectern as a telling symbol of his administration.

Although Karzai looks likely to win, some factors may play to his disadvantage. The most important of these is the deep-seated dissatisfaction of ordinary Afghans, who have seen growth stagnate and security deteriorate in spite of the billions of dollars that have poured into the country. Karzai may also be hurt by the security situation in the heavily-Pashtun south, which may disproportionately affect members of his ethnic group. The Obama administration, while ramping up military assistance to Afghanistan (as it should), has taken steps to distance itself from the Karzai administration. Under the circumstances, the best outcome may be a runoff, which will result if no candidate captures a majority of the vote.

Conflicts in cyberspace

2009-07-01T09:56:00.018-04:00

At the risk of becoming a blog that does nothing but comment on New York Times stories, the NYT is reporting that the US and Russia are expected to continue discussions, during President Obama's visit to Russia this week, on Russia's proposal for an international treaty to limit offensive cyberwarfare capabilities. The US, which has so far opposed calls for such a treaty, instead favors a defensive approach which focuses on better security and increased cooperation between law enforcement agencies, which it hopes will reduce network vulnerability to attacks from both rogue operators and governments.

This discussion comes in the wake of an upsurge of interest in cybersecurity and online warfare; the Obama administration recently undertook a review of USG cybersecurity coordination, resulting in the creation of a White House coordinator for cybersecurity, while the US Military is in the process of creating Cybercom, a new command for offensive and defensive cyberwarfare. The UK and Russia, among other countries, have also stepped up their efforts. This is from President Obama's remarks on the review, in which he revealed, among other things, that his presidential campaign had been hacked:

"This new approach starts at the top, with this commitment from me: From now on, our digital infrastructure -- the networks and computers we depend on every day -- will be treated as they should be: as a strategic national asset. Protecting this infrastructure will be a national security priority. We will ensure that these networks are secure, trustworthy and resilient. We will deter, prevent, detect, and defend against attacks and recover quickly from any disruptions or damage."

The administration's interest in cybersecurity, while forward-thinking and reflective of Candidate Obama's commitment to addressing unconventional threats, also responds to a number of recent incidents. In 2007, in what has been described as the first war in cyberspace, hackers (believed to be Russians or Russian Estonians) shut down much of Estonia's online infrastructure for several days in response to the Estonian government's removal of a monument to Russian soldiers. This sophisticated attack (the article is well worth reading) used a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) mechanism, launched from both dedicated and rented botnets, to cyber-pwn the offices of the president and prime minister, parliament, and Estonia's largest bank. In 2008, as Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, hackers took down Georgian government and military networks (see here for a list of suggested targets). In 2001, after a US Navy surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter, hackers launched coordinated attacks on USG networks; malware has reportedly been found on computers at the Pentagon and NASA. Israeli networks regularly block attacks believed to come from Palestinian groups, and Danish servers were targeted after the 2005 publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

Like conventional terrorism, cyberwarfare presents an opportunity for states, and their sympathizers (known in this case as "hacktivists"), to advance their interests while maintaining plausible deniability; although the Estonian government claims that Russian government IP addresses were involved in the 2007 incident, and both Russia and China are believed to have developed offensive capabilities, the use of botnets makes it difficult to trace responsibility (at least without active cooperation from the countries in which the attacks originated), and perpetrators of online attacks are rarely caught. Or, to quote the New Yorker cartoon where two dogs are sitting at a computer, "On the internet, nobody knows you're a dog." This is from Global Dashboard's Peter Hodge:

"The Russians and the Chinese appear to run a decentralized model, outsourcing cyber-war to shadowy civilian groups. The advantages of this approach include deniability, flexibility, access to the latest tactics and weapons, and being able to draw on the best talent available (hackers, IT workers, online gamers)."

For example, security pundit John Robb blames the Russian Business Network (RBN), an online crime syndicate, for the attack on Estonia and foresees a growing strategic advantage for countries that are willing to operate cyberwarfare through third parties. Evgeny Morozov, writing in Slate, describes how easy it is to become one of those third parties, using readily downloadable applications to flood servers with information (click here for cool movies of malicious activity). Hodge's conclusion is that the best response to outsourced attacks may be an outsourced defense:

"So, rather than set-up a hierarchical government unit, a better strategy for countering cyber-attack could be to form a flat network of experts, set a general operational framework, give people the resources they need, then let them to go for it. And keep the managers and the HR people well away."

