Abu Aardvark

facing up to reality

I'm just too busy right now to do any real blogging.  What I'm doing these days isn't exactly a vacation (ha!) but it's a vacation from Abu Aardvark at least.  Will continue with the tags on the sidebar, and reserve the right to pop in with a post every now and then, but Abu Aardvark won't be posting regularly for a while.

Zebari swings at the zombie story trying to eat your brain

Back on September 16, Amir Taheri published a highly disingenous op-ed arguing that during his trip to Baghdad Barack Obama had tried to persuade Iraqi leaders to postpone concluding a security agreement with the United States during the Bush administration.  This led to dark speculation that perhaps Obama had violated the Logan Act prohibiting unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments, along with a variety of attempts to score political points by the McCain campaign.   

In response, I pointed out that, among other problems, Taheri's only evidence for his assertions was an interview with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari in al-Sharq al-Awsat newspaper which clearly did not even refer to the Baghdad meetings but to his June conversation with Obama in Washington DC.   In a follow-up piece, Taheri quoted the entire passage in question... except for the phrase which clearly showed that he had misrepresented the interview.  When several Republican participants in Obama's Baghdad meetings told Jake Tapper of ABC News that nothing of the sort had happened, the story seemed dead. 

But then Barbara Slavin resurrected the issue with a front page, banner headlined Washington Times piece entitled "Obama tried to sway Iraqis on U.S. troop deal."   She at least correctly tied Zebari's al-Sharq al-Awsat interview to the June meeting in DC.  But oddly, for such a prominently placed and unambiguously titled story, she presented no new evidence about what had happened in that meeting, other than a quote from Iraqi Ambassador Samir Sumaidaie - who admitted that he had not been present during the conversation.   She couldn't get Zebari to comment.

But CNN could:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama did not urge Iraqi officials to delay a decision on a security agreement with the United States, Iraq's foreign minister told CNN on Sunday. 

The statement by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari refutes a recent published report and a statement by Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that Obama tried to influence Iraqi politicians negotiating with the United States to score political points. 

Obama "never, ever discouraged us not to sign the agreement," Zebari said. "I think this was misrepresented, and I have clarified this case in a number of interviews back in the United States recently."

That wasn't so hard.   One would think the story is now dead, but we all know that these zombies never stop coming back to try and eat your brains.   

FA: Politics First (1)

In the September/October issue of Foreign Affairs, Stephen Biddle, Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack wrote in an important article entitled "How To Leave a Stable Iraq" that the United States should build on progress in Iraq by refraining from significant troop drawdowns in the short term until progress is consolidated: 

Both to deal with the new problems and to guard against any revival of the old ones, any further troop drawdowns, now that the "surge" is over, should be modest until after Iraq gets through two big rounds of elections -- in late 2008 at the provincial level and in late 2009 at the national level -- which have the potential either to reinforce important gains or to reopen old wounds. But starting in 2010, if current trends continue, the United States may be able to start cutting back its troop presence substantially, possibly even halving the total U.S. commitment by sometime in 2011, without running excessive risks with the stability of Iraq and the wider Persian Gulf region.

In the forthcoming issue of Foreign Affairs (November/December), I have a brief response, entitled "Politics First:  Why Only U.S. Withdrawal Can Spur Iraqi Cooperation" (no link as of yet, sorry:  the issue seems to have reached subscribers, but is not yet online - I will add a link when it's available).   I argue that

Although Biddle, O’Hanlon, and Pollack are right about the tenuous but real security gains in Iraq, they are wrong about the effects this military progress has had on the political realm and about the likely consequences of their recommendation. Their approach would almost certainly mean that troops would remain at high levels for far longer than they suggest, because the kind of political progress they anticipate—and which would, they argue, allow U.S. troops to withdraw from an Iraq that has achieved “sustained stability”—will likely not materialize.

The problem lies in the fundamentally flawed belief that providing more security is the key to achieving political compromise. Restoring basic levels of security from the low point of 2006 was indeed essential. But now, contrary to what the authors argue, improved security is making the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki less likely to make meaningful compromises, since Maliki currently sees little downside to not doing so. The Iraqi government simply does not share American assessments of the negative consequences that would result from failing to achieve reconciliation. And as long as the U.S. military protects Iraqi leaders from the consequences of their choices, they are probably correct.

