If you think today's announcement that the Israelis and Palestinians are going to resume "direct talks" is a significant breakthrough, you haven't been paying attention for the past two decades (at least). I wish I could be more optimistic about this latest development, but I see little evidence that a meaningful deal is in the offing. 

Why do I say this? Three reasons. 

1. There is no sign that the Palestinians are willing to accept less than a viable, territorially contiguous state in the West Bank (and eventually, Gaza), including a capital in East Jerusalem and some sort of political formula (i.e., fig-leaf) on the refugee issue. By the way, this outcome supposedly what the Clinton and Bush adminstrations favored, and what Obama supposedly supports as well.

2. There is no sign that Israel's government is willing to accept anything more than a symbolic Palestinian "state" consisting of a set of disconnected Bantustans, with Israel in full control of the borders, air space, water supplies, electromagnetic spectrum. etc. Prime Minister Netanyahu has made it clear that this is what he means by a "two-state solution," and he has repeatedly declared that Israel intends to keep all of Jerusalem and maybe a long-term military presence in the Jordan River valley. There are now roughly 500,000 Israeli Jews living outside the 1967 borders, and it is hard to imagine any Israeli government evacuating a significant fraction of them. Even if Netanyahu wanted to be more forthcoming, his coalition wouldn't let him make any meaningful concessions. And while the talks drag on, the illegal settlements will continue to expand.

3. There is no sign that the U.S. government is willing to put meaningful pressure on Israel. We're clearly willing to twist Mahmoud Abbas' arm to the breaking point (which is why he's agreed to talks, even as Israel continues to nibble away at the territory of the future Palestinian state), but Obama and his Middle East team have long since abandoned any pretense of bringing even modest pressure to bear on Netanyahu. Absent that, why should anyone expect Bibi to change his position?

So don't fall for the hype that this announcement constitutes some sort of meaningful advance in the "peace process." George Mitchell and his team probably believe they are getting somewhere, but they are either deluding themselves, trying to fool us, or trying to hoodwink other Arab states into believing that Obama meant what he said in Cairo. At this point, I rather doubt that anyone is buying, and the only thing that will convince onlookers that U.S. policy has changed will be tangible results. Another round of inconclusive "talks" will just reinforce the growing perception that the United States cannot deliver.

The one item in all this that does give me pause is the accompanying statement by the Middle East Quartet (the United States, Russia, the EU and the U.N.), which appears at first glance to have some modest teeth in it. Among other things, it calls explicitly for "a settlement, negotiated between the parties, that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors." It also says these talks can be completed within one year. Sounds promising, but the Quartet has issued similar proclamations before (notably the 2003 "Roadmap"), and these efforts led precisely nowhere. So maybe there's a ray of hope in there somewhere, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Meanwhile, both Democrats and Republicans here in the United States will continue to make pious statements about their commitment to a two-state solution, even as it fades further and further into the realm of impossibility. Barring a miracle, we will eventually have to recognize that "two-states for two peoples" has become a pipe-dream. At that point, U.S. leaders will face a very awkward choice: they can support a democratic Israel where Jews and Arabs have equal political rights (i.e., a one-state democracy similar to the United States, where discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity is taboo), or they can support an apartheid state whose basic institutions are fundamentally at odds with core American values.  

Equally important, an apartheid Israel will face growing international censure, and as both former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak have warned, such an outcome would place Israel's own long-term future in doubt. If that happens, all those staunch "friends of Israel" who have hamstrung U.S. diplomacy for decades can explain to their grandchildren how they let that happen.

As for the Obama administration itself, I have only one comment. If you think I'm being too gloomy, then do the world a favor and prove me wrong. If you do, I'll be the first to admit it.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has sensibly concluded that when the United States: 1) Is facing massive federal budget deficits, combined with a looming fiscal crisis at the state and local levels, 2) Is already spending more on national security than the rest of the world combined, and 3) Faces no "peer competitors" or dangerous great powers nearby, then it makes sense to make a few modest cuts in its military spending.

Of course, patriotic Congressmen will now fight tooth-and-nail to preserve spending in their states or districts, so it's not even clear how much money will ultimately be saved. But it's a step in the right direction, and Gates deserves credit for seeing where the wind was blowing and for addressing the problem, even if only in a modest way.

Just don't lose sight of the real issue, which is not so much the amount of money we devote to national security as the purposes for which we use these capabilities. It doesn't make much sense to cut spending if you're going to continue to use the military on ill-advised missions; in fact, if you have a very ambitious foreign policy, then you ought to expect to spend a lot of blood and treasure on it. As the Times noted this morning, the White House backed Gates's plan, saying that "his plan would free money that could be better spent on war fighting." And when some key elements of your foreign policy make you very unpopular in large swathes of the world, it will probably fuel anti-American terrorism and create dangers that might not exist otherwise, or at least might not be as large or as difficult to address.

In other words, the debate that is about to occur about Pentagon cuts is mostly a disagreement about the allocation of pork and short-term priorities. Gates did not propose any change in the roles and missions of the U.S. armed forces, in our international commitments, or even our overall force levels. His proposals do not invite a debate about the fundamentals of U.S. grand strategy. And until that debate occurs, don't expect major changes in America's force posture or its underlying belief that it has the right and/or responsibility to intervene in far-flung corners of the world, even when vital interests are not at stake and when we don't really have any idea how to run these places reliably.

