Iran Uncertain About Turkey

Perhaps the various parties to the Iranian nuclear dispute have begun to figure out by themselves the seriousness of the issue and the superficiality of much of their own behavior, or perhaps they read yesterday’s blog. [Truth in advertising: neither Hillary nor Ali Larijani has personally communicated with me on the issue.] I said yesterday that Tehran had “fumbled the ball” by rushing to pour cold water on the idea of a Turkish role in the transfer of uranium to and from Iran, and I stand by that assessment. But a fumble is not the ball game. Whatever the reason, suddenly today both Washington and Tehran appear grudgingly to be behaving more thoughtfully.

In an effort to make up for the shortsighted and amateurish remark by Secretary of State Clinton that the U.S. would make no further changes (as though Washington had been bending over backwards to be understanding!), U.S. Ambassador to the IAEA Glyn Davies took a step back from the confrontational cliff, calmly stating:

We want to give some space to Iran to work through this. It’s a tough issue for them. We’re looking for an early, positive response.

At the same time, reports of Iran’s rejection of a Turkish role notwithstanding, Iranian and Turkish officials were discussing the possibility. In February 2006, when Erdogan supported Iran’s right to peaceful use of nuclear technology but in the context of firmly opposing an Iranian nuclear bomb, Iran suddenly found itself unable to locate sufficient gas to meet its export commitments. Whether or not Iran manages its relations with Turkey more smoothly this time remains to be seen. Erdogan’s tone is more conciliatory now, but Bilkent professor Mustafa Kibaroglu’s assessment that Turkey would oppose Iran having nuclear arms presumably remains the case. Subsequent to that apparent bit of Iranian blackmail, Istanbul reported that both sides requested Turkish help in achieving a compromise.

Turkish-Iranian relations are, at the moment, heavily coated in sugar, but the potential for the relationship to turn overtly competitive has hardly been missed by commentators. As long as Turkey remained in Washington’s shadow, the idea could go nowhere, but now Turkey is asserting a regional leadership role with an innovative diplomacy that is far ahead of anything seen out of Washington in the past and even makes Obama look slow and awkward. Yet Turkey’s diplomacy also looks nothing like the confrontational attitude so popular in both Iran and Israel, offering a vision dramatically different from that of any other major regional player. So…will Tehran view this as a challenge or an opportunity?

Hard of Hearing

The leader of the Israeli war party is finally granted access to the man elected to bring “change.”

The Reception.

As Haaretz put it:

The White House wanted Netanyahu to sweat before being granted an audience with the president, and wanted everyone to see him perspire.

The delays in finding a time to meet, and pushing it to a late hour - after the news programs on Israeli television - make Netanyahu look as if Obama threw him a bone. In such circumstances, it is no longer important what will be said at the meeting, and the extent to which there will be an attempt to present it as an achievement. The prime minister of Israel was humiliated before all.

The Context.

For a little context, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad summarized Israel’s situation as follows:

“The source of the problem is the Israeli invasion of others’ land. If there is an invasion, people react. Therefore, the thing to do is to withdraw from the occupied land and sign a peace treaty.”

There is one clear message that Israel should understand, al-Assad said: “Only peace can protect the Israelis. If they believe they are defenseless, it is not war, but peace that can protect them. The experiences in Lebanon and Gaza showed them that they cannot reach a conclusion by military means and moreover, that these means will drag them to failure.”

A few days ago British Foreign Secretary David Milibrand put it like this:

"Settlements are illegal in our view and an obstacle to peace settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem," Miliband told a news conference after talks with King Abdullah II.

"The settlements challenge the heart of... a Palestinian state."

The Reality on the Ground.

In case you have overlooked the situation on the ground, consider this Haaretz commentary:

I thought they would feel right at home in the alleys of Balata refugee camp, the Casbah and the Hawara checkpoint. But they said there is no comparison: for them the Israeli occupation regime is worse than anything they knew under apartheid. This week, 21 human rights activists from South Africa visited Israel. Among them were members of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress; at least one of them took part in the armed struggle and at least two were jailed. There were two South African Supreme Court judges, a former deputy minister, members of Parliament, attorneys, writers and journalists. Blacks and whites, about half of them Jews who today are in conflict with attitudes of the conservative Jewish community in their country.

Tehran Fumbles Diplomatic Ball With Turkey Over Nukes

Following up instantly on my thought about Turkey as a neutral guarantor of everyone’s honesty in the delicate negotiations over Western reprocessing of Iranian uranium, El Baradei has proposed the idea only to have Iranian media immediately throw cold water on it, leaving Erdogan just a bit humiliated. That is no way to treat a new friend.

IAEA chief El Baradei’s trial balloon about Turkey temporarily guarding prospective Iranian uranium in transit to Europe for further enrichment provides the first test of Turkey’s bold initiative to broker a more peaceful Mideast. Iran’s initial abruptly rejectionist response suggests that Turkey is going to have a tough time making any progress.

The semi-official Iranian PressTV news service quoted an “anonymous” source as coldly observing:

It seems the IAEA chief is trying to take advantage of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Turkey to gain media coverage on a closed issue.

If that represents the official Tehran line, it shows a degree of self-defeating narrowmindedness that matches any of the diplomatic mistakes of its Western adversaries. Whatever Tehran’s level of trust in Istanbul, it behooves Tehran to treat the idea with public politeness. Is Ahmadinejad taking this opportunity to slap Erdogan in the face as he arrives for the big Islamic summit, or is this a further example of disarray in the now highly-factionalized Iranian decision-making process on this hotly debated issue?

Alaeddin Boroujerdi, Parliament National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Chief, suggested some flexibility in Iran’s approach, though without reference to Turkey:

If we cannot buy 20 percent enriched uranium to supply Tehran’s reactor fuel, we could accept exchange in limited amount provided that we receive 20 percent enriched uranium in advance.

A detailed Tehran Times review of the uranium exchange issue emphasized that Tehran was still considering its response, with its distrust of the West being the obstacle. Meanwhile, Ali Larijani, a key decisionmaker on the issue, is in Najaf consulting with Ayatolla Sistani.

Turkish leaders have been pouring into Iraq in recent days. What might Sistani’s views on the nuclear crisis be? Surely the nightmare of a temporary nuclear storage facility in Iraq is not crossing anyone’s mind!

As long as Tehran conducts its own “arrogant” diplomacy, to use a word of which it is fond, giving Istanbul nothing in return for its efforts, Israeli right wingers will have no incentive to compromise, Turkey will be left out in the cold, and Iran will remain in Western crosshairs.

Iran has just failed a small test of its sincerity and unnecessarily made Erdogan look bad. Perhaps its official response will be more thoughtful, but at the moment Netanyahu and Lieberman must be laughing over their morning coffee.

_______________________

Iran Must Judge

Iranian decision-makers must judge two issues to determine how to preserve Iranian national security:

1. Can they trust the West enough to compromise?
2. Would Israel actually launch an unprovoked nuclear war of aggression?

Leaving aside all the many issues of psychology, misinformation, cultural blinders, and factional politics, let’s just look at some facts that Iran must consider.

Can Iran Trust the West?

• Washington is already conducting a highly public economic war against Iran with its sanctions.

• Washington has refused further compromise even though negotiations are continuing.

• Washington has warned that its patience is limited.

Might Israel Start a War?

• Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister has just stated that Israel is not bluffing in threatening to start a war.

• Western media report that Israel is in the midst of a war of murder to undermine Iran’s nuclear research; Israeli media coverage of these reports does nothing to undermine confidence in their veracity.

• The Jerusalem Post, in its coverage of the issue, quoted right wing extremist John Bolton as noting that Israel has “done so in the past,” noting that Israel “undertook the very important operation, in September 2007, to destroy the North Korean nuclear reactor in Syria.” The Post also referred to a recent Israeli book claiming that Israel was sabotaging Iranian research.

To trust an opponent that is refusing to compromise, warning that it is capable of starting a war, already conducting an economic war, and allegedly also already conducting a war of sabotage and murder would take a lot of faith. This leaves Tehran in a serious predicament: if Tehran cannot trust the West to compromise but must take seriously Western threats of attack, then what choice does Tehran have? It can rationally neither compromise nor continue its defiance!

General Jim Jones to Israel: "Do Something"

If the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is at the "epicenter" of all America's global problems, then it stands to reason that something must be done about it. Is Israel listening?

National Security Advisor General James Jones recently stated that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the “epicenter” of America’s problems worldwide. This remark, not only highly insightful for a top Washington policy advisor but also—in the context of the spineless Washington response to the Goldstone Report—was stunningly politically incorrect. If the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is at the epicenter of all America’s problems, then it is incumbent upon our Israeli ally to allow Palestinians their freedom. No friend of the world’s only superpower could seriously contemplate aggravating the full range of the superpower’s global responsibilities for the sake of its own narrow political advantage, nor could it rationally imagine that a superpower worth its salt would seriously contemplate allowing a remote and tiny client state to behave so abusively.

Americans, not to mention Israelis, should think carefully about Jones’ remark. He did not say the Palestine conflict was the most important problem but the "epicenter." Of course, the disintegration of Pakistan or a nuclear attack on Iran would be a more serious problem per se, but neither is at the center of the whole Western conflict with Islam. Only the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has that particular characteristic of inflaming everyone's passions and striking everyone as egregiously immoral.