I make three specific arguments, building on the premise that the moral hazard created by the U.S. military presence creates perverse incentives undermining American efforts to help create a self-sustaining Iraqi polity which can get by without it. 

First, I argue that the provincial and national elections are unlikely to produce a fundamentally new political situation.  Most likely the elections will reshuffle the political deck, producing new lines of grievance and cooperation but not the kind of new political reality which will make American drawdowns suddenly appear more feasible. The elections are extremely important, as I've written many times here, but after the painful experiences of 2005, when much-hyped elections led to sectarian voting, political stalemate, and the sectarian war of 2006, expectations should not be too high for their transformative power.  Thus,

"The United States should of course push for fair, internationally supervised elections and help provide security on election day. But U.S. grand strategy cannot be held hostage to elections that are unlikely to fundamentally change Iraqi politics for the better."

Second, I warn that an incremental approach to promoting political change, absent a fundamental change in the incentives of the political actors, is unlikely to deliver what the U.S. hopes for:   

"the slow and steady approach to Iraqi political accommodation they advocate is a recipe for indefinite delays. In the past, even when Iraqi politicians have reached formal agreements, they have gone on to drag their feet over implementation, stripping the agreements of their intended meaning and generating even greater frustration. This is best exemplified by the failure of the Iraqi government to integrate the tens of thousands of former insurgents in the U.S.- backed Sons of Iraq into the Iraqi security forces, despite constant U.S. pressure and dire warnings of the consequences. Rather than moving the Iraqis toward compromise, [their] approach would create a multitude of perverse incentives for Iraqi politicians to produce just enough progress to keep U.S. forces engaged but never enough to allow them to leave. Political progress would continue to dance just out of reach, with its failures always offering a reason for the United States to delay the drawdown of its military forces."

Third, I argue that the evolution of Iraqi politics (see my article with Brian Katulis for a much more detailed analysis of those dynamics) refutes the claim that providing more security will necessarily give Iraqi leaders the space and confidence to make political compromises: 

"the refrain that the United States has made progress on security but must do better on political progress misses the point. For Iraqi leaders who do not wish to share power, the failure to translate security into political progress is a feature, not a glitch. There will be no significant political progress until the incentives of Iraqi leaders change, which will not happen as long as the United States continues on the current—and Biddle, O’Hanlon, and Pollack’s proposed—course. It is time to acknowledge the limits of the United States’ ability to exert leverage over Iraqi politics. The primary drivers of Iraqi politics are Iraqis, not Americans, and a stable political order must rest on the alignment of their interests and not on the exercise of U.S. power. It is not simply that the United States cannot militarily or financially sustain the commitments required to achieve a perfect solution; it is that the U.S. military presence actively impedes the essential political accommodations needed to create a stable, broadly representative Iraqi political order."

I conclude:

A U.S. commitment to draw down U.S. troops over a defined period, as the Iraqi political leadership itself now demands, would give Iraqi politicians a self-interest in political accommodation—accommodation reached not to meet foreign demands but to ensure their own survival. A clear and credible public declaration of the United States’ intention to withdraw would shift the incentives of all the major political actors. And a responsible exit strategy would then offer plenty of opportunity to shape the transition and guard against the likely dangers. In contrast, a policy built on U.S. troops staying in Iraq, whether to enforce local cease-fires, maintain pressure for political accommodation, or moderate the fears of Iraqi politicians, is a problem masquerading as a solution.

Up next:  Steve Biddle, who is one of the sharpest military analysts I know and a friend for whom I have tremendous respect even when we disagree as we do here, offers up a sharp rebuttal.   Then, I respond as best I can.  As with last summer's online debate between me, Colin Kahl, and Brian Katulis I think this opens up extremely important avenues of debate.  Coming soon.... (probably early next week).

