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  #51  
Old Tuesday, April 05, 2011
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Default Libya's Strains on NATO

Libya's Strains on NATO



Interviewee:
Charles A. Kupchan, Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow, CFR
Interviewer:
Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org
April 4, 2011



With the United States starting to remove warplanes from frontline Libyan missions, France, Britain, and other NATO nations will be at the forefront of the aerial conflict in Libya. The United States' move highlights strains in the NATO alliance that could become "serious divisions" if NATO tries to ramp up support for Libya's rebels, says CFR Europe expert Charles A. Kupchan. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has resisted participation, largely for domestic political reasons, says Kupchan, and Turkey has been uncomfortable with the appearance of "another Western war in a Muslim country." Kupchan says that French President Nicolas Sarkozy led the effort to involve NATO in Libya to compensate for his reluctance to take a pro-democracy stand in Egypt and Tunisia. Kupchan adds that looking forward, the problem for the coalition is "the ambiguity that prevails on the question of the mission's scope and objectives."
Why did U.S. ally Germany abstain in the Security Council vote on a no-fly zone over Libya on March 17 and announce it would not participate militarily in the subsequent operation in Libya?
The roots of the Ger
[/COLOR]man position are in the troubles the current government faces at home. The Merkel government has been in a tailspin, with its poll numbers dropping and having received a series of setbacks in regional elections. Merkel has attempted to stabilize the situation with a number of policy decisions that have backfired. One was a decision to change her position on nuclear power plants in Germany. She had essentially been in favor of the continuation of nuclear power electrical generation and then after the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, she flip-flopped (Reuters), but that cost her credibility with the German electorate. On the Libya question, Merkel seems to have calculated that she would be able to follow in the footsteps of Gerhard Schroeder [German Social Democrat chancellor from 1998 to 2005], who rallied his domestic supporters in 2002-03 by standing up to George W. Bush and allying with France and Russia to oppose the Iraq war in the UN Security Council.
The German vote in the Security Council was to abstain, but in effect it kept Germany outside the transatlantic center of gravity and aligned the country with China, Russia, Brazil, and India. Again, this did more harm than good to her political fortunes. Part of the problem is that even though going to war has very little resonance in Germany, for historical reasons the German public has tended to see the Libya mission as a humanitarian intervention and therefore the opposition to the operation has been not as strong as Merkel had suspected it would be. [Her] decision has been exacerbated because now that NATO has taken control of the Libya operation, Germany has essentially gone along for the ride. Technically speaking, Germany could have vetoed NATO's taking over command and control because NATO makes decisions by consensus, but that would have been an extremely costly move. Essentially Germany has simply sat on its hands during the Libya operation.
So Germany is officially in the NATO operation, but not really doing anything?
German military are not participating (DailyMail) in the operation. But that's not all that unusual. Other NATO members have also chosen to sit out this mission in terms of concrete contributions.
The French were one of the first say there should be a military no-fly zone over Libya. Some press reports suggest the French involvement came about because well-known French philosopher Bernard-Henri Levi was in Benghazi when the fighting picked up, and he telephoned Sarkozy and set up a meeting between Sarkozy and Libyan rebel leaders in Paris. Then he introduced the rebel leaders to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in Paris at the time.
There are three factors that help explain the French position.
The first is that Sarkozy has always attempted to use foreign policy and France's place as a great power to shore up his domestic political support. We've seen since the beginning of his presidency his readiness to step out ahead of the pack and play a leading role on foreign policy issues. He was the leading personality in attempting to negotiate a ceasefire between Russia and Georgia during their war in August 2008. He took the lead in proposing and fashioning (BrusselsJournal) what has come to be called the Mediterranean Union, a new effort to build greater regional integration among Mediterranean states. There are many other examples.
We are in a stage in the fighting in which at times it appears that NATO forces have become the air force of the rebels. If things head down that road and NATO begins to arm the rebels, we will see some pretty serious divisions emerge within the NATO coalition.
Secondly, he felt vulnerable because of claims that France was behind the curve on Tunisia and Egypt and that Sarkozy had shown too much sympathy for the leadership in those countries and not aligned [France] readily enough with the democracy movements. Many analysts believe that his readiness to rush into Libya was to make up for his previous political mistakes.
The third factor would be that for both geographic and historical reasons, France continues to view North Africa as part of a broader French sphere of influence. Libya figures less in that than former French colonies like Algeria and Tunisia, but there still is a sense that France should play a leading role in this part of the world. I think those conditions combined to impress on Sarkozy the need to act boldly on Libya and made him want to get out in front of the issue.
In some ways, it's safe to say France has been leading the pack on the Libya intervention and that the intervention may well not have occurred had it not been for French leadership.
Did France push the United States into the military operation over Libya?
It's safe to say that the United States moved toward intervention reluctantly, and one of the factors that I think forced Obama's hand was that you had not only the Arab League but a coalition of willing European countries saying to Washington, let's go! It put Obama in an awkward position.
[COLOR="rgb](255, 0, 255)"]But now, the United States is essentially withdrawing from the military field and turning it over to NATO command. But of course the United States is the biggest player in NATO. What's Washington's thinking?[/COLOR]

