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  #41  
Old Thursday, February 24, 2011
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Default Libya's Leadership Crossroads

Libya's Leadership Crossroads


If Egypt's uprising represents the best of the turmoil sweeping the Middle East, then Muammar al-Qaddafi's brutal effort to stay in power in Libya represents its worst. Nobody will mistake Libya's bloody handling of its uprising for the relatively peaceful overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak's regime in neighboring Egypt or Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's in Tunisia. Absent from Libya are any of the restraining influences that convinced Mubarak and Ben Ali to step down from power: Libya has no institutions or political parties that stand to restrain its leader's whims. Whereas the military in Egypt retained its legitimacy by peacefully siding with the protestors and edging Mubarak out, in Libya fighter aircraft are strafing its citizens in the capital in an effort to suppress the popular uprising. With the regime having lost control in parts if not all of the east--particularly its volatile second largest city Benghazi--the country is living up to its name as the Libyan Arab Jumahiriya, a term coined by Qaddafi, meaning "state of the masses." The masses, however, no longer stand with the man who toppled the Libyan monarchy over forty years ago. With over two hundred civilians dead and a brutal crackdown being waged in its capital, absent from Libya today are the elements that would allow for a smooth and peaceful transition of power.
Should Qaddafi's regime survive--a questionable proposition given the violence and popular outrage expressed on its streets--Libya will return to the pariah status it knew after bombing an American civilian airliner and its 270 passengers nearly twenty-five years ago. The brutal killing of over two hundred demonstrators in Libya so far has brought about harsh condemnations from around the world, with even terrorist group Hezbollah, responsible for murdering American and French diplomats in Lebanon, condemned the "crimes committed by the Qaddafi regime."
Yet a return to Qaddafi's absolute rule does not appear imminent or likely. Some forty years of political suppression, economic privation, and societal sclerosis have finally caught up with the flamboyant author of the Green Book. Qaddafi has proven himself to be out of touch, with key tribes having broken with him in recent days. Libya's top diplomats in many parts of the world--Britain, the EU, the Arab League, China, the UN, to name just a few--have already resigned in protest against Qaddafi's repression. Several pilots have voted with their aircraft and defected to neighboring Malta.
Qaddafi's response has been brutality coupled with laughable offers of reform, including a changed flag and a new national anthem, not political rights and freedoms. Meanwhile, his son has vowed to fight "to the last bullet." Remarkably, even though Qaddafi has largely succeeded in cutting Libya off from international communications--foreign journalists are barred, Internet access has been severed, and al-Jazeera is off the air--this has not forestalled the regional contagion from sweeping through this country of six and a half million.

With over two hundred civilians dead and a brutal crackdown being waged in its capital, absent from Libya today are the elements that would allow for a smooth and peaceful transition of power.
Libya today faces a dark future in the short term. While Qaddafi's departure from the scene would be mourned by few, it would also create an enormous power vacuum. Entirely unclear is what glue will hold together this largely decentralized country, in which nationalist identification is low, and tribal and clan affinity paramount. Unlike in neighboring Egypt, the military lacks the cohesion or unity needed to hold together the country. How events unfold over the next few days in Benghazi and elsewhere in eastern Libya may be key indicators of Libya's future.
Despite Qaddafi's heavy hand and relative success at keeping Libyans cut off from the rest of the world, the unrest ravaging his country shows that the forces unleashed in the Middle East are well beyond his control. No state, however powerful its security organs, should now consider themselves immune. Regional dictators who have brutally repressed their people to maintain control may also soon be at risk. Syria's Bashar al-Assad comes to mind.
Internationally, the ramifications of Libya's unrest are being felt. Libya is the world's twelfth largest oil exporter and parts of Europe are extremely vulnerable: Italy, Germany, and France imported over half of Libyan oil last year. While petroleum companies are continuing to operate in Libya, they have begun to evacuate their staff. With the world's first major oil producer now experiencing political unrest, prices shot to over $105 per barrel as traders braced for greater instability. It is no surprise then that the normally restrained EU harshly condemned Qaddafi Monday for his brutal handling of the situation. Should there be major disruptions in the flow of oil amid continued violence and brutality, key European countries may be forced to consider much stronger steps--including military intervention--to safeguard their own key vital interests.
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  #42  
Old Tuesday, March 01, 2011
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Default Our Bargain with the New Gadhafi

Our Bargain with the New Gadhafi



The man Ronald Reagan called "the mad dog of the Middle East" is living up to that title these days, launching bloody assaults on his own population and reminding us of why we hated him for so long. Moammar Gadhafi is the man behind the bomb that brought down Pan Am flight 103 in 1988, killing 270 people (190 Americans). He is also behind the 1986 bombing of the La Belle discotheque in Berlin, killing several Americans and wounding 229 people. By the time Reagan left office, we had a total trade ban on Libya and had, in response to the attack on La Belle, bombed targets near Tripoli and Benghazi.

Two decades later we have come full circle, watching Gadhafi on TV with horror. On Tuesday he said "I call on those who love Moammar Gadhafi, who represents glory . . . to come out of your houses and attack" the anti-regime demonstrators. He would not resign, he said, because "Moammar Gadhafi is not the president, he is not a normal human being."

That is clear, but for most of the past decade we made believe he was. After the U.S. Army made short shrift of Saddam Hussein's forces in 2003, Gadhafi approached British intelligence and sought to come in from the cold. He agreed, after negotiations conducted largely by the CIA and London's MI6, to abandon terrorism and hand over to the U.S. his programs for developing missiles and weapons of mass destruction.

He kept his part of the bargain: Those materials reside at a military base in the U.S., and he has stayed away from terrorist groups. Libya began making payments to the families of those killed on Pan Am 103, ultimately reaching an agreement with all but one family and handing over a total of $1.5 billion.