On the latter point, I hope you caught the delicious irony on General Ray Odierno's statement that U.S. forces in Iraq were now there "to prevent foreign powers from meddling with Iraq's new government" (h/t Yglesias and Greenwald). It's easy to lampoon such a comment -- weren't we "meddling" just a bit when we invaded in 2003? -- but the real lesson is that this is how virtually all imperial powers tend to see their own conduct.  Great Britain claimed to shoulder the "white man's burden" (i.e. to bring civilization to its benighted colonial subjects), and the French saw their colonial role as "la mission civilizatrice." The former Soviet Union thought it was helping spread the benefits of socialism to its Third World clients, and the United States has convinced itself that it is spreading freedom, democracy, liberty, the rule of law, "world order," etc.   

I don't know if countries tell themselves this sort of thing in order to rally support for interventionist policies, or to convince other states that their actions are inspired by noble aims rather than the self-interested dictates of realpolitik (probably both). Whatever the motivation, I remain convinced that the United States would be better off if it devoted more attention to nation-building here at home, and somewhat less to fruitless efforts to do so abroad, especially in those places where the preconditions for Western-style liberal democracy are sorely lacking.

As my vacation comes to an end, I want to thank Columbia's Jack Snyder and Georgetown's David Edelstein for their thoughtful guest posts. Last week David had an excellent entry on the war-aversion of most contemporary realists and I wanted to offer a brief reaction. I've always found it odd that many academics see realism as a hawkish view of world politics and think that realists are big fans of using military power, even though most contemporary realists -- with a few exceptions like Henry Kissinger -- have generally been prudent about the use of force and skeptical about most overseas military adventures. As Edelstein points out, realists like Waltz, Morgenthau, and Kennan were opposed to U.S. involvement in Vietnam -- on strategic rather than moral grounds -- and younger realists (including me) opposed the Iraq War in 2003, were ambivalent about our intervention in Balkans or Africa in the 1990s, and think attacking Iran would be major strategic blunder today.

Edelstein's discussion of this issue is excellent and I don't have any major disagreements with his post, but I would add a few additional points. 

To start with a minor correction: the invasion of Afghanistan in 2002 is not the only post-Cold War military operation that realists supported. As I recall, most realists also supported Desert Storm, the 1991 liberation of Kuwait. Moreover, it was two realists -- John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Barry Posen of MIT -- who offered the most optimistic (and as it turned out, accurate) pre-war forecasts of how easy that war was likely to be. (By contrast, both doves and a surprising number of hawks seemed to think ousting Saddam from Kuwait was going to be very difficult).

As one might expect, realists supported Desert Storm for good balance-of-power reasons. If Saddam's Iraq had absorbed Kuwait permanently, its GDP would have increased by about 40 percent and it could have translated that additional wealth into additional military power.   Although Saddam's military machine was never very impressive by U.S. standards, a somewhat stronger Iraq might have posed a more serious long-term threat to the regional balance in the Gulf and presented a more serious threat to Saudi Arabia in particular. Given that the United States has always sought to prevent any single power from dominating this oil-rich region, it made good strategic sense to expel Iraq from Kuwait and to degrade its military power in the process. Most of the rest of the world agreed, by the way, which is why they helped us do it and why that operation did not tarnish our national image.

It was also the right decision not to go to Baghdad back then, because toppling Saddam in 1991 would have dragged us into precisely the same quagmire we have been dealing with since we foolishly invaded in 2003.

The other reason why contemporary realists have been skeptical about many recent military adventures is essentially structural. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been in a remarkably favorable geopolitical position. Realists care primarily (thought not exclusively) about the balance of material power, and there just isn't a lot of additional power out there to be won via military action. Instead, the main arenas of American military activity have been conflict-ridden backwaters of little or no strategic importance. They are hard to get to, difficult-to-impossible to pacify, and don't have a lot of economic potential or military power of their own. Getting bogged down in places like Iraq or Afghanistan just strengthens jihadi narratives about America's alleged antipathy to Islam, and as with Vietnam, it ultimately won't matter very much whether we win or lose. On simple cost-benefit grounds, therefore, realists don't think these wars are worth the effort.

In short, because realists understand that military power is a crude instrument and that governing alien societies is a costly business, they have argued against such foolishness.   Instead, the main advocates of military involvement have been a coalition of neoconservatives and liberal internationationalists, driven by a a variety of agendas and infused with a remarkable degree of hubris. The results -- first in Iraq and now in Afghanistan -- have not been pretty.

Realists have lost these debates, however, for somewhat similar structural reasons. When a state is as big and powerful as the United States is, it is hard for its leaders to believe that they can't do the impossible in places like Iraq or Afghanistan. And when you are geographically distant from the places you are meddling, it's hard to believe that it will have any serious consequences back here at home (9/11 notwithstanding). Also, as I've noted before, the Cold War got the United States in the habit of going everywhere and doing everything, and led to the emergence of a large set of domestic institutions whose cumulative impact is to to keep the United States engaged in as many places as possible.

So long as there are no great power rivals out there, it is hard to argue that attacking some country we have taken a disliking too (whether for valid or bogus reasons) is going to be costly or difficult.  Even worse, there will always be various propagandists and clever briefers out there to explain why this time the intended target is really dangerous and this time the war really will pay for itself, and this time failure to act will have catastrophic consequences, and oh yes, this time other states really want us to do it, etc., etc., etc. And no matter how many times the hawks have been wrong in the past, plenty of people will take them seriously.   For an 800-lb gorilla like the USA, amnesia seems to be a congenital condition.

One last point. Contrary to what some critics think, realists don't want a weaker America. But they do understand that a robust economy is the foundation of all national power and that wasting money or lives on foolish foreign adventures, excessive military spending, or a large, secretive, redundant, and dysfunctional "intelligence" apparatus does not make the country stronger or more secure. 