Obama has been in the awkward position of justifying the war to the American people as a necessary act of humanitarian intervention while at the same time acknowledging that the United States doesn't have vital interests in Libya. [It also means] being aware that the United States is passing through a period politically in which building support for the projection of power abroad is more difficult given the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the budget deficit. Obama from the very beginning has said, "We're in this, but we don't want to take the lead. We're in this, but we want the timing and the scope of our involvement to be limited." To some extent, the handoff to NATO is more perception than reality. That's because the United States is the dominant power in NATO, and the United States will still be calling the shots on a day-to-day basis. It's not as if the United States is getting out. My guess is that when we look at the numbers of sorties being flown by NATO aircraft, and who is launching missiles, we really aren't yet at a stage in which U.S. participation is dramatically dropping. [There were reports that the number of flights flown by the United States in Libya would drop.]
The word is that the United States is going to try to decrease that number, but I think a lot depends on the military situation.
My guess is that when we look at the numbers of sorties being flown by NATO aircraft, and who is launching missiles, we really aren't yet at a stage in which U.S. participation is dramatically dropping.
The situation on the ground is very fluid, and clearly the rebels have had some setbacks in the last few days. Some of the airpower can be provided by European allies alone, but if the mission calls for close air support for ground forces and going after Qaddafi's forces more difficult to identify--those who have taken off their uniforms, [or] those who are in pickup trucks and sedans rather than armored vehicles--some of the flying will need to be done by American pilots flying aircraft that the Europeans don't have.
[COLOR="rgb](255, 0, 255)"]At first Turkey, a NATO member, was opposed to military action in Libya, but it has gone along, right?[/COLOR]

The Turks were reluctant from the beginning, in part because of concern that a NATO mission in Libya would be seen as yet another Western war in a Muslim country. The Turks were also riled by the fact that Sarkozy was in the lead. That stems in part from longstanding tension between Ankara and Paris because of Sarkozy's open opposition to Turkish membership in the European Union. Relations between France and Turkey have not been good for several years. Then, Sarkozy called a meeting in Paris just as the operation was coming together, and he didn't invite the Turks to participate. That led to a situation where for a week or so the Turks were openly dismissive (DerSpiegel) about the operation and about French leadership. That then led to a stalemate of sorts, with the Turks essentially insisting that the mission be put under a NATO chapeau rather than let the French lead it. The French initially were unwilling to put the military mission formally under NATO. Apparently, Obama had to really twist arms to get the French to sign off on the NATO mission.
Right now, I would say that the danger for the coalition, looking forward, is the ambiguity that prevails on the question of the mission's scope and objectives. The Turks, for example, have been quite explicit in arguing that the UN authorization of the mission restricts NATO to the protection of civilians. That essentially would mean bombing campaigns only against Qadaffi's forces that are going after civilians. Now we are into a stage in the fighting in which at times it appears that NATO forces have become the air force of the rebels, in which they may therefore be supporting offensive operations. If things head down that road and NATO begins to arm the rebels, we will see some pretty serious divisions emerge within the NATO coalition.
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  #52  
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Default China Lacks Focus in the Arab World, Missing a Mutual Opportunity

China Lacks Focus in the Arab World, Missing a Mutual Opportunity

In January 2009, the investment bankers, government officials and philanthropists attending the World Economic Forum in Davos got a blistering lecture from a most unlikely source. The first senior Chinese leader to attend, the premier Wen Jiabao, was known at home for his mild demeanour. Nicknamed "Grandpa Wen", he was popular in China for his down-to-earth style. Indeed, the Beijing leadership usually sent him out to handle natural disasters or other large-scale tragedies which called for a warm personal response. That genial grandpa was not in evidence at Davos.
Months after the Lehman Brothers collapse triggered a global economic crisis, Wen told the forum that the West was squarely to blame. An "excessive expansion of financial institutions in blind pursuit of profit", a failure to supervise the financial sector, and an "unsustainable model of development, characterised by prolonged low savings and high consumption" were behind the crisis, he said.
Wen's broadside was startling, but not unique. A decade earlier China had been largely absent from international relations. It barely played a role at the United Nations, for instance. Until the end of 2008 nearly every top Chinese official still lived by Deng Xiaoping's old advice to build China's strength while maintaining a low profile in international affairs. But by the early part of this decade, Chinese leaders had begun to assert themselves. As one current senior American official who deals with China said: "They are powerful, and now they're finally acting like it."
In the middle of last year, Beijing reacted to Japan's decision to impound a Chinese fishing boat in disputed waters by cutting off shipments to Tokyo of rare earth materials, a resource critical to modern electronic devices such as mobile phones. Beijing also warned Vietnam not to work with western oil companies such as ExxonMobil on joint explorations of potential oil and gas in the South China Sea; China had claimed nearly the entire sea for itself. When South-east Asian nations protested Beijing's stance and asked Washington to mediate their disputes with Beijing, Chinese officials reminded them, at a meeting of Asian nations held in Vietnam, that "China is a big country" - that it could outmuscle them.
Even with the United States, where China had trodden cautiously for decades, officials displayed a new-found assertiveness. In one article published in the state-run China Daily, a think-tank expert from China's Commerce Ministry wrote: "The US's top financial officials need to shift their people's attention from the country's struggling economy to cover up their incompetence and blame China for everything that is going wrong in their country."\




Author:
Joshua Kurlantzick, Fellow for Southeast Asia
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Default U.S. Military Not Happy Over Libya

U.S. Military Not Happy Over Libya

Pentagon civilian leaders and the military brass see nothing but trouble looming as the Obama administration takes one step after another into the Libyan morass. The next step appears to be arming the Libyan rebels, a move that would inevitably entail pressures to send U.S. trainers and even more potent arms—and a move that Defense Secretary Robert Gates flat-out rejected in testimony before Congress on Thursday. “What the opposition needs as much as anything right now is some training, some command and control, and some organization,” Gates said. As for providing weapons, that is “not a unique capability for the United States, and as far as I'm concerned, somebody else can do that.”
Military officials also have slim sympathy in general for those who advocate U.S. combat operations for humanitarian missions, when other nations and other means should be leading such efforts. And with surging demands to cut the Pentagon budget, Pentagon brass aren't thrilled with the more than $500 million tab for the extra operations over Libya. Despite these concerns, Pentagon leaders have been saluting in public, hoping their private warnings will be sufficient to prevent deeper involvement.
White House officials find Pentagon alarms misplaced. One insisted Thursday that "by Saturday we will have handed off fully to partners." By that, officials mean that U.S. jet fighters won't be flying combat operations over Libya. That task will fall entirely to NATO partners such as Britain, Canada, France, Norway, and Denmark with still ill-defined flights by the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.