In exchange, the U.S. sent an ambassador to Tripoli and allowed Libya to open an embassy in Washington. Gadhafi's son Saif al-Islam visited Washington, and his suave and murderous intelligence chief Musa Kusa (Michigan State University class of '78, and more recently Libya's foreign minister) was allowed back into the U.S. All sanctions ended. The U.S. stopped blocking Libyan efforts to join United Nations committees, and in 2008 Libya served for a month as president of the Security Council. That same year, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Libya.

The U.S. also restrained its criticism of Gadhafi's internal repression. The agreement with Gadhafi came in 2003, the same year that President George W. Bush delivered his speech at the National Endowment for Democracy saying that "Sixty years of Western nations excusing and accommodating the lack of freedom in the Middle East did nothing to make us safe—because in the long run, stability cannot be purchased at the expense of liberty."

How did we square that circle when it came to Gadhafi? We hoped that our embassy folks, visitors, academics and businessmen would—in the long run—pull Libya toward being a more open society. And we suspended disbelief about the intermittent promises of reform, usually delivered by Saif al-Islam, that change was on the way.

Our annual human rights reports told the truth, but there was no question that the Bush administration (and the Obama administration that followed) felt limited by Gadhafi's adherence to the bargain. We had not promised to be silent about human rights abuses, and we were not, but there was no real energy behind our statements. We were doing business with Gadhafi, not trying to overthrow him. The fate of Fathi Eljahmi, one of Libya's most prominent dissidents, was symbolic: Bush and Obama administration pressure was insufficient to free him from prison until just before his death in 2009.

Seen from this bloody February of 2011, the agreement with Libya was still the right policy. Gadhafi in his bunker with control over missiles, chemical weapons and a rudimentary nuclear program is a terrifying thought. So is a Libya after regime collapse with those materials available to the highest bidder.

Had we reneged—taken Libya's weaponry but then started a campaign against Gadhafi's rule—he'd have re-armed fast and gone back to terrorism. It's also not clear what more strenuous and public efforts to promote change in Libya would have achieved. It's not as if one could reason with Gadhafi.

Gadhafi's vicious regime has left Libya far worse than he found it on the day of his coup in 1969. King Idriss was at least a unifying figure for a country that had not long been unified and had been independent only since 1951. Gadhafi has established no national institutions, not even allowing a fake parliament of the Mubarak or Ben Ali variety that could perhaps be turned into something real.

Nor is there an army such as in Egypt, with the prestige and unity to intervene, restore calm and (we all hope) set the country on a better path. Gadhafi, who took power in a military coup, was too clever to allow a well-organized army that might do the same to him. Many units are organized along tribal lines, which has kept Gadhafi safe but may be his undoing now. If the tribes are central to defeating him, the next government will have to balance them carefully, using Libya's oil wealth to buy support and time to address its many crises.

Like Idi Amin and Emperor Bokassa, Gadhafi will soon join the pantheon of grotesque dictators who leave their countries in ruins. Given the last years—when quiet disapproval replaced forceful denunciation as U.S. policy—we can only hope that Libyans remember the decades when we were Gadhafi's worst enemy.

Mr. Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, handled Middle East affairs at the National Security Council from 2001 to 2009.
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  #43  
Old Tuesday, March 01, 2011
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Default Iran Will Benefit From This Arab Spring

Iran Will Benefit From This Arab Spring


Suzanne Maloney explains why, far from being overtaken by a revolution of its own, Iran might very well emerge from this period stronger than before.
As upheaval sweeps the Middle East, optimists have hoped that Iran would soon follow Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. In fact, the opposite has happened. As shown by its audacious decision to dispatch warships through the Suez Canal for the first time in 31 years, the Iranian leadership expects to emerge from the regional turmoil further entrenched and emboldened.
With a revived opposition mounting a number of large protests, the Islamic Republic ought to be looking across the region with trepidation. Instead its leadership sees the turmoil across the Arab world as confirmation of its ascendancy as a regional power, and America's decline. Tehran is revelling in analogies between Egypt and Tunisia, and its own revolutionary inception. And despite the resurgence of the “green movement” opposition, Iranian leaders remain confident about their ability to beat back dissent and buy off a conflict-weary population.

They are also savvy enough to recognise that those new Arab leaders who emerge are likely to trumpet nationalist sentiments, and are unlikely to embrace the Islamic Republic. Still, regime change will inevitably produce governments that are less compliant to Washington, and less hostile to Tehran. The American experiment in Iraq has taught Iran's ageing revolutionaries that the eviction of an old antagonist is more than sufficient for the purposes of enhancing influence.
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  #44  
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Default The Arab Turmoil and Palestinians

The Arab Turmoil and Palestinians

Interviewee: Rashid I. Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies, Columbia University
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org


The turmoil in the Arab world, particularly the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, has "excited" most Palestinians, says Rashid Khalidi, co-director of Columbia's Center for Palestine Studies. But the U.S.-led negotiations for a two-state solution between Palestinians and Israel has foundered, which was underscored by the U.S. veto in the Security Council against a resolution to condemn Israeli settlements in the West Bank. He says the veto--the only one among Council members--will "intensify a sense in the Arab world generally and among Palestinians as well that a resolution to this conflict does not lie through this bankrupt, failed negotiation process." He says a rethink of U.S. policy in the region is necessary. "[Obama] has to make a decision on whether he wants to act on the basis of what most people would agree are American interests: a rapid resolution of this conflict and removing the impression that most people in the world have of the United States being on the wrong side of this."

Much of the attention in the Middle East in recent years has been over Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which have proceeded without achieving any breakthrough. And now, suddenly there is turmoil in the Arab world that has diverted attention away from the Israeli-Palestinian issues.