The implications of all this span defense, international relations, and trade. Interestingly, they also raise complex legal issues ranging from privacy to intellectual property to NATO's commitment to collective defense. The Berkman Center at HLS is doing interesting work in this area, especially (in the form of the OpenNet Initiative) in tracing government filtering of internet content. On that topic, Slate ran a piece on the Iranian government's success in controlling information, which has launched the logical equivalent of a DDoS attack on my previous post about how Twitter has facilitated the Tehran protests. Perhaps most interesting are the article's assertions that the Iranian government is using crowdsourcing to identify protesters and that Nokia and Siemens built the system the government is using to stifle dissent.

On the topic of corporate complicity with filtering, and last but not least in this international technology roundup, China has delayed the enforcement of its new rule, set to enter into effect today, that all computers sold in the country be equipped with "Green Dam" software, which allows the government to block "objectionable content," supposedly restricted to pornography but, according to leaked documents, also including numerous political buzzwords. According to the WSJ, China and Iran use different approaches to filter information:

"China's vaunted "Great Firewall," which is widely considered the most advanced and extensive Internet censoring in the world, is believed also to involve deep packet inspection. But China appears to be developing this capability in a more decentralized manner, at the level of its Internet service providers rather than through a single hub, according to experts. That suggests its implementation might not be as uniform as that in Iran, they said, as the arrangement depends on the cooperation of all the service providers."

The delay, which seems motivated partly the logistical impossibility of implementing the rule on the government's timeline, also reflects US objections regarding possible violation of free trade agreements and concern from computer manufacturers that the software may compromise the security of computers on which it's installed, which sort of brings us back to the beginning of this post. If you are keeping score, which someone should be, Sony, Lenovo, and Acer are reported to be making attempts to comply with the order; HP and Dell have been quiet about their plans.

US to halt Afghan poppy eradication

2009-06-27T11:13:00.011-04:00

The NYT is reporting that Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has announced a major shift in US counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan. The shift, which will align US policy more closely with the approach favored by the UN and European countries, will phase out eradication in favor of support for legitimate agriculture, interdiction, and rule of law.

This announcement represents a major change in US drug policy. It recognizes the fact that eradication efforts have largely failed in the face of resistance from the Afghan government, elements of which are widely acknowledged to be in on the drug trade, and lack of support from UN and NATO allies. It also recognizes a central paradox of supply reduction efforts: where eradication has been successful, it has driven up the price of opium, leading to the cultivation of new areas (see the balloon effect). Indeed, the international approach to drugs in Afghanistan has been such a disaster that some observers, notably the Senlis Council, have suggested legalizing production and selling the opium to the global pharmaceutical industry (this approach is not without its critcs). For more on all things drug-related, see my friend Nina's blog.

Although the shift away from eradication probably makes sense, the systems which the US will rely upon to fill the gap (legitimate agriculture, interdiction, the justice system, and the borders) are not exactly "ready for prime time." Legitimate agriculture has been destroyed by years of war and neglect, law enforcement is incompetent and corrupt, and both the formal justice system and the borders (both of which I worked on to some extent) are pretty nascent. Another piece of this puzzle is cooperation with Afghanistan's neighbors, especially Pakistan and Iran; Iran had originally been invited to the G8 meeting but, what with ruthlessly crushing dissent and everything, wasn't able to make it.

Afghanistan now produces 93% of the world's opium. If you ask me, the issue will only be addressed when the country is administered by a national government that legitimately wants to address it, and is willing to remove corrupt officials and confront local warlords in order to do so. That government is not the Karzai government, and Karzai looks set, despite massive unpopularity, to win another term in August.

New trial in Politkovskaya murder

2009-06-25T09:58:00.005-04:00

The NYT is reporting that Russia's supreme court has ordered a new trial for four people who had been accused, and found not guilty, of complicity in the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist and human rights advocate who had been a vocal critic of the Kremlin's wars in Chechnya:

"In ordering the retrial, the court sided with the prosecution, which argued that there had been procedural violations by the judges and the defense during the original trial, a court spokesman, Pavel Odintsov, said. Other critics, however, including President Dmitri A. Medvedev, cited the prosecution’s errors and unfamiliarity with the jury system, which is relatively new in Russia, in the acquittal."