As the realist Kenneth Waltz put it back in the early 1980s, "more is not better if less is enough." Those wise words apply to the entire national security establishment, and to the costly misadventures that civilians have been asking it to do in recent years. So in addition to the reasons that Professor Edelstein emphasized, that's why realists have been wary of using force in recent years.

Last week, I promised to offer a few reactions to the Washington Post series on "Top Secret America," which deserves to be on everybody's short list for the Pulitzer Prize. In a brilliant piece of investigative journalism, reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin uncovered the vast expansion of the U.S. "intelligence" industry since 9/11, and suggest that this largely-unknown array of secret agencies and private contractors is expensive, frequently unaccountable, often dysfunctional, and nearly impossible to rein in.

Talk about previously "unknown unknowns!"

My first thought, of course, was "Osama wins again!" It's hardly a fresh insight to observe that we've done more damage to ourselves since 9/11 than Osama and his murderous band of misguided criminals ever did, and the Post article suggests that this bloated bureaucratic excess is yet another self-inflicted wound. Not only have we spent billions of dollars that might have been devoted to more constructive purposes, but we seem to have created an intelligence system that may be even less effective than the imperfect one we had before. I can't decide if it's just the intelligence equivalent of the "Sorcerer's Apprentice," or maybe a real-world manifestation of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. Either way, it ain't good.

One problem, of course, is that the very nature of top-secret agencies makes it very difficult to hold them accountable. If you don't know how much they actually cost and you don't know exactly what they are collecting, analyzing, or doing, then there's no way to do a proper cost-benefit analysis. Although it is our taxes that fund these agencies and our own security that is ultimately at stake, these super-secret agencies are basically saying to all of us: "Trust me!" Some of you may think Congressional oversight is sufficient to deal with this problem, but the track record in the past is disheartening, and Priest and Arkin's account isn't reassuring about the current state of affairs. On the contrary, they suggest that the people in charge of these various agencies have at-best imperfect knowledge of what they are actually doing, which makes it hard to believe that the designated Congressional watchdogs are doing their jobs either.

To make matters worse, the system they depict gives the participants (and especially those private contractors) an obvious incentive to hype threats, both to cover their bureaucratic tails and to justify their own existence and profits. Nobody wants to be caught downplaying a possible danger (which would be embarrassing later on), and suggesting that a potential threat might not be that serious is a good way to get your budget cut. As one of the sources quoted by Priest and Arkin put it, the post-9/11 intelligence maze has become a "self-licking ice cream cone," and the overall effect will be to make the world's most powerful and secure country even more paranoid than before. And when everyone in the system has an incentive to maximize dangers, the whole apparatus gets drowned in more data than it can absorb and assess.

The larger problem, it seems to me, is trying to get better intelligence by throwing billions of dollars at the problem and by recruiting thousands of new analysts is like trying to write Shakespeare by putting a million chimpanzees at computer keyboards and letting them type forever. One of them might eventually produce a decent sonnet, but mostly you'll get a lot of gibberish that nobody has time to read, vet, or evaluate.

It isn't the volume of data that we collect that matters, it is the insight, knowledge, analytical ability, and good judgment of the people who are assessing it. I would rather have a relatively small number of very smart, well-trained, and independent-minded people working on critical intelligence problems than hundreds or thousands of inexperienced and poorly-trained "analysts" who were mostly looking to make a buck.

And you may rest assured this problem isn't going to go away. Conservatives have long complained that government agencies are virtually impossible to kill once they are established (a position for which I have some sympathy), and that means that we are going to be wrestling with this unwieldy bureaucratic behemoth for decades to come. Indeed, as noted above, getting it under control is likely to be even more difficult with other government agencies, because those in charge can classify the information needed to evaluate them properly and thus keep it out of the public eye.

Finally, we shouldn't lose sight of the taproot of this whole problem. The expansion of "Top Secret America" was a direct response to the 9/11 attacks. As the 9/11 Commission Report and other independent studies have confirmed, the motivation for those attacks was al Qaeda's anger at America's entire Middle East policy, including our intimate ties to Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the stationing of U.S. air and ground forces in the Gulf as part of "dual containment," and our unconditional support for Israel. To say this does not excuse what Obama bin Laden and his murderous associates did, of course, it just reminds us that the money we have spent, are spending, and will continue to spend on "Top Secret America" is part of the price we pay for those policies. Some Americans undoubtedly think the price is worth it and that these policies shouldn't change. Others disagree, and believe that a different approach would help marginalize terrorist organizations, undermine their recruiting ability, and allow the United States to gradually rebuild a positive relationship with many of these societies. Whatever position you take on that issue, the one thing you shouldn't do is deny that there is a price for our current approach. Thanks to Priest and Arkin, we now know that it's even bigger than we thought.

Postscript: The Priest and Arkin series also reminds us why we need a large and profitable mainstream media industry. Many bloggers (including me) are quick to criticize mainstream media organizations for their various shortcomings, but we shouldn't forget that this sort of investigative journalism takes time and money and there are few if any bloggers who could have produced something similar to the Post series. If these organizations succumb to market forces and are not replaced by news organizations with an ethos that prizes truth and sufficient resources to ferret it out, our ability to know what is really going on in the world will be diminished and the informed debate that is essential to democracy will be further imperiled.

My nominee for the "most callous statement recently uttered by a prominent U.S. diplomat" goes to George Shultz, who was interviewed by New York Times reporter Deborah Solomon a couple of weeks ago. Solomon asked Shultz a few questions about his role "stumping for the war" and serving as chairman of the "Committee for the Liberation of Iraq." Shultz reveals that the committee never actually met and that he didn't even know who all the members were, which seems like a pretty cavalier approach to a major foreign policy decision.   Solomon asks him if he has any regrets about the invasion (he doesn't, though he wishes it had gone quicker). And then, after some not-very insightful questions about whether the Bechtel Corporation (which Shultz used to head) made money from the war, there is the following exchange:

Solomon: 'It's been seven years since we invaded Iraq, and there is so much sorrow in the world. I don't see things getting a lot better.'

