Amitai Etzioni's Blog

Stimulate Greening

2008-11-21T16:21:48Z

A good debate has started as to the size of the stimulus package the economy badly needs, and what it should include. I suggest that paying in part for the greening of all public facilities should be included. Such greening should be required of all federal facilities (from office buildings and prisons, to courts and military bases), and of all corporations that receive a substantial amount of federal funds in grants or contracts (e.g., Halliburton and Boeing). It should be demanded of all that receive bailout money, of state and local government, as well as of other public agencies (e.g., the nation's 35,000 school boards) and the hundreds of thousands of not-for-profit organizations, such as the Gates, Ford, and Rockefeller foundations, that benefit from tax privileges. (Granted, some public agencies already participate in some greening measures, but it's sporadic and not on a national level.)

]]> The greening of the public square should apply to all new facilities and tools (e.g., all new buildings should be required to meet basic green standards, all new vehicles to meet higher and rising CAFE standards, etc.) as well as to the retrofitting of old ones (through improved insulation, green roofs and so on). It should encompass both conservation (e.g., by turning off computers at night and on weekends and holidays) and requirements to purchase power from alternative, renewable sources (say, electricity produced by windmills rather than oil).

Such greening is for the common good to the fifth degree. Environmentalists have already pointed out (albeit not in these exact words) that green acts are winners to the fourth degree. They reduce our dependence on foreign oil; generate jobs at home; improve the climate; and stimulate our research and development, a major engine of a strong economy that is especially well-suited for the American place in the global economy. I add only that the greening of the public square also creates a powerful and reliable demand for new or improved green products by securing a mass market for them. Take the example of vehicles that are much more energy efficient than existing ones. To develop such vehicles requires a major outlay. If there is no secure and sizable market for such vehicles, car manufacturers and investors will be reluctant to make such investments. If, however, they knew that all new vehicles purchased by millions of public entities in the future would be required to meet ever higher CAFE standards, such investments would become much less risky. Moreover, such an ensured mass market would reduce the unit cost for the private sector.

Most discussions of greening focus on the private sector. However, the public sector is the best place to rush greening forward. It is much more amenable to national guidance than the private sector.

In short, there is much to be gained from greening the public square. The main losers would be the adversaries who are confronting us from Latin America to Eastern Europe, drawing on the funds and political leverage sky-high oil prices have granted them. That is, such greening provides yet another "win": more funds in our pockets, less in the hands of those who do not particularly love us.

Amitai Etzioni is Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University. For more discussion, see his book: Security First (Yale, 2007) or www.securityfirstbook.com email: comnet@gwu.edu

Freud, International Relations Are Calling

2008-10-29T18:25:05Z

Freud, where are you when we need you? Think tanks in Washington, DC and across the land are furiously issuing position papers in preparation for the new administration. They are full of "we need" statements. They declare: "We need to fix the climate," "we need to stop Iran from making nuclear bombs," "we need to restructure the UN Security Council," and on and on. The sentiments behind these statements are often noble, and they may well find their way into high flying speeches. But they, unfortunately, ignore the main point Freud taught us.

]]> I do not mean to look for sexual interpretations of international relations, but that its study ought to benefit from the grand insight that there are no accidents. If we have a need and it is not responded to, it is usually not because nobody has ever noted it, but because there are powerful causes that block treatment. Thus, it is hardly news that the climate is deteriorating, Iran is nuclearizing, the UN Security Council reflects the power structure of 1945, and so on. A serious analysis needs to lay bare the obstacles faced by those seeking to deal with these problems--and point out the way these may be overcome.

Take the relatively simple matter of changing the composition of the Security Council. Surely Britain and France, two has-been powers, are not entitled to the same status and veto power as the big powers--US, China, and arguably Russia. Rationally, they should be replaced by, say, one vote each for the EU, India, Japan, Brazil, and the African Union, or some other such list, all too easy to draw up. However, it does not take a PhD in international relations -- or anything else -- to realize that Britain and France are not about to rush to pack up and leave, or that the big powers are not ready to dilute their clout by granting other nations the same privileges. And given that it is hard enough to gain consensus among the five veto powered members, are we really served by increasing the number?

I am not arguing that one cannot deal with such entrenched problems, but we can do so only if we look below the surface and understand why these problems are entrenched and figure out ways to dig them up. Declaring that "we need to reform the UN" is an opening sentence of a policy analysis, not a substitute for it.

Or, look at one other case in point: stopping the genocide in Sudan. Part of the problem is that China, which has a special relationship with Sudan based on economic interests, especially concerning China's quest for energy, is not supporting serious action via the UN. The US is ambivalent because the Sudanese government is helping the West with intelligence about Al Qaeda. Also, the US military is overstretched, depleted, and exhausted; it cannot take on another major mission. The African Union forces are not large enough, not properly equipped, and not properly trained. If more troops are somehow found and sent to Sudan, they may protect the refugees in their camps, but--given that Sudan is a large country--they are very unlikely to suffice to enable the displaced people to return to their villages.