I wrote an article in Gelf Magazine in 2006, in response to the killing, which argued that journalists should respond to the strategic murder of a journalist anywhere by descending en masse and conducting a thorough, long-term investigation:

"Each future killing of a journalist, when there is any suspicion that it may have been a deliberate attempt to thwart an investigation or silence a critic, should be met with a coordinated, world-wide, well-resourced, intensely publicized investigation that does not conclude, nor leave the front pages, until something like the truth has come out. Like most other decisions, the decision to kill a journalist must involve a calculation of risk and reward. I believe that a more deliberate response from the press, in the form of a predictably well-funded and determined investigation, could alter this calculation."

It's not clear why the Russian government has chosen to reopen the Politkovskaya case; if previous experience is any guide, it's as likely to be for political reasons as it is to be motivated by a desire for justice. In terms of my suggestion for a more coordinated response to the targeted killing of journalists, the progressive magazine In These Times, which still gets delivered to my ex-roommate Reihan, ran an interesting article on the decline of substantive news reporting in the United States:

"It is hardly surprising to learn that the U.S. news media ranked last in its coverage of international hard news, with only 15 percent of stories devoted to international affairs (nearly half of which were about Iraq). Finland’s international coverage is double. Thus, you’ll be even less surprised that the study found Americans are “especially uninformed about international public affairs,” while the Scandinavians emerged as the best informed. What do we excel at? Knowledge of soft news and its stars, like Britney Spears and Mel Gibson. Of those surveyed, 90 percent could identify them, whereas 62 percent didn’t know what the Kyoto Accords are. Americans know less about the world than the Finns, Danes or British because we “consume relatively little news in comparison to populations elsewhere.”"

If major news outlets are finding it difficult to devote space to, say, climate change, I guess sustained reporting on the murder of obscure journalists in dangerous places is going to be a hard sell. Maybe if each major celebrity in the US started dating a reporter from a repressive country?

As the Iran protests have shown, it's often not necessary to kill journalists in order to keep them from reporting on the news; threats and expulsion will usually do quite nicely. But then, with much of the news from Iran now being provided by ordinary people, the definition of "journalist" may be getting more difficult. In These Times had something to say about that too, arguing in the same issue that "citizen reporting" is no substitute for investigations by trained, experienced, full-time journalists. Ironically, the article is not yet available online.

Man, this is a long post! I can't wait until Boris reads it!

Tweeting the revolution

2009-06-22T15:31:00.008-04:00

The NYT has an interesting article on the use of Twitter in the ongoing protests in Tehran over the Iranian presidential election. While acknowledging that other forms of communication, including websites and regular text messages, have played an arguably more important role than Twitter, the article points out several aspects of the new technology which have made it particularly useful. Most important is the fact that, as a tool rather than a website, Twitter has been essentially impossible to shut down:

"You do not have to visit the home site to send a message, or tweet. Tweets can originate from text-messaging on a cellphone or even blogging software. Likewise, tweets can be read remotely, whether as text messages or, say, “status updates” on a friend’s Facebook page. Unlike Facebook, which operates solely as a Web site that can be, in a sense, impounded, shutting down Twitter.com does little to stop the offending Twittering. You’d have to shut down the entire service, which is done occasionally for maintenance."

The article also quotes HLS cyberspace guru Jonathan Zittrain; I saw him give an awesome, hilarious presentation on internet law a few months ago. In addition to connecting the Tehran protesters with each other, social media technologies like Facebook and Twitter have been critical in getting information to international news outlets, which have been essentially blocked from sending reporters to the protests. For example, the mobile phone video of protester Neda Soltan bleeding to death after allegedly being shot by the Basij has been picked up by international news sources including CNN, provoking outrage both domestically and around the world.

Not coincidentally, the NYT is also reporting that Jared Cohen, a 27-year-old member of the State Department's policy planning staff, contacted Twitter last week to request a delay of scheduled maintenance which would have interrupted service during the protests. It seems that the State Department's use of communications technology, which previously focused on distributing books about Abraham Lincoln, may be catching up with the times.

Palau to accept Guantánamo Uighurs

2009-06-10T09:56:00.004-04:00

News on Guantánamo is coming fast and furious; today the island nation of Palau announced that it would accept up to 17 Uighurs who are being held at Guantánamo. The case of the Uighurs (Chinese Muslims) has represented a particularly egregious stain on US detainee policy; the Bush Administration declined to classify them as enemy combatants, essentially admitting that it had no case against them, and a US federal district court ordered last fall that they should be released into the United States. As the NYT points out, the administration hopes to begin cutting down the numbers at Guantánamo by releasing prisoners which it doesn't believe to be a threat to the United States, and by trying in civilian courts the prisoners it thinks it can convict there:

"The Obama administration has been negotiating actively with European and other governments to resettle 50 detainees, who it says are cleared for transfer. Since Mr. Obama took office, the United States has transferred one detainee to France and one to Britain. On Tuesday, it sent the first detainee to the United States to face charges in federal court."