Author:
Leslie H. Gelb, President Emeritus and Board Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations
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Default After Fukushima, Examining Nuclear Power Safety

After Fukushima, Examining Nuclear Power Safety



With problems at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant still unfolding following the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, public concern has grown about the safety of nuclear plants. But it is difficult to fully understand what is going on at Fukushima, because the plant operator and emergency workers themselves are still figuring it out, cautions John Ahearne, former head of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He says critics should be careful about making policy and procedure recommendations right now. "After Three Mile Island and after Chernobyl, it took several years of analyzing what happened before one could really reach a conclusion about what could have been done to prevent it, and we are a long way away from having that kind of knowledge about the Japanese systems," he says. However, Ahearne notes countries should proceed with current safety reviews as soon as possible, since "the public in general is uneasy about nuclear power" following the Fukushima catastrophe.
Some international officials have criticized the way the Fukushima crisis has been handled--for instance, the use of seawater in cooling. Could things have been done differently from the emergency management point of view?


My understanding is that the earthquake-resistance systems worked. Of course what didn't work was protection against the huge tsunami. One thing they could have done was to build much higher walls or they could have put their emergency generator systems above ground instead of below ground. But it was a catastrophe, and I'm not sure how much they could have prevented.
The idea of using seawater--they were trying as best as possible to get as much water into the [reactor] system to cool it. They recognized if they used seawater they were essentially saying we are not going to be able to ever restart those reactors. So they were writing off tremendous expense, but they were trying hard to get enough water into the system to cool it down. It's turned out that they also needed to get the [coolant] pumps running, which they have not been able to do yet, so they are a long way away from getting the accident completely under control.
I'm not that familiar with the [emergency] system that Japan has in place. I know that in the United States, [plants] have to do a drill every couple of years on an emergency. That includes at least having a table-top exercise with the local fire, police, emergency systems. For all reactors, there is a set of emergency procedures that is different than the operational procedures. I assume Japan had the same thing, because most countries that have developed nuclear power have ended up using the U.S. regulatory system as their base system.
What is the worst-case scenario? Are we still looking at a potential full meltdown?


It's not only hard to follow for people outside, but from what I gather--I've been reading the TEPCO internal releases--it's very hard for them to follow what's happening because they don't have access to a lot of their systems. They're still trying to figure out what is the condition of the spent-fuel areas, much less what is the condition of the fuel that was in the reactors. We can't say what is the worst case [since it's] not really possible to estimate until you get a better sense of the condition of all those rods.
If the two worst accidents were Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, this is a lot worse than Three Mile Island, much less than Chernobyl. Chernobyl had an explosion that drove a large amount of radioactive debris--parts of the fuel rods-- thirty thousand feet into the air. There is no driving force like that in these reactors, so it's not going to be at that level.
You mentioned that the United States is the regulatory standard for much of the nuclear industry, but one op-ed recently talked about a number of places where known design flaws (NYT) were not addressed, which, if made standard, could have helped prevent some of the problems at Fukushima. What's your take on this?


Any time there is an industrial accident--whether it's chemical, nuclear, airplane--a lot of people say, "If you had only done this, that wouldn't have happened." Some of the ideas are good, [but] a lot of the ideas are not, because you have people who really don't understand the systems saying, "I have a bright idea. You ought to do this." After Three Mile Island and after Chernobyl, it took several years of analyzing what happened before one could really reach a conclusion about what could have been done to prevent it, and we are a long way away from having that kind of knowledge about [the Fukushima Daiichi accident].
Since Chernobyl, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been helping to create a more cogent international safety regime. Could you just talk a little bit about how that regime works?


There were a number of countries interested in getting into nuclear, and they did not have a regulatory system in place; they didn't have a system [to] train the people who could operate the plants. So the IAEA developed a standard guide that could be used by these new entrants. The IAEA can't require that. But what they have been trying to do is put in place a set of guidelines.
It remains to be seen how effective that is going to be. So far, the countries that are building nuclear power plants, such as China, are not ones that didn't have any experience. There are a lot of small countries that have decided that they want to get into the nuclear power world, and the IAEA is concerned that they develop the fundamental infrastructure to be able to do that safely. I've been concerned that a regulatory system is not easy to develop, and to some in the industry a regulatory system always looks like an unnecessary burden.
For these new entries, it's critical that they start developing their regulatory systems, develop people who understand how to monitor construction, how to test operator skills and watch over the reactor when it's built and running. That will take five to ten years to develop.
Many countries, including the United States, are retesting nuclear plants for issues like seismic activity, power loss, and flooding. What does a nuclear plant risk analysis look like? And how do you weigh safety versus cost of safety measures?


[In the United States], nuclear plants have a system of regulatory requirements based on locale. What has to be done is to periodically review those requirements. [For example,] do we now know more about the seismic hazards of an area; do we have better information about the likelihood of wind damage? The climate change issue has come to the front: One has to now review whether the weather patterns that have been used in the past for the design requirements are still accurate and appropriate.

Those kinds of reviews should be done, and certainly they are going to have to be done now because the public in general is uneasy about nuclear power. They had been getting more comfortable with it, but this Japanese catastrophe has made the public once again get very uneasy. So it's absolutely necessary that the plants go through a review of all their design requirements and how well they were developed and how well are they being maintained.
Ten, fifteen years ago, the argument was that stressing safety would make a plant inefficient, but it finally got across to the utilities that safety actually makes a plant run more efficiently. I don't think there has been much of a debate over the last ten years about whether safety regulations interfere with the operation of the plant.
Can you talk a little bit about the debate over long-term storage (Beacon) at a facility like Yucca Mountain in Nevada and the discussion over reviving reprocessing in the United States?