Washington’s support for Israeli repression of the Palestinian people is a political cancer infecting every global issue that touches any Muslim, any minority, any third world group, anyone who cares about human rights. General Jones has sent a clear signal that the Goldstone Report needs to be taken seriously and that it is time for Israel to think about the global implications of its misbehavior.

Israeli Mis(?) Calculation on Iran & Turkey

By pushing for total military dominance over the Mideast and the imposition on other states of rules it can openly ignore, Israel is provoking the emergence of a new Mideast strategic triangle composed of Israel, Iran, and Turkey. Is Israel making an historic miscalculation?

Let us assume that the whole Western world is diligently trying to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue in a way that will bring peace and stability to the Mideast. (Do not laugh in my face…just go quietly to the kitchen, make some coffee, and laugh by yourself.) It is just an assumption, OK? A conversation has to start with something, so we will start with this assumption.

Now, take a look at Israel’s reaction during the delicate semi-public two-level negotiations that have been taking place 1) between Iran and the West, 2) among the many players in Iran’s highly fractured and unstable domestic political process.

One might assume that Israel, concerned as it claims to be, about the possibility of a future Iranian-Israeli nuclear conflict, would hold its breath publicly while quietly reassuring its (patrons? clients?) in Washington that it will support any reasonable compromise to defend its security.

Nope, in the midst of the delicate back-and-fro, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak sabotages the negotiations by publicly demanding that Iran give up its legal right under international law to refine uranium for civilian purposes! This is the act of an official intent on preventing agreement that would stand in the way of complete and unilateral Iranian surrender to Israeli military dominance of the Mideast. So much for any dreams Obama may have had of making his own decisions about U.S. foreign policy.

A few days later, after the issue had, with Barak’s encouragement, become a domestic Iranian hot potato causing Iran to back off, Netanyahu came out publicly in support, perhaps hoping that Israel will not be blamed by the West for screwing the deal if it indeed falls through.

Given the enormous military superiority of nuclear Israel (a fact admitted by Olmert, Carter, and Gates) over non-nuclear Iran, one might at first glance find Israeli military dominance over the Mideast a rational objective on the part of Israel, but this absolute refusal by Israel to countenance a compromise that would permit Iran to play a normal role in Mideast affairs or be treated by anything remotely resembling a common set of rules looks rather less rational in the light of Turkey’s recent behavior.

And Israel appears determined to provoke Turkey into moving away. The viciousness of both Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon and its destruction of Gaza in December 2008, accentuated by its refusal to accept any criticism of its behavior, were hard enough for Turkish leaders to stomach. Then, Israel's rejection of Turkish efforts to broker an Israeli-Syrian compromise were a direct slap in Istanbul's face.

Although NATO member Turkey has been trying for years to “join the West” and has traditionally been a close military ally of Israel, it appears that the type of total military dominance over the Mideast that Israeli officials evidently aspire to is, for Turkey’s new moderate but independent-minded leaders, going a step too far.

There would, very simply, be no room whatsoever for Turkish independence or flexibility in the Mideast envisioned by Israeli leaders.

The Mideast Israeli leaders want would be tightly hierarchical. Two sets of rules governing possession of nuclear arms and technology, even for peaceful purposes, would exist – one for Israel and one for everyone else. In addition, Israel would have the right to do to its enemies what it did to Gaza in December 2008 and what it did to Lebanon in 2006. Israel, for example, would have the right to define the type of arms its neighbors could possess, a right it has already asserted regarding the state of Lebanon. Not only non-state actors like Hezbollah but states that violated Israel’s injunctions would be open to attack. Interstate transfer of arms as well would be open to Israel attack.

Turkey evidently foresees such a Mideast as a rather suffocating place in which to catch one’s political breath.

Israel may have succeeded in scuttling the compromise so laboriously worked out by the U.S., Russia, France, Germany, etc. with Iran, but it has already begun paying the price. First, obviously, Iran still has its uranium, despite clear indications in recent days that sincere efforts to negotiate a reasonable compromise (e.g., multiple shipments to trusted third countries, e.g., Turkey, of Iran’s low-grade uranium with multiple return shipments of Western research-grade uranium to establish mutual trust) might very easily produce an agreement the West could live with. Second, the evident Turkish feeling over the past year that Israel is creating an uncomfortable Mideast has been strengthened. This is undoubtedly not the last payment Israel will have to pay for its ambitions. Indeed, the next may be the reemergence of Russia as a major Mideast player, starting with Russian arms shipments to enable Lebanon to defend itself against Israeli aggression.

Imperial overreach in the Mideast over the past decade has opened the door to the emergence of Iran as a regional power. Iran has captured the world’s attention, making itself simultaneously the major adversary of Washington and an invaluable potential partner, needed to resolve both the Iraqi and Afghan quagmires. Iran has achieved the dream of decades in gaining its current level of influence over Iraq, as well.

Now, mini-imperial overreach threatens to provoke a second realignment by pushing Turkey out of Israel’s orbit, thus facilitating its own emergence as a regional power. Turkey of course has whatever resources it has, regardless of the diplomatic shifts, but Turkey’s resources—military, geographic, cultural--are considerable. The change is in the degree to which Turkey is now becoming willing to make use of those resources to assert a position of regional leadership. Given the tense tug-of-war between Israel and Iran in the broader context of the erosion of the U.S. regional military position, Turkey’s repositioning may have even more significance than even its respectable weight would merit.

"America-Replacement" Strategy for Afghanistan: A Simple Plan

In the context of the three basic principles for resolving the Afghan conflict that I discussed earlier, here's an implementation strategy:

1. Washington announces that it will vacate any region of Afghanistan that is either - A. peaceful and drug-free or B. guarded by an international force, preferably from Muslim societies
2. the international force will have two duties - A. preventing the use of force to resolve conflict, B. eliminating illegal narcotics, with emphasis on destruction of the refinement business.

This solves the current problem that no one understands what American goals are and puts the U.S. on the right side of morality. To those who protest that the devil is in the details, I say, "Try it...at any desired scale."

The international community will provide stability; state-building will be up to the Afghans...with international funding to be transferred directly to the lowest possible levels.

Erdogan's Calculus: An Analytical Approach

Erdogan's diplomatic initiative to break the Mideast logjam with fresh thinking has provoked lots of smoke but much less analytical fire. How might we think through the options facing the region?

Turkey appears to be challenging the world to think more deeply about the state of affairs in the Mideast and to move toward a positive-sum solution. Most of the relevant actors seem unable even to imagine and perhaps do not want a situation in which the U.S., Iran, and Israel might all benefit.

Yet, it seems obvious that all three countries, and Turkey as well, would benefit if an international security regime that put a cap on the militarization of nuclear technology. Indeed, the leaders of all of those countries except Israel have called for this, although, with the exception of Prime Minister Erdogan and Foreign Minister Davutoglu, most seem to have trouble imagining a balanced way to get there. Moreover, the degree to which current powerholders rely on the fear of nuclear war to buttress their personal positions constitutes an enormous obstacle. Beyond that, settling the nuclear issue seems workable only in the context of fundamental changes in U.S. and Israeli foreign policy. What Erdogan and Davutoglu undoubtedly have thought about but are, perhaps wisely, not discussing in public is the degree to which removal of Mideast nuclear tensions depends on the willingness of Washington to replace its 21st century military-centric Mideast/Central Asian policy with a diplomacy-centric policy and the willingness of Israel to replace its post-1980s (roughly) Greater Israel policy with a "good-neighbor" policy of living within its legally recognized borders.

For Turkey, in particular, the rationale of trying to bridge the nuclear gap between Iran and its antagonists is crystal clear. Turkey's plan of becoming the regional energy hub virtually requires resolution of the nuclear crisis. Even more important, Turkey would almost certainly lose from a prolongation of the crisis: if it turns to war, Turkey gets the fallout; if not, Turkey will come under pressure to participate in a wasteful regional nuclear arms race. Moreover, the higher the tension, the more Turkey is likely to be forced back into subordination to its American bloc leader. That, in turn, seems likely to raise the prominence of the Turkish armed forces in domestic affairs, undermining both the delicate position of Turkish democracy and the fortunes of the Erdogan regime.

If the challenge Erdogan has taken on is great, the logic of it is so persuasive that his effort can be assumed to be sincere. How he and his foreign minister rank the various goals that they surely have in mind is more difficult to answer.

Ergogan's major goals:

• security - a peaceful regional environment, requiring both resolution of the nuclear crisis and resolution of Iran's demand for a "place at the Mideast table"
• economic - international acceptance of Turkey as the hub of hydrocarbon pipelines from Iran, Kazakhstan, etc. into Europe
• moral - justice for Palestinians and the creation of a less egregiously unbalanced regional nuclear regime
• personal - success could cement the hold of moderate, reformist Islam on Turkish politics and make his name in history.

Debate has arisen over the reasons (e.g., economic) for Erdogan's initiatives to restrain Israeli militarism and invite Iran "to the Mideast table." A better analytical approach is to recognize that he almost certainly has a wide range of goals, as indicated above. These four goals, then, constitute the obvious (albeit not necessarily the only) "driving forces" underlying Erdogan's initiative.

