Jim Johnson's List: International

• In a world of dogs, diplomatically speaking, Mr. Obama is a cat. Just as he has suffered from being standoffish with Congress, donors and his base, our feline president can be oblivious to the neediness of other less Zen leaders. As Helene Cooper and Robert Worth wrote in The New York Times Tuesday, some Arab officials are critical of Mr. Obama's impersonal, distant style. "You can't fix these problems by remote control," one Arab diplomat told them.

  At least the president has a foreign policy. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan haven't spent much time thinking or speaking about foreign policy. They have taken the path of least resistance and parroted the views of neocon advisers. They talk tough and label the president a weak apologist and build up bogymen and rant about how America must dictate events in the Middle East. That's not a doctrine; it's a treacherous neocon echo.

  It's amazing that many of the neocons who were involved in the Iraq debacle are back riding high. (Foreign Policy magazine reports that 17 of Mr. Romney's 24 special advisers on foreign policy were in W.'s administration.)

• Mitt Romney gave a foreign policy speech on Monday that could be boiled down to one argument: Everything wrong with the Middle East today can be traced to a lack of leadership by President Barack Obama. If this speech is any indication of the quality of Mr. Romney's thinking on foreign policy, then we should worry.
• It was not sophisticated in describing the complex aspirations of the people of the Middle East. It was not accurate in describing what Mr. Obama has done or honest about the prior positions Mr. Romney has articulated. And it was not compelling in terms of the strategic alternatives it offered. The worst message we can send right now to Middle Easterners is that their future is bound up in what we do. It is not. The Arab/Muslim world has never been more in need of radical new approaches by us -- and them.
• the United States has been looking for ways to connect with the Arab youths who spearheaded the revolutions; 60 percent of the Arab world is under age 25.
• "The old police states ... were authoritarian dictatorships that ruled their people arbitrarily and poorly. But they were good at fighting terror. ... These new governments are trying to do something the Arab world has never done before -- create structures where the rule of law applies and the secret police are held accountable to elected officials. That is a tall order, especially when terrorists are trying to create chaos."

• How does the United States impact a region with so many cross-cutting conflicts and agendas? We start by making clear that the new Arab governments are free to choose any path they desire, but we will support only those who agree to: 1) educate their people to modern standards; 2) empower their women; 3) embrace religious pluralism; 4) have multiple parties, regular elections and a free press; 5) maintain treaty commitments; and 6) control their violent extremists with security forces governed by the rule of law.

  That's what we think is "the answer," and our race to the top will fund schools and programs that advance those principles. (To his credit, Mr. Romney wants to move in this direction, though Mr. Obama already is.)

3 more annotations...

• But he argued that "modest encroachments on privacy" were "worth us doing" to protect the country, and he said Congress and the courts had authorized those programs.

  A National Security Agency telephone surveillance program collects phone numbers and the duration of calls, not the content, he said. An Internet surveillance program targets foreigners living abroad, not Americans, he added.

  "There are some trade-offs involved," Mr. Obama said. "I came with a healthy skepticism about these programs. My team evaluated them. We scrubbed them thoroughly." In the end, he concluded that "they help us prevent terrorist attacks."
• In Congress, the main vehicle for any changes, a reauthorization of the 1978 law that created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, passed only in December and is not due for renewal for five years. During the debate last winter, the Senate voted on a bipartisan basis to reject amendments to force transparency or curtail surveillance.

• The Guardian posted online a copy of a classified directive that Mr. Obama signed last year laying out conditions under which the president could order cyberattacks against another country, akin to the attacks on Iran's uranium enrichment plant.

  The directive ordered the government to "identify potential targets of national importance" against which offensive cyberoperations "can offer a favorable balance of effectiveness and risk as compared with other instruments of national power." That means, in essence, that the Pentagon's Cyber Command and the intelligence agencies would maintain lists of targets around the world that could be damaged more effectively, and more covertly, by a computer attack than by a missile or bomber attack.

  As previously reported, the document says only the president can authorize offensive cyberoperations, just as only he can authorize use of nuclear weapons. The directive also reserves the right to take "anticipatory action against imminent threats" to protect critical infrastructure in the United States, including power utilities, cell phone networks and financial markets.