They're separate issues. Reprocessing basically means to take the fuel and go through a chemical reduction process to extract the plutonium and the uranium to reuse it. Once you do that and put it through the reactor, you now have spent fuel again, so you haven't really solved the problem of what to do with spent fuel. It does enable you to reuse some of that material, so that's really separate from where do you put the spent fuel.
So far, the only countries that have come close to having a way of putting away the spent fuel is Sweden, [which] is well on its way toward developing a site, as is Finland. Countries like the United States, France, Japan, China, with large numbers of nuclear power plants, do not have a system in place.
Technical people end up saying, the best thing to do is to build a depository. The problem with that is it is an engineering answer to a political problem. Finding a place to put it has turned out to be extraordinarily difficult, as the Yucca Mountain case points out. So I'm not sure how that's going to be resolved. My own personal preference for years has been to have monitored surface storage; that is, to build a facility somewhere where you can put a lot of the fuel and just keep monitoring it for maybe a century. But that still requires finding a place to build it, which hasn't been possible. The Achilles' heel of nuclear power is the waste problem.
The industry is touting the safety of newer reactors, but there are many reactors in operation using older technologies that are expected to operate for decades to come. What has Fukushima taught us about safety and preparedness, and what do you expect to see going forward?


There has always been an open question about whether the type of pools that exists in some of the [plants] was a safe way of storing the spent fuel. That's going to be revisited.
As far as what lessons are readily learned, there are facetious answers: Don't build a reactor where you can have a thirty-foot tsunami wash over it. But, realistically, countries like Japan, which is laced with fault lines, don't have much of an option about where to build the reactors. They have to try to make sure that they are seismically safe, and I believe these reactors were, and [it was] the tsunami that wiped them out.
There's clearly going to be a revisiting of nuclear power worldwide. We've already seen it happening in Germany [which has shutdown some reactors and is considering phasing out nuclear power entirely], and I expect something similar in Sweden. I don't expect to have a revisiting in South Korea or China or India, which are other countries that are going forward with nuclear power. The United States is a little uncertain. Certainly the big question always in the United States is can you afford to build a plant. It's a little too soon to tell what's going to happen with respect to the loan guarantee offers and congressional offers.


Interviewee:
John Ahearne, Sigma Xi, Executive Director Emeritus and Emeritus Director, Ethics Program
Interviewer:
Toni Johnson, Senior Staff Writer, CFR.org
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Default State Department Announcement on the Iran Sanctions Act, March 2011

State Department Announcement on the Iran Sanctions Act, March 2011

The U.S. Department of State released this announcement on March 29, 2011.
Today, the United States is taking further action to increase pressure on Iran for its failure to meet its international obligations with regard to its nuclear program. A key element of our strategy focuses on Iran’s oil and gas production capacity, which -- as UN Security Council Resolution 1929 recognized -- Iran uses to fund its proliferation activities as well as to mask procurement for the importation of dual-use items. As part of that strategy, the State Department is sanctioning Belarusneft, a state-owned Belarusian energy company, under the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) of 1996 as amended by the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act (CISADA) of 2010, for its involvement in the Iranian petroleum sector.
In a thorough review, the Department confirmed that Belarusneft entered into a $500 million contract with the NaftIran Intertrade Company in 2007 for the development of the Jofeir oilfield in Iran. The ISA requires that sanctions be imposed on companies that make certain investments over $20 million.
This action on Belarusneft is another application of U.S. sanctions on Iran. In September, 2010, the State Department announced sanctions on the NaftIran Intertrade Company and the Department has applied the “Special Rule” in CISADA to persuade five major multinational energy companies to pledge to end their investments in Iran and provide assurances not to undertake new energy-related activity in Iran that may be sanctionable. The companies are: Total of France, Statoil of Norway, ENI of Italy, Royal Dutch Shell of the Netherlands, and INPEX of Japan.
Since President Barack Obama signed CISADA into law on July 1, 2010, Iran’s ability to attract new investment to develop its oil and natural gas resources, and to produce or import refined petroleum products, has been severely limited. The State Department’s direct engagement with companies and governments to enforce CISADA is raising the pressure on the Government of Iran. In the past year, many foreign companies have abandoned their energy-related projects in Iran or have stopped shipping refined petroleum to Iran. This is an appropriate response to Iran’s longstanding use of its oil and gas sector to facilitate its proliferation activities and thereby its noncompliance with its nuclear obligations.
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Default Hearing on Perspectives on the Crisis in Libya