Starting, for analytical simplicity, with the first two--security and economic, axes representing the range of possible outcomes can be defined as follows:

• Security - from "zero-sum" to "positive-sum;"
• Economic - from "isolated" to "regional hub."

The objective of both the selection of driving forces and the way that the axes are defined is to provoke interesting analysis. In this light, it may be advantageous to define "security" as "zero-sum to positive-sum" to underscore the distinction between competing blocs and a mutually beneficial regional security regime (rather than, e.g., "insecure" to "secure"). Similarly, defining the economic extremes as "isolated" and "regional hub" focuses on Turkey's economic policy choices rather than outcomes (e.g., "poverty" and "wealth"). It may seem likely that becoming a regional hydrocarbon hub would produce wealth, but that is an analytical conclusion.

The two axes now define an analytical landscape of possible futures that can simplistically be thought of as offering four broad alternative options. Rather than getting bogged down in the typical scenario analysis exercise of weaving fairy tale stories about each one, it is analytically useful simply to conceive in a general way of the distinctions by suggesting the obvious alternative outcomes with titles.

The result, as graphed, shows what we may take as Erdogan's calculus:

• In a zero-sum security context with Turkey economically isolated, regional tensions and the absence of regional economic integration can be expected to interact, with each making the other worse, generating a vicious cycle.
• The combination of a zero-sum security context with regional economic integration may seem fairly advantagous but is likely to be unsustainable, generating instability.
• A positive-sum security environment lacking regional economic integration might be sustainable but would leave Turkey relatively weak.
• The combination of a positive-sum security regime and economic integration would be mutually reinforcing, generating a virtuous cycle in which participants increasingly see cooperation as to their advantage.

Now we have the analytical raw materials for beginning to think seriously about where Turkey stands and how it might design an effective policy. The image alone helps structure thinking, but the essential element is still missing. The key at this point is not to construct stories about how you think the future might develop in each quadrant of our analytical landscape but to ask a simple question with inevitably complicated answers:

how are the underlying dynamics likely to affect behavior in each quadrant?

Briefly, we have decided that economics and security are the key elements affecting the future, and we have made some simplistic guesses about how they might interact (e.g., to produce a vicious cycle at one extreme and a virtuous cycle at the other), but we have yet to do any real analysis. What has been accomplished is the setting up of the analytical stage in preparation for serious evaluation of how Erdogan may be assessing his options and how Washington and Tehran might determine the appropriate reaction. Those wishing to proceed (be they students writing a term paper or decision makers) should start by asking, "As X (e.g., economic integration) increases, what else happens?" Grab pencil and paper. It gets complicated.

Defense of the Morally Bankrupt

Today a band of willful men will attempt to pass a bill (H.R. 867) calling on the U.S. Government to stick its head in the sand; to speak, hear, and see no evil; and to refuse to discuss charges of war crimes during Israel’s vicious and equally willful attack on the people of Gaza in December 2008. In a move that would make John C. Calhoun proud, this band will adopt the final defense of the morally bankrupt and instead attack free speech. Knowing well that their position cannot stand in the light of day, they will demand that the charges being brought against them in the closest arena the world has to a court of law simply “not be discussed.”

For a long sad generation, slavery was an issue that “could not be discussed” in Congress, thus allowing the pressures to build to the point that only a horrifying domestic war could resolve the issue. And today it is the barbaric collective punishment of the people of Gaza that “cannot be discussed.” Just as history today blames Calhoun for paving the road to the U.S. Civil War, so may history one day blame this petty group of American supporters of the Israeli right wing for paving the road to the destruction of Israel.

The right to buy and sell and oppress and murder slaves by Southern plantation owners could “not be discussed;” the right to oppress and bomb and murder Palestinians by the Israeli Army and the extremist politicians who control the Israeli government “cannot be discussed.” Of course not. What else can these so-called American “friends” of Israel do? When one is complicit in the rape of Fallujah and the endless rain of Predators on innocent Central Asian villagers, how can one protest the same behavior from those who perfected such tactics?

__________________

In depth:

1."No Partner for Peace; Our American Problem" Analysis by Israeli human rights worker Jeff Halper.

Despite the mission’s charges over Israeli war crimes, South African jurist Richard Goldstone actually bent over backwards to protect Israel as much as possible. Thus the report does not mention Israel’s 42-year occupation of Gaza or its three year siege which has left a million and a half Gazans without adequate food, medical care or the basic necessities of life. Nor does it mention the fact that, rather than defending itself, it was Israel which violated the cease-fire with Hamas and refused repeated appeals by Hamas to renew it....

When, recently, I did the rounds of Congress and the State Department promoting a just resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I was told that “justice” is not an active element in American foreign policy.

Judging Government

Among all the cute phrases dreamed up by humans, perhaps “political science” is the most humorous. (I claim to be a political scientist, so I can say that.) I mean, you have to admit, there is precious little science guiding the actions of our leaders in regards to, say, the war in Afghanistan or health care or the regulation of Goldman Sachs. To be a little more polite, let’s say that “political science” is a goal. To bring us one step closer to that goal, which would presumably enable the creation of decent government, I propose the following simple metric for judging the quality of every official act by politicians:

Was their action on balance “for the elite” or “for the people?”

I am a political scientist; I can make the implementation of this simple heuristic as complex as you like. It can be arithmetic or really mathematical (e.g., based on calculus) or complex or graphical or philosophical. A nice little graduate seminar could be held on the merits of the various methods.

The point remains, however: if a politician does something that advances the interests of the society in general, that politician has done good; if it is just the elite that benefits, the politician has done bad. If you want good government, you need to be able to tell the difference, whether you are a political scientist or a barber…or even a TV news commentator.

Protecting the Economic Elite

Washington is setting us up for a new recession provoked by Wall Street gamblers even as we teeter on the edge of a second bursting bubble...this time in commercial real estate.

Goldman Sachs is sitting pretty, having—with taxpayer help—defeated its competitors and recouped the losses on its gambling debts (which contributed greatly to causing the recession in the first place. And now, the real Obama, who looks more and more like a corrupt Republican every day, is putting into law a program that will ensure that, whatever economic catastrophe may ever occur in the future, Goldman will come up a winner. Carefully avoiding the problem of insufficient government regulation (the open door that led to the recession), the new law will ensure a permanent pipeline of taxpayer funds to protect the millionaires of Goldman Sachs.

Concerning that law-in-the-making, FDIC Chair Sheila Bair testified to Congress:

The oversight council described in the proposal currently lacks sufficient authority to effectively address systemic risks.

Ouch! Would someone please explain to me why Geithner is still employed by the U.S. Government?

Actually, Senator Maria Cantwell has explained this mystery:

...the nation's largest banks are posting record profits....many of these banks have resumed their old habit of using other people's money to gamble with the same risky unregulated derivatives that led us into this crisis.

In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and with job losses and home foreclosures mounting, it's no wonder the rest of us are asking how this can be allowed to continue.

Look no further than the powerful lobbying arm of the financial services sector, which has spent at least $220 million this year lobbying Congress to stave off new rules to prevent another collapse.

For a real lesson in civics as it actually works in modern America, here are the gory details of one particularly egregious case of how your officials in Washington sold you down the river to please their masters on Wall Street.

It's simple - the American people do not control their government. In fact, even the government does not appear to control the government: Wall Street does.

As for the rest of the economy, manufacturing in the U.S. (and China) is increasing, but contrasting that good news for the economy, employment in U.S. manufacturing continues to decline. In addition, disposable income for Americans was flat for the last two months, so one might wonder who is going to buy the products being manufactured.

And it is not just Main Street that continues to suffer, as unemployment steadily worsens. Not only have we just had, with CIT, the first bankruptcy of a TARP-bailed company, but bank failures continue at their 2009 rate of slightly more than two per week. And now we are, apparently, finally moving into the long-feared crash in commercial property, which will further pressure banks. These points only add weight to Ron Paul's argument that Washington's bailout is going to cause a new round of trouble. According to Wilbur Ross, investor and money manager aiding the government to get control of toxic assets:

A huge crash is now starting….Occupancy rates are going down. Rent rates are going down and the capitalization rate -- the return that investors are demanding to buy a property -- are going up.

Note that I am citing both Bloomberg and the World Socialist Web Site, sources that you might not expect to be sending the same message.

In case you think I am being too flip or unfairly focusing on the bad news, here, in simple English, is the academic summary of the state of affairs by Princeton economist Alan Blinder from a paper prepared for a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston conference:

Emergency rescue operations have increased concentration in the banking industry, and the too-big-too-fail (TBTF) doctrine may have been abused by many of our once-illustrious financial companies. A variety of miscreants imposed enormous costs on innocent bystanders by dragging the economy down. And taxpayers have been forced to shoulder a variety of huge actual and potential bills. All this suggests the need for fundamentally rethinking the rules and regulations that govern our financial system. [Thanks to Econobrowser for pointing out this paper.]