[NOTE:  sorry for all the confusion, for those of you who saw this post appear and then disappear - I just had to check with Foreign Affairs to make sure that the issue had been published and that it was legit to post about it.  The issue did go to subscribers, so even though it's not yet on-line I got the green light - and so the post is back.]   

where strategic communication leads

The Washington Post reports today that the Defense Department "will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to "engage and inspire" the local population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government."   In contrast to earlier efforts, where there was supposedly always a "produced by MNF-I" label, these efforts explicitly will not have such attribution.  As one official explains, "They don't know that the originator of the content is the U.S. government. If they did, they would never run anything."

These sorts of efforts exemplify all of the problems with strategic communications vs public diplomacy at which I hinted on Tuesday.   It's easy to see why eager information warriors think that paying for positive press makes sense in pursuit of tactical advantage in the strategic propaganda war.  It gets the "messaging" out with greater credibility, it "counters" the adversaries efforts, and it might shift some perceptions in the short term.   Even at this level, the strategy is deeply flawed.  When the payments are exposed, as they inevitably are in today's global media environment (for example, with page one stories in the Washington Post), they then discredit not only the specific messages but also every other pro-U.S. message which will quite reasonably then be dismissed as "paid for by the United States."   At our panel this week, Mike Doran and others suggested that the key to success in the "war of ideas"  is building up credible third party messengers.  Nothing could be more devastating to the credibility of third party messengers than this kind of program. 

At a deeper level, these efforts fatally compromise the long-term objective of building free, credible and independent media as the foundation of a democratic system.  I've argued many times that support for free and independent media should be at the center of all efforts to promote reform in the region.  Only a free and independent media can provide the flow of information, the transparency and demands for accountability, and the open contestation of political ideas necessary for real political pluralism and democracy.   Turning the media into a tool for spreading propaganda compromises not only the very media which we should be promoting but also our own credibility in arguing for a free and independent media. 

The other obvious point is that current "war of ideas" and COIN thinking explicity considers U.S. public opinion an important domain of information warfare.  The Post quotes from the contract solicitation this passage which should be deeply disturbing:  one goal is to "communicate effectively with our strategic audiences (i.e. Iraqi, pan-Arabic, International, and U.S. audiences) to gain widespread acceptance of [U.S. and Iraqi government] core themes and messages."  Presenting American audiences as a key target for manipulation through the covert dissemination of propaganda messages should be seen as scandalous, subversive of democracy, and illegal.   Let's hope this story finally gets some attention to trends I've been tracking for years. 

AMS: Evolution of Egyptian blogging

A new issue of the always-essential journal Arab Media and Society has just been posted online(full disclosure: I'm on the editorial board, but had no role in producing this issue).   Along with the usual selection of interesting articles (including one by Mark Harmon trying to determine via survey research whether the spread of satellite TV has increased materialism and "affluenza" among Arab youth), it has a package of pieces focusing on changes in the Egyptian blogosphere:

Core to commonplace

A vanguard of techies and activists used blogs to change the face of politics and journalism in Egypt.  But once a small town, Egypt's blogosphere now resembles a sprawling metropolis with no clearly defined center, argues Courtney C. Radsch. 

A new direction or more of the same?

Blogging has intensified political trends first triggered by the birth of satellite television and an independent print press but does not mark a new departure for Egyptian politics, argues Tom Isherwood.

Revolutions without revolutionaries?

Facebook made a splash when it attracted 70,000 members to a group supporting an Egyptian general strike.  But were these committed activists or fly by night fans?  David Faris on the politics of social networking sites.

All highly recommended!

Public Diplomacy and the War of Ideas

Tuesday's panel discussion which I organized for the Institute for Public Diplomacy (working title) and Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University, "Public Diplomacy and the War of Ideas: Agendas for the Next Administration," went extremely well.   A standing room only crowd and live C-Span audience got to see an unusually substantive, thoughtful discussion of the bureaucratic, practical, policy and intellectual challenges facing the next administration - whichever it may be - in this vital policy area. 

Panel:  me, Michael Doran, Kristin Lord, Hady Amr

I introduced the event by recounting the rise of "public diplomacy" from something of a niche State Department specialty to a matter of urgent national security and policy concern after 9/11.  The perceived rise of anti-Americanism, the destructive power of al-Qaeda's ideology, and the 9/11 Commission Report's call for a "war of ideas" generated a remarkable number of reports (Hady Amr and Peter Singer counted 33 different major studies in a, yes, report that they wrote in 2006).  It also helped spark major changes in U.S. foreign broadcasting (al-Hurra TV and Radio Sawa), the creation of the position of Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy (currently held by Jim Glassman), and more.   But what have we actually achieved through all of this effort?  What specific goals have been advanced, problems solved, or interests advanced?   