In a sense, these two categories of detainees are the "easy part;" the third group of prisoners, those whom the administration believes are a threat to the United States but, for various reasons, it cannot convict in civilian courts, will represent the most thorny challenge in the effort to close Guantánamo.

Guantánamo detainee on trial in New York

2009-06-09T21:33:00.008-04:00

More news on Guantánamo: a former detainee has been arraigned in US civilian court in Manhattan. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian, pleaded not guilty to charges that he abetted the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Dar es Salaam. His appearance in civilian court seems to provide further evidence of the Obama Administration's willingness to seek the most expedient solution to the Guantánamo detainees on a case-by-case basis, and specifically to use civilian courts to try everyone it deems convictable there; we previously reported that the Justice Department was working up analysis on this. The NYT reports:

"Mr. Ghailani’s appearance in the packed courtroom on Tuesday came after President Obama’s announcement last month that he would be transferred to civilian court as part of the effort to close Guantánamo. The president said the plan was to try terrorism suspects in federal courts “whenever feasible.”"

Closing Guantánamo was a central promise of Candidate Obama's national security platform, but it has so far proved easier said than done, partly because of significant push-back from Congress on the idea of transferring detainees to the United States. Nevertheless, the fact that some movement is happening represents a profound change from the approach of the previous administration, which seemed content to leave hundreds of prisoners, some of whom it had essentially admitted to be innocent of any crime, in a perpetual legal black hole.

Spain opens inquiry on Guantánamo

2009-04-29T13:13:00.006-04:00

The NYT is reporting that Spain has opened a judicial inquiry into the question of whether USG officials committed torture in their interrogations of Guantánamo detainees.

Wait, what? How does a Spanish court have any claim to jurisdiction over the actions of Americans in Cuba? It's not, as would make slightly more sense, because one of the detainees in question is a Spanish citizen. No, it's because of "Spain's observance of the principle of universal justice."

"Garzon said he was acting under Spain's observance of the principle of universal justice, which allows crimes allegedly committed in other countries to be prosecuted in Spain."

Ouch! So now Spain can prosecute me for offenses supposedly committed anywhere in the world? I'm as much against torture as the next guy, but isn't that a significant expansion of jurisdiction? Can Spain prosecute me for breaking the laws of my own country in my own country? For breaking Spanish laws in my own country? For breaking "international laws?" I feel like I need an informational brochure on this.

"Garzon cited media accounts of the documents and said he would ask the U.S. to send the documents to him."

Ooh, so sorry, national secrets and all...sure you understand.

Bagram detainees gain access to U.S. courts

2009-04-02T12:36:00.010-04:00

A U.S. District Court judge ruled today that three non-Afghan detainees who are currently being held at Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan have the right to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts. This ruling extends the Supreme Court's ruling, in Boumediene v. Bush, that detainees at Guantánamo could do the same thing (see this post for a discussion of who remains at Guantánamo).

In related news, I attended a talk a few days ago by NYU Law professor Stephen Schulhofer, who argued that the U.S. civilian criminal justice system is flexible enough to try the Guantánamo detainees, even accounting for questions of classified evidence, hearsay, and possibly torture. In contrast to the opinion, expressed elsewhere, that the Bush administration rendered dangerous people unprosecutable in civilian courts through the use of "enhanced interrogation methods," Schulhofer believes that any detainee who is unconvictable in U.S. civilian courts is probably not a danger to the United States. The Justice Department is reportedly in the process of analyzing the prosecutability of the remaining Guantánamo detainees.

Karzai seeks to move elections forward

2009-03-01T11:19:00.008-05:00

The US presidential transition has not been easy for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has seen his status in Washington downgraded from untouchable golden boy to semi-legitimate leader of a narco-state. While Bush used to hold weekly video conferences with the dashing Pashtun, then-Senator Joe Biden famously walked out in the middle of a dinner with Karzai after the Afghan leader had stated that there was no corruption in his administration. Now the NYT and other sources are reporting that Karzai has decreed that the upcoming presidential elections, which had been scheduled for August, will be moved forward to April or May.