For the details, consider the Congressional testimony by Robert Johnson, Director of Economic Policy at the Roosevelt Institution, that the House Financial Services Committee is trying to suppress to protect the guilty:

the most important dimension of all of the needed financial reforms is the precise intersection between Too Big to Fail financial institutions and OTC unregulated derivatives….. We have a financial architecture in place governing derivatives that has failed profoundly. The bailout costs, lost output around the world, and breathtaking rise in unemployment are the result of that financial failure. [Thanks to Democracy Now, perhaps the most honest news service in the U.S., for revealing this.]

Brooksley Born, head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and target of intense hostility from the Washington-Wall Street cabal that brought us this recession, recently put it like this:

we have to close the regulatory gap. ... We cannot afford as a society to go forward with an enormous unregulated market that poses this kind of danger because it’ll happen again if we don't take the appropriate steps. ... We need to take a lesson from the existing futures markets where exchange trading has been safe. As much as possible of the over-the-counter derivatives market should be traded on a regulated derivatives exchange. The transaction should be cleared on a regulated clearinghouse. There should be robust federal regulation of any remaining OTC derivatives market. And personally, I think that remaining market should be limited as much as possible to no more than the customized contracts that are needed for specific businesses to hedge particular business risks.

In case the above make your eyes glaze over, try this even blunter statement from McClatchy, a news source vastly more reliable than the ones you normally pay attention to:

Why didn't Wall Street firms tell potential investors that the bonds they were selling them were rotten? Why did their business partners, including subprime mortgage lenders, ignore glaring evidence that borrowers weren't qualified and give loans to virtually anyone with a heartbeat?

The answer is simple: Because they could.

For the details of how the near-criminal, if not literally criminal, process going from a single tricky mortgage to a naïve homebuyer to large-scale fraudulent Wall Street investments occurred, read the full McClatchy article. But the above quote is the bottom line.

Evidence that Washington is "governing for the elite:"

• emphasis on bailing out Wall Street with trickle-down for the people;
• no punishment for Wall Street executives;
• officials like Elizabeth Warren appear to be getting the cold shoulder from the White House.

What would help to change my mind about Washington:

• taxing derivatives;
• tight oversight of all derivatives trading (i.e., "moving derivatives trades onto regulated exchanges");
• ending the exemption of derivatives trading from regulation, including regulation under state gambling laws(!);
• a law making it illegal for senior officials in financial arms of the government to come from Wall Street or banking positions (that constituting a clear presumption of conflict of interest) and the removal of all such officials;
  
• reenactment of Glass-Steigal;
• replacement of Geitner by Warren;
• making it illegal, with stiff jail sentences for corporate executives, for a company to purchase a mortgage without informing the homeowners;
• breaking up Goldman Sachs into separate companies;
• creating a comprehensive regime for breaking up failing companies that are "too big to fail;"
  
• new "trust-busting" legislation for the financial industry.
  

Now, is the difference between "governing for the people" and "governing for the elite" becoming clear?

Project: List Washington folks who favor “government for the people” and “government for the elite”

Government for the People

Elizabeth Warren, TARP Superwoman

Sheila Bair, FDIC Chairwoman

Maria Cantwell, Senator

Brooksley Born

Dennis Kucinich, Presidential candidate 2008 so if you failed to vote for him…

Government for the Elite

Bush-Cheney

Hank Paulson

Barack Obama

Tim Geitner

Melissa Bean, congresswoman from Wall Street and member of House Financial Services Committee

Turkey Moves Toward Regional Leadership

In a Mideast region being ripped apart by greed, short-sightedness, arrogance, refusal to compromise, a growing addiction to violence, and the virtual absence of wise leadership, Turkey appears to see itself as the leader of a new moderate regional coalition. Can Washington maintain pace?

On October 30, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu held a joint press conference in Iraqi Kurdistan, saying:

It is time for Arabs, Turks, Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis to rebuild the Middle East. Therefore, it is time for everyone to take brave steps.

This does not automatically mean equality for Turkish Kurds, of course, and yet, it seems an improvement over the Turkish military attacks of last winter and suggests a real openness in Turkey to questioning sensitive political taboos.

Turkey’s Kurdish Question. One small but perhaps “brave” step taken by Turkey was the release on October 20 of five PKK members who surrendered in the name of achieving a peaceful settlement but had been arrested. Whether or not Turkey will institute reforms to make its own Kurds feel more welcome as Turkish citizens remains to be seen. That 100,000 people would turn out in Turkish Kurdistan to welcome the PKK members home as heroes was a signal that Istanbul should tread lightly in Kurdish regions. It might start with a “brave” step to open a dialogue in response to the call for a “civilian constitution” by Mehmet Şerif Gençdağ, who spoke on behalf of the returnees. Co-chairman of the Democratic Society Party, or DTP, Ahmet Türk underscored the point by stating in a speech in Kurdish that “introducing freedom in Turkey will not lead to the country’s disintegration, an excuse currently being used by people to generate fear in society.” A hardline stance toward Turkey’s Kurdish minority by Istanbul would certainly give the lie to its protestations of wanting a policy of peace and cooperation throughout the region. If Istanbul is serious, it will have to take care to avoid letting those parties desiring continued regional tension exploit Kurdish sensitivities for that may be the most serious ticking bomb that could explode in Erdogan’s face.

____________________________

Too ambitious?

In a partial answer to those who may think Erdogan is overextending his country, Turkey is moving forward with plans to become the regional energy hub by cooperating with Kazakhstan and Russia.

____________________________

Turkey: Mideast Peacemaker?

At the same time as Turkey was negotiating the shoals of its Kurdish question, Prime Minister Erdogan was in Iran criticizing nuclear powers for imposing “arrogant sanctions” against Iran.

Turkey is positioning itself to be the agent of a possible historic regional realignment. If any genuine willingness can be found in the West to follow through on Obama’s conciliatory message of understanding that came in the early, optimistic months of his administration, then it could be Erdogan who will end up earning the Nobel Peace Prize by facilitating a Western-Islamic compromise.

Although Erdogan may yet face domestic opposition to his effort to move Turkey away from its traditional foreign policy subservience to Washington, Turkey has much to gain from flexibility. If it can succeed in moderating Tehran’s treatment of its people and reach agreement with Iran on a joint activist stance supporting Muslim democracy combined with resistance to Arab dictators, resistance to al Qua’ida terrorism, and resistance to Israeli expansion, it will transform regional affairs. Turkey and Iran together have the power to provide real regional leadership, should they be able to agree on the way forward, and moderate Islamic activism is a position that currently has a very large vacancy.

Erdogan spelled out part of what a Turkish-led moderate bloc would mean a few days before his late-October visit to Iran, telling al Jazeera:

We are not in favor of presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iran and in our region. But it is not fair and unjust to put pressure on Iran while someone else in the region has such weapons. The world must assume a fair attitude. In that case a totally different environment of confidence will emerge.

The vision of a single set of rules to govern regional nuclear rights would fundamentally shift interstate relations, where the region is currently dominated by Israel’s exclusive possession of nuclear weapons.

Going beyond nuclear rights, Erdogan laid out a general principle that could, if accepted in Washington, go far toward resolving its conflict with Iran:

Iran has a long-standing political tradition of its own. You cannot ignore Iran and any attempt to encourage negative approaches to Iran will damage efforts to ensure peace in the region.

A Turkish commentator reassured Washington (whose own invitation to Erdogan was postponed because of “a Turkish holiday,” thereby affording Erdogan time to consolidate ties with Iran and Iraq first) by soothing that the new warmth in Turkish-Iranian relations does “not signify a shift toward an Iran-oriented foreign policy.” Perhaps not, but it does signify a shift toward acceptance of Iran as a legitimate player combined with a hint that Iran might facilitate its acceptance by some unspecified shifts of its own. In noting politely that “Iran has always been a key actor in regional peace and stability because of what it has done and what it will not do,” [emphasis added] Erdogan seemed to be telling Washington to accept Iranian prominence and telling Iran to avoid destabilizing behavior. It is not yet clear whether either side will be willing to accept Erdogan’s advice. After all, it was Larijani who only two weeks ago reaffirmed Iran’s commitment to defending the rights of Muslims. Whether or not Tehran and Istanbul can come to agreement on how that should be accomplished remains to be seen.

Western Calculus.

But a Turkish-sponsored Western-Islamic compromise remains far in the future, for such a compromise would entail a highly uncharacteristic voluntary Western pullback from its current aggressively militant stance. The astonish shortsightedness of the West in refusing to participate in NATO war games in NATO partner Turkey without the presence of non-NATO Israel and the hostile reaction to the U.N. report on Israel’s war crimes in Gaza bode ill for Erdogan’s hopes to be a regional peacemaker.

Iranian Calculus.

And that’s not the sum of the obstacles in Erdogan’s path by far. His hopes of success also hinge on his ability to persuade Iran to play ball. As Gülnur Aybet put it:

Turkey’s primary purpose in this visit is not to act as a mediator between Iran and the West but to deliver an independent Turkish message to the Iranian authorities that Iran is not being convincing about the civilian intentions of its nuclear program to the international community. However, Turkey insists it will engage Iran on this issue as a country which empathizes with Iranian sensitivities.