I can practically hear the "we need" people exclaiming "we need a diplomatic solution." It is a mantra worth repeating, but it does not get you very far beyond showing that your heart may be in the right place.

I do not wish to fall prey to the same serious mistake by arguing that "we need" 'Freudian' policy analysis without suggesting why we rarely get it, and how we might. A good place to start is by changing the training provided to future policy analysts, which is given by about twenty major universities that have public policy schools and by a few think tanks that specialize in preparing students for this vocation. This training is best provided by seasoned researchers, not has-been politicians or those waiting for the next administration.

In the process, future policy analysts will discover that there are many more needs than can be served, and learn that we better scale back our expectations and promises and focus our resources and resolve on our highest priorities--rather than spin endless lists of desiderata which are well beyond our reach.

Next, the position papers by think tanks and individual policy analysts that are long on declarations of needs should be sent to the speech writers of various elected officials, but otherwise ignored. If there will be no market for such papers, the good people who composed them may well start looking for ways to improve what they are producing, leading them to look below the surface, to conduct a sort of Freudian analysis of international relations (and domestic politics), not a moment too soon.

Biden for Afghanistan

2008-10-21T20:49:34Z

Senator Biden has been repeatedly criticized by Senator McCain for calling for the dismemberment of Iraq. McCain charged Biden with saying that "that Iraq had to be broken up into three different countries," and called the plan "one of the more cockamamie ideas that I've heard in a long, long time."

Actually, the most sensible policy that follows from Biden's position is to recognize that Iraq is much more a tribal amalgam than a solid nation. Hence, the more each ethnic and confessional group is able and encouraged to govern itself, the closer we are to a stable Iraq. A federation with a high level of devolution to the various regions is the best model.

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True, such an approach will leave some issues standing, especially those concerning the borders among the Kurdish, Shia, and Sunni parts of the country and maintaining law and order in the few remaining mixed parts. However, managing these problems would be much less taxing than imposing American ideas about nation building up and down the large country.

The same approach ought now to be applied in Afghanistan--and in the areas of Pakistan that border on Afghanistan. The United States and its allies best work with the tribes and their natural leaders, rather than try to subject them to an American composed and directed, very ineffectual, and increasingly corrupt national government. After all, the United States did not overthrow the Taliban or free Afghanistan; it merely helped a coalition of tribes called the Northern Alliance to achieve these goals. Since, the United States has tried to replace the tribal militias with a national army and police force, and substitute elected officials for tribal leaders. However, these attempts at nation building have met with very limited success. Here again the lessons of Iraq are relevant. The situation turned around in Iraq once the United States started working with the Sunnis--in the areas they controlled--rather than trying to suppress them, and when the US started working with their Sheiks rather than with Sunni hand-picked "representatives" in Baghdad. (For addition support on this topic, see today's Washington Post article, "A New Breed Grabs Reins in Anbar: U.S.-Backed Sheiks Reshaping Own Areas and, Potentially, the Future of Iraq.")

Finally, the same is true about the tribal parts of Pakistan. The United States can bomb them until the mules come home, and it can pray that the Pakistani army will take them on. However, the bombing kills women, children and other innocent civilians, which fuels the already strong anti-Americanism. And the Pakistani army, even more rigidly geared for conventional warfare than the US army, has a very hard time fighting in the tribal areas. The rough terrain only adds to the difficulties.

When I asked the CIA chief from the area whether all seven tribes that make Waziristan their home are of one kind and one mind, he allowed that they are not. Asked whether it might be possible for the United States and its allies to work with some of the tribes to hold at bay the others, he suggested that this is the only way the US may be able to stop the area from serving as a haven for Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

There is no way on earth to turn Afghanistan into a stable democracy in the foreseeable future. However, it can be helped to develop a stable regime, based on tribal forces and coalitions. These, in turn, could gradually evolve, as other tribal societies did, into national societies--and, over time, into some kind of democracy. Even so, the prevention of terrorism need not wait until all these complex and slow processes mature, as long as the United States works with the tribes, instead of against them in the name of a waning national government. Biden was right about the best ways to approach the reconstruction of Iraq, and his ideas can be made to work in other parts, too.

More Nukes to Pakistan?

2008-10-03T19:53:19Z

The list of the overwhelming challenges President Bush is leaving for the next president was long enough before he added, with the acquiescence of the U.S. Senate, providing India with nuclear material and knowhow. There are so many ways this is a dangerous policy that it is hard to know where to start. The "winner" is the fact that Pakistan's military responded by deciding that it must keep up with India, and hence will seek to expand its nuclear program, one way or another. This is a truly alarming development, in a world in which alarms abound, because Pakistan is by far the country in which terrorists are the most likely to get their hands on nuclear arms, either by capturing them, having them slipped to them by cooperative elements in the military or intelligence services, or by overthrowing the failing government.

]]> One may say, wait a moment; the US is not giving India nuclear arms. Hence, why would Pakistan seek to countervail them? The fact is that India's access to highly enriched uranium is limited. As a result of the U.S. providing Indian civilian reactors with such materials, India can and will use its own uranium in its military nuclear facilities to make more bombs.