Q.How do you see this, as a Palestinian?

I think most Palestinians are very excited about what's happening because they felt that the old Arab order helped to keep them down [and] was complicit with the United States and Israel. Palestinians were thrilled with what happened in Tunisia and ecstatic about what happened in Egypt. Most Palestinians will be very happy to see [Muammar] Qaddafi bite the dust. The so-called "peace process" has not been something that most Palestinians believed in since late in the 1990's. Most Palestinians believed that this was not a process that had anything to do with peace or conflict resolution. It had to do with conflict management and expansion of occupied Israeli settlements. It was clear that these talks were not leading to self-determination or statehood. It was clear it was not leading to an end of the occupation. Most Palestinians were very disenchanted with the whole process.

Now, in the midst of the upheavals in the Arab world, the Palestinians tried to get a UN Security Council resolution (AP) passed last Friday, which would have condemned the Israeli settlements. It was approved by every member of the Security Council except the United States, which by voting no, vetoed the resolution. What's been the reaction?

I think it will intensify a sense in the Arab world generally that a resolution to this conflict does not lie through this bankrupt, failed negotiation process. We may be seeing its last days. This veto clarified matters. It shows what we've known since the days of President Harry Truman [who recognized the State of Israel in 1948 against the advice of the State Department]. Clearly, domestic [pro-Israel] concerns trump everything. People's opinions are changing. But Congress hasn't changed and the media to a very large extent hasn't changed. So, the administration responds to that [pro-Israel] sentiment. They aren't responding to reality, unfortunately. Sooner or later it's going to catch up with them. But who knows when?

At the Security Council last week, the British ambassador said that the EU was looking forward to admitting a Palestinian state to the UN by September. Is there really any possibility of a separate Palestinian state emerging?

The reality is that there has been one sovereign power since June 1967 between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and that sovereign power is Israel. And any declaration of a Palestinian state would fly in the face of that reality. European powers may be irritated enough over the U.S. policy to take a separate course, but I'll believe that when I see it.

But isn't Salem Fayyad, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, working toward a Palestinian state?

A negotiation between a party under occupation and a sovereign power--which has nuclear weapons and is one of the strongest countries in the world militarily--is not a negotiation. And if the greatest superpower in the world puts its thumb on the Israeli side of the scale to boot, it's a travesty.

The whole Arab constellation is changing. We really don't know where we're going to end up in as little as a few weeks and certainly a few months. So that may have been, and may indeed still be, the intention of Fayyad. But he's also been talking about elections and reconciliation between Hamas [in Gaza] and the Palestinian Authority [on the West Bank], and I'm not sure how you square that with such a declaration. It may be that it would be something that would appeal to a coalition government after elections, but I don't know.

What about the July elections proposed by President Mahmoud Abbas? I take it Hamas is opposed to them.


Yes, and they seem to argue that you have to have an agreement before you can have elections. Given the fact that everything is changing in the Arab world, I would suggest that there may be developments in this regard yet to come. The Egyptian regime was an enormous prop of the Palestinian status quo in its closure of Gaza and in its blockade of Gaza with Israel. All this is changing now. So, I would hesitate to suggest that we could say much definitively about this right now.

Could you see an uprising in Gaza?


The only demonstrations have been in Ramallah [the capital of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank], and they haven't been opposing the authority but were calling for Palestinian reconciliation. I'm sure that any attempts to demonstrate in Gaza would be repressed. But the ground is moving under the feet of these two weak authorities, both of which lack legitimacy. I don't think the Gaza/Hamas authority is very popular, and I know the Ramallah authority is not popular either. That's not to say that those two parties are not going to do well in elections. They have the party machines to get out votes and know how to raise an election.

Are there some Palestinian leaders who we don't know about who are more popular?

A large chunk of Palestinian leadership at any moment is either under administrative detention, on trial, or have been sentenced or awaiting sentence. And there are a lot of people in prison. Americans and Westerners are dying to see a new Palestinian leader. The most irritating question I've gotten about Egypt is, "Who are the leaders? Where are the leaders? Why don't we see the leaders?" Well, it seems to me that one of the things that people who have been organizing this uprising in Egypt have been careful to do is to avoid appearing as leaders. In fact, somebody said on Egyptian television that the days of Egyptian strongmen are over. That period in Arab history has passed. Perhaps it's an exaggeration, but I think that what you're seeing in both Tunisia and Egypt is a fairly well-organized movement that has been very reluctant to produce a charismatic leader. I'm not sure that's germane to the Palestinian case, but I don't think we should necessarily be looking for a new leader, although many potential leaders are in prison.

I take it that George Mitchell's peace mission is dead, right?

It very much depends on what the president directs [Mitchell] to do. If he tells him to keep doing what he's been doing, I can't see that there's much point to it. A negotiation between a party under occupation and a sovereign power--which has nuclear weapons and is one of the strongest countries in the world militarily--is not a negotiation. And if the greatest superpower in the world puts its thumb on the Israeli side of the scale to boot, it's a travesty. It's not even in the realm of negotiations.

That has been the policy since Secretary of State James Baker in 1990-91, and it has just not worked. In 1991, there were a couple hundred thousand settlers, and now there's well over half a million. That has been the policy that the president essentially asked Mitchell to continue. It is a policy whereby the United States essentially endorses whatever Israel chooses to throw in the way of the Palestinians, and if the Palestinians don't accept it, then the United States wanders off and pays attention in another two months. There's no point to anyone continuing with that. That is not a peace process. That is not a negotiation. That is not going to resolve the conflict. That is simply a means of enabling Israel to continue the expansion of its settlement and occupation, which is now in its forty-fourth year [since the 1967 war]. I think it's insane for both American and Israeli interests. It's obviously not good for the Palestinians, and allowing it to continue for two years of the Obama presidency leaves a bad mark on this presidency.