The Council on Foreign Relations takes no institutional positions on policy issues and has no affiliation with the U.S. government. All statements of fact and
expressions of opinion contained herein are the sole responsibility of the author.
April 6, 2011
Prepared statement by
Richard N. Haass
President
Council on Foreign Relations
Before the
Committee on Foreign Relations
United States Senate
First Session, 112th Congress
Hearing on Perspectives on the Crisis in Libya
Mr. Chairman:
Thank you for asking me to appear before this committee to discuss recent U.S. policy toward Libya. Let me make two points at the outset. First, my statement and testimony reflect my personal views and not those of the Council on Foreign Relations, which as a matter of policy takes no institutional positions. Second, I will address today’s topic from two perspectives: first, the lessons to be learned from recent U.S. policy toward Libya, and second, my recommendations for U.S. policy going forward.
Analysis must be rigorous. In two critical areas, however, I would suggest that what has been asserted as fact was in reality closer to assumption. First, it is not clear that a humanitarian catastrophe was imminent in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi. There had been no reports of large-scale massacres in Libya up to that point, and Libyan society (unlike Rwanda, to cite the obvious influential precedent) is not divided along a single or defining fault line. Gaddafi saw the rebels as enemies for political reasons, not for their ethnic or tribal associations. To be sure, civilians would have been killed in an assault on the city – civil wars are by their nature violent and destructive – but there is no evidence of which I am aware that civilians per se would have been targeted on a large scale. Muammar Gaddafi’s threat to show no mercy to the rebels might well have been just that: a threat within the context of a civil war to those who opposed him with arms or were considering doing so.
Armed intervention on humanitarian grounds can sometimes be justified. But before using military force to save lives, we need to be sure of the threat; the potential victims should request our help; the intervention should be supported by significant elements of the international community; the intervention should have high likelihood of success at a limited cost, including the cost to our other interests; and other policies should be judged to be inadequate. Not all of these conditions were satisfied in the Libyan case. Such an assessment is essential if we are asking our
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troops to put their lives at risk, if we are placing other important interests at risk, and if we are using economic and military resources that puts our future more at risk.
Second, it was (and is) not obvious that what happened or happens in Libya would or will have significant repercussions for what happens elsewhere in the region. Libya is not a particularly influential country; indeed, Gaddafi’s isolation in no small part explains why it was possible to get Arab League and UN support for a resolution supporting armed intervention. The dynamics in Syria or Bahrain or Egypt, not to mention Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, will be determined mostly by local factors and forces and not by what happens in Libya.
American policymakers erred in calling explicitly early on in the crisis for Gaddafi’s removal. Doing so made it far more difficult to employ diplomacy to help achieve U.S. humanitarian goals without resorting to military force. It removed the incentive Gaddafi might have had to stop attacking his opponents. The call for Gaddafi’s ouster also put the United States at odds with much of the international community, which had only signed on to a humanitarian and not a political mission when voting for UN Security Council resolution 1973. It increased the odds the intervention would be seen as a failure so long as Gaddafi remained in power. And, as I shall discuss, requiring Gaddafi’s removal actually makes it more difficult to effect the implemention of UN Security Council Resolution 1973 and stop the fighting.
Multilateralism is not a reason for doing something. Multilateralism is a mechanism, no more and no less, for distributing burdens. It can add to the legitimacy of an action; it can also complicate policy implementation. Such pros and cons need to be assessed. But multilateral support does not make a policy that is questionable on its merits any less so. To think otherwise is to confuse ends and means.
Inconsistency is unavoidable in foreign policy, and in and of itself is not a reason for rejecting doing something that makes sense or for undertaking something that does not. Some humanitarian interventions may be warranted. But inconsistency is not cost free, as it can confuse the American public and disappoint people in other countries, in the process opening us up to charges of hypocrisy and double standards.
It is acceptable in principle to intervene militarily on behalf of interests deemed less than vital, but in such cases – what I would deem “wars of choice” – it must be shown that the likely costs are commensurate with the interests involved and that other policies would not have done equally well or better in the way of costs and outcomes. Otherwise, a war of choice cannot be justified.
As I expect you have gathered from what I have said here today and both said and written previously, I did not support the decision to intervene with military force in Libya. But we are where we are. So what would I suggest the United States do in Libya going forward?
We must recognize that we face a familiar foreign policy conundrum, namely, that there is a large gap between our professed goals and the means we are prepared to devote to realizing them. The goals are ambitious: protecting the Libyan people and bringing about a successor regime judged to be preferable to what now exists. But the means are limited, as the president is clearly looking to our partners in NATO to assume the major military role and has ruled out the introduction of American ground forces.
Whenever there is such a gap between ends and means, a government has two choices: it can either reduce the ends or elevate the means. The Obama administration has up till now mostly emphasized the latter course. The no-fly zone was quickly augmented by additional air operations designed to degrade Libyan government forces. This proved insufficient to tilt the battlefield decisively in favor of regime opponents.
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Now there is apparent interest in arming opposition forces. I would advise against taking this path. We cannot be confident of the agenda of the opposition towards either the Libyan people or various U.S. interests, including counter-terrorism. Nor can we be certain as to which opposition elements with which set of goals might in the end prove dominant. Arms once transferred can be used for any purpose. Bad situations can always get worse.
The only way to ensure the replacement of the current Libyan regime with something demonstrably better would be through the introduction of ground forces that were prepared to remain in place to maintain order and build capacities in the aftermath of ousting the government. As we have seen in Afghanistan and Iraq, the only thing certain about such a policy trajectory is its human, economic, and military cost. U.S. interests in Libya simply do not warrant such an investment on our part. And it is obviously far from certain whether any other outside party has both the will and the capacity to introduce ground forces on a scale likely to make a decisive military difference.
There is little reason to conclude that the Libyan opposition will any time soon be able to defeat the Libyan government. It appears to lack the requisite cohesiveness and skill. The combination of a no-fly zone, bombing, and arming might, however, have the effect of leveling the playing field and prolonging the civil war, leading to more civilian casualties in the process. This would be an ironic result of an intervention designed to promote humanitarian ends. The Libyan government may implode, but we cannot base our policy on this hope.
This all argues for reducing the immediate aims of American foreign policy and giving priority to humanitarian as opposed to political goals. This would entail undertaking or supporting a diplomatic initiative to bring about the implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1973 and, most importantly, a cease-fire. A narrow cease-fire is probably unrealistic, though. What would also be required to gain the support of the opposition would be a set of political conditions, possibly including specified political reforms and a degree of autonomy for certain areas. Sanctions could be added or removed to affect acceptance and compliance. Gaddafi might remain in office, at least for the time being. The country might effectively be divided for some time. An international force could well be required on the ground to keep the peace.
Such an outcome would be derided by some. But it would stop the civil war and keep many people alive who would otherwise perish. It would create a window for political reform and possibly over time lead to a new government without Muammar Gaddafi. The United States could use this time to work with Libyans in the opposition and beyond to help build national institutions without the added weight of ongoing fighting.
A compromise, negotiated outcome would also be good for this country, as it would allow the United States to focus its resources – economic, diplomatic, military, and political – elsewhere. Far more important than Libya for U.S. interests in the region are Egypt, Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan, and Iran. The United States also needs to reserve resources for other parts of the world (the Korean Peninsula comes to mind), for possible wars of necessity, for military modernization central to our position in the Pacific, and for deficit reduction.
Foreign policy must be about priorities. The United States cannot do everything everywhere. This consideration would have argued for avoiding military intervention in Libya; now it argues for limiting this intervention in what it seeks to accomplish and what it requires of the United States.
Thank you for this opportunity to appear before this committee. I look forward to your questions.
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Default Crumbling Wall Between the Pentagon and CIA