1 more annotation...

• ISIS's takeover of most of the so-called Sunni Triangle, as well as Mosul, the second largest city with almost two million people, hammers a deadly nail in the coffin of the post-Saddam Hussein nation-building project.

   

  Fragile Iraqi institutions now lie in tatters.

   

  It is doubtful if Baghdad could ever establish a monopoly on the use of force in the country, or exercise authority and centralised control over rebellious Sunni Arabs and semi-independent Kurdistan.
• After eight years in office and monopolising power, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has delivered neither security nor reconciliation and prosperity
• Iraqi security forces, which number hundreds of thousands of men, almost disintegrated under a stunning sweep of only a few thousand, lightly armed al-Qaeda-linked fighters.
• At the very heart of the fierce struggle raging in Iraq is a broken political system, one based on "muhasasa", or distribution of the spoils of power along communal, ethnic and tribal lines, and put in place after the US invaded and occupied the country in 2003.

• Sunnis Arabs, particularly in the last four years, have felt excluded and disfranchised by what they view as Mr Maliki's sectarian-based policies.

   

  When the US left Iraq in 2011, the al-Qaeda brand was in decline, unpopular among Sunnis.

   

  Three years later, ISIS has revived by finding a "hadana shaabiya", or social base, among dissatisfied and alienated Sunni Arabs
• ISIS has aligned itself with insurgent Sunni groups, such as officers of Saddam's dissolved army, and co-opted hundreds of these skilled fighters to its ranks, a turning point in its ability to plan and execute complex operations in both Iraq and Syria.
• More alarming, Sunni officers who deserted their bases are reported to have said that they would not fight for Mr Maliki's government, a development that shows the gravity of the sectarian-political rift in Iraq today.
• SIS is only a powerful vehicle for Sunni Arab grievances, though a vehicle that could ultimately crush both Sunnis' aspirations and the Iraqi state
• ven if the Iraqi state recaptures the cities seized by ISIS, it would be unable to pacify the population without decentralisation of the decision-making and devolution of power to the local level.

• Various communities should be empowered to govern themselves and feel invested in the national project, a vital task to rescue the fragile Iraqi state and rid the country of ISIS and other insurgent groups.

   

  The old order is dead. There is an urgent need to reconstruct the broken political and social system along new lines of citizenship and the rule of law.
• Neither reconciliation nor institution-building would occur without a new social contract based on the decentralisation of power and an equitable sharing of resources.

9 more annotations...

• The United States' health system once again comes in last when compared to 10 other rich nations, according to the latest Commonwealth Fund report on the issue.

   

  The nonprofit group said that while Americans spend much more per person on medical care, they are less healthy than people in the other nations. In addition, the U.S. health care system is less fair and efficient than those in the other 10 countries, NBC News reported.

   

  "Among the 11 nations studied in this report -- Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States -- the U.S. ranks last, as it did in the 2010, 2007, 2006, and 2004 editions,"

• Today, it’s different. We see Islamist fighters becoming skilled soldiers. The thrust of the Islamic State down the Euphrates River illustrates a style of warfare that melds old and new. U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq used to say: “Thank God they can’t shoot.” Well, now they can. They maneuver in reasonably disciplined formations, often aboard pickup trucks and captured Iraqi Humvees. They employ mortars and rockets in deadly barrages. To be sure, parts of the old terrorist playbook remain: They butcher and execute prisoners to make unambiguously clear the terrible consequences of resistance. They continue to display an eager willingness for death and the media savvy of the “propaganda of the deed.”
• Some observers of the transformation admit that Hezbollah now is among the most skilled light infantry on the planet. And now there is Hamas. Gone are the loose and fleeting groups of fighters seen during Operation Cast Lead in 2008. In Gaza they have been fighting in well-organized, tightly bound teams under the authority of connected, well-informed commanders.
• This frightening new age is emerging due to several factors that neither the United States nor Israeli forces anticipated. First is the influence of foreign fighters. Iranian advisers throughout the Middle East are getting better at their craft. Radicalized fighters from the Chechen and Bosnian conflicts serve Islamic State forces as mentors.
• Second, the bloody Syrian war has served as a first-rate training ground for the Islamic State and Hezbollah.
• Third, these new armies talk to each other, even occasionally across ethno-sectarian divisions.
• Fourth, while these new armies are becoming more professional, they retain the terrorist’s specialty of disciplined killing.
• media-driven executions of surrendering soldiers and opposition leaders. Such strategic killing can give the armies a psychological advantage before the clash of arms begins.