While this appears, in one sense, to be an attempt to avert a constitutional crisis stemming from the fact that Karzai is required by law to step down when his term ends on May 21, many commentators suspect darker motives. These include the possibilities that Karzai (1) wants to use US and NATO logistics and support for his campaign, as he did last time, and (2) wants to take his opponents by surprise by holding the election before they are prepared to mount an effective challenge:

"Snap elections might favor Mr. Karzai, as his opponents would probably be unprepared for such a short campaign. The earlier elections also would keep him from having to run a campaign while under a cloud of accusations that he had overstayed his term and was no longer a legitimate president."

Karzai's opponents, by the way, include former Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani (a long-time power broker), recently-former Finance Minister Anwar ul-Haq Ahadi (slick but maybe competent), and First Vice President Ahmad Zia Massood (brother of the assasinated leader of the Northern Alliance and "Lion of the Panjsher," Ahmad Shah Massood).

You may remember from a previous post that BU anthropologist Thomas Barfield predicted that Karzai, whose popularity hovers around 20%, might try to steal this election. Stay tuned for more devilry!

Back from Algeria

2009-03-01T10:46:00.006-05:00

Hey all (er...that's all of you who read this blog, which I think at this point is Boris), I'm back from almost two months in Algeria. I decided not to post anything while I was there, not because I was specifically advised not to, but because I wanted to avoid any possibility of causing problems for my hosts and the people I was working with. As I mentioned in the previous post, this threw something of a wrench into my plans to launch this blog on Inauguration Day, although you can rest assured that I watched the whole thing from my hotel room on the BBC. Anyway, I had a good time, did some technical work which is not hugely relevant to this blog, rocked the cash bar, and am raring to go with some new posts about that rascally Hamid Karzai. So thanks for bearing with me (Boris) and expect more content in the next few days.

Going to Algeria

2009-01-05T22:01:00.002-05:00

I'm leaving tomorrow for Algeria and Morocco, where I expect to be working for the next few weeks. I'm not sure whether I'll be able to post things there, which could interfere with my plans to "launch" this thing on Inauguration Day. Stay tuned...

NYT calls out the Karzai family

2009-01-02T16:26:00.007-05:00

The NYT's Dexter Filkins has said, more clearly than I have seen before, what Afghans have long understood and the international community has gradually come to appreciate: the Afghan government is deeply corrupt and the Karzai family is in on the game:

"Kept afloat by billions of dollars in American and other foreign aid, the government of Afghanistan is shot through with corruption and graft. From the lowliest traffic policeman to the family of President Hamid Karzai himself, the state built on the ruins of the Taliban government seven years ago now often seems to exist for little more than the enrichment of those who run it.

A raft of investigations has concluded that people at the highest levels of the Karzai administration, including President Karzai’s own brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, are cooperating in the country’s opium trade, now the world’s largest. In the streets and government offices, hardly a public transaction seems to unfold here that does not carry with it the requirement of a bribe, a gift, or, in case you are a beggar, “harchee” — whatever you have in your pocket."

Most surprising to me was the article's suggestion that Dr. Abdul Jabbar Sabit, until recently the Attorney General, was himself a part of the corruption he gained considerable fame for combating; I met Dr. Sabit in Kabul and heard a great deal from others about his honesty. In any case, the dysfunctionality of the Karzai government will pose a major challenge to the incoming administration; until aid money starts making it past bureaucrats' pockets, it will not start to rebuild the country.

More about conditionality on foreign assistance

2008-12-30T18:51:00.005-05:00

My friend Mauro sent me a NYT op-ed which was written by four members of the Board of Directors of the Milennium Challenge Corporation (among them Senator Bill Frist). In it, the Directors argue that the incoming administration should adopt the MCC as a central tool of its development policy. I have written before about the importance of attaching conditionality to U.S. foreign assistance; the Corporation takes a somewhat different approach - called indicator-based competition - by making countries compete for aid on the basis of their performance on a range of relevant criteria:

"Aid works best in countries whose governments are capable and committed. Before directing any American aid to a country, the corporation measures its performance on 17 indicators of democratic government, anti-corruption efforts, investments in health and education (particularly for girls) and economic freedom. Only those countries that perform strongly are allowed to compete for a five-year compact that makes them eligible to receive American aid for programs intended to reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth."

Mauro pointed out that the willingness of countries like China, Korea, Qatar, and Brazil to deliver no-strings-attached assistance (often in return for natural resources or support at the UN) has undercut the efficacy of U.S. conditionality. While the MCC has received mixed reviews in some quarters, it could represent the best way to make sure that U.S. foreign assistance benefits the people it is intended to help.

Who are the Guantánamo detainees?