If Obama called you and asked for advice on what to do, what would you recommend?

I would suggest that a fundamental rethinking of the U.S. approach is necessary. [Obama] has to make a decision on whether he wants to act on the basis of what most people would agree are American interests: a rapid resolution of this conflict and removing the impression that most people in the world have of the United States being on the wrong side of this, [which is] that we're in favor of settlement, in favor of unending occupation, and in favor of Israel dictating terms. I would suggest to him that we have to decide whether we really believe that following a policy that would serve the interest of the United States as well as the interests of Israelis and Palestinians would, in fact, lose him votes. I would be very surprised if it didn't win him votes. It would serve the national interests of the United States and the Middle East. And I would say to him that there's a huge untapped reservoir of support for a just, equitable, rapid solution of this conflict.

What would be the basis of an equitable settlement in your mind?

You would have to say settlement and occupation are illegal and should be ended as rapidly as possible. That's how you have to start it. You take note of Resolution 242, which ended the 1967 war and called an end to "territories occupied," and you take the Fourth Geneva Convention against moving populations to occupied territories. That would be a very simple and clear way to start. And how you work from there to a settlement, I don't know. But I think status quo is the starting point.

Talk about the Israeli settlements.

The settlements are illegal. Forcing Israelis to face the fact that they have to obey international law may shake up the people in Israel who really are not in favor of the settlement or the settlers. The majority of Israelis don't really believe that the settlements are in Israel's interests. But they don't get any support from the United States. The settlers get support from the United States. The only people in Israel who are happy with this U.S. veto were the settlers. The United States is in support of the settlers and not in support of the Israeli majority that's against settlement? That's what our policy, in effect, says.

But hasn't Obama inveighed pretty strongly against the settlements?

His speeches are one thing and his Security Council veto is another thing. I think his veto has a lot more weight than a lot of hot air, don't you?
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  #45  
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Default Gauging U.S.-Taliban Talks

Gauging U.S.-Taliban Talks

Interviewee: Steve Coll, President, New America Foundation
Interviewer: Jayshree Bajoria, Senior Staff Writer, CFR.org



The United States has supported an Afghan-led negotiation process with Taliban insurgents ready to renounce violence, but a new report in the New Yorker provides details on what it says are direct U.S.-Taliban talks already underway since last year. Steve Coll, president of the Washington-based New America Foundation, and author of the article, says U.S. engagement is meant to "create conditions in which a more sustainable--and possibly internationally endorsed--process of negotiating led by the Afghan government, and including players such as the Pakistan government, can take place." There haven't been any official statements discussing U.S.-Taliban direct talks. However, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a speech at the Asia Society last week, emphasized the need for reconciliation with Taliban leaders who broke ties with al-Qaeda, renounced violence, and abided by the Afghan constitution. But, Coll says, these "conditions are not intended by the Obama administration to be understood as preconditions for talks. They are meant to be understood as preconditions for an acceptable settlement."
Could you give us some background on when these talks started, and which U.S. department has the lead in the negotiations?
It started last year probably before October. I would imagine from circumstantial evidence that the timing may have been related to the failure of [the Afghan] government's engagement with a man who presented himself as Mullah [Akhtar Muhammad] Mansour--and who turned out to be an imposter (NYT)--that fell apart in the summer. What I do know about the timing is that it occurred last year while Ambassador [Richard] Holbrooke was still engaged in his role.

The idea of the American role is primarily to create conditions in which a more sustainable, and possibly internationally endorsed, process of negotiating led by the Afghan government, and including players such as the Pakistan government, can take place.
All the departments have been involved in one way or another. The State Department has been involved; intelligence channels have been involved in trying to support this dialogue and make sure that people are who they seem to be and develop an understanding of who the other side really is. The White House is certainly involved, and General [David] Petraeus's command is involved, so this is clearly an interagency initiative.

What stage are the talks at

It was characterized to me [as indicated in his article, people briefed about the talks told him] as exploratory in the sense that it does not constitute a substantive negotiation about the issues that divide Taliban leaders from the United States. Obviously some of those issues come up and are part of the exploratory, confidence-building aspect of the discussions. But if this were to ripen in some way, it would manifest itself in a more formal process for negotiating among Taliban leaders; the Afghan government; in subordinate but important roles, the United States and Pakistan; and perhaps other elements of the Afghan body politics, such as those representative of [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai's peace council (Reuters).

Which Taliban leaders are the United States talking to? And who is not going to be part of these talks?]

The United States [needs] to identify not only who on the Taliban side might be willing to participate, but also who besides Mullah Omar really has a record of culpability for terrorism or anti-American violence that essentially disqualifies them. That's a judgment that the United States would have to make after figuring out who, if anyone, is really willing to participate in a serious way. There would be at least some U.S. officials who would judge that there are leading Taliban personalities besides Mullah Omar who might be out of bounds to participate in such a negotiation. But of course, the Afghan government may have its own view about who it is willing to talk to, and American policy presumes that the Afghans have the leading voice in this political tract.

These talks might have promise if they are embedded inside a much more robust political strategy that seeks Afghan national unity and looks to regional governments to reinforce that unity and to participate in these talks on those terms.

But do you have any names of Taliban leaders or Taliban factions that the United States is already talking to?


No, I didn't publish any names and I'm not going to provide them in an interview.


What are the basic principles on which these talks are being held? Are there any red lines that have been laid down?