The U.S. has a vital security interest in curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It has been pressing Iran and North Korea for years to stop such developments, and it has rallied its allies to help it in implementing such nonproliferation policies. However, if the U.S. helps another nation expand its nuclear program, it will end up undermining the already weak norm against nuclear weapons, making it even more difficult to demand that other nations give up their military nuclear ambitions. In the words of Senator Byron Dorgan,

"[The] message is you can misuse American nuclear technology and secretly develop nuclear weapons, you can test those weapons, you can build a nuclear arsenal in defiance of U.N. resolution and you will be welcomed as someone showing good behavior with an agreement with the United States of America."

He added that the agreement is a "green light to say 'You may produce additional nuclear weapons.'"

The notion that it is ok for "good" governments to have nuclear bombs, that we need only worry about rogue and failed ones, is a risky supposition. Governments come and go. The government of Iran--when the U.S. helped the Shah to start a nuclear program--was a close ally which overnight became a dire enemy. I am not suggesting that India will follow the same course, but the notion that it can be relied upon to be a close U.S. ally has little to support it. For decades, India was much closer to Russia than to the U.S., and there are large and growing segments of the populations who, let's put it gently, do not love us.

In short, the Bush "legacy" has just been extended by adding one more mess to the pile, and the next administration is being saddled with one more problem that it will need to fix--only this one is more troubling than many of the others.

Amitai Etzioni is a professor of international relations at The George Washington University. For more discussion, see Security First (Yale 2007). To contact him, write comnet@gwu.edu. www.securityfirstbook.com

At Least Do No Harm

2008-09-26T17:17:50Z

The most important issue is coming up now, as our week is winding down, the one Michael Contarino raises in his last posting, namely regarding the role of morality in foreign policy. I could not agree more that the next president must work to restore the "moral credibility" of the United States.

]]> A good place to start is for the US to take the Hippocratic Oath: First Do No Harm.
The US should engage in war only if all other means of resolving a conflict have been exhausted, and if its vital interests are truly threatened. War--I know from personal experience--is neither heroic nor uplifting, but a killer. It undermines people's character, divides nations, and devastates others.

Second, the US should recognize that the less power it has--economic, military, cultural--the more important the morality of setting priorities becomes. It is a sort of lifeboat ethics. If we cannot save everyone and secure everything, we must carefully assess where we shall use up whatever resources--political capital included--we still have.

As I see it, morally speaking, our first duty (beyond attending to our vital interests) is not to force democratization on people but to stop genocides--all other good deeds pale in comparison. Sick people may be nurtured to good health; homeless people may be helped to build huts; hungry people, to be fed. However, dead people cannot be brought back to those who love them, and those who are killed are denied all other rights.

For more discussion see Part I of Security First (Yale 2007). Amitai Etzioni is a professor of international relations at The George Washington University. To contact him, write comnet@gwu.edu.
www.securityfirstbook.com

Security First in dealing with Russia

2008-09-25T16:00:34Z

Schwartz argues that America "always" puts freedom before peace [here]. Actually, as today's headlines show yet again, the Bush Administration is falling victim to its own propaganda. It is endangering vital U.S. interests in order to continue pretending that it is promoting democratization.

]]> We are learning today, according to reliable information provided by the European Union, that Iran will soon be ready to arm its missiles with nuclear warheads. We also are learning that North Korea is restarting its nuclear bomb-making program, and that Russia is going to stop cooperating with the United States on both fronts. As the Russian foreign minister put it, the U.S. cannot have it both ways--try to punish Russia for its invasion of Georgia, and then seek its cooperation in dealing with Iran's and North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

One may say, and Schwatz might well agree, that it is worth paying a hefty price for protecting the young democracy of Georgia from the claws of the Russian bear. However, what I am calling for is not some kind of Mephisto like deal, to give up our soul of support for democracy in order to advance our vital security interests. I am merely pointing out that we are undermining our vital interests (and those of our allies) -for propaganda's sake. The U.S. is not protecting Georgia from anything.

On the contrary, when the Bush Administration and Senator McCain declared that the "United States of America stands with the democratically elected government of Georgia" and that "Today, we are all Georgians," these pronouncements merely reinforced the growing realization that the U.S.--mired in the Middle East and in a deep economic crisis--is turning into a paper tiger. It can huff and puff, but short of nuclear war, it cannot bring anybody's house down. It cannot even take off the roof.

Moreover, the whole mess started when the Bush Administration, the master of the one-move chess play (lets make one move, and then think what to do next), sought to enroll Georgia in NATO. Membership in NATO implies military protection by all members for all members. The U.S., however, was neither willing nor able to make good on such a commitment, short of starting a nuclear war. So, it merely provoked Russia, endangered Georgia, and undermined our vital interests.