But Erdogan has a good shot at persuading Iran to moderate its behavior. Iran can only gain by a conciliatory attitude toward Turkey. Israel’s hardline attitude makes triangular relations a zero-sum game, affording Iran a golden opportunity to enhance its regional position at Israel’s expense by pulling Turkey away from its close ties to Israel. Turkey also represents the route for Iran to break out of the West’s economic embargo and improve ties with Europe. Not content to wait for the future Nabucco pipeline, Turkey and Iran have, according to Iran’s PressTV, signed an agreement for Turkish aid in constructing an oil refinery that directly undermines Western economic sanctions and thus offers Tehran a powerful incentive to compromise with Turkey on other issues. Beyond this, for Iran to receive sympathetic attention from NATO member Turkey puts a serious crack in the anti-Iranian Western front that Tehran would be very foolish to spurn. Washington risks being overtaken by events.

Indeed, Tehran seems determined to maintain the diplomatic momentum. Majlis Speaker and prominent regime foreign policy spokesperson Ali Larijani stated enthusiastically:

The Islamic Republic of Iran perceives no limitation or restriction on the expansion and development of its brotherly relations with Turkey.

In addition, Ahmadinejad’s just-announced decision to participate in the November 5-9 meeting of the Organization of Islamic Conference in Istanbul suggests the two sides are determined to keep the diplomatic momentum going. Iran, still a regional outsider, hardly seems to have much choice if it still aspires to regional prominence. Even its one state ally, Syria, seems to be moving into the Turkish orbit with the creation of the Turkey-Syria High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council. Ahmadinejad will thus evidently see Erdogan again before Erdogan manages to find the time to visit Washington; Ahmadinejad would be well advised to take advantage of his luck and show up in Istanbul with a substantive package of security compromises for his host.

Potential Western Benefits.

If Iran has good reason to play ball with Turkey, the West also stands to gain. The economic benefit of having a second source of critically-needed natural gas for Europe to reduce its dependence on Russia is hardly trivial. In security terms, the West also stands to gain. Muslim, NATO-member Turkey is well positioned to persuade both sides to moderate their positions on the nuclear issue, persuading Iran to behave with real transparency in return for an unambiguous Western acceptance of an Iranian civilian nuclear industry. Aside from the nuclear issue, a West seeking resolution of the Afghan and Iraqi conflicts would surely benefit from any joint Turkish-Iranian steps to combat illegal narcotics and stabilize Afghan and Iraqi societies.

With Turkey having just doubled its commitment of troops in Afghanistan and taken over NATO command in Kabul, Turkey is in an increasingly strong position to persuade Washington to listen to its views. The same is true for Iraq, where Turkey is accelerating its efforts to provide economic support and just signed “more than 40 agreements ranging from fighting Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) terrorism to energy cooperation and sharing water” even as it implements diplomatic initiatives toward the Kurds.

Can Washington Compromise?

Whether or not the West will come in sufficient time to appreciate the opportunity Turkey is offer, however, remains unclear. Will the West shoot itself in the foot to the extent of alienating Turkey in order to pander to the Israeli rightwing? Or, to put it differently, will Washington’s regional ambitions prevent it from accepting the idea of an independent and regionally powerful Iran?

If Washington is indeed determined to learn from the Dec. 2008 Gaza experiment the lesson that the right way to deal with the Muslim world is military suppression of those who refuse to subordinate themselves to Western preferences plus obdurate refusal to allow independent Muslim entities to participate as equals in the global political system, then that may indeed be the result.

Before the Israeli rightwing cheers too loudly, it might contemplate the implications of a Mideast in which Turkey and Iran are jointly leading an international movement in opposition to Israel and, simultaneously, managing a future Nabucco gas pipeline keeping West Europe warm. While Washington empire-builders may extrapolate from tiny Gaza that military force can repress larger Islamic societies, it seems clear that Erdogan has learned something very different—that the chaos resulting from Western/Israel military suppression of Muslim desires for independence is simply becoming too dangerous to continue tolerating. Maybe Greater Israel advocates in Israel and the Washington elite should rethink the lessons of their Gaza Laboratory.

Israel: War Crimes Then, "Peace Crimes" Now

Israel remains firmly in denial about its barbaric treatment of the people of Gaza, and Washington, busy with its own empire-building in Afghanistan, remains dutifully in support. If the people of Gaza were accepted as, well, “people,” the crack in the war party’s shield might bring down the whole U.S.-Israeli anti-Islamic house of cards, so that party’s experiments in the Gaza Laboratory continue.

Meanwhile, the U.N. has courageously shined a spotlight on Israeli war crimes, and one wonders if discussions about Fallujah or U.S. failure to tackle Afghan heroin production might be next.

UN General Secretary Ban commented:

Jerusalem must be the capital of two States – Israel and Palestine – living side-by-side in peace and security, with arrangements for the holy sites acceptable to all, if peace in the Middle East is to be achieved, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned today....

He cited as obstacles to peace continued Israeli evictions and house demolitions in East Jerusalem, the latest occurring yesterday, closure of Palestinian institutions there, and the expansion of settlements contrary to international law and the Roadmap peace plan espoused by the Quartet – UN, the European Union, Russia and the United States – that seeks a two-State solution to the conflict….

He also called on Israel to re-open its borders with Gaza to allow in reconstruction material 10 months after the end of its three-week assault on Hamas there, noting that a donors’ conference in Egypt raised $4.5 billion in financial aid for the purpose.

“Little if any of that money has been delivered,” he said. “Families have not been able to rebuild their homes. Clinics and schools are still in ruins. I urge Israel to accept the UN reconstruction proposals as set forth, recognizing that the only true guarantee of peace is people’s well-being and security.”

He called on both Israel and the Palestinians to carry out “full, independent and credible investigations” in accordance with the recommendations of a UN commission led by Justice Richard Goldstone, a former prosecutor at the UN war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, which found evidence that both sides committed serious war crimes in the Gaza war.

Ban’s comments come amid controversy over the Goldstone report, which, according to Goldstone, found:

The Mission found that the attack on the only remaining flour producing factory, the destruction of a large part of the Gaza egg production, the bulldozing of huge tracts of agricultural land, and the bombing of some two hundred industrial facilities, could not on any basis be justified on military grounds. Those attacks had nothing whatever to do with the firing of rockets and mortars at Israel…. These attacks amounted to reprisals and collective punishment and constitute war crimes.

Goldstone’s report on Israel’s December 2008 attack on Gaza is a landmark effort by the global community to stand up to oppression, but Ban’s comments carry this even further, officially stating the obvious: even in victory, Israel has done little if anything to “clean up its act.” If what Israel did during the overt military phase of its suppression of Gaza constituted “war crimes,” then what is the proper term for its continued collective punishment of a now quiescent population – “peace crimes?"

Constructing Afghan Society

Practical solutions for building civil society in Afghanistan do exist. The key is to get over the addiction to brute force and think about it.

I recently offered three principles to guide our thinking about Afghanistan, principles taboo in the mental box called official Washington. The goal of these principles is to win via civic action designed to create a healthy Afghan society (not a new colony for the Empire). What follows is a set of specific proposals that speak directly to the challenging task of implementation.

1. A White House Initiative to Empower NGOs:

Bring to the White House the international organizations who know Afghanistan well because they have been there so long — such as World Vision, Mercy Corps, Catholic Relief Services, Oxfam, Tearfund, Christian Aid, Church World Service — and many others. Ask them what U.S. policy would best work, and what kind of security they would need to really do the kind of development in Afghanistan that is most needed.

Let the non-military strategies lead the way, rather than the other way around, which often just makes aid and development work another weapon of war; but then provide the security needed for that work, and make it as international as possible. Also bring in some of the religious and other nonprofit leaders from the Obama Advisory Council and others, to focus on the deeply ethical and moral issues that are at stake in our decisions about future policy in Afghanistan — legitimately protecting Americans from further terrorism, defending women from the Taliban, developing a diplomatic surge, genuinely supporting democracy, and saving innocent lives from the collateral damage of war — to name a few.

2. Raise Saffron, Not Poppies. A second idea, directed at combating the crucial opium trade, is to encourage farmers to turn to saffron. This might provoke attacks by the Taliban, but that would only serve to expose their lack of concern for the Afghan people. It also might provoke attacks by the narco-state bureaucracy, which could possibly be countered by increasing the already-evident tendency of the U.S. to deal directly with local authorities..

3. Target Heroin Labs. ...and not just those under the control of "insurgents." I wonder what would happen if the criminal gangs exporting heroin began to get the idea that merely standing near a heroin lab might be dangerous to their health? A major obstacle to accomplishing this is the high proportion of the Afghan narcotics trade that is under the control of the Afghan regime. According to a Russian report on recent comments by Viktor Ivanov, director of the Russian Federal Drugs Control Service:

The most modern and the best equipped laboratories processing opium poppy into heroin are located in the northern provinces of Afghanistan near the Tajik, Turkmen and Uzbek borders, which are areas of influence of the Northern Alliance.

The real threat comes from drug bosses operating in the north of Afghanistan, "and the coalition forces are not conducting an effective fight against them." [Thanks to the Human Security Report Project's Afghan Security News at Simon Fraser University for bringing attention to this report.]

4. Pay Afghan Security Forces a Living Wage. Those willing to undertake the incredibly dangerous career of being a member of the Afghan security forces (which someday are theoretically supposed to replace the U.S. military) are now paid only about half what it costs to raise a family. Is that the way to keep your police force honest? [Thanks to the Human Security Report Project's Afghan Security News at Simon Fraser University for bringing attention to this report.]