2008-12-22T13:35:00.005-05:00

The Brookings Institution has released a report which summarizes the available public-record information, mostly drawn from habeas petitions and U.S. Government statements, about the identities and affiliations of the detainees who remain imprisoned at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. As of December 16, 2008, there were 248 detainees at the base, composed mainly of (alleged or admitted) Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, but also including Uighurs with no apparent affiliation to either group and assorted others. The report's authors provide separate assessments of the detainees (and of how the prison's demographics have shifted over time) on the basis of U.S. Government allegations and on the basis of detainee statements. Here is a quote:

"The current population numbers less than a third of the total number of detainees who have passed through the facility since 2002. And the composition of the population has changed markedly as it has declined. Yet precisely how it has changed remains fuzzy. Which detainees are still there and which have been sent home? What allegations does the military make against the residual population and how serious are they? How have the detainees responded to these allegations? Are they, as the Bush administration has described the Guantánamo population, the “worst of the worst”? Or are they composed, as the New York Times once put it, of “hundreds of innocent men . . . jailed at Guantánamo without charges or rudimentary rights”? Or do they, perhaps, vary?"

One interesting conclusion is that, while U.S. Government statements indicate a concentration over time of the most dangerous detainees (as low-level operatives have been released or transferred to their home countries), detainee statements do not support this picture. Such dynamics could have complex implications for President-elect Obama's plans to close the facility, including the potential to try remaining detainees in military or civilian courts.

Petraeus on Afghanistan and Iraq

2008-12-17T19:32:00.013-05:00

Everyone's favorite general, David Petraeus of CENTCOM (formerly commander of U.S. forces in Iraq), has written a letter to the soldiers under his command - his first since he assumed control of CENTCOM in October - in which he outlines some of the challenges facing his area of responsibility, which includes Afghanistan and Iraq. While acknowledging progress made in both countries and referencing upcoming troop reductions in Iraq, Petraeus was cautious in his assessment and listed a number of remaining challenges. His evaluation of Afghanistan was particularly blunt:

"The Taliban and other elements that make up the extremist "syndicate," aided by groups operating from sanctuaries outside Afghanistan, have significantly increased the levels of violence in Afghanistan and contested control of important areas in the country. Slowly-developing Afghan governmental institutions have been challenged by the security situation and have yet to achieve the necessary levels of competence, integrity, capacity, and legitimacy."

The first of these two sentences is a reference to Pakistani support for the Taliban (see recent post on Thomas Barfield), while the second is an allusion to the growing consensus among U.S. and international observers (the Afghans have known it for a long time) that the Karzai government, tainted with corruption, incompetence, and links to the drug trade, has ceased to be a credible partner in the effort to rebuild the country. President-elect Obama's apparent willingness to place greater conditionality on U.S. foreign assistance, which I referenced in a previous post, could begin to shift this dynamic. The NYT is reporting that Petraeus's letter is expected to be followed by the release of a more comprehensive report, currently being researched, in February.

Looking Back: The 1978 NNPA

2008-12-15T09:18:00.007-05:00

The Carnegie Endowment's Sharon Squassoni, writing for the Arms Control Association, has offered a look back at the 1978 Nuclear Nonproliferation Act in the context of the recent US-India nuclear deal. She makes the point that, while many of the original goals of the NNPA remain unrealized, it has provided a critical bulwark against proliferation and needs renewed engagement in the wake of the India deal, which has dealt it an unprecedented blow:

"The successes and failures of the NNPA may be more relevant than ever as the nuclear nonproliferation community continues to grapple with the dilemmas posed by India, Iran, and a potential expansion of nuclear energy across a wide swath of states. New institutional frameworks are needed to curb enthusiasm for engaging in uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing. The United States, no longer the pre-eminent nuclear supplier, must gain wide support for implementing a vision of a nuclear fuel cycle that poses fewer proliferation risks than before. Moreover, the United States needs to begin taking seriously the NNPA's call to identify alternative options to nuclear power to meet countries' energy needs, particularly low-carbon-emitting sources."

Meanwhile, talks with North Korea have broken down again, leaving the North's nuclear program, along with other unfinished business from the Bush years, to the incoming administration.