5 more annotations...

• Russia-watcher Miriam Elder noted in a piece on BuzzFeed that Putin's response and other statements he has made about Ukraine in the past reflect some of the arguments put forward by Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in a 1990 essay titled "Rebuilding Russia." 

• Although he is best known for his exposure of the Soviet Gulag system and his staunch anticommunism, Solzhenitsyn welcomed Putin's rise to power in 1999 and praised him for restoring Russia's national pride. 

    

  In 2007, Putin visited the ailing Solzhenitsyn at home to award him a state prize for his humanitarian work. 

    

  In "Rebuilding Russia," published in the dying days of the U.S.S.R., Solzhenitsyn criticizes the Soviet government's haphazard border policies that he says carved up traditional "Rus." He advocates a "Russian Union" encompassing Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and the ethnic Russian parts of Kazakhstan.
• Solzhenitsyn is confident of the fundamental unity of the Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian peoples, three branches that were historically separated by "the Mongol invasion and Polish colonization."
• "The return of these lands to Russia was at the time viewed by everyone as 'reunification,'" he says.
• At the same time, Solzhenitsyn criticizes the Soviet ambition to impose Russian domination over non-Russian nations, saying it "would destroy the Russian national essence."
• Russia does not have enough strength to control an empire, he writes, and trying to do so will only "hasten our destruction."
• "We rejoice for the countries of Eastern Europe -- let them live and prosper in freedom," he writes. "And let them pay for everything according to global prices."

5 more annotations...

• Former Vice President Dick Cheney has had a relatively quiet couple of years since leaving the White House. But with the release of a Senate report on alleged torture by the CIA, it was inevitable that Cheney — who is closely associated with the post-9/11 policy of "enhanced interrogations" for captured terrorists — would return to television screens.
• The report concluded that techniques signed off on by Cheney and President George W. Bush were not an effective way to gain intelligence from detainees, and that the CIA misled Congress and the White House.
• Cheney, however, says the techniques worked and were legal

• the deaths of 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, at the hands of al-Qaida terrorists justified expanded interrogation methods and the subsequent invasion of Iraq.

   

  "We got to the point where we were very concerned about the possible linkage between terrorists on the one hand and weapons of mass destruction on the other,
• he had a 10-year relationship with al-Qaida."
• The 9-11 Commission
• found isolated contacts over the years between Iraq and al-Qaida terrorists but nothing more.
• In 2007, the Institute for Defense Analyses
• "found no 'smoking gun' (i.e., direct connection) between Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaida,"
• Vice President Cheney, despite making these claims for more than 10 years now, has failed to present any evidence to support it,
• At one point in that interview, Cheney said the terrorists "were not covered by the Geneva Convention. They were unlawful combatants. And under those circumstances, they were not entitled to the normal kinds of courtesies and treatment you would accord to those."
• The Geneva Convention is a series of four treaties that guarantees a certain level of protection for former combatants, including prisoners of war and civilians. They set out in detail the requirements for food, clothing, shelter, safety from combat, access to medical care and other matters.
• It's misleading for him to say that such combatants are "not covered by the Geneva Convention." While detainees who do not have POW status don't get the top level of protection, they do get more basic protections from the Geneva Convention.
• Even the lower level of protection would have shielded detainees, at least on paper, from some of the harsh treatments now alleged in the Senate report.
• Among other things "prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever" by Common Article 3 are "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture," as well as "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
• The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the basic protections in the 2006 case Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld.
• In other words, "our own Supreme Court has made it completely clear that, whatever their status, (detainees) are entitled to some minimal protections under the Geneva Convention,"

15 more annotations...