One of the interesting themes that came out of the conversations that I had is the extent to which the announced American red lines--which are essentially that the Taliban would have to verifiably break with al-Qaeda, leave the battlefield if not disarm, and accept the Afghan Constitution--are not intended by the Obama administration to be understood as preconditions for talks. They are meant to be understood as preconditions for an acceptable settlement. A reasonable person listening to the statements of Obama administration officials in the past might have concluded that those were preconditions for any talks. However, I did go back and look at as many of the public remarks as I could find, when those red lines were being articulated, and I can't really find an explicit case of a cabinet member or a senior military commander saying that they were preconditions for any talk. It was implied, or at least it was received that way in some quarters.
But clearly, now the idea is that those are the conditions that the United States would require to endorse and participate in any settlement of this kind. American participation would be critical because only the United States and NATO can provide, at this stage, the security regime that would be required to guarantee the safety of participants in negotiations.

Where do these talks fit into the full gamut of talks that have been led by the Afghan government, by President Karzai, by the Saudi monarchy, and by other governments and international organizations?

The idea is to use direct American assessments and confidence building as a way to create conditions for more successful Afghan-led talks. There is a recognition that the efforts of Karzai, while they have become more systematic and inclusive over the last year, have in isolation not been able to produce the breakthroughs that Karzai hoped for, or that other supporters of negotiations had sought. The idea of the American role is primarily to create conditions in which a more sustainable and possibly internationally endorsed process of negotiating led by the Afghan government, and including players such as the Pakistan government, can take place.


Has there been any involvement of the Pakistani government or of its intelligence agency, the ISI? Are there concerns that they might act as spoilers?

There are concerns that they might act as spoilers. There's been a very careful effort to brief both the Pakistan and Afghan governments about the course of these direct talks for the purpose of assuring them that they were not going to be kept in the dark about something that they are obviously very interested in.
In the case of the Pakistanis, however, the United States is indicating that it is not going to approach negotiations with the Taliban through the ISI acting as an agent. By working directly, the United States is able to gather more reliable impressions and information about this track and its potential, but also to put itself into a position to prevent the ISI from attempting to control or manipulate any process that emerges.
Obviously, Pakistan has a legitimate interest in the outcome of these negotiations. Afghanistan is a neighbor and has been a source of instability and violence in Pakistan's national life for thirty years. No one is suggesting that the Pakistani army or the Pakistani establishment doesn't have a role here. But it's obvious that allowing the ISI to speak for the Taliban would be an unsuccessful strategy for negotiations and likely also alarm many Afghans about the legitimacy of such talks.

[T]he United States is indicating that it is not going to approach the prospect of negotiations with the Taliban through the ISI acting as an agent.
In your article, you allude to differences among U.S. administration officials on whether or not to talk to the Taliban. Are they significant, and what are the main points of dispute?


The differences were substantial a year or eighteen months ago, and have narrowed since then. There is the question of whether these negotiations would be effective at all. There is also a question as to whether by undertaking such talks the United States risks alienating important sections of the Afghan body politic, particularly the northern groups that fought a civil war against the Taliban in the 1990s. There are some in the administration who would like to work harder to make sure that those groups are included in the decision-making about how to approach talks with the Taliban. President Karzai's [government] has, at least until recently, not always built that kind of inclusive politics around these talks.
Finally, there are regional players, and those within the administration, who sympathize with the view that the Taliban really is best understood as culpable in international terrorism, and we don't talk to terrorists. Until they take more concrete steps to demonstrate that they are not, in fact, engaged in facilitating international terrorism, we ought not to talk with them. That has been the government of India's view, for example. It's becoming a little less inflexible now, but there are still outstanding issues, like the Indian airlines hijacking case [in 1999] and others, that would influence Indian views.
There's an argument inside both the academic and intelligence communities about the best way to understand the relationship between the Taliban and al-Qaeda, historically and currently. It's a very complicated subject, but there are those who regard the Taliban and al-Qaeda as groups without meaningful differences between them.
What potential problems do you foresee going forward in these talks?
There is a threshold question--whether there are enough serious Afghan Taliban leaders who are prepared to engage in talks of a sort that would make a difference to the course of the war over the next couple of years. That's an unanswered question.
Let's assume there are a significant number of people acting in the name of the Quetta Shura or otherwise who are prepared to engage. Then, the second most important problem is to develop negotiations that do not unbalance Afghanistan's already fragile politics by creating fears among anti-Taliban groups that they're going to be left out of some bargain. Or by proceeding in an atmosphere of such secrecy that Afghans become uncertain about who is negotiating their future and on what grounds.
Karzai is already an isolated political leader. He has built a peace council that, in its list of names, has the potential to construct the kind of inclusive negotiations I'm describing. But whether it will actually play that role is uncertain. There are lots of important factions in Afghan politics and political military equations that are not represented on the peace council.
It's going to require, in short, a much broader strategy of political engagement and diplomacy. There is no silver bullet here. These talks might have promise if they are embedded inside a much more robust political strategy that seeks Afghan national unity and looks to regional governments to reinforce that unity and to participate in these talks on those terms. If this becomes a kind of backroom deal between governments, then it is not likely to succeed.

What would be your recommendations on how the Obama administration handles these talks
?