Crumbling Wall Between the Pentagon and CIA





At one of his first meetings with his senior national security staff, U.S. President Barack Obama reportedly pronounced (NYT): "The CIA gets what it needs." Ever since, the CIA has enjoyed great power and latitude in executing Obama's foreign policy, and the line between intelligence and the Pentagon has become increasingly fuzzy. That Obama is expected to announce today CIA Director Leon Panetta as his choice to replace departing Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Gen. David Petraeus as his pick for CIA director reflects the further erosion of what was once a high wall between the CIA and the Defense Department.
The CIA has become central to the Obama administration's approach to counterterrorism. Most notably, the CIA controls the United States' campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan, described by Panetta as "frankly, the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al-Qaeda leadership." Of the 236 drone strikes conducted by the CIA since 2004, more than 192 have happened under Obama. Another, lower-profile indication of the CIA's power occurred in 2009 when Panetta won a turf battle with then-director of national intelligence Dennis Blair over the CIA's right to retain a direct line to the White House on covert activities and have CIA station chiefs be the senior intelligence official at missions abroad.
Part of the explanation for the CIA's growing influence is its greater integration with the military. The CIA drones that fly over Afghanistan are reportedly (Wired) overseen by an Air Force operations center, and the Air Force loans its armed drones in Afghanistan to the CIA for strike missions in Pakistan. And in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as on the clandestine battlefields of Somalia and Yemen, the CIA is described as working well with its counterparts in the military's special operations community. Indeed, an active-duty U.S. military official told me that one of the first meetings Gen. Petraeus has every morning is with the current CIA station chief in Kabul.
Petraeus will have fewer resources and authorities directly at his disposal as the director of central intelligence, making this move an effective demotion just as when he went from serving as the head of U.S. Central Command to become commander of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan in June 2010. Under current U.S. law, the CIA director "shall report to the director of national intelligence regarding the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency." Although the largest producer of all-source national security intelligence and home to the National Clandestine Service, which conducts covert operations, the CIA is but one of sixteen agencies that serve under the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Panetta's nomination as defense secretary reflects the continued move away from the blue-sky thinking, sweeping pronouncements, and micromanaging of Donald Rumsfeld, defense secretary under George W. Bush. Much like Gates, who set the needed tone of candor, and held senior leaders to higher standards of accountability, Panetta should be a steady hand at managing the scheduled troop withdrawals in Iraq and Afghanistan, and overseeing President Obama's plan to cut $400 billion in new defense spending through 2023.
Given that both Panetta and Petraeus were integral to the development and implementation of Obama's national security strategies to date, we should not expect significant changes in America's engagement with the world. If anything, these appointments, both of which are likely to have wide support in Congress, indicate that Obama intends to stay the no-drama, smooth-process course on foreign policy through the remainder of his first

(Micah Zenko, Fellow for Conflict Prevention)
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What's Next for al-Qaeda?

Osama bin Laden's death in a raid by U.S. troops on his compound north of Islamabad, Pakistan, is both a symbolic and real blow to al-Qaeda. But will it mean an end to terrorism or to al-Qaeda's hold on the imaginations of radicals in the Middle East and elsewhere? Most likely it won't, according to five CFR experts who weighed in on the subject.
While bin Laden's killing sends a strong signal to extremists, it doesn't spell an end to their efforts, particularly those enabled by Pakistan, says CFR President Richard N. Haass. In contrast, Ray Takeyh argues that the revolts in the Middle East suggest that while bin Laden's death is a laudable triumph of U.S. efforts, the region has moved on and bin Laden is largely a symbol of a passing era. Robert Danin agrees with Takeyh, noting that many moderate Sunnis and Shiites in the Middle East will be pleased at bin Laden's demise, although some extremists will want to resurrect him as a symbolic martyr. That impulse could be especially strong in countries like Yemen, where the government is weak and vulnerable, says Steven A. Cook, who also believes most Arabs are interested in transitioning to more open political systems. Max Boot warns that maintaining a "comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign" in Afghanistan is crucial to preventing the country from falling back into terrorist hands. Daniel Markey observes that while bin Laden's death could be an opportunity to improve U.S.-Pakistan relations, it's more likely to exacerbate tensions than to enhance cooperation. On the legal basis for the attack, John Bellinger says the killing was lawful under both U.S. domestic law and international law.

Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations
The killing of Osama bin Laden constitutes a significant victory over global terrorism. But it is a milestone, not a turning point, in what remains an ongoing struggle without a foreseeable end.

The significance of what was accomplished stems from bin Laden's symbolic importance. He has been an icon, one representing the ability to strike with success against the United States and the West. That icon is now gone.

There is also the demonstration effect of what U.S. Special Forces are able to do. It sends a clear message to terrorists that they are at least as vulnerable as those they would seek to hurt.

But any celebration needs to be tempered by two realities. The first is that bin Laden's demise is in no way to be equated with the demise of terrorism. There is no time for a V-T Day--a Victory over Terrorism Day celebration.