Shultz: 'You ought to come out to California. We have problems out here; but the sun is shining, and it's pleasant here on the Stanford campus.'

I grew up about 4 miles from Stanford and did my undergraduate studies there. Shultz is absolutely right: It's a very pleasant place, and I'm sure it's even nicer when you're a multi-millionaire. But to dismiss the death and destruction that the United States wreaked on Iraq -- as well as all the other suffering that occurs elsewhere in the world -- with a blithe reference to California sunshine strikes me as emblematic of the indifference that underpins a lot of American meddling around the world. So long as the sun is shining where we are, we don't care all that much about what our foreign policy decisions are doing to other people. And then we get surprised and irate when some people in some far-flung part of the world resent what we are doing, and when a few of them try to do what they can to pay us back.

The United States continues to interfere in lots of places around the world in part because most Americans -- and especially privileged individuals like Mr. Shultz -- are immune from the immediate consequences of these actions. We borrow the money to pay for foreign wars, and we rely on sacrifices by an all-volunteer force. We fail to see the connection between our heavy-handed diplomacy and penchant for using force and the persistent anti-Americanism that occurs in the places where we've interfered most often. And when you're the 800-lb gorilla in the international system, you can allow your foreign policy to be swayed by well-connected "letterhead" committees that never actually meet and whose funders and motives remain hidden. Great power allows states to behave irresponsibly, in short, because others suffer the consequences and future generations get stuck with the bill.

What's most striking about Shultz's offhand comment is that it came from someone with a long record of public service and generally sensible views on a lot of foreign policy issues. He was hardly a "chicken-hawk," having served in the Marines in World War II, and his tenure as secretary of state helped rescue the Reagan administration from some of its worse excesses and internal divisions. But for men (and women) like him, the world is a stage on which to operate, and the consequences for others are just "collateral damage."

Needless to say, statements like that are why I tend to look at the world through a realist lens.  However much we may deplore it, most leaders worry primarily about their own positions and their own country's narrow self-interest, and they don't spend much time or attention thinking about whether what we are doing is good for others. There isn't a lot of altruism in the conduct of foreign policy, even though great powers always tell themselves that their motives are pure and that they are really acting for the greater good. It would be nice if things were different, but that ain't the world we live in. 

Via Ben Smith at Politico, we learn that the usual suspects have started yet another organization whose objective is to promote a hard-right, Likudnik agenda in the Middle East. The new group apparently intends to go after anyone who thinks U.S. Middle East policy has been less than totally successful in recent years, and who is willing to think for themselves (and U.S. interests), instead of reflexively echoing the positions favored by AIPAC and other groups in the "status quo" lobby.

To be more specific, Smith reports that hardline neoconservatives such as William Kristol, Michael Goldfarb, Noah Pollak, and Rachel Abrams have joined forces (again) with rightwing Christian evangelical Gary Bauer to establish a new group: the "Emergency Committee for Israel." The group says it is going to target candidates in key Senate and Congressional races, along with the Obama administration. It is directing its initial salvo (in the form of a TV ad) at Congressman Joe Sestak (D-PA), who defeated incumbent Arlen Spector in the Democratic primary and is now running for the Senate. Sestak was targeted because he had the temerity not to sign an AIPAC-sponsored letter awhile back, and though he's a strong defender of Israel, he's been critical of Israel's counterproductive blockade of Gaza.

The ironies here are remarkable. For starters, you have some of the same geniuses who dreamed up and sold the Iraq War -- one of the dumbest blunders in the annals of U.S. foreign policy -- joining forces with someone who thinks U.S. Middle East policy ought to be based on his interpretation of Old Testament prophecy. They're going after a retired three-star admiral in the U.S. Navy, who also happens to have a Ph.D. in political economy and international affairs from Harvard. Given their track record over the past decade, this is actually a stunning endorsement of Sestak's candidacy. Criticism from these folks is like having Lindsay Lohan complain about your lifestyle choices, or having BP president Tony Hayward offer advice on environmental safety and public relations.

What is even more ironic is the group's paranoid name: the "Emergency Committee." Its members must think Israel is in real trouble, but what they don't seem to realize is that it is their advice that has helped lead to its current difficulties.  Israel has been following the Likudnik/neoconservative/Christian Zionist program for several decades now, with vocal backing from the likes of Kristol, Pollak and Bauer, and the United States has been providing it with unconditional support for this self-destructive course. 

Contrary to what many people think, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not win a great political victory over President Obama during their little love-fest last week. Sure, Obama has largely abandoned his early insistence that Israel stop building settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and he's made it clear that his administration won't use U.S. pressure to bring about a genuine two-state solution. Contrary to his early rhetoric, Obama is proving to be just like most of his predecessors, and for essentially the same reason.

Last week was a tactical win for Bibi but yet another strategic misstep, because, as his predecessor Ehud Olmert and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak have both acknowledged, only a viable two-state solution can prevent Israel from becoming a full-fledged apartheid state. This development will force the Palestinians to seek full political rights within this "greater Israel." And as Olmert warned back in 2007, "once that happens ... the state of Israel is finished."  

As Jerome Slater pointed out on his own blog last week, the reason Obama couldn't do the right thing was the power of the lobby, and that includes the endless machinations of folks like Kristol and Bauer. They are right to think that Israel is in deep trouble and that it's likely to get worse. What they don't get is that it is to a large extent their fault.