I argued that the policy debate had been roughly framed around poles loosely definable as "public diplomacy" and "strategic communication."  Public diplomacy advocates generally focused on promoting America's image in the world, building relationships with foreign elites through cultural programs and exchange programs, and generally working to explain America to the world.  Strategic communications advocates generally focused on the use of information in the service of particular tactical or strategic objectives:  delegitimating al-Qaeda's ideology and driving up its negatives.   Both goals clearly have their place, but there has been a remarkable imbalance of resources devoted to each.  Even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has repeatedly noted the unhealthy implications of the vast gap between the resources available to the Pentagon and to the State Department,  particularly in the realm of these public diplomacy/strategic communications issues.  This imbalance has tipped even further with the embrace of strategic communications concepts by Glassman since taking over as Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy.   

So with that context, I asked the three speakers to offer their visions of what the U.S. should do in the next administration.

Kristin Lord, author of a major forthcoming report from Brookings for which she interviewed some 300 people, started by arguing that the U.S. should be able to do both public diplomacy and strategic communications - walk and chew gum at the same time, as they say.   Public diplomacy should be an integral part of the formulation of all policy, used to promote America's interests in trade talks as well as in counter-terrorism.   She offered five general principles, and then five recommendations.  First, the principles:

1. Take public diplomacy seriously:  the world has changed in ways which make it more important than ever before.  The spread of democracy, the rise of global communications and media, the power of ideas and ideologies - all of these force us to recognize the power of information and ideas, and the shaping of them which lies at the heart of PD.
2. View public diplomacy more strategically.   Too much of American public diplomacy has been reactive and tactical, asking public diplomacy officers to "sprinkle pixie dust" on policies determined in advance.  Instead, foreign public attitudes should be taken into account during the process of forming policy - not to give foreign publics a veto, but to anticipate their reactions and find ways to shape their likely reception of U.S. policy initiatives in beneficial ways.
3. View public diplomacy broadly.   It should be an effective complement to every issue, not just on terrorism.
4. Play offense and defense.  Negative campaigning to shape the political arena definitely has its place.  The U.S. government might not be the right messenger in these campaigns, so instead it should facilitate the efforts of like-minded individuals from the societies in question.
5. Think about public diplomacy even when no specific goal is being pursued.  American policies and perceptions should be explained constantly, routinely, in order to give foreign publics insight into our motivations and expectations.

With those principles in mind, Lord then offered five goals:

1. Inform, persuade and engage foreign publics
2. Promote understanding of America in all of its complexity and put our policies in context.   Making America appealing or attractive would be nice, but is not necessary.
3. Create a climate of mutual understanding, trust and respect so that new developments will pass through a positive rather than negative filter
4. Encourage support for shared values
5. Strengthen dense networks of personal relationships with current and future elites

Hady Amr, of Brookings Doha, then spoke.  Drawing on his own work in the field of public diplomacy as well as his perspective spending half his time in the Gulf, Amr focused upon the specific challenge of "engaging the world" in the current international environment.   He offered the following principles:

1. We need to confront who we are.  In a world where Arab teenagers ask about the latest controversy on the U.S. election campaign trail posted on YouTube, it's crazy for public diplomacy to try to shape or control America's image from the top down.  We can't hide who we are.
2. We need to be broad based in our engagement and messaging.    The maxim that we should engage moderate or like-minded Arab allies is too limited - engaging the 1% of Arab liberals who already agree with us will not address our problems.  While we should never be sitting down with or legitimizing those who use or promote violence, there is a broad range of religious conservatives and traditionalists who we can not afford to ignore.   They are the 'swing vote' that we need to win.
3. Think about two-way communication.  Too much of what we do is one-way: broadcasting, psychological operations, etc.  That's important, but not enough: we need to think in terms of jointness, partnering through real dialogues and engagement with local partners at every step of the way. 
4. We need to organize ourselves as a government to promote a more integrated, smarter approach.  But there are many activities which should not be directly done by the government.  We should think about the British Council model, a largely independent entity which can build relationships and promote exchanges without being tasked with advancing specific U.S. policy objectives. 