If you think about it, which Washington officials enamored of grandiose plans for military bases and pipelines don’t, solutions are possible.

Newsletter Giving Highlights of This Blog

Announcing: Newsletter Now Published

"Governing for the People"

This "behind-the-news letter" will summarize the key issues discussed in the Shadowed Forest blog in order to expose the real nature of government. The theme is judging the degree to which government is designed for the benefit of the elite or the people, a distinction that those doing the governing of course go to great lengths to conceal.

Preparing an Honorable U.S. Exit Strategy

The time has come for the U.S. to move past the simplistic “go or stay” debate to a focus on the full range of Afghan policy options. Washington urgently needs to design an honorable Afghanistan exit strategy.

Three principles that currently seem almost taboo in Washington policy-making circles point the way to an honorable exit strategy from Afghanistan for the U.S. These principles are of course moot to the degree that Washington may have no intention of leaving, but for those searching for an American exit strategy that leaves Afghanistan in peace, these principles offer an initial set of guidelines.

1. Local Control: Muslim socio-political reform should be managed first by locals and second by neighboring non-Western societies;
2. Civil Society First: The method should always give precedence to civil society reform with military action firmly subordinated;
3. Afghan Independence: The goal should not be incorporation into the American system but the establishment of an independent society.

But how can they be implemented?

Neither as a society nor as a government, has the U.S. even come close to answering this challenging question. In fact, the question almost seems to be considered unacceptable in polite conversation, as though even to ask were somehow to “embarrass,” a sin in Washington far worse than hypocrisy.

Local Control:

Whether “local” means “tribal,” “Afghan,” “Muslim,” or “Central Asian,” it implies that decisions do not flow from Washington, but what other organizations are willing to step up to take leadership and, of course, how are their members to be protected? Are there politically neutral civil society organizations that could be accepted by both sides, that could negotiate with both sides to carve out spaces for action? Might there be members or factions of the Taliban willing to accept moderate Muslim but modernizing civil society activities in return for the removal of U.S. forces and their inclusion in the political process?

Iran. One piece of a non-American solution is Iran, which has been providing electricity and other economic aid to the Herat region, the area of its traditional influence, but Iranian aid allegedly can cut both ways. Whatever the truth of Pentagon charges that Iran aids the Taliban, it is certainly aiding Afghan society more generally, including the building of a new university and, sometimes, in the face of American opposition. Iran also fulfills its aid pledges much more reliably than does the U.S.

Turkey. Turkey is, albeit slowly, taking the initiative to support Afghan development. Two questions concerning this potentially important development concern Turkey’s resolve to act in time, given the urgency of the situation, and whether Turkey will act primarily as a member of NATO or primarily as a Muslim country.

Civil Society. The Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief or other international relief coordinating bodies might be a route to building Afghan society that could be accepted by both the U.S. and the Taliban if the Taliban could be granted a role in building society so they would not see destruction as their route to power. A good beginning would be for the U.S. to give the kind of emphasis to improving Afghan civil administration it is giving to building up Afghan security forces. Arif Rafiq recommends that the Organization of the Islamic Conference take the lead; why that group has not been more active on Afghanistan so far is unclear.

Civil Society First:

Whatever the politically correct words from McCrystal, as long as the Pentagon is in charge, the hammer it holds in its hand will always be the main tool employed. How might Washington transfer initiative from the Pentagon to civilian organs of government?

Medecins Sans Frontiers has returned to Afghanistan for the first time in five years, because it views the situation as worsening. Whether or not MSF will be better protected this time than back in 2004, when it left Afghanistan because its personnel were being murdered, remains to be seen.

Afghan Independence:

Whatever Washington’s intent, to the degree that it unilaterally constructs military bases in Afghanistan, it will give the impression that it plans to colonize Afghanistan and use it as a base for threatening regional states. Both care in constructing bases that are obviously designed for counterinsurgency use only (rather than regional power projection) and a focus on obtaining approval from regional states (specifically including Iran) in advance would be useful steps for signaling a willingness to support true Afghan independence. Far more important would be a fundamental shift in military policy from a U.S.-centric to a Muslim-centric military force.

Rafiq, for example, recommends that only Muslim troops be sent to Afghanistan. This intuitively appealing approach would entail new dangers – highly unstable Bangladesh might suffer blowback of its own were it to get involved in the Afghan conflict; Turkey might appear to be just another NATO member; Saudi involvement would raise the already high threat of further Saudi sponsorship of Salafi extremism; it is hard to see how Egypt or Iran could be a force for the sponsorship of democracy. However, while these concerns merit consideration, they pale beside the horrors and self-defeating nature of massive American forces. Might sufficient forces be assembled from such Muslim states as Morocco, Kosovo, Bosnia, Montenegro, Malaysia, and Indonesia? Might an Asian even if non-Muslim force be able to play a significant role, perhaps in guarding regions currently peaceful?

Conclusion

Wise policy-makers in Washington will start thinking seriously about how an honorable exit strategy from Afghanistan might be designed. Both the obvious worsening of the situation since Washington turned its primary attention to invading Iraq six long years ago and the easily overlooked historical record of American military interventions in developing world conflicts support the contention that Washington needs to have a carefully planned exit strategy.

The result of American intervention in Vietnam was the destruction of Vietnamese culture; a disastrous defeat for the U.S. that provoked stagflation and opened the strategic door to the Soviet Union; a dishonorable rooftop escape for Americans accompanied by a treacherous abandoning of America’s Vietnamese allies; and the needless death of perhaps 4,000,000 people.

The result of American intervention in Iraq remains to be seen but already includes perhaps 1,000,000 dead; tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers with wounds so severe their lives are destroyed; invalidation of America’s claim to being moral leader of the world; and the provocation of an Iraqi domestic terror campaign that may yet spill over into the rest of the world.

Designing an exit strategy that will save the U.S. from another defeat and make possible a stable, decently governed Afghanistan will require an uncommon degree of policy-making creativity and humility. It is time to get started.

Provoking Russian-Iranian Entente

Does Washington risk provoking a new cold, or even hot, war with Russia by asserting the right to intervene massively in Afghanistan but failing to control Afghanistan’s booming heroin export trade?

Moscow is beginning, quite rightly, to view its heroin addiction epidemic as a threat to its national security.

From this, it would be a small step for Moscow to conclude that Washington is intentionally looking the other way. Two glaring facts would seem to support such a view:

• The American army in Afghanistan is doing little to control heroin export;
• Alternative methods for Afghan farmers to earn a living are being ignored.

What, then, might Moscow do if it decided Washington were intentionally subverting Russian society the way the Colombian drug cartels are subverting American society?

The list of Russian options for fighting back seems long enough to merit a bit of contemplation by Washington:

• Cut off the recently-approved flow of American military supplies through Russia into Afghanistan;

• Work with Tajik contacts both in Tajikistan and the increasingly disaffected Afghan north to separate that part of Afghanistan from the Taliban regions of the Pushtun south to create a buffer zone or just to complicate American plans;

• Focus the Collective Security Treaty Organization, Moscow’s mini-NATO, on building Russian influence in Afghanistan;

• Lead a Shanghai Cooperation Organization regional initiative to build a third political force in Afghanistan, independent of both the Taliban and the U.S., perhaps starting with a campaign against large American military bases in Afghanistan that would no doubt attract Chinese interest;

According to a Russian news agency report, a regional conference on Afghanistan in 2008 concluded:

The American counter-terrorism campaign encouraged terrorists, boosted production of drugs, illegal immigration, illicit arms deals, and fomented other threats that compromise the security of Afghanistan itself and other Eurasian countries. All of that necessitates actions by Afghanistan's neighbors who view the Afghani crisis resolution as vitally important.

• Cut a mutually-beneficial two-part deal with its ally Tehran to support increased Iranian influence in regions of Afghanistan historically and religiously close to Iran already to combat the drug trade that both Moscow and Tehran fear.

A Russian Perspective

What really scares Washington - from George W Bush to Obama - is the perspective of a Russia-Iran-Venezuela axis. Together, Iran and Russia hold 17.6% of the world′s proven oil reserves. The Persian Gulf petro-monarchies - de facto controlled by Washington - hold 45%. The Moscow-Tehran-Caracas axis controls 25%. If we add Kazakhstan′s 3% and Africa′s 9.5%, this new axis is more than an effective counter-power to American hegemony over the Arab Middle East. The same thing applies to gas. Adding the "axis" to the Central Asian "stans", we reach 30% of world gas production....

A nuclear Iran would inevitably turbo-charge the new, emerging multipolar world. Iran and Russia are de facto showing to both China and India that it is not wise to rely on US might subjugating the bulk of oil in the Arab Middle East.

______________________

The latter option in particular should be contemplated carefully in Washington. The Central Asian-Middle Eastern region is currently at a tipping point, where any one of at least three historic shifts is possible. These three potential shifts in regional power relationships are all quite conceivable at the present time because the multiple, cross-cutting cleavages of the artificially conceived nuclear crisis and the various regional conflicts have destroyed regional stability.