A Security First foreign policy does not mean giving up on promoting democratization by nonlethal means. It just means not fooling others and ourselves about what can be done by pronouncements and even sanctions (which nations do not enforce) and attending first to our most vital interests: stopping rouge states, failing states, and terrorists from developing--or keeping-- nuclear arms.

Amitai Etzioni is Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University and author of Security First (Yale, 2007) He can be contacted at comnet@gwu.edu. www.securityfirstbook.com

Is Afghanistan becoming a narco-terrorist state?

2008-09-25T13:32:33Z

In his response to my original post in this series, Stephen Schwartz objects to my application of the term "narco-terrorism state" to Afghanistan. He claims that I either "misuse the term" or else "libel the government of Hamid Karzai." I let the facts speak for themselves.

]]> Afghanistan now supplies 93% of the world's heroin. The drug trade now amounts to about one half of Afghanistan's GDP--some $4 billion a year. This, after dramatic increases in production in 2006 and 2007.

A considerable chunk of this drug money is being funneled into the very groups that continue to wage an insurgency against the U.S. and Afghan national forces. In a July 2008 report, former U.S. Drug Czar and Retired Four-Star General Barry McCaffrey finds that drug production and export in Afghanistan has become the main source of funding for Taliban and al Qaeda. McCaffrey refers to Afghanistan as a "narco-state" in the report and calls on the international community to either eradicate the drug crop or risk losing the battle against insurgents.

Thomas Schewich, who served as the State Department's top counternarcotics official, shows that the lack of an effective drug-eradication policy which has allowed production and profits to soar over the last several years is not a sign of incompetence, but rather the product of a corrupt Afghani government with close ties to the drug trade. In his July 27, 2008 New York Times Magazine article, Schewich shows how the influence of the drug trade has infiltrated all levels of the Afghani government, all the way up to President Hamid Karzai.

Karzai's "roots and power base" are in wealthier areas of the Pashtun south, Schewich explains, where much of the opium is produced. A September 2007 Kabul Weekly article emphasizes this point: "More than 95 percent of the residents of...the poppy growing provinces--voted for President Karzai." As a result, Karzai is bound to serve the interests of the drug-trade, or else risk getting voted out of power.

As Schewich shows, Karzai has been "playing us like a fiddle" by preaching anti-drug messages on the one hand, but winking and serving the interests of his drug-dependent constituency. For instance, Schewich explains Karzai's successful opposition to a proposed comprehensive aerial crop-eradication program in a September 2007 speech:

"[Karzai] made antidrug statements at the beginning of the speech, but then lashed out at the international community for wanting to spray his people's crops...He got a wild ovation. Not surprising since so many in the room were closely tied to the narcotics trade. Sure, Karzai had Taliban enemies who profited from drugs, but he had even more supporters who did."

Karzai's loyalty to the drug-world is also on display in his record of selecting numerous known drug traffickers for government positions. To head his anticorruption commission, for instance, Karzai appointed a convicted heroin dealer, Izzatulla Wasifi.

The drug trade in Afghanistan is both fuelling the insurgency and corrupting the government--both on a very large scale. If that's not a "narco-terrorist state," what is?

(More to come about the other, equally fallacious, arguments Mr. Schwartz casts about. As to other comments I received, I will answer all those who will own up to their statements and stop hiding behind their aliases.)

I am indebted to Alex Platt for helping to prepare this statement.

Amitai Etzioni is Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University and author of Security First (Yale 2007) www.securityfirstbook.com

Democratization: Realistic Idealism

2008-09-24T19:25:59Z

Michael Contarino correctly points out that in discussing democracy promotion, two issues can become entangled. One is what means should be employed. As I stated before, I am all in favor of democracy building by non-lethal means, via education, cultural exchanges, leadership training, fostering civil society projects, and much more. I do have an issue with using cruise missiles, bombers, and the Marines to build democracy.

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First of all, I agree with Thomas Carothers, author of Aiding Democracy Abroad, who writes, "The idea that there's a small democracy inside every society waiting to be released just isn't true." And F. Gregory Gause III writes in his article, "Can Democracy Stop Terrorism?," that the "confidence that Washington has in its ability to predict, and even direct, the course of politics in other countries" is "unjustified."

The great difficulties that the United States and its allies are encountering in democratizing Afghanistan and Iraq are but new entries in a long list of failures. In an often cited 2003 policy brief entitled "Lessons from the Past: The American Record on Nation Building," prepared for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Minxin Pei and Sara Kasper examine U.S. attempts at forced democratization during the twentieth century. Pei and Kasper identify the following sixteen attempts at nation-building: in Cuba (1898-1902); in Panama (1903-36); in Cuba a second time (1906-09); Nicaragua (1909-33); Haiti (1915-34); Cuba a third time (1917-22); the Dominican Republic (1916-24); West Germany (1945-49); Japan (1945-52); the Dominican Republic a second time (1965-66); Cambodia (1970-73); South Vietnam (1964-73); Grenada (1983); Panama a second time (1989); Haiti a second time (1994-96); and Afghanistan (2001-present).