Finally, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Support to Public Diplomacy Michael Doran (soon to be Assistant Secretary of State for International Information Programs Michael Doran, if he can get confirmed) offered four pillars for thinking about the problem from his vantage point as the coordinator for the counter-ideology mission in the Defense Department.   

1. Understand the environment.  Public diplomacy in all its forms requires detailed understanding of how information flows in a given society, who is credible and influential, what resonates, how U.S. policies are actually being perceived - the sorts of things that a marketing firm would want to know.  But nobody in the U.S. government, he argued, has the job of collecting that information and making it useful to policy-makers.   Where is the line between intelligence analysis and audience analysis?  He posed this as a tough bureaucratic problem, and I believe him since there are few people in the government better placed to know.   He then argued that the information environment in the world had changed so dramatically since the Cold War that old models should be discarded.   People are not waiting to be spoon-fed information, they actively seek out information... often information which confirms their own biases and beliefs.   But we need to track this new kind of information flow and engage with it.
2. Engaging people.  He agreed with Lord and Amr on this basic pillar, and said that we do these traditional activities well and should have more resources.   
3. Empowering partners.  Agreed again that the U.S. government might not be the right messenger to contest al-Qaeda's interpretation of sharia, so needs to find ways to support the efforts of those in the Muslim world who want to do so.   Again, he pointed to the bureaucratic problem:  whose job is it in the government to partner with them?   We're not set up, he argued, to create third party networks who might not necessarily support U.S. policy but whose efforts help American interests - i.e. Islamic conservatives who argue against al-Qaeda even as they promote conservative views that Americans don't like.   He repeatedly offered the "semi-hypothetical" example of an Iraqi film maker who wanted to produce a documentary about the horrors of Saddam Hussein's mass graves and disseminate it among European audiences.  Whose job is it to give him a grant and help him get this useful message out? 
4. Countering the adversary.  Not just al-Qaeda, but a whole range of adversaries.   

In the lively discussion which followed, I pushed the panelists on two points.    First, everyone would probably agree that we should do everything but in a world of scarce resources - and getting scarcer - which should we choose?   All seemed to agree that the problem wasn't getting more resources, it was about the distribution of the resources:  the Pentagon would barely even notice the transfer of a few hundred million dollars which would revolutionize the State Department's programming capabilities.   Second, what about the "Muslim Brotherhood problem" which Jim Glassman struggled with at GWU a few weeks ago?   Nobody really wanted to engage with that one, though - Amr proposed a perfectly reasonable "violence" litmus test, while Doran turned it back as a tough policy quesiton not a public diplomacy question. 

After a number of other questions, Bruce Gregory asked each panelist to say what specific piece of advice he or she would offer the next President.  Lord suggested an immediate, powerful symbolic gesture such as closing Guantanamo, Amr urged listening to foreign publics in a visible way (such as early trips to the Islamic world), Doran focused on bureaucratic reforms to overcome the persistent shortcomings he had diagnosed.  I offered three suggestions: 

1. Read Kristin Lord's new report... and then don't commission or read any more reports.  The surprising degree of overlap on the panel demonstrated that at this point we pretty much know what needs to be done.  So do it.
2. I agreed with Lord's Guantanamo suggestion, and pushed it further:  a crisis will certainly hit early in the next President's term, and the suggestions about incorporating an understanding of the information environment and foreign attitudes into decision-making should be implemented immediately.  In both cases, we'll be looking at a window of opportunity in which foreign publics will want to see if anything has changed... and that window will close quickly.
3. Don't reduce everything to a 'war of ideas.'   Al-Qaeda poses a significant challenge which must be countered, but a radical fringe ideology which is already broadly rejected by most Muslims hardly demands the total resources of the government of the United States.  Public diplomacy should be part of a broader, long-term strategic engagement with the world.

There was much more in the discussion, but hopefully this roundup gives a sense of what went on.   Feel free to watch it on C-Span if you're interested in more!