Bottom line: If you want to kill off any prospect for peace, ensure that Israel's current difficulties multiply, and reinforce anti-Americanism throughout the region, by all means back any of the candidates that the "emergency committee" endorses. 

I suspect some readers are expecting me to comment on today's meeting between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but I actually don't have that much to say about it. I think it's a largely meaningless public relations exercise, a kiss-and-make-up session designed to show that U.S-Israeli relations are still just fine and intended to keep "pro-Israel" dollars flowing into the Democratic Party's coffers in the run-up to the November mid-terms. I don't expect Bibi to make any serious concessions today and I doubt Barack will put any serious pressure on him. Instead, look for lots of smiles and handshakes, accompanied by frothy statements about "shared values" and "unbreakable commitments." Then you can switch channels, turn the page, or head for a different website.

There is only one big question here: is there going to be a genuine two-state solution or not?  In other words, is Israel going to withdraw from most of the lands it occupied in 1967, end the siege of Gaza, and permit the Palestinians to establish an independent state of their own on those lands, including a capital in East Jerusalem? If so, then the rest of the Arab world will recognize it, its stigma as an occupying power will end, and U.S. relations with the Arab and Islamic world will improve significantly. It won't solve all our problems, of course, but it would be a major step forward.

If a two-state solution fails, however, then Israel will become a full-fledged apartheid state and will increasingly be seen as one. It will face growing international censure, liberal Israelis will be more inclined to emigrate, and the United States will continue to pay a significant price for the "special relationship." 

President Obama understood all this when he took the oath of office, but he's been in full retreat mode ever since his Cairo speech in June 2009. Unless today's meeting yields some unexpected results, it's mostly a waste of time. And time is running out.

Contrary to what many (but not all) commentators seem to think, the firing of Stanley McChrystal and his replacement by General David Petraeus is not that significant. To be more precise, it will only be a significant event if Obama uses this shift as an opportunity to move towards withdrawal. Otherwise, we'll just rearrange some deck chairs and watch the war effort continue to founder.

Until the Rolling Stone article surfaced, there was little sign that Obama was unhappy with McChrystal's handling of the war. (Gareth Porter of IPS reports that there was in fact growing discontent within the administration over the lack of progress, but it hadn't surfaced in any visible way.) More importantly, there was no sign that Petraeus had serious problems with McChrystal's performance or visible doubts about the need to continue the fight until "victory" was achieved. Don't forget that Petraeus's status and prestige is based on his knowledge of and commitment to counter-insurgency (COIN) warfare, and COIN is exactly what McChrystal was doing too. Unlike the "surge" in Iraq, which involved a fundamental shift in U.S. strategy and tactics, there is no reason to expect Petraeus to implement a fundamentally different approach in Afghanistan. The subhead in today's New York Times says it all: "Obama Says Afghan Policy Won't Change after Dismissal."  Uh-oh.

There is also no reason to believe Petraeus will achieve significantly different results because the problem in Afghanistan is not the quality of our generals. Bad leadership can hamper a war effort, of course, but it is a fallacy to think that all we need to do is get the right leader in place at the top and then all will be well. (Military history is often written in ways that glorifies the role of the "great captains," but there's a lot more to military success than just a smart and inspired commanders).

The real problem is that our campaign in Afghanistan is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. The Karzai government is a liability, not an asset, and we have no way of making it perform better. Similarly, we have no way of forcing the Taliban to sit still and fight us out in the open -- where they would be easy to beat -- when confronted by superior force, they simply melt away and wait us out. Although troop morale seems to be good, our forces have been fighting a long time and burnout is beginning to set in. Our NATO allies are leaving the field, and Americans are beginning to realize that the costs of continuing this fight exceed either the benefits of victory or the risks of withdrawal. "Victory" in Afghanistan -- whatever that might mean -- wouldn't make al Qaeda a lot weaker; and "failure" wouldn't make them much stronger either. Putting a new general in charge doesn't change that calculus at all.

Third, some prominent commentators like Andrew Sullivan now worry that Obama is in effect hostage to Petraeus, because the latter's stature and prestige will make it almost impossible for Obama to overrule him should he ask for more troops or seek to continue the war indefinitely. That is an obvious danger, but that same prestige and stature also makes Petraeus the best person to help Obama sell a prudent decision to cut our losses and get out.  Moreover, Petraeus' stature is based primarily on the supposed success of the 2007 "surge" in Iraq, a campaign that achieved the tactical objective of lowering the level of violenace but did not achieve the strategic goal of political reconciliation. If Iraq goes south again as U.S. forces withdraw, some of Petraeus's current luster is bound to diminish and Obama's freedom of maneuver might increase.

In any case, the only important question here is what Obama is telling Petraeus to do. In essence, McChrystal's gaffe has given Obama a chance for a "do-over." He made the wrong choice in the fall of 2009, when he agreed to escalate the U.S. presence despite all the obvious pitfalls.  Has he learned from the results of the past nine months?  Does he now realize that he is not the master of events in Afghanistan, and that he cannot achieve success there simply by giving inspiring speeches and sending more troops? And has he begun to sense that this war might not be winnable at acceptable cost, and that continuing the fight is putting his entire presidency at risk?

If he has, he'll tell Petraeus that his mission isn't to pacify Afghanistan, build a stable central government there, or even "defeat, disrupt, and defeat al Qaeda" (which isn't in Afghanistan anymore). Rather, his mission is to find a way for the United States to end this futile and unnecessary adventure in social engineering, so that we can turn our attention (and our finite resources) to more pressing problems. 