Of these efforts, eleven flatly failed to establish a functioning democracy, while Afghanistan remains inconclusive and problematic. Only four of sixteen succeeded: West Germany, Japan, Grenada, and Panama (in 1989). Grenada, however, is a very small island, and the population of Panama is under 3 million. West Germany and Japan thus constitute the only major examples of successful democratization by the United States in large, complex societies. In the cases of Germany and Japan, important factors were present which made successful democratization there possible, factors not available in the other nations under study--including a very high level of education, a sizeable middle class, a relatively high per capita income, and ethnic homogeneity, among others.

Second, I have grave doubts about killing large number of people in order to free them. If they want to live up to the call "give me liberty or give me death," that should be their choice.

Moreover, the precept that only democracies are reliable partners in peace is a misleading one. Russia appears on most of the lists of the budding or new democracies that the Neocons keep brandishing. This did not prevent Russia from attacking Georgia. Nor did the state of democracy in India and Pakistan prevent conflict in 1999. Ditto Israel and Lebanon in 2005.

Finally, I could not agree more with Michael Contarino on a point he helped Governor Richardson make during his election campaign--that realists need not be anti-moralists. In effect, as I see it, unrealistic pursuit of fine ideals weakens them by undermining the credibility of those who could promote them if they pursued a more realistic campaign. Such unrealistic strategies also squander scarce resources that could be used to do much good--and serve our narrow interests--if they were more realistically applied. In short, that which is right and that which is mighty need to be combined.

Amitai Etzioni is a professor of international relations at The George Washington University. For more discussion, see Security First (Yale 2007). To contact him, write comnet@gwu.edu.
www.securityfirstbook.com

On Working With the Tribes

2008-09-24T17:33:34Z

I am delighted to learn from one of the great specialists in the field, Shuja Nawaz, who is just back from the tribal areas in Pakistan next to the border with Afghanistan.

]]> His on-the-spot observations are supported by a report published in the last issue of the Economist. The seven tribes at issue are not all of one kind. Some are much more willing to work against foreign fighters than others. All seek economic support for the development of roads, schools, and clinics. To reiterate, a good part of the turn about in Iraq came after the US started working with the various tribes, especially the Sunnis. The liberation of Afghanistan was achieved by working with an alliance of tribes, called the Northern Alliance. Now those who seek to protect both Pakistan and Afghanistan from Al Qaeda and the Taliban need to find ways to work with at least some of the tribes next to the border. It's all in Sociology 101.

For Non-Lethal Democratization

2008-09-23T14:13:12Z

The critical phrase in Professor Piki Ish-Shalom's valuable posting is "That does not mean that we need to force democracy at gun point." He is surely right that the Neocons gave democracy promotion a bad name. I could not agree more that the ideal of democratization should not be abandoned. The problem, as his key sentence helps us to remember, is that the language traps us, because the phrase "democracy promotion" covers both coerced democratization (which is what regime change means, at least in the Neocon world) and non-lethal support of democratization.

I, like Professor Piki Ish-Shalom, am all in favor of promoting democracy by educational, persuasive means, and indicated how this may be done in Security First. It is the violent type of promotion that I object to.

]]> We should not help cause hundreds of thousands of casualties in order to topple a regime--especially when we have no way to determine what will replace it.

Note that now, success in Iraq is on all lips because the level of violence is down. Most agree that the pacification is fragile, but it may hold. However, anyone who expects Iraq to be a democracy should not hold their breath. At best we shall have a Putin-like authoritarian regime, which is very likely to be anti-American, may well ally itself with Iran, and may invite French and Russian oil companies to play a key role in the Iraqi economy. Is this worth dieing for?

Afghanistan: The Right War?

2008-09-22T17:19:07Z

We are told all too often that the invasion of Iraq was the wrong war but that the war in Afghanistan is the right one. Indeed, both presidential candidates favor a surge of troops in Afghanistan. However, the attempt to impose a regime change on Afghanistan is failing, all the while causing more and more Afghan, American, and other casualties.

The main reason is that a conventional army is no match for guerrilla forces, especially when they can rely on a safe haven right across the border. The Taliban dress like civilians, are supplied by civilians, and are housed in civilian homes. When the U.S. attacks them, it inevitably ends up killing civilians, including women and children. The notion that if the U.S. used more ground forces, and less planes and artillery, there would be fewer casualties is a valid one--as far as the Afghans are concerned. But many more Americans and allied troops are going to be lost this way. Using airpower undermines the support of the war by the Afghans; using ground troops undermines the support of the war by America's allies, and soon--by Americans.

]]> Moreover, given that the Pakistani government cannot control the tribal areas that border Afghanistan and which provide a haven for the Taliban, the U.S. is increasingly embroiled in a third war in Pakistan. This engagement is causing still more civilian causalities. It further antagonizes Pakistan, a nation that has nuclear bombs that can be acquired by terrorists, our greatest security nightmare.