Terrorism is a decentralized phenomenon--in its funding, planning, and execution. Removing bin Laden does not end the threat. There are successors in al-Qaeda--and successors in autonomous groups operating out of Yemen, Somalia, and other countries. So terrorism will continue. Indeed, it could even grow somewhat worse in the short run as there are sure to be those who will want to show that they can still strike against the West.

The second reason for responding with caution to this welcome development is that it underscores yet again that Pakistan, home of some of the most dangerous terrorists in the world, is decidedly less than a full partner. Some parts of the government there are sympathetic to terrorism and unwilling to act against it; others are simply unable to given a lack of capacity. This reality is unlikely to change. As a result, the sort of independent operation carried out against bin Laden is likely to be the rule as much as the exception going forward.
Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
The death of Osama bin Laden delivered another symbolic blow to two interrelated concepts that have done much to bedevil the West: Islamic radicalism wedded to terrorism as its most suitable expression. The Arab Spring had already done much to discredit bin Laden's foundational ideology. Al-Qaeda had long denounced pluralism and representation as fraudulent conceits of the West. Granting power to men who presumably knew the mind of God, violence against the West and imposition of severe cultural restrictions were its only offerings to the region's restive youth. There was little room in this vision for political emancipation, diversity of opinion, or economic empowerment. From Tunisia to Yemen, the Arab masses rejected this ideology through word and deed. The Arab revolt is a denunciation of radicalism in all its hues: whether autocrats ruling in the name of modernization or Islamists pledging redemption through terror.

As the region moved beyond bin Laden's ideology, it also left behind his methods. Al-Qaeda had professed that the only means of displacing Arab despots was to unleash terror against their presumed patron--the United States. The "enemy abroad" was the focal point of its wrath. Yet the Arab masses proved that the likes of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia's Zine-el-Abidine Ben Ali can actually be overthrown through peaceful mobilization of people power. Islamist terror only offered the Arab strongmen a rationale for maintaining power, as they conveniently brandished the specter of Islamist power as a justification for their autocracy. Ironically, al-Qaeda, its ideology, and its terrorism may have prolonged the lifespan of an order it professed to despise.

In the end, the Middle East has moved beyond bin Laden. Though his death should certainly be celebrated as a triumph of painstaking efforts by the U.S. government, he can only be remembered as a discredited relic of an increasingly vanishing era.
Robert Danin, Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
Bin Laden's death brings to a close the decade-long search for the mastermind of the terrorist attacks against New York and Washington on September 11, 2001. As such, it will mark a significant turning point, though not an end, to the U.S.-declared "War Against Terror." The significance of bin Laden's departure, especially given al-Qaeda's decentralized structure, will likely be more symbolic than operational. Terrorism did not begin with al-Qaeda, nor will it end with al-Qaeda weakened, though weakened it will be. Nonetheless, bin Laden's death deals a blow to those who took inspiration from the Saudi-born terrorist leader, and demonstrates that the United States remains a superpower with global reach.

In the Middle East, bin Laden's death will serve as a sort of Rorschach test. Many moderate Sunni Arabs and Shiites will welcome his departure from the scene, some explicitly, others tacitly. Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority welcomed bin Laden's death as a victory for moderation, while his soon-to-be partner Hamas denounced the killing. Israel, long in the vanguard in the fight against terrorism, sees vindication of its own assertive and often creative approach against terrorist leaders worldwide. In Abu Dhabi today, the foreign ministers of Bahrain, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates met and declined to comment on bin Laden's death. Nor have the Saudis commented so far. The fear that bin Laden instilled for some is likely to live on.

Given the unrest sweeping the Arab world, bin Laden's death is likely to be less significant to the people of the Middle East than otherwise would have been the case. For many Arabs, bin Laden had represented a violent reaction to the Arab's powerlessness and failure to measure up to the West. Yet even for many who had sympathized with his tactics, bin Laden had become an embarrassment, having helped solidify a global image of the Arabs as terrorists. The Arab uprisings now sweeping the region are an attempt to forge a new Arab image and identity.