If Obama hasn't learned that lesson, then he will find himself stuck in the Afghan quagmire for the remainder of his time in office. As with Johnson in Vietnam and Bush in Iraq, the war will suck the life out of his presidency and make it impossible to achieve more urgent domestic and international priorities. And because he's now had two opportunities to chart a different course, it will have been entirely his own doing.

It couldn't be more predictable. Back when Israel and Turkey were strategic allies with extensive military-to-military ties, prominent neoconservatives were vocal defenders of the Turkish government and groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and AIPAC encouraged Congress not to pass resolutions that would have labeled what happened to the Armenians at the hands of the Turks during World War I a "genocide." (The "Armenian lobby" is no slouch, but it's no match for AIPAC and its allies in the Israel lobby). The fact that the ADL was in effect protecting another country against the charge of genocide is more than a little ironic, but who ever said that political organizations had to be ethically consistent? Once relations between Israel and Turkey began to fray, however -- fueled primarily by Turkish anger over Israel's treatment of the Palestinians -- the ADL and AIPAC withdrew their protection and Congressional defenders of Israel began switching sides, too.

Last week Jim Lobe published a terrific piece at InterPress Service, detailing how prominent neoconservatives have switched from being strong supporters (and in some cases well-paid consultants) of the Turkish government to being vehement critics. He lays out the story better than I could, but I have a few comments to add.

First, if this doesn't convince you that virtually all neoconservatives are deeply Israeli-centric, then nothing will. This affinity is hardly a secret; indeed, neocon pundit Max Boot once declared that support for Israel was a "key tenet" of neoconservatism. But the extent of their attachment to Israel is sometimes disguised by the claim that what they really care about is freedom and democracy, and therefore they support Israel simply because it is "the only democracy in the Middle East."

But now we see the neoconservatives turning on Turkey, even though it is a well-functioning democracy, a member of NATO, and a strong ally of the United States. Of course,Turkey's democracy isn't perfect, but show me one that is. The neocons have turned from friends of Turkey to foes for one simple reason: Israel. Specifically, the Turkish government has been openly critical of Israel's conduct toward the Palestinians, beginning with the blockade of Gaza, ramping up after the brutal bombardment of Gaza in 2008-2009, and culminating in the lethal IDF attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. As Lobe shows, a flock of prominent neoconservatives are now busily demonizing Turkey, and in some cases calling for its expulsion from NATO. 

Thus, whether a state is democratic or not matters little for the neocons; what matters for them is whether a state backs Israel or not.  So if you're still wondering why so many neoconservatives worked overtime to get the U.S. to invade Iraq -- even though Osama bin Laden was in Afghanistan or Pakistan -- and why they are now pushing for war with Iran, well, there's your answer.

As I've said repeatedly, there's nothing wrong with any American feeling a deep attachment to a foreign country and expressing it in politics, provided that they are open and honest about it and provided that other people can raise the issue without being accused of some sort of bigotry. The neocons' recent volte-face over Turkey is important because it reveals their policy priorities with particular clarity, and Lobe deserves full points for documenting it for us.

One last comment. Neoconservatives usually portray American and Israeli interests as essentially identical: In their eyes, what is good for Israel is good for the United States and vice versa. This claim makes unconditional U.S. support seem like a good idea, and it also insulates them from the charge that they are promoting Israel's interests over America's.  After all, if the interests of the two states are really one and the same, then by definition there can be no conflict of interest, which means that the "dual loyalty" issue (a term I still don't like) doesn't arise.

I hold the opposite view. I believe that the "special relationship" has become harmful to both countries, and that a more normal relationship would be better for both. Right now, the special relationship hurts the United States by fueling anti-Americanism throughout the region and making us look deeply hypocritical in the eyes of billions -- yes, billions -- of people. It also distorts our policy on a host of issues, such as non-proliferation, and makes it extremely difficult to use our influence to advance the cause of Middle East peace. President Obama's failures on this front -- despite his repeated pledges to do better--make this all-too-obvious. At the same time, this unusual relationship harms Israel by underwriting policies that have increased its isolation and that threaten its long-term future. It also makes it nearly impossible for U.S. leaders to voice even the mildest of criticisms when Israel acts foolishly, because to do so casts doubts about the merits of the special relationship and risks incurring the wrath of the various groups that exist to defend it.

Although the United States and Israel do share certain common interests, it is becoming increasingly clear that their interests are not identical. This situation puts die-hard neoconservatives in a tough spot, as it could force them to choose between promoting what is good for America or defending what they think (usually wrongly) will be good for Israel. And insofar as prominent neocons continue to beat the drums for war, it behooves us to remember both their abysmal track record and their underlying motivations.

My wife and I spent part of our honeymoon in Paris (where I am at the moment), and we had gorgeous weather the entire time. I've been back here without her three times since then, and the weather has been grey and gloomy (if not downright awful) each time. There's an obvious lesson to draw from this pattern of evidence (though the causality is murky), and I conclude that I need to stop coming here without her. Make a note....

But I digress. The hotel where I'm staying has rather primitive internet access, so posting will be light this week. I did manage to get online for a few minutes this morning, and caught up on some of the news. Two quick comments on things I read:

Via Sullivan and Yglesias, I picked up on Chris Beam's amusing essay in Slate asking "What if Political Scientists Covered the News?" Instead of breathlessly reporting every up-and-down in the news cycle, and trumpeting events that research has shown to be largely meaningless, as journalists tend to do, political scientists covering the news would undoubtedly provide better analysis of the underlying forces that shape political outcomes and help everyone see the forest for the trees. Political scientists would also be more inclined to discuss foreign policy in terms of long-term economic and demographic trends, underlying social forces within and across states, shifting balances of power, the role of interest groups, the impact of shifting normative discourses, etc. With perhaps a few exceptions, they'd be less inclined to highlight personalities and inside-the-Beltway gossip.  