Barfield on Afghanistan

2008-12-11T21:04:00.006-05:00

So my office subscribes to a journal called Current History, and in perusing/swiping the latest issue, I noticed an article by Boston University anthropologist Thomas Barfield entitled "The Roots of Failure in Afghanistan." I can't link to it because Current History wants me to pay for the article (thanks guys), but I found it very insightful. Barfield identifies four critical failures of the reconstruction and stabilization effort since 2001: (1) the failure to deploy enough troops to secure the country, (2) the imposition of a highly centralized government on a country in which such a system had never worked, (3) the failure to commit sufficient resources to reconstruction, and (4) the assumption that Pakistan would support the US-NATO intervention. Barfield's opinion is that the first and third of these problems are slowly being addressed, and that the others are not. The question of the government is especially interesting in light of presidential elections scheduled for 2009; Barfield outlines a range of possible scenarios which include the unpopular Karzai government stealing the election, losing to a wildcard candidate, or (most hopefully) losing to a broad-based coalition which better represents the interests of the population.

One thing I can link to is the AIAS feature on my friend Noah Coburn, who when not researching his dissertation under Barfield in Istalif can be found tearing it up on the ISAF Frisbee field. What's up Noah!

Afghanistan and Other Conflicts

2008-12-11T14:35:00.007-05:00

The NYT is reporting on Defense Secretary Robert Gates's visit to Afghanistan, where he is conferring with General David McKiernan on troop levels necessary to contain a growing insurgency. Announced increases included another 20,000 US troops to supplement the approximately 65,000 US and NATO soldiers currently in country, with as many as two brigades arriving by the spring, when violence typically picks back up after the relatively quiet winter months. McKiernan and his predecessors have asked repeatedly for more troops; current levels are sufficient to fight insurgents but not enough to hold the ground which has been won, and heavy reliance on air strikes has led to a steady stream of civilian casualties which, in combination with a corrupt and ineffective national government, have severely eroded the faith of the Afghan people in the current situation. Gate's visit seemed to reflect this sense of discouragement:

"What was striking about the trip was the tone of weariness that cropped up in the remarks of both Mr. Gates and General McKiernan about the Afghan war. “Let’s put it in historical perspective — this country has been at war for the last 30 years,” General McKiernan told reporters, using the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 as the starting point. “Thirty years. That’s not going to stop overnight. So if your question is might it get worse before it gets better, the answer is yes, it might.”"

Meanwhile, President-elect Obama is meeting with a commission led by former Secretaries of State James Baker and Warren Christopher to consider amending the 1973 War Powers Act, which requires Congressional approval of military operations but has, in general, neither been observed by presidents nor enforced by Congress. Proposed changes would grant to the president de jure most of the powers he or she currently enjoys de facto, while boosting the requirement for consultation:

"A president would have to consult with Congress before any “significant military action” expected to last more than a week or within three days of the start of action in circumstances where secrecy is paramount. This would not include short-term missions such as protection of United States embassies, reprisals against terrorist attacks or covert operations.

Within 30 days, Congress would vote on a measure approving the military action. If the resolution to approve fails in either house, any member could then introduce a measure to disapprove, which would be voted on within five days. If passed by both houses, it could still be vetoed by the president, so as a practical matter, Congress could stop a president’s war only with a two-thirds vote in both houses overriding the veto."

Restoring the Balance

2008-12-10T13:46:00.007-05:00

The Council on Foreign Relations and Brookings Institution have released a book of Middle East policy recommendations for the incoming president, the result of an 18-month study conducted jointly by CFR and the Saban Center at Brookings. Apparently not everything is coming up roses:

"The forty-fourth president will face a series of critical, complex, and interrelated challenges in the Middle East that will demand his immediate attention: an Iran apparently intent on approaching or crossing the nuclear threshold as quickly as possible; a fragile situation in Iraq that is straining the U.S. military; weak governments in Lebanon and Palestine under challenge from stronger Hezbollah and Hamas militant organizations; a faltering Israeli-Palestinian peace process; and American influence diluted by a severely damaged reputation. The president will need to initiate multiple policies to address all these challenges but will quickly discover that time is working against him."

I will look forward to reading this and then getting drunk by myself.

Letter from Pashmul

2008-12-08T09:45:00.005-05:00

My roommate Graeme Wood had an article about Afghanistan in last week's New Yorker. In it, he offers a snapshot of one of NATO's most controversial counterinsurgency tactics, the use of ethnic-minority Hazara police units to patrol Pashtun areas. Graeme writes:

"Alessandro Monsutti, an anthropologist who has studied the Hazaras, fears that the short-term gain of the Hazara units’ efficacy may be outweighed by long-term harm. “They’re very efficient for narrow, military targets,” he told me. “But what about rebuilding the country?” Donnelly, too, acknowledges that the use of ethnic militias could lead to explosive retribution when NATO leaves Afghanistan. (European use of privileged local minorities in colonial Africa contributed to the continent’s most destructive post-colonial wars, including the Rwandan genocide.) The Hazaras have not, historically, fared well in combat with the Pashtuns, although the policemen at Pashmul seem eager to try their luck. When Vollick asked them where he could get more police like them, they replied that they could raise a militia of a thousand men in their homeland, in Daykundi Province."