Now that Arabs from the Atlantic to the Gulf of Oman are taking matters into their own hands, bin Laden may well be forgotten more quickly than he is in the United States, where he murdered thousands of Americans and perforated the nation's sense that international affairs take place abroad and not at home. Yet for a small but significant group of bin Laden's followers, he will be a symbolic martyr whose death will now need to be avenged.
Steven A. Cook, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
Osama bin Laden's death is an enormously symbolic event for the Arab world. The Saudi-born al-Qaeda leader represented a worldview shared by a small but influential group of Arabs. In this season of change in the Middle East, there will no doubt be those who seek to carry on bin Laden's jihad, but the demands of Tunisian, Egyptians, Syrians, Bahrainis, and others to live in democratic societies suggest that bin Laden's ideological reach was quite limited.
Even as al-Qaeda and its theoreticians welcomed the recent demise of Tunisia's Zine al Abidine Ben Ali and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak--and would probably like to see Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi and Syria's Bashar al-Assad go, too--the political change in the Middle East is not good for the al-Qaeda franchise.
If countries in the region manage to make the transition to more open political systems, individuals will have the opportunity to resolve their grievances through political institutions that preclude them from taking up arms against their own states or the United States. More important, it is clear that the vast majority of Arabs do not share bin Laden and al-Qaeda's view that the only legitimate authority on earth is God's. They support the sovereignty of manmade law, so long as it is just.
That said, Hamas's quick condemnation of the U.S. military operation that brought bin Laden to justice, and the fact that extremists are likely to seek revenge, suggests that there is still fertile ground for al-Qaeda in the Middle East and beyond. At the very least, al-Qaeda affiliates can find opportunity to set down roots in places like Yemen, and perhaps Libya and Syria, where Arab leaders have lost their grip but society has not fallen into Somalia-like chaos.
Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies, Council on Foreign Relations
What does the death of Osama bin Laden mean for the war in Afghanistan?
The positive impact is obvious: bin Laden had a close alliance with Taliban leader Mullah Omar. No doubt many Taliban and associated operatives (e.g., in the Haqqani network) viewed bin Laden as a great holy warrior who charted the way forward in the battle against infidels, crusaders, and Zionists. His death could, therefore, strike a significant psychological blow against insurgents. It may also have more direct repercussions. If bin Laden was still acting, as he had in the past, as a key intermediary between the Taliban and its wealthy Persian Gulf backers, then his death would clearly interrupt the flow of funding.
But oddly enough, bin Laden's death may also be a setback for the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, at least in the West. In justifying his surge in Afghanistan, President Obama has put too much rhetorical weight on the need to counter al-Qaeda. The president has repeatedly claimed that all we were doing in Afghanistan was denying al-Qaeda the ability to use that country as a sanctuary. With bin Laden dead, many Americans may decide that the threat from al-Qaeda is also gone and that we can afford to draw down in Afghanistan. Not so.
Whatever al-Qaeda's fate (and it is too early to tell whether it will be able to survive its "emir's" demise), other Islamist terrorist groups will not be significantly hindered. This includes groups such as the Pakistani Taliban, the Afghan Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Haqqani network, all at least as virulent as al-Qaeda if lacking, so far, its global ambition. A comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan is still vital to prevent that country from falling to Osama bin Laden's fellow travelers.
Moreover, by maintaining a large presence in Afghanistan, the United States can also project power into Pakistan--as Navy SEALs showed by swooping down on bin Laden's compound. Given how unstable Pakistan remains (instability that may well be exacerbated by the fallout from this raid), it is imperative that we have bases nearby, and no location is as convenient or secure as Afghanistan.
Daniel Markey, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia, Council on Foreign Relations
Osama bin Laden's death comes at a time of intense crisis between the United States and Pakistan. Its repercussions have the potential to launch the bilateral relationship off a cliff, or to bring U.S. and Pakistani strategic interests into better alignment.
Some Pakistanis, already enraged over U.S. drone strikes and the Raymond Davis affair, are more concerned about the U.S. raid in Abbottabad being a violation of Pakistan's territorial sovereignty than they are about bin Laden's death. If terrorists launch a wave of reprisal attacks, Pakistanis will be on the receiving end. Some will undoubtedly question whether their security interests were well served by bin Laden's killing.
Pakistan's leadership will have doubts about continued U.S. engagement in their region, what with bin Laden dead and a phased military withdrawal from Afghanistan taking shape. For all their frustrations with Washington, they also fear abandonment.
Many Americans, convinced that Pakistan has done less than it might to confront radical militants and terrorists, see their worst suspicions confirmed by the fact that bin Laden lived in a large, well-protected compound right under the Pakistani military's nose. Either Pakistan's intelligence service is terribly incompetent, fatally compromised, or both, raising questions about its utility as a partner.
Americans and Pakistanis, therefore, have reasons to give in to their mistrust. A more constructive outcome is possible, but it will require both sides to think about long-term interests rather than near-term frustrations. If handled smartly, bin Laden's death could mark a major reversal of momentum for extremists and their supporters throughout South Asia.
That reversal would have to start in Islamabad, where too many military and intelligence officials have actively or passively supported militants and terrorists as a means to project influence into Afghanistan and India. They will need to rethink such strategies. Recognizing that no terrorist group can escape Washington's reach, Pakistan should now lend its unconditional support to confronting and eliminating the wide range of terrorists operating from its soil.
But that would not be enough. Bin Laden's death hardly clears the way for disengagement from Pakistan. Disengagement is likely to enable the rise of a new, perhaps even more dangerous, generation of terrorists. Instead, America's strategy for the post-bin Laden era must be a far greater commitment to helping Pakistan overcome the political, economic and security conditions that make it an appealing safe haven for terrorists like bin Laden. Such an effort will be costly, and it will take years.
Unfortunately, bin Laden's death is more likely to exacerbate tensions between Washington and Islamabad than to encourage such farsighted cooperation. But this would be a tragic waste of an historic opportunity to write a more positive chapter in U.S.-Pakistan relations.
John B. Bellinger III, Adjunct Senior Fellow for International and National Security Law, CFR; former legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
The U.S. killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan was lawful under both U.S. domestic law and international law. The U.S. government's legal rationale will be similar to arguments used by both the Bush and Obama administrations to justify drone strikes against other al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan and elsewhere. The Authorization to Use Military Force Act of September 18, 2001, authorizes the president to use "all necessary and appropriate force" against persons who authorized, planned, or committed the 9/11 attacks.
The killing is not prohibited by the longstanding assassination prohibition in Executive Order 12333 because the action was a military action in the ongoing U.S. armed conflict with al-Qaeda and it is not prohibited to kill specific leaders of an opposing force. The assassination prohibition also does not apply to killings in self-defense. The executive branch will also argue that the action was permissible under international law both as a permissible use of force in the U.S. armed conflict with al-Qaeda and as a legitimate action in self-defense, given that bin Laden was clearly planning additional attacks.
Some critics of the administration's legal theory that the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda might--if they were consistent with their past criticisms--argue that the United States did not have a right to use military force against bin Laden outside of Afghanistan, and that Washington should instead have sent an extradition request to Pakistan or asked the Pakistani government to arrest bin Laden. But such traditional critics may prefer to remain silent in this instance.
In addition, under the UN Charter, the United States would normally be prohibited from using force inside Pakistan without obtaining Pakistan's consent. It is not clear whether the Obama administration received the consent of the Pakistani government to use force inside Pakistan in this case, but the Pakistani government appears at least to have consented after the fact to this potential infringement of its sovereignty.
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