The first possible shift is the “Netanyahu option,” a nuclear strike on Iran that would, if successful, empower Israeli rightwing militarists dreaming of Israeli domination of the region. Success is highly unlikely, however, since the aftermath of a nuclear strike would be a classic case of a complex (i.e., unpredictable) situation. The winner would probably be bin Laden.

The second possible shift is the “Obama option,” a breakthrough in U.S.-Iranian relations that would stabilize the region and greatly facilitate American efforts to resolve the Iraqi and Afghan conflicts. Although this option would require recognizing Iran’s emergence to regional prominence with the right to choose its own path and constraining the war party in Washington, the result would be a relatively stable regional balance of power curbing both the threat of Israeli nuclear aggression and Iranian nuclear militarization.

The third possible shift is the “Putin option,” a breakthrough in Russian-Iranian relations at American expense, propelled by mutual concern over the strategic threat of rising American military power in Central Asia. Various cooperative steps in the energy, maritime in this direction, motivated by intense U.S.-Israeli threats against Iran, are already visible. Such a bilateral breakthrough at American expense would encourage both Iranian and Israeli extremism, wreck the chances for resolving the Western-Iranian nuclear dispute, imperil the American adventure in Afghanistan, and very possibly end up destabilizing Pakistan or, perhaps, result in a distinct type of regional stability enforced by Russia, with the U.S. on the sidelines.

It would be ironic, to put it mildly, if willingness in Washington to tolerate Afghan heroin exports ended up provoking the regional replacement of the U.S. by Russia in coordination with an emergent Iran.

Resolving Conflict With the Muslim World

The Western conflict with the Muslim world can be resolved--not by "victory" for the American empire or its "defeat" but by supporting local solutions and real independence for local societies.

In response to an excellent summary by Stephen Walt of the problem of the Afghan conflict, I wrote the following letter to focus attention on nature of an acceptable solution:

Leave Afghanistan? Absolutely--but leave responsibly.

Thinking of the current Afghan conflict as a complex system—and it certainly is one in every sense of the word—makes your well-reasoned argument for U.S. withdrawal all the stronger…but also offers some guidance to the way in which the U.S. should withdraw.

First, the complexity perspective tells us to look for feedbacks, and one of the most dangerous feedbacks (which you alluded to) is the impact of the U.S. presence on nationalist feeling: the more visible the U.S. military, the more support the Taliban will receive from Afghan nationalists. And one could amplify this point by citing innumerable additional negative feedbacks (e.g., radicalization of society, destruction of infrastructure) resulting from high-tech foreign military activity.

This leads to the second point, concerning the nature (and purpose) of a U.S. withdrawal. The question should not be, “Should the U.S. stay or leave?” The question should be, “How can the U.S. most effectively support the creation of a stable, well-governed, secure society?” Full application of American power to create a lackey state is exactly the wrong way. Rather, behind-the-scenes American support for civil society reforms guided by non-Western societies to create a viable, independent Afghan state should be the goal.

Starting from your analysis of the problem, Washington needs to move toward an Afghan, Muslim, Asian solution. That is the exit strategy for the U.S. and the road to peace for Afghanistan.

This is clearly not the current focus of Washington thinking. We need a concerted, organized project to create a plan by which the U.S. can retreat from the Afghan limelight without once again turning our backs on the long-mistreated Afghan people.

To summarize, I offer three principles for resolving not just the Afghan conflict but all the brushfires along the borders between the "American system" of global rule and the Muslim world:

1. Muslim socio-political reform should be managed first by locals and second by neighboring non-Western societies;
2. the method should always give precedence to civil society reform with military action firmly subordinated;
3. the goal should not be incorporation into the American system but the establishment of an independent society.

Can Americans and their friends rise above the crisis of the moment to think through how we might plan such a solution? Behind the headlines and away from Washington decision-making circles, a huge amount of thought and research has gone into finding the answer in recent years. The knowledge to come up with such a plan is available, if only we can summon the will to create the plan and (of course) implement it.

Iraq? Afghanistan? Pakistan? Is Arabic for Vietnam

That old “Vietnam is Arabic for Iraq” bumper sticker is still on my car. Am I out-of-date? The continuing presence of Cheney’s sneer on U.S. TV, as though he should be considered a legitimate public figure instead of a discredited national disaster, suggests that I am not. The pattern of errors from the French Indochina War to the American Indochina War to the War Against Islamic Independence (if I may be permitted to assign the sort of names that may become generally accepted by historians of the future) is ominous. By failing unambiguously to denounce the mistakes of their allies and predecessors, American politicians ensure the repetition of their mistakes.

Overconfidence. The French, being in Vietnam first, led the way in making fundamental mistakes. According to The Pentagon Papers:

In May, 1947, Minister of War Coste-Floret announced in Paris that: "There is no military problem any longer in Indochina . . . the success of French arms is complete." Within six months, though ambitious armored, amphibious, and airborne drives had plunged into the northern mountains and along the Annam coast, Viet Minh sabotage and raids along lines of communication had mounted steadily, and Paris had come to realize that France had lost the military initiative.

Military Solutions to Political Problems.

The record shows that through 1953, the French pursued a policy which was based on military victory and excluded meaningful negotiations with Ho Chi Minh.

Simplistic Analysis of the Adversary. The following classic oversimplification is of course a self-fulfilling prophesy of which politicians seem never to tire:

American thinking and policy-making was dominated by the tendency to view communism in monolithic terms.

It is ironic that this Washington attitude toward the Viet Minh existed, since relations between the anti-Japanese Viet Minh and the U.S. had been cooperative during World War II.

Creeping Commitment.

From 1946 to 1954, France became increasingly engaged in a major counter-insurgency campaign in Indochina. At first, the threat was not immediately recognized as being serious, but it soon became a strategic imperative for France to keep its colony, and prevent a precedent to be emulated across its colonial empire. Furthermore, after its defeat in June 1940 by Germany, France was engaged in reinstating itself as a major power, and would not allow a colonial conflict to be lost to a gang of insurgents. Over time, the French military commitment, including auxiliaries and Vietnamese allies, reached nearly 450,000 troops.. Source.

Take Key Assumptions for Granted. The surest path to disaster is the failure to question fundamental assumptions, and the classic assumption is of course that everything you want is essential for survival. Whatever you do, never waste time trying to figure out an alternative way of achieving one’s goal.

The U.S. Government internal debate on the question of intervention centered essentially on the desirability and feasibility of U.S. military action. Indochina's importance to U.S. security interests in the Far East was taken for granted.

Making Historic Decisions Too Quickly. Truman’s decision only three days after the North Korean attack on South Korea in 1950 to provide significant military aid to the French war against the Viet-Minh, who had assumed power, declared Vietnamese independence, and requested international recognition following Japan’s surrender, is a classic. The US military aid surge notwithstanding, by the end of the year, a Viet-Minh campaign to destroy French forts on the Vietnamese-Chinese border had inflicted what has been called the worst colonial defeat of French forces since the 1767 loss of Quebec.

Where, in all the conflict, is any Western awareness of the natural preference of societies for making their own decisions? Regardless of right or wrong, once a society perceives a domestic conflict as being dominated by foreigners, those foreigners begin to lose momentum. Perhaps the key fact about the whole post-WWII Western experience in Vietnam is that the French had to reinvade after Japan’s defeat, e.g., the 1946 naval shelling of Haiphong and consequent slaughter of thousands of Vietnamese and provocation of the French Indochina War following the unilateral French decision to modify its previous recognition of Vietnamese independence by limiting the Viet Minh regime to the north.

Cultural Taboos Threaten American Progress

American culture is evolving in ways that pose increasingly dangerous and unnecessary constraints on the ability of American society to imagine effective solutions to the highly interconnected set of foreign policy, economic policy, environmental policy, and health policy problems it currently faces.

Politics in the U.S.—at the level of policy-making—has a degree of rigidity, narrow-mindedness, and short-sightedness that causes enormous harm to the security and quality of life of Americans. The artificial constraints that American voters and policy-makers impose on themselves, the unstated and unreasoned taboos that are accepted without a second thought, have the effect of preventing Americans from taking full advantage of their vast natural and intellectual resources. The result is a set of interlocked policies that needlessly undermine American security and worsen the general quality of life in American society.

Taboos obstructing honest evaluation of fundamental policy choices prevent American society from moving effectively in new and desperately needed directions. The American system is based on open debate to find answers to complex problems. That is the best system yet discovered for resolving national problems, but it only works when society faces its options honestly. New directions do exist for addressing this set of challenges, but the roads will only be found if we are willing to look for them.

Ironically, these fundamental decisions—precisely the ones meriting the most meticulous public debate—are typically the public policy decisions made with the least care, the least debate, the least thought. The results include a foreign policy based on military force even when force intensifies hostility; health care as a business rather than a right; environmental policy favoring consumption now rather than preservation for future generations; and an economic policy that has more or less steadily been enriching the super-rich and impoverishing the rest since the Reagan era.

The careful reader may notice an underlying similarity among the four policy arenas: a foreign policy based on force benefits the military-industrial complex, an environmental policy favoring consumption benefits corporations looking for short-term profits, the economic policy benefits the Wall Street, banking, and real estate businesses; the current health care system benefits the insurance and medical businesses. And all four harm the average American.