Movement in these directions would be an improvement. But speaking as a card-carrying political scientist who is (mostly) proud of my chosen profession, there'd be a pretty clear downside too. If political scientists wrote the news, we might see a lot of articles about trivial topics of little interest to anyone but a handful of other scholars. (Check out the next APSA annual program if you don't believe me). Moreover, most political scientists would be reluctant to tackle anything that might be controversial for fear that someone might say something mean about them in response. Journalists can be thin-skinned, but most academics are notoriously sensitive to even fair-minded criticism.

Read on

When asked what sort of thing was most likely to blow governments off course, British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan famously replied, "Events, dear boy, events." I thought of that line as I was reflecting on the series of bad bounces that the Obama administration has experienced in recent weeks, most notably in the case of the BP blow-out and oil leak down in the Gulf of Mexico. I think there's a broader lesson there, however, so permit me to briefly ascend one of my familiar soap-boxes.

One of the many reasons I think the United States should adopt a more restrained grand strategy is the fact that our current level of (over)-commitment leaves us with little latitude for dealing with surprises. Presidents think they can set an ambitious foreign and domestic agenda and then just proceed to implement it. They know they will face various obstacles along the way, but they forget that they will also have to spend enormous amounts of time on problems that  just come out of nowhere. But if you're already trying to do too much, then there's no time to handle anything else and either the new problems get bungled or your original goals have to be sacrificed.

Lord knows I have a certain sympathy for the Obama team, insofar as they inherited a very tough situation. But from the start they've acted as if they could do everything at once, didn't need to set priorities, and didn't really need to have a clear and well-articulated strategy for achieving their various lofty goals. As I noted last week, their new National Security Strategy devotes a lot of lip-service to relying more on partnerships, institutions, etc., but it still sees the United States deeply engaged virtually everywhere and it anticipates Washington retaining the lead role on most if not all major issues. It is decidely not a document that anticipates our doing less.

The obvious danger with an overcrowded agenda is that there's no slack in the system when the inevitable surprises occur. Nobody expected an oil well to blow in the Gulf of Mexico, but that unforeseen event is going to consume a lot of Obama's time and energy and limit his ability to act in other areas. (He's already canceled a trip to Indonesia for the second time). Meanwhile, the U.S. military is stretched to the max in Iraq and Afghanistan (in part because Obama foolishly decided to double down in the latter), and Secretary of Defense Gates is now telling the Pentagon to start cutting costs in order to keep those wars going. North Korea has raised the temperature in East Asia, the Prime Minister of Japan has just resigned, relations with Turkey ain't so hot, and the administration's tepid response to the Gaza flotilla debacle is putting the last nail in the coffin of Obama's "New Beginning" with the Arab and Islamic world.    

I'm sure the Obama team feels like they can't catch a break right now, but unpleasant surprises happen all the time and they should have planned for that reality even if they didn't know exactly what the nature of  the surprise would be. One good reason to plan on doing a bit less is so that we have the capacity to handle the stuff that just happens.

P.S. I don't have much to add to my earlier comments on the Gaza Flotilla, but I did want to alert readers to a very clear-eyed and unsentimental analysis of the incident by M.J. Rosenberg of Media Matters for America. It's about the most sensible thing I've read yet, and is well worth your attention. Plus, Glenn Beck attacked it on his show last night, which virtually guarantees that M.J. is right.

Back in September, I said I wished the Obama administration wasn't required by law to submit a formal statement of its “National Security Strategy.” I said this in part because I think such efforts are mostly a waste of time, but also because I thought it might be better not to be too explicit about the adjustments forced upon Obama by the Bush administration’s errors and the 2008 recession. So I suggested that they try to make the report as boring as possible.

The new National Security Strategy was released yesterday, and the usual parsing of its prose is now underway. (You can find other reactions here, and here, and an inteview with the report's primary author, Ben Rhodes, here.) I doubt Rhodes and his colleagues were trying to take my advice, but they have succeeded in producing a document that could make even the most dedicated foreign policy wonk’s eyes glaze over. I haven’t done a word count compared to the Clinton or Bush versions, but I’d bet this one is substantially longer. It’s certainly duller. None of the earlier reports deserved prizes for clarity, consistency, or rhetorical achievement, but the new version manages to make the drama of world politics positively enervating. Given my earlier recommendation, I guess congratulations are in order.

So having struggled through it, what are my first impressions? Let me start by saying that it's hard for me not to like a report whose first page says "to succeed, we must face the world as it is." It then goes on to say that "we need to be clear-eyed about the strengths and shortcomings of international institutions that were developed to deal with the challenges of an earlier time." I read that and almost thought that somebody had screwed up and let a realist into the drafting room. 

But I kept reading, and soon realized that this was not the case. Although the report reflects certain broad realities, it ignores plenty of others. It offers the usual bromides about NATO’s position as the “cornerstone” of U.S. engagement, for example, but takes no notice of the economic difficulties that will inevitably reduce Europe’s ability to be a substantial partner. It talks about the continued "pursuit" of Middle East peace, but is silent on what the administration has learned after eighteen months of trying. It offers a predictably upbeat view of our strategy in Central Asia without acknowledging the possibility that our efforts won’t succeed. Needless to say, that is not quite "facing the world as it is."

Read on

I was overseas when Peter Beinart’s article on "The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment" appeared on the website of the New York Review of Books and started an immediate hullabaloo. I read it quickly online but had little time to reflect on it or to post a reaction. My copy of the NYRB was waiting when I got home, however, and I’ve now had time to digest Beinart’s article and some of the reactions to it. What follows is a belated response, in the form of a few comments and two questions.