As the Obama team pursues what is expected to be a renewed US engagement with Afghanistan and pressures NATO allies to do the same, we will be watching for any shift in these and other tactics. Congratulations Graeme and looking forward to more.

Clinton vs. Biden

2008-12-07T14:45:00.010-05:00

It's not exactly news at this point, but as part of his record-time staffing of key Cabinet posts, President-Elect Obama has announced his picks for key members of his national security team, including Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Robert Gates to continue as Secretary of Defense, and General James Jones as National Security Advisor. The selection of Hillary Clinton, who will come burdened with several kinds of political baggage, has raised eyebrows; Politico has offered a reasonable explanation for the choice, focusing on the "team of rivals" philosophy. Here is a quote:

"A possible clue to Obama’s willingness to consider Clinton for chief diplomat can be found in a January interview he gave to Katie Couric, anchor and managing editor of the “CBS Evening News.” As part of her “Primary Questions” series, she asked him what books besides the Bible he would considers essential if he were elected president. “Doris Kearns Goodwin's book ‘Team of Rivals,’” Obama replied. “It was a biography of Lincoln. And she talks about Lincoln's capacity to bring opponents of his and people who have run against him in his cabinet. And he was confident enough to be willing to have these dissenting voices and confident enough to listen to the American people and push them outside of their comfort zone. And I think that part of what I want to do as president is push Americans a little bit outside of their comfort zone. It's a remarkable study in leadership.”"

This sounds good, but it raises the obvious specter of a potentially unproductive conflict between Clinton and Biden; while Clinton will nominally be the top foreign affairs advisor to the President, the presence of a VP with real-deal foreign policy experience and a habit of asserting his own ideas could potentially set up a tug of war. Along related lines, Global Dashboard picked up a post from the Atlantic Monthly's Marc Ambinder about the fate of Clinton's foreign policy advisors. Ambinder writes:

"So where does Hillary Clinton's foreign policy cabinet hang its hat for the next four years? Her main team consists of:

Richard Holbrooke, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Dayton Peace Accord broker; Clinton's chief defense adviser, Bob Einhorn, a Clinton administration veteran and non-proliferation expert, Andrew Shapiro, Clinton's chief foreign policy adviser, Wendy Sherman, a senior adviser to Madelieine Albright and Warren Christopher, and Melaine Verveer, a former Clinton chief of staff and longtime Clinton confidante.

Now -- signing up for Team Obama, especially when things were not looking so hot in late 2007, was a real act of professional courage for many Obamaites. And there was quite a bit of tension between the two camps -- although it's not clear whether the principals listed above were involved.

Tensions have cooled; Clinton advisers are assisting Obama's transition team and serving on several advisory committees. But staff is destiny, and there are conflicting reports about how much latitude Clinton will have to bring her own team aboard."

We will look forward to seeing how this all plays out.

Renewing American Leadership

2008-12-04T08:51:00.007-05:00

Welcome to my blog, where I hope to write (well, more like aggregate and comment on information from other sources) on foreign policy under the new (at this point, not yet installed) Obama Administration. I thought it would be appropriate to kick things off by linking to the article written by then-Senator Barack Obama in Foreign Affairs, part of a series of foreign policy pieces written by the then-contenders for the White House, in which the Senator outlined a muscular but responsible foreign policy, touching on three issues dear to my heart: the foreign policy implications of climate change, the growing threat of nuclear proliferation (state-based and non), and the importance of placing conditions on U.S. foreign assistance. If there is a unifying theme, it is the idea that the United States must stop defining its foreign policy by what it is against and start enunciating - and embodying - a better vision of what it stands for. Here is a quote:

"Finally, to renew American leadership in the world, I will strengthen our common security by investing in our common humanity. Our global engagement cannot be defined by what we are against; it must be guided by a clear sense of what we stand for. We have a significant stake in ensuring that those who live in fear and want today can live with dignity and opportunity tomorrow."

Over the coming months, one of my aims will be to track how the administration's policy decisions play out against the vision the Senator described in this article, the opening salvo of his foreign policy as a candidate for the presidency.