The number one lesson from Iraq is that the U.S. must work with local tribes and their militias. In Iraq, this meant working particularly with the Sunnis and the Kurds, but also with various Shia groups. It involved dealing directly with the tribal chiefs or sheiks, and not some elected official in Bagdad. The relative success also entailed allowing the Iraqi forces to carry more of the burden, whether they were fully prepared or not, and granting them various kinds of American help -- in communications, transportation, intelligence, and even fire power - when asked for.

In Afghanistan, the US has been trying to impose a national government and remove tribal chiefs, who command strong and sizable local militias. The time has come to realize that Afghanistan is, even more than Iraq, a tribal society composed of different ethnic groups, each dominating one part of the country. These groups and their troops were the forces that liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban in the first place (remember the Northern Alliance? ). Such tribes are best now called upon to take responsibility for various parts of the country--with American support when asked for.

The result will not be the picture perfect prosperous democracy that Neocons have been dreaming about. It is not in the cards anyhow. Indeed, as it is, the Afghan government is becoming ever more corrupt, increasingly controlled by opium exporting mafias and turning into a new nacro-terrorism state. However, a coalition of the major tribes would go a long way toward stabilizing the country. Casualties would decline, especially among civilians, as it is much easier for the locals to tell who is who. And these tribes will understand that if their country again provides a haven for terrorists, they will face more rounds of bombings and missile attacks. The rest they will have to duke out with each other, as they have been doing since the beginning of history.

All this may seem like a minimalist agenda, but if one recalls the alternatives--especially in terms of the number of killed children and women, as well as some of our own youngsters--one realizes that this is about as good as it is going to get for now.

Amitai Etzioni is a professor of international relations at The George Washington University. For more discussion, see Security First (Yale 2007). To contact him, write comnet@gwu.edu.

www.securityfirstbook.com

"The Social Animal" Revisited

2008-09-17T19:46:46Z

In his September 12th column in the New York Times, David Brooks put the communitarian thesis into better chosen, fewer words than any of his predecessors. His excellent overview follows very closely on the key points and even the text of the Communitarian Platform (link) and The Spirit of Community.

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Brooks writes that the "...individualist description of human nature seems to be wrong. Over the past 30 years, there has been a tide of research in many fields, all underlining one old truth -- that we are intensely social creatures, deeply interconnected with one another and the idea of the lone individual rationally and willfully steering his own life course is often an illusion."

Brooks lists the findings of many social sciences, stating: "Psychologists have shown that we are organized by our attachments. Sociologists have shown the power of social networks to affect individual behavior."

Brooks concludes that "[w]hat emerges is not a picture of self-creating individuals gloriously free from one another, but of autonomous creatures deeply interconnected with one another."

And finally "That language of community, institutions and social fabric has been lost, and now we hear only distant echoes -- when social conservatives talk about family bonds or when John McCain talks at a forum about national service."

Brooks, who is entrusted with being the conservative voice in the New York Times, calls for the GOP to embrace the communitarian message. He writes that Republicans are " ...probably going to have to follow the route the British Conservatives have already trod and project a conservatism that emphasizes society as well as individuals, security as well as freedom, a social revival and not just an economic one and the community as opposed to the state."

However, no one owns the message. Democrats--Obama more than any--have already made the rebuilding of community their mantra. The GOP is welcome to join.

Please review the communitarian platform (here), compare notes, and considering endorsing it. For more discussion see The Spirit of Community and The New Golden Rule. To contact Amitai Etzioni, write comnet@gwu.edu

How Terrorism Ends....

2008-09-16T21:30:35Z

The RAND Corporation dug into its own funds to produce an unusual report. It seeks to determine how terrorists groups end. It found that in the best cases, they turn into political parties (like the Resistencia Nacional Mozambicana in Mozambique did). When force must be used to end terrorism, a combination of policing and use of intelligence is much more effective than committing conventional armies. The RAND report provides more ammunition to those who reject the metaphor of a "war" against terrorism and all that it evokes. At the same time the report points out that Al Qaeda is especially unlikely to agree to a political settlement, given its ambitions, goals, and religious fundamentalism. To learn more, go here.

]]> Because the report draws mainly on data about groups that functioned in countries in which they had no realistic chance of gaining control of nuclear weapons, such as Columbia and El Salvador, the report does not deal with what practically all experts consider by far the greatest threat to security, what is referred to as massive or catastrophic terrorism-- by those who employ nuclear weapons.

This grave threat is directly tied to the question of what is the best way to curb terrorism. Some hold that terrorists should be treated like other criminals. However, the criminal system focuses on prosecution. That is, bringing offenders to trial and deterring future crime by punishing those that have already committed crimes. In contrast, to counter terrorism, prevention is much more important. We seek to ensure that such attacks will not occur, rather than go after the perpetrators after the fact. Moreover, given that many of them commit suicide during their attacks, they fear not the prosecution that might follow, as they will be unavailable to face trial.