You have to solve some statecraft puzzles. How do you handle the regional diplomacy? How do you handle the talks with the Taliban simultaneously? How do you handle the intra-Afghan political challenge? But if you don't take each of those tracks equally seriously, resource them all and try to unify the strategy, it's going to be very difficult to achieve the kind of progress that would change the level of violence in Afghanistan, which is, after all, the point. There are ways, once substantial confidence has been built, to carry out talks. There are lots of models out there for building negotiations in a secure way. Even in the best case, it's going to require time. There are lots of reasons to get started, because it may take several years to discover whether this track can produce results.
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The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs from an interventionist perspective. Founded in 1921 and headquartered at 58 East 68th Street in New York City, with an additional office in Washington, D.C., the CFR is considered to be the nation's 'most influential foreign-policy think tank.' It publishes a bi-monthly journal Foreign Affairs.
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Default 5 Myths About Nuclear Energy

5 Myths About Nuclear Energy

Explosions. Radiation. Evacuations. More than 30 years after Three Mile Island, the unfolding crisis in Japan has brought back some of the worst nightmares surrounding nuclear power — and restarted a major debate about the merits and the drawbacks of this energy source. Does nuclear energy offer a path away from carbon-based fuels? Or are nuclear power plants too big a threat? It's time to separate myth from reality.
[COLOR="rgb(255, 140, 0)"]1. The biggest problem with nuclear energy is safety.[/COLOR][/COLOR]
Safety is certainly a critical issue, as the tragedy in Japan is making clear. But for years, the the biggest challenge to sustainable nuclear energy hasn't been safety, but cost.
In the United States, new nuclear construction was already slowing down even before the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979; the disaster merely sealed its fate. The last nuclear power plant to come online started delivering power in 1996 — but its construction began in 1972. Today, nuclear power remains considerably more expensive than coal- or gas-fired electricity, mainly because nuclear plants are so expensive to build. Estimates are slippery, but a plant can cost well north of $5 billion. A 2009 MIT study estimated that the cost of producing nuclear energy (including construction, maintenance and fuel) was about 30 percent higher than that of coal or gas.
Of course, cost and safety aren't unrelated. Concerns about safety lead to extensive regulatory approval processes and add uncertainty to plant developers' calculations — both of which boost the price of financing new nuclear plants. It's not clear how much these construction costs would fall if safety fears subsided and the financing became cheaper — and after the Fukushima catastrophe, we're unlikely to find out.

2. Nuclear power plants are sitting ducks for terrorists.

It’s easy to get scared about terrorist attacks on nuclear plants. After the Sept. 11 attacks, a cottage industry sprung up around the threat, with analysts imagining ever-more horrific and creative ways that terrorists could strike nuclear facilities and unleash massive consequences.

There are certainly real risks: Nuclear expert Matthew Bunn of Harvard University has pointed out that well-planned terrorist attacks probably would produce the sort of simultaneous failures in multiple backup systems that Japan’s reactors are experiencing. But it’s much harder to target a nuclear power plant than one might think, and terrorists would have great difficulty replicating the physical impact that last week’s earthquake had on the Japanese plants. It also would be tough for them to breach the concrete domes and other barriers that surround U.S. reactors. And although attacks have been attempted in the past — most notoriously by Basque separatists in Spain in 1977 — none has resulted in widespread damage.

To be sure, the water pools in which reactors store used fuel, which reside outside the containment domes, are more vulnerable than the reactors and could cause real damage if attacked; there is a debate between analysts and industry about whether terrorists could effectively target them.

3. Democrats oppose nuclear energy; Republicans favor it.

Yes, the GOP base is enthusiastic about nuclear energy, while the Democratic base is skeptical. Moreover, many Republican politicians support assistance to the industry such as loan guarantees for nuclear developers, while many Democrats oppose them. But the politics of nuclear power have changed in recent years, mainly because of climate change.

Democrats, including many supporters in the environmental movement, have become more open to nuclear power as a large-scale zero-emissions energy option. Steven Chu, President Obama’s energy secretary, has been enthusiastic about the nuclear option. When asked to compare coal and nuclear energy in 2009, Chu responded: “I’d rather be living near a nuclear power plant.”

The biggest prospective boost for nuclear power in the past two years was an initiative championed by Democrats and scorned by Republicans: cap-and-trade legislation. Cap-and-trade would have penalized polluting power sources such as coal and gas emitters, thus tilting the playing field toward nuclear power. Department of Energy simulations of the ill-fated Waxman-Markey climate bill projected that it would have increased nuclear power generation by 74 percent in 2030.

Yet although Democrats may have become more accepting of nuclear power, few became fully enthusiastic. Japan’s tragedy may make many reconsider their stance.

4. Nuclear power is the key to energy independence.

When people talk about energy independence, they’re thinking about oil, which we mostly use in vehicles and industrial production. When they talk about nuclear, though, they’re thinking about electricity. More nuclear power means less coal, less natural gas, less hydroelectric power and less wind energy. But unless we start putting nuclear power plants in our cars and semis, more nuclear won’t mean less oil.

This wasn’t always the case: During the the heyday of nuclear power, the early 1970s (45 plants broke ground between 1970 and 1975), oil was a big electricity source, and boosting nuclear power was a real way to squeeze petroleum out of the economy. Alas, we’ve already replaced pretty much all the petroleum in the power sector; the opportunity to substitute oil with nuclear power is gone.

5. Better technology can make nuclear power safe.

Technology can increase safety, but there will always be risks with nuclear power. The Japanese reactors at the center of the current crisis use old technology that increased their vulnerability. Next-generation reactors will be “passively cooled,” which means that if backup power fails like it has in Japan, meltdowns will be avoided more easily. (Passive-cooling systems vary, but their common feature is a lack of dependence on external power.) Other lower-tech improvements, such as stronger containment structures, have also mitigated risk.

But what happened in Japan reminds us that unanticipated vulnerabilities are inevitable in any highly complex system. Careful engineering can minimize the chance of disasters, but it can’t eliminate them. Operators and authorities will need to make sure that they’re prepared to deal with unanticipated failures even as they work to prevent them.