Overall, I thought it was an important contribution to a long-overdue debate. He doesn’t say much that is new, of course, but he says it well. Moreover, Beinart is a well-connected individual with demonstrable pro-Israel credentials, which makes it harder for critics to accuse him of being a self-hating Jew or having some deep-seated animus toward Israel.  

I also thought his essay reaffirmed several of the points that John Mearsheimer and I made in The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Though he does not say so explicitly, Beinart clearly recognizes that what he calls the "American Jewish Establishment" has a significant influence on U.S. Middle East policy and especially on our “special relationship” with Israel. After all, if the attitudes and activities of that "Establishment" were of little consequence, there would be no reason for Beinart to write the article in the first place. He clearly hopes that his article will convince its leaders to abandon their role as unthinking cheerleaders for Israel and adopt a more critical stance.  He believes that this is the best way to save Israel from itself.

Beinart also recognizes that some of this "Establishment’s" influence derives from its efforts to shape public commentary about Israel. In his words, "groups like AIPAC and the Presidents' Conference patrol public discourse, scolding people who contradict their vision of Israel as a state in which all leaders cherish democracy and yearn for peace." "Scold" is far too weak a word for the baseless and sometimes vicious attacks that some groups and individuals dish out against those with whom they disagree. Still, his basic point is on the money.  

Finally, his overall prescription dovetails with some of our own recommendations, and especially the idea that the key organizations in the lobby need to rethink the positions that they have held for many years. The issue, as we made clear in our book, was not the existence of a powerful "pro-Israel" community in the United States. Rather, it was the specific policies that the most powerful of these groups were defending and/or promoting, policies that we believed were harmful to the United States and Israel alike.

It took a certain amount of guts for Beinart to publish this article, and it is to his credit that he has been willing to engage the predictable chorus of critics without flinching. I’m not about to join his adversaries, but I would like to raise two questions.

First, he writes that "the heads of AIPAC and the Presidents' Conference should ask themselves what Israel’s leaders would have to do or say to make them scream 'no.' After all, [Avigdor] Lieberman is foreign minister, Effi Eitam [who openly favors ethnic cleansing in the West Bank] is touring American universities, settlements are growing at triple the rate of the Israeli population; half of Israeli Jewish high school students want Arabs barred from the Knesset.  If the line has not yet been crossed, where is the line?"

It’s an excellent question, but Beinart does not answer it and he should.  Nor does he say what policies he would advocate once Israel crossed his red lines (wherever they are). In subsequent interviews, in fact, he has acknowledged the tension between his own liberal convictions and his Zionist beliefs, and said that he is willing to compromise the former (somewhat) in order to preserve the latter. He ought to say more, however: Just how far is he willing to sacrifice the one to preserve the other? More importantly, he does not tell us where he stands on the "special relationship"; nor does he identify the circumstances, if any, where he would recommend that the United States either distance itself from Israel or put strong pressure on it to change its policies.  

In short, I’d like Beinart to answer the same question I asked Aaron David Miller. What does he think the United States should do should it become clear that a genuine “two-state” solution is not going to happen?

Second, Beinart’s essay is primarily directed at the American Jewish community, which is understandable. Yet I’m curious as to whether he thinks this is a topic that all Americans should engage with, or whether he thinks (as some do) that it is a topic on which non-Jews should remain largely silent. My own view is that the special relationship has a profound impact on American foreign policy and therefore it is a subject that all Americans should care about very much and be able to discuss openly -- without being unfairly attacked -- even if they a critical of Israel’s actions and America’s unconditional support for them. No group should enjoy a privileged position in that debate.  I wonder if Beinart would agree.

In any case, the best thing about Beinart’s essay is that he decided to write it, and that the NYRB chose to publish it. It is a sign of a more open discourse on this important subject, and it is long overdue. The United States faces vexing challenges in the Middle East, and the only way to develop policies that will work better is to have an open discussion of past failures. Beinart deserves our thanks for his thoughtful contribution to that effort.

I’ve mostly stopped reading Maureen Dowd, as I’ve tired of her Gossip Girl approach to commentary, but sometimes she really does nail it. Today's column on Afghan President Hamid Karzai's visit to Washington cuts neatly through the fog of feel-good blather surrounding the trip, and underscores the extent to which the Obama administration is merely kicking this particular can down the road.

The problem is a familiar one. Once a great power commits itself to a weak client state, its prestige is on the line and it loses most of its potential leverage over the people it has chosen to back. Why? Because clients can always threaten to lose -- which is the one thing the great power doesn’t want -- and so threats to pull the plug on them aren’t very credible. Clients are even less likely to reform when their local support depends on patronage networks and other forms of corruption, and when they want to make sure they have enough money in their Swiss bank accounts to finance a lengthy exile should things go south.   

Patrons can pound the table and complain, but they soon look rather silly and ineffectual, and its now as though we have an ideal replacement for President Karzai waiting in the wings. So the United States has to try carrots instead of sticks, which is why Karzai is getting love-bombed in DC this week.

Afghanistan is hardly the first example of this problem, of course. The United States couldn’t get its South Vietnamese clients to shape up during the Vietnam War, and key Soviet clients like Egypt repeatedly extorted additional aid from Moscow by threatening to resign or realign with the West.  

Virtually everyone agrees that we can’t succeed in Afghanistan without a reasonably legitimate and effective government in Kabul, even if it is running a fairly decentralized state with lots of local autonomy. There is also widespread agreement that Karzai is an ineffective leader, and that corruption is endemic. We’ve tried browbeating him to no avail, and now we’re trying a charm offensive. But neither is going to work, and President Obama is going to face another difficult decision when that eighteen-month deadline expires next summer.