Last but not least, in the criminal justice system those charged with a crime have a right to face those who bear witness against them, and the state must disclose to the defense all the relevant information it has. This would mean, for instance, that if the US found a collaborator or planted an agent among bin Laden's close associates--he or she would have to be appear in court! And if the US succeeded in planting a microphone in Iran's command and control center, this source would have to be disclosed.

Our mind is big enough to accommodate more than two options. The image of a war against terrorism is clearly a wrong one, if only because the other side will not abide by the few rules that wars have, especially wearing a uniform or some other insignia so one can tell fighters from civilians. (One should though note that Bob Woodward's new book, The War Within, shows that what is working in Iraq is a combination of better methods of collecting intelligence and better use of special and conventional forces--that is better use of the military.) Policing is the wrong model for reasons just indicated. The RAND report uses the term counterterrorism to imply a third approach. As I see it, a third approach would grant terrorists basic human rights (e.g. they cannot be tortured, and they cannot be held indefinitely without being charged) but not the full list of rights a citizen of the United States (or whatever nation is involved) commands. Thus, terrorists should be required to choose a lawyer from among those that have security clearances. They will not be able to see sources and methods, and can be held for longer than 48 hours--say 21 days--before they have to be charged, to allow time to roll up their cells, trace their phone calls, and decipher their computer files.

Finally, we need another RAND report on the best ways to win over the sympathizers of the terrorists, on which they draw for funding, supplies, and intelligence. In that sense, the fight against Al Qaeda is an ideological confrontation. The best way to proceed is to ally ourselves with the majority of Muslims who abhor violence, who make reliable Partners in Peace, against the violent minority. [for more on this point, go here]

All in all, thanks is due to RAND (and especially to Seth G. Jones and Martin C. Libicki, the authors of the report) for a work that lifts the deliberations about how to end terrorism to a new level. It is at this level that we must find new ways to fight terrorism.

Amitai Etzioni is Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University and author of Security First (Yale 2007). www.securityfirstbook.com email: comnet@gwu.edu

Cost-benefit foreign policy?

2008-09-12T20:51:00Z

One might disregard that the New York Times published a savage review of a well-meaning book. However, one cannot ignore -- especially as we about to face a changing of the guards -- a call for a foreign policy that ignores moral considerations and is built on costs and benefits. Killing people is very often much more efficient than helping them build a life for themselves, but helping people is clearly the right course, and happens to be what the book at issue calls for.

]]> The book is A Path Out of the Desert by Kenneth M Pollack, the head of research of the center for Middle East policy at Brookings. Granted, Pollack's record is not without blemishes. His previous book made a case for invading Iraq, which by now most agree was at best the right war in the wrong country. And his current book is sociologically naïve to the nth degree. Pollack believes that a sort of Marshal Plan for the Middle East could provide jobs, education, and political reforms for the region, which in turn would drain the swamp in which terrorism breeds. However, the record shows that the conditions in the Middle East make such efforts much more difficult to advance than they were in Germany and Japan after WWII. In addition, terrorists and their supporters are more numerous in nations that have a higher level of income and education than in those with low ones. I do believe that we should provide help to nations for humanitarian reasons, although the Middle East is swimming in oil revenue and hardly needs our cash. However, to expect that such foreign aid will stop terrorism is simply a profoundly mistaken notion.

None of this, however, justifies the kind of abusive barrages Max Rodenbeck, a reporter for The Economist, unleashes on the book and on its author. Among the nicest things Rodenbeck has to say about the book is that it's full of errors and "outdated generalizations," and that it's "disingenuous" and offers false or misleading assertions. Pollack is said to have "a shaky grasp of history"; he is "oddly unaware of history's motivating forces," and makes "absurdly cockeyed assertions."

Only in the last lines of the review does Max Rodenbeck himself become clear about that which troubles him--what he labels the United States' "strategically burdensome" support of Israel which is "driven by the passion of several domestic constituencies" rather then "cold cost-benefit geopolitics." Even if one accepts for a moment the notion that there is such a thing as "cold cost-benefit" foreign policy, it would suggest that abandoning Israel, after decades of close alliance, would undermine the already shaken confidence of whatever allies the US has left. The US just demonstrated in Georgia how meaningless its declarations of support are. The Bush Administration repeatedly declared that "we shall stand with Georgia" but in effect has shown itself to be powerless to do anything meaningful about protecting it. (I am not arguing that the US should have rushed to Georgia's defense, only that it should not promise support which it cannot back up with action). If Israel would be left to the same fate, it is hard to see that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Taiwan, or any other nation would still consider the US a viable ally.

More profoundly, public life at home and overseas cannot be disassociated from moral considerations. People are not willing to die for whatever cost-benefit analyses determine should be paid for. They are willing to sacrifice their lives for the promotion of human rights and democratic freedoms, to stop an ethnic cleansing in Kosovo because it is morally reprehensible, even if it does not have oil or serve any other strategic interest of the US. The US saved Europe from the Nazis at huge human costs, although it could quite readily have retreated behind its borders. I am not saying that nations do not or should not pay mind to their narrowly defined interests. I am merely suggesting, as have many others, that in this day and age doing what is right also plays a key role in shaping a nation's foreign policy. Anybody who does not understand this most basic fact of contemporary international life should not call others ignorant.