Most energy sources entail risks. In the past year, we’ve seen an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, fatal explosions at the Upper Big Branch coal mine in West Virginia and now the crisis in Japan. The American public will need to decide whether the risks of nuclear power — compared with those of other energy sources — are too high

Author:
Michael A. Levi, David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change
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Default Saudi Arabia's Missteps into Bahrain

Saudi Arabia's Missteps into Bahrain

On March 14, 2011, Saudi Arabia launched its own "Brezhnev Doctrine," exercising the right to militarily intervene to prop up an unpopular governing order. In the process, the Saudis have demonstrated how little they understand their own region and their own country. Saudi rulers have made a major mistake in casting the crisis in Bahrain as a sectarian conflict in which Iran's Shia proxies are battling a benign Sunni ruling class for sake of Persian aggrandizement. The rebelling in Bahrain, as indeed throughout the region, is about a disenfranchised and impoverished majority seeking political representation and economic justice. The proper path for Bahrain's al-Khalifa dynasty is to renegotiate its national compact and appreciate that as the Middle East finally joins the twenty-first century it has limited options beyond a constitutional monarchy.
The aging Saudi rulers nurturing their own misconceptions and conspiracies are hopelessly behind the curve as the Arab Spring gradually suffuses the entire Middle East. The yearning for democratic reforms and economic equality cannot be repressed through police tactics in Riyadh or forceful intervention in Manama. It would be wise for Washington to have a frank and unpleasant conversation with its ally of long-standing. Too often the lure of Saudi oil wealth has caused successive American administrations to placate their truculence. The old Arab bargain whereby the state exchanges material rewards for political quiescence is no longer relevant. If the Saudi monarchy and its Sunni subsidiaries want to survive the turbulent politics of the new Middle East, they will have to opt for political modernization as opposed to offers of bribes mixed with threats of violence.
The Iranian angle is as interesting as it is intriguing. The Islamic Republic is itself beset by a democratic uprising that it has tried to contain at the risk of its own illegitimacy. The Saudi move this week could not have come at a better time for the guardians of Iran's theocracy. Tehran will likely continue its unequivocal condemnations and portray itself as champion of democracy without actually practicing it at home. By highlighting the deficiencies of the Arab political order and Washington's seeming passivity, the clerical state can try to capture the region's political imagination irrespective of its own tarnished reputation. But don't expect any regional show of force by the Iranian regime. Tehran understands that it benefits the most by limiting itself to rhetorical attacks as opposed to a direct military intervention that could allow the Saudis to portray their power play as part of the effort to contain Iran.
U.S. policymakers must grasp that the crisis in Bahrain and elsewhere in the Middle East is not about Iran and should not be seen through the prism of U.S.-Iran confrontation. The sooner Washington emancipates itself from such flawed perceptions, the sooner it will be in position to craft a new, stable regional order.
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Default Qaddafi Must Go

Qaddafi Must Go

Better late than never, the United States and her allies finally have acted to stop the slaughter in Libya. With strong American, British, and French support, the United Nations Security Council on March 17 approved a Lebanon-sponsored resolution authorizing member states to use “all necessary measures... to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack” in Libya.

Only hours before, Muammar Qaddafi had been issuing blood-curdling threats, promising to go “house by house, room by room” and vowing “we will have no mercy and no pity on them.” Yet as soon as the U.N. resolution passed, Qaddafi's foreign minister announced an immediate cease-fire—although there were reports that offensive operations were still continuing.

Qaddafi may be a “mad dog” (as Ronald Reagan called him), but he is also shrewd and ruthless enough to have held on to power for 41 years. His ruthless streak has been on ample display in recent weeks as his armed forces have been on a rampage through rebel-held towns. Now we are seeing his pragmatic streak—the same instinct he displayed in 2003, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when he suddenly decided to give up his weapons of mass destruction program and support of terrorism. Presumably Qaddafi realizes that overwhelming military forces are marshaling against him and that his best bet is not to provoke the American-led coalition.

But while the cease-fire, if real, is good news—it gives breathing room to the rebels in Benghazi, Libya's second city, which Qaddafi had been on the verge of assaulting—it should not lead to complacency on the part of the West and our Arab allies. We cannot be content with the current stalemate, with Qaddafi holding Tripoli and most other cities while the rebels are ensconced in Benghazi and Tobruk in the east. We do not want to divide Libya indefinitely (unless its people vote to do so). Most of all, we do not want to get into a situation like that in Iraq between 1991 and 2003, when the United States had to devote considerable resources to maintaining a no-fly zone.

The longer Qaddafi stays in power, the more suffering he can inflict on the people under his control, and the more mischief he can inflict on other countries—including the United States. He has already threatened to retaliate against “all air and maritime traffic in the Mediterranean Sea.” That is no idle threat, given that in the past he has been responsible for numerous acts of terrorism, including the midair bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988.

The only way this crisis will end—the only way we and our allies can achieve our objectives in Libya—is to remove Qaddafi from power. Containment won't suffice. We must make “rollback” the international strategy.

Such a goal is not compelled, but is permitted, under U.N. Security Council resolution 1973. That resolution “stresses the need to intensify efforts to find a solution to the crisis which responds to the legitimate demands of the Libyan people” and which leads to “a peaceful and sustainable solution.” The Obama administration should argue that the only “peaceful and sustainable solution” would be for Qaddafi to abdicate power—as the president has already demanded (a demand he pointedly did not reiterate yesterday though he did say Qaddafi has lost “the legitimacy to lead”).

Now we need to muster the will and the resources to oust the dictator. Resolution 1973 gives authority for a wide variety of actions. The only step which is explicitly excluded is “a foreign occupation force of any form on any part of Libyan territory,” although it is not impossible to imagine a future U.N. resolution authorizing the dispatch of an international peacekeeping force to help Libya make the transition from Qaddafi's heinous rule. The immediate need is for the U.S., British, and French armed forces—along with, we hope, Arab allies—to unleash a devastating fusillade from the air and the sea to cripple Qaddafi's ability to threaten Libyan civilians. We should target not only his military forces but also their command and control infrastructure—including Qaddafi himself. The Libyan state is a one-man operation. Eliminate that man and the whole edifice may come tumbling down.