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress was eloquent, moving and intelligent in identifying the problems with the potential nuclear deal with Iran. But when describing the alternative to it, Netanyahu entered never-never land, painting a scenario utterly divorced from reality.
• Netanyahu declared that Washington should reject the current deal, demand that Tehran dismantle almost its entire nuclear program and commit never to restart it. In the world according to Bibi, the Chinese, Russians and Europeans will cheer, tighten sanctions, and increase pressure — which would then lead Iran to capitulate.
• We have some history that can inform us on the more likely course. Between 2003 and 2005,

• talks collapsed because the Bush administration, acting through the British government, vetoed it. It was certain, Jenkins explained, that if the West could “scare” the Iranians, “they would give in.”

  What was the result? Did Iran return to the table and capitulate? No, the country withstood the sanctions and, unimpeded by any inspections, massively expanded its nuclear infrastructure.
• If the deal now being negotiated fails, the most likely scenario is a repetition of the past. Iran will expand its nuclear program. If the other major powers believed that Iran’s offer was serious but U.S. and Israeli intransigence torpedoed it, they would be reluctant to enforce sanctions — and all sanctions start to leak over time anyway.
• So why have Bibi’s predictions been wrong for 25 years?
• the mullahs have calculated — correctly — that the benefits of breakout are not worth the costs. The key to any agreement with Iran is to keep the costs of breakout high and the benefits low. This is the most realistic path to keeping Iran from becoming a nuclear weapons state

5 more annotations...

• I want to say that ISIS is evil.

• The latest report issued by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, on “The Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict in Iraq,” catalogues the human rights atrocities committed by ISIS, making it abundantly clear that this group is evil. They include:

  • attacks directly targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure,
  • executions and other targeted killings of civilians,
  • abductions, rape and other forms of sexual and gender based violence perpetrated against women and children,
  • slavery and trafficking of women and children,
  • forced recruitment of children,
  • destruction or desecration of places of religious or cultural significance,
  • wanton destruction and looting of property, and denial of fundamental freedoms.

  The report goes on to identify the targeting of ethnic and religious groups — such as Christians, Yazidis, Shi’ite Muslims, and many others — and subjecting them to “gross human rights abuses, in what appears as a deliberate policy aimed at destroying, suppressing or expelling these communities permanently from areas under their control.” The report describes the actions as possible “war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.”

• Here is a good example of how not to respond to the reality of evil.

  Bill O’Reilly, Fox News’ top-rated political pundit and talk show host has devoted a great deal of attention to ISIS atrocities and what he believes the Western response should be. Unfortunately, while O’Reilly rightly condemns ISIS as evil, he frames the conflict as a “holy war” that ISIS is waging against the West, Christians, and anyone else who does not share ISIS’ extreme views
• Here is the problem. The idea of a “holy war” is indeed what ISIS most wants. It’s what ISIS is clamoring for and is deliberately trying to provoke with their sadistic and brutal cruelty. Their highly publicized barbarity is an attempt to provoke a “holy war” with us as their primary enemy, which would give credence to their complete perversion of the religion they claim — a fundamentalist and apocalyptic interpretation of Islam. ISIS would like to be seen as the sole defender of true Islam in an existential battle against people of other faiths and other Muslims who do not share their extreme beliefs.

• Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski made some excellent points in a recent discussion on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

  The worst thing we can do is to become the sole combatant against the forces of evil that are operating in that region. We have to avoid any direct collision with the world of Islam, we mustn't label the enemy as Islamist, but we must work with those governments in the region that are prepared to defend themselves. … The key point I have in mind is that strategically we are not the chief protagonist in the region, because if we are, we become the inheritor of the colonial era, and we even become more hated in the region than is the case today.
• There are no “holy wars.” War is always the result of a failure to resolve human conflicts without violence. War is a consequence of our sins. Even when theology is used to justify the use of force, or “just war,” it is still a failed and sinful response to other sins.
• We must admit that our primarily military response to terrorism since 9/11 has not worked; it has made things worse. The world and our lives are less secure now because of previously failed military responses.
• Only new political and economic solutions in the Middle East will finally transform the current state of affairs.
• Fundamentalism, in all our faith traditions, is a politicized use of religion based on fear and power, and it is best defeated from the inside, not the outside.
• Understanding and addressing the roots of terror to build a strategy to defeat it does not dismiss terror’s evil, barbaric behavior.

8 more annotations...