That American society now faces a crisis in each of these four major policy arenas--foreign policy, economic policy, environmental policy, and health care policy--is now fortunately becoming widely recognized, though at an enormous cost (a decade of war against radical Islam, a still-deepening recession made in Washington, declining environment [see the New York Times' expose this past week of corporate poisoning of the nation's drinking water], and one of the least effective health care systems in the modern world).

The economic decline of American society, just to take one example, over the last half century is easy to see if one only recalls that in the 1950s, a man could support a middle class family on his salary alone, that by the 1990s a middle class lifestyle required that both husband and wife work, and that today a rising percentage of families face the perilous situation of the wife being a temp without benefits while the husband is unemployed. The overall economic trend is not “a natural result of the rest of the post-WWII world catching up.” That excuse contains just enough truth to be marketable, but the real reason is socialism for the rich. “Socialism for the rich” is not just a cute slogan, though few people ever stopped to think about what it really means until last fall’s billionaire bailout brought the idea to everyone’s attention.

Given the current recession, perhaps the most obvious example of “socialism for the rich” is taxing wages but not the profits from derivatives. This policy, if one thinks about it, sends the clear message that the U.S. government discourages people from holding honest jobs and prefers that the rich gamble on the market and, in particular, gambles by inventing financial tricks that enable the rich to evade legal requirements for collateral, instead building financial houses of cards. A more traditional but equally scandalous type of “socialism for the rich” is allowing huge lumber companies to clear-cut national forests (perhaps the most precious natural resource in the possession of the American people) virtually without paying any compensation at all to the thus cheated American taxpayer and, needless to say, without being required to restore the forests. Anyone who is shocked at this revelation need only drive on a side road somewhere in Oregon, notice the fine line of trees, and then walk 50 feet off the pavement: behind the screen, all you will find in a shocking number of places is a national desert.

Similar analyses could easily be made for foreign policy, environmental policy, and health care policy. The broader point is to figure out why Americans have such trouble reforming public policy. It is far more subtle than just “crooked politicians.” American voters consistently support politicians who favor socialism for the rich, environmental destruction, military force as the core of foreign policy, and health care as a business to enrich insurance companies rather than a natural right of all Americans. Intellectually serious reform candidates ran in the recent presidential election under Republic, Democratic, and several third party labels.

At the heart of this self-defeating American attitude toward public policy lies American culture, and unfortunately American culture is evolving in exactly the wrong direction. In only the last couple decades the trends toward irresponsibility (“it’s society’s fault”), winner-take-all, and bullying (whether it’s bullying your neighbor on the highway or Muslims worldwide) have become all too visible. Combine these negative trends in general culture with some highly pernicious cultural taboos that prohibit the honest public analysis of our public policy options, and the result is a social system condemned to self-defeating governance.

Maybe violence and overwhelming military superiority are the only way to achieve security. Maybe we want a country with sick poor people and great health care reserved for the “important” people. Maybe we can destroy the environment to our heart’s content and just keep inventing new ways of surviving (yes, I actually read a book making exactly this argument). Maybe the historic capitalist boom-bust cycle is the best of all possible worlds. Maybe…but that conclusion is not obvious. It deserves debate.

Alternatively, maybe allowing Muslims (e.g., Palestinians) to have their own countries and to play by the same rules as everyone else (e.g., nuclear policy toward Israel and Iran) would lead to a more stable and secure world. Maybe the provision of free, public, basic health care with the emphasis on nutrition and disease prevention for all would create a richer and happier and more productive society. Maybe saving our forests for our children would create a stronger America. Maybe America would be a better country if tax policy were designed to encourage honest labor and discourage irresponsible forms of Wall Street or real estate financial manipulations.

These are all fair questions. They deserve debate.

• Should the U.S. continue to give a blank check to right-wing Israeli militarists trying to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their own land? Or should the U.S. support Israel reformers?
• Should Iran be denied the opportunity to emerge as a regional power or be forced to accept limitations on its nuclear capabilities that are not imposed on Israel or even Pakistan or India?
• Should we learn to build more environmentally acceptable homes (i.e., not out of wood) in order to save our remaining national forests?
• Should we keep the current health care business that has produced the richest medical and insurance companies on earth or pay to create a one-class society where the poor and the unemployed have basic health care?

Unfortunately, such core questions about public policy are considered “off-limits.” Or, at least, those profiting from the current system are trying very hard to sell that viewpoint.

Sure, everyone talks about health care and foreign policy and economics and the environment, but look at content of the debates: it focuses on details. Should we, perhaps, modify the degree of Wall Street regulation a bit (while still leaving the main offenders in business)? Should we, perhaps, talk to international adversaries (in order to get them to do what we previously used the threat of violence to achieve)? Should we, perhaps, add a few soldiers in uniform to your Muslim country of choice or should we use mercenary forces out of uniform (but without altering the goal of our war)? Should we, perhaps, pass a new environmental protection law (but without holding corporate executives criminally responsible for their cheating on the laws already passed)? Should we, perhaps, add a sliver of the disadvantaged to the rolls of those favored with health insurance (but surely without endangering the massive profits of the health care industry)?

The basic questions that address fundamental direction are seldom voiced. They are taboo.

• A foreign policy of true compromise with reformist Islam is a taboo subject.
• A health care policy that rejects socialism for the health care industry and institutes socialism for the disadvantaged is a taboo subject.
• An environmental policy that punishes corporate polluters and preserves the environment (allowing economic functions only within those constraints) is a taboo subject (the recent New York Times expose of corporations polluting the nation’s drinking water notwithstanding).
• A financial system that controls exploitation and stimulates responsible productivity is a taboo subject.

Americans do have certain cultural/political advantages. Perhaps the greatest is the consensus that those who break taboos are not killed, so, yes, I can voice these complaints in safety, something I would not be able to do in, say, China, Saudi Arabia, or Iran. While I am grateful for this, it does not invalidate my argument. Taboos work more subtly in the U.S.: those who violate them may speak; they are simply ignored. In terms of having influence, if you challenge taboos, you will be cut out of the debate, will no longer be heard, will effectively no longer exist except as an official nonperson, an “…ist,” as in “racist, socialist, leftist.” In (we imagine) highly stable but tenuous Neolithic times, banishment of those who broke village taboos by speaking out may have enhanced group survival; in the contemporary rapidly evolving world, it invites disaster.

The U.S. has an historic power advantage over its adversaries (even after a decade of behaving like a rogue elephant), the best academic establishment on earth, and enormous resources. These advantages give American society an incredibly fruitful array of options. That is, Americans have the collective power to do an unimagined range of different things...if they can open their minds sufficiently to imagine taking new directions toward a fundamentally more just and effective society. Whatever the route to a perfect society, we will never find it (or even succeed in treading water in today's world) if we censor ourselves from discussing the basic options about the fundamental direction of public policy.

Learning to Govern...from Wolves!

Even wolves seem to govern themselves better than the U.S. has been doing recently...

“An alpha animal may be alpha only at certain times for a specific reason, and, it should be noted, is alpha at the deference of the other wolves in the pack….The social structure of a wolf pack is dynamic – subject to change, especially during the breeding season – and may be completely reversed during periods of play.” [Barry Holstun Lopez, Of Wolves and Men, p. 33.]

Compare this wisely flexible social sophistication with the winner-take-all attitude that has been gaining increasing domination over U.S. society during the last decade or two. In the U.S., a politician, bureaucrat, or corporate executive is increasingly likely to have the ability to enforce his or her control all the time, across all issues to the limits of that leader’s purview regardless of his or her competence on the issue under consideration. Managers can sneer at staff scientists, politicians haughtily dismiss the results of their own review committees, and arbitrarily make and enforce decisions based on nothing but their own personal, uninformed preferences.

Such immature and irrational behavior is not only not widely condemned, it is lauded as demonstrating a trait now increasingly perceived in the U.S. as among the most meritorious of all: “toughness.”

And wolves have had the reputation of being wild and uncivilized beasts!

The above glib generalizations surely do not apply everywhere to the degree that they apply at management levels in Washington and on Wall Street, and I would welcome counterexamples as rays of hope for the future. That said, the argument is serious and the results harmful to society.

A foreign policy based on the military suppression, with endless slaughter of noncombatants, of social movements (e.g., radical Islamic protest against Western domination of the global political system) is a prime example of the harm that can result from granting uninformed leaders the power to ignore the counsel of experts and make arbitrary decisions.

A second outcome of this mode of socio-political organization is the confused health reform debate currently raging across the land. Uninformed politicians are tossing out a stream of ideas, while all ignore the specialists who understand that the core issue is whether or not in a modern civilized and democratic society, health care should be a profit-making business or a “right.”

When policy is controlled by “winners” rather than people with knowledge, it tends to be arbitrary, ineffective, counter-productive or even carefully designed to benefit only the policymaker. These traits appear clearly not just in the counterproductive military attacks on Muslims or the endless decades of argument over the health care mess that never produce real reform but in the perfectly needless recession created from scratch by tough but self-focused or brainless “leaders” who never bothered to think that bubbles always burst, in the idiotic faith that Iraqis would welcome U.S. invaders “with flowers.”

Even wolves seem to realize something Americans don’t – that leadership should be about more than “toughness;” it should be a function of competence.