We should also dispatch special forces and CIA operatives to meet with the resistance and assess their needs. There is an obvious need for outside specialists to help train the rebels and to coordinate any offensive they undertake with allied forces. We saw in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 how devastating an indigenous force can be when backed by precision American airpower directed by tactical air controllers on the ground. A similar combination should work as well in Libya's deserts as it did in Afghanistan's mountains—especially considering the fact that Qaddafi has significantly fewer supporters than the Taliban had. Few if any Libyans have been converted to the loopy gospel of Qaddafi's “Green Book.” The bulk of his forces are mercenaries. It is doubtful that they will fight to the death. Many will desert once they see they are backing a losing cause.

We don't want to discount the difficulties of toppling Qaddafi. Like any other military operation, it will be filled with risks, costs, and hardships. In many ways, however, the harder issue will be cobbling together a post-Qaddafi government. The Transitional Council, under the leadership of Qaddafi's former justice minister, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, has made a good start in Benghazi. Behind the scenes, we and our allies should be working to build the most durable and democratic regime possible—while assuring Qaddafi's allies, especially in the army, that they will be welcome in the new Libya. A good start would be to recognize the Transitional Council as Libya's lawful government, as France already has done.

The passage of U.N. Security Council resolution 1973 is a step in the right direction. But it is only the beginning—not the end. Much dangerous and difficult work remains to be done to create a decent post-Qaddafi state where (in the words of the U.N. resolution) civilians will not have to fear “attacks” and “abuses.”


Author:
Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies
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Default Libya: Too Much, Too Late

Libya: Too Much, Too Late


The United States has now embarked on its third war of choice in less than a decade. And like the 2003 Iraq war and the Afghan war after 2009, this war of choice is ill-advised.

Libya is a war of choice for two reasons. First, U.S. interests are decidedly less than vital. Libya accounts for only 2 percent of world oil production. The scale of the humanitarian crisis is not unique; indeed, this is not strictly speaking a humanitarian intervention. It is a decision to participate in Libya's civil war.

It is a war of choice for a second reason: The United States and the world have other options besides military intervention. Civil wars tend to burn out and come to an end sooner barring significant foreign intervention. A range of tools, from economic sanctions to covert action, could weaken the regime, bolster the opposition or both.

In this last regard, President Barack Obama has done himself no favor by demanding that Libya's leader of four decades, Muammar Qadhafi, give up all political power. By doing so the Obama administration has essentially denied itself the diplomatic tool.

Why should Qadhafi stop pursuing his domestic opponents if he must leave office – and, worse yet from his perspective, face possible trial for war crimes?

The U.S. demand for Gaddafi's ouster causes two other problems as well. First, it goes beyond the U.N. resolution that it is the basis for current military action. The world is demanding that Qadhafi hold off attacking rebel positions and that he pull back from several cities. Implicit here is that he can remain in power if he complies. Will Washington accept this?

Second, the U.S. demand is also inconsistent with stated limits on what it is prepared to do to oust Qadhafi. Obama promised his fellow citizens there would be no U.S. boots on the ground in Libya.

But limited means cannot always be relied on to deliver essentially unlimited aims. To the contrary, big goals often require a big price to be paid.

This intervention is ill-advised for a number of reasons. Under almost any scenario, whether Qadhafi's removal from power, his falling back and holding off as the U.N. resolution requires or his fighting on successfully, something more than the current international military effort —which now involves considerably more than just imposing a no-fly zone — will be required.

But who will maintain order? And who can prevent a continuation of the civil war? The likely answer to these and related questions is military forces from the outside. But forces from where and for how long and with what mission and at what cost? There is little evidence that any of this has been thought through.

This intervention is also a strategic distraction. U.S. policymakers would be wiser to focus on what could be done to buttress Egypt's economy or to help deal with the far more important and dangerous situation unfolding in Bahrain.

What happens in Libya will not have much if any impact on these and other regional developments. Indeed, it is Qadhafi's political isolation in the Middle East that, as much as anything, explains Arab League support for the world's armed effort against him.

It is true that this military intervention in Libya is multilateral — in the sense that there is U.N. backing and some military contribution from others. But such multilateralism only means that there is some international support and some sharing of burdens. It does not mean the effort makes sense in its design or execution. Multilateral support in and of itself is not a reason to do something.

Those advocating the intervention emphasize what they see as its moral underpinning — if not necessity. But this requires bringing about something morally preferable in Libya at a cost commensurate with interests.

Alas, there is little reason to be confident the opposition will be able to constitute a benign, national alternative. It could just as easily be tribal-based, radical, localized — or some combination of all of these. A Libya that is at war with itself for years, or that either welcomes or becomes too weak to resist groups like Al Qaida, is not something worth fighting for.

There are also strong competing claims on morality. What about asking young American men and women in uniform to put their lives at risk for interests that are less than vital? For outcomes that are less than sure to be an improvement over what now exists?

Or what about committing the United States to another costly foreign intervention at a moment we owe it to ourselves — not to mention future generations — to get our economic and military houses in order so we can meet our obligations at home and be prepared to meet true wars of necessity (North Korea for one) if and when they arise?

At the end of the day, though, the Libyan intervention is more than anything about the role of the United States in the world. The United States cannot and should not intervene in every internal dispute where bad or even evil is on display.

It is not simply that we lack the resources, which we do. It is that we lack the ability to right every wrong, and that not every situation has within it a solution.

It was John Quincy Adams who, some two centuries ago, warned that the United States should not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. He was right then. He is no less right today.

Richard N. Haass is the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars.”


Author:
Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations
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