***
Micro-blogging
Rodenbeck is not alone. Don Wycliff refers, in the May 23, 2008 issue of Commonweal, to a "daily diet of images of [Israeli] soldiers shooting at [Palestinian] rock-throwers and of homes being bulldozed." Actually such confrontations have become extremely rare. Better yet, Hamas has stopped attacking Israel with missiles for now and Israel has ceased killing militants in Gaza.

Edited to add:
In response to the comment by destor23, "...Etzioni never deigns to answers his critics here. The professor is here to lecture": I would be happy to respond to all serious criticisms from all those who will give up their aliases and own up to what they are saying -- just the way I do.

The fault line: within each civilization

2008-08-12T15:19:30Z

These days, there are few who still agree with Sir Bernard Lewis, Samuel Huntington, and those others who treat all Muslims as if they were of one violent sect; who treat Islam as an inherently intolerant belief system. As Huntington once put it, "Some Westerners...have argued that the West does not have a problem with Islam but only with violent Islamist extremists. Fourteen hundred years of history demonstrate otherwise..." The question, however, still stands: what is the way to characterize Muslim beliefs and those who hold them? At issue is finding the best way for the West to approach Islam.

]]> As I see it there is no clash of civilizations but a clash within each civilization; namely, between the moderate people who reject violence (from terrorism against outsiders to imposing their beliefs on their own people) and those who legitimate it. In Christianity, it is the division between those who see Christ as a prince of peace and those who see him as the sword. In Judaism, between rabbis who interpret "an eye for and eye" as a call for compensation and the Jews who interpret the text as a call for revenge. It is a division equally found in secular belief systems, for instance within Socialism between Fabians and Stalinists.

Islam is no different; there are Muslims who see Jihad as a spiritual journey of self development, and those who view it as a war on all infidels. (It takes me fifty pages to fully document this point in my book Security First). However, it is important to note that many of these religious and politically moderate Muslims do not favor the full plethora of human rights and Westminster democracy. Still, they can and do serve as reliable partners in peace, working against terrorism and for curbing the spread of nuclear weapons. In the words of Barak Obama, "If we could win a battle of ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast majority of Muslims who reject the extremism that leads to hate instead of hope." You will find such Muslims in Turkey, as the majority party (the Justice and Development Party); in Morocco (the Party of Justice and Development); they are the majority of the citizens of Indonesia, Bangladesh and many other Muslims countries.

The May 2008 issue of The Cambridge Review of International Affairs (http://www.cria.org.uk/) includes an exchange by prominent scholars of religion on this thesis: that the majority of Muslims are 'illiberal moderates'--opposed to violence and terrorism, but not necessarily in favor of a secular, liberal democracy--and that the major clash is within each civilization between the warriors and the preachers rather than among civilizations. Many important questions are raised in this exchange, some of which follow:

Some dispute the argument that all religions are equally susceptible to moderate and immoderate interpretations. For instance, Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University Of Chicago writes: "...in the Christian just war tradition, there are criteria through which one must go--barriers, in effect, to the deployment of armed force--you have to justify force; in Islam, you must search for ways to refrain from force."

I am not fully convinced that all of Christianity does not legitimate violence. I will not rehash the complicated question of the role the Church played in Nazi Germany and during various communist regimes, and look merely at the role of the Church during the military dictatorships in Argentina and Chile. Here, the Church unquestionably legitimated the torture, execution and 'disappearances' of hundreds of socialists, liberals, and others because it considered the war against communism to be a holy one.

Also, I am particularly concerned by any implications that 'Islam' is monolithic, subject to one overarching interpretation as being in favor of violence.

Others raise questions about the justification, stability and longevity of any alliances with 'illiberal moderates,' given that there is a lack of fundamental agreement on basic moral principles. Mohammad Fadel of the University of Toronto writes that the only way to justify supporting 'illiberal moderates' is the prospect that, by doing so their views "evolve from merely formal democratic commitments to more principled ones."

I agree with Professor Fadel that in the longer run, merely formal commitments from 'illiberal moderates' will not do. The history of the EU illustrates this point. It was initially founded to ensure that there would be no furthermore wars between Germany and France, but eventually moved to much higher levels of transnational integration. The EU is now facing serious problems in part because, although it formed shared institutions, laws, and regulations, it failed to form a thick enough set of shared values to legitimate these state-like developments and to provide a normative underpinning for their policies involved.

We should neither continue to support authoritarian regimes (such as in Saudi Arabia) nor should we pursue a policy of externally-imposed regime change. We should, as Fadel suggests, favor and support internal changes especially by reformist forces. But, one must keep in mind--if one begins political reforms with free elections, these non-moderate groups are likely to win, leading to a situation where there is one person, one vote, but for one time only. Hence free elections are best preceded by other steps such as rewriting the constitution, freeing of the press, allowing rival parties, and maybe some measure of economic development.