Diplomacy and International Institutions

Conflict Prevention

  • United States
    Would We Know if Iran Decides to Build a Bomb?
    The most important unanswered question about the heightened U.S.-Israel confrontation with Iran over its nuclear program is whether Iran’s political leadership will decide to pursue a nuclear weapon. The key judgments in the last declassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the Iranian nuclear program found with “high confidence” that “Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program” in the fall of 2003, and this conviction remained with “moderate confidence” through mid-2007. U.S. officials believe that only one person holds the power to decide whether or not to pursue a bomb—meaning to enrich enough uranium to bomb-grade level that can be formed into sphere that could be compressed into a critical mass—the Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Testifying before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee in late January, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper stated: “Iran’s technical advances, particularly in uranium enrichment, strengthen our assessment that Iran is well-capable of producing enough highly-enriched uranium for a weapon if its political leaders, specifically the supreme leader himself, choose to do so.” Shortly thereafter, Clapper echoed this statement before the Senate Armed Services Committee: That is the intelligence community’s assessment, that that is an option that is still held out by the Iranians. And we believe the decision would be made by the supreme leader himself, and he would base that on a cost-benefit analysis in terms of -- I don’t think you want a nuclear weapon at any price. One month later, James Risen reported in the New York Times: “American intelligence analysts still believe that the Iranians have not gotten the go-ahead from Ayatollah Khamenei to revive the program. ‘That assessment,’ said one American official, ‘holds up really well.’" On Monday, however, Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak introduced a new observation that upends the previous understanding of this particular redline: “[Israel and the U.S.] both know that Khamenei did not yet ordered, actually, to give a weapon, but that he is determined to deceit and defy the whole world.” When asked, “What does that mean, that the ayatollah has not given the order to build a nuclear bomb?” Barak replied: “It’s something technical. He did not tell his people start and build it—a weapon—an explodable device. We think that we understand why he does not give this order. He believes that he is penetrated through our intelligence and he strongly feels that if he tries to order, we will know it, we and you and some other intelligence services will know about it and it might end up with a physical action against it. So he prefers to, first of all, make sure that through redundancy, through an accumulation of more lowly enriched uranium, more medium level enriched uranium and more centrifuges and more sites, better protection, that he can reach a point, which I call the zone of immunity, beyond which Israel might not be technically capable of launching a surgical operation.” If the United States accepts this logic—that the Supreme Leader would never issue the formal order to pursue a nuclear weapon for fear of foreign detection—then what was once a distinct and identifiable redline for U.S. intelligence no longer exists. In other words, any U.S. or Israeli attack on the Iranian nuclear program will target a latent capability that might eventually lead to a weapon protected by Barak’s ill-defined zone of immunity, but not an actual nuclear weapons program. This is a tremendous shift by Israel over how we would know if Iran decides to pursue the bomb. Before the Obama administration decides to go to war, Congress, journalists, and U.S. citizens should demand answers to the following questions: Are violations of the NPT, UN Security Council resolutions, and ongoing inadequate cooperation with the IAEA sufficient grounds for suspecting that Iran will soon achieve nuclear weapons capability? Does the Obama administration accept Barak’s new principle, contradicting Clapper’s earlier assessment that the supreme leader’s decision is paramount? It is unlikely that Iran would needlessly test a nuclear weapon, since it would not be required to verify that it worked. What sort of credible information will the Obama administration declassify and make public that would justify a preventive attack on Iran?
    Blog Post by Micah Zenko August 2, 2012 Politics, Power, and Preventive Action
  • United States
    A U.S.-Iran Naval Clash Is Not Inevitable
    The headline of today’s Washington Post reads, "Iran Expands Ability to Strike U.S. Navy in Gulf." The piece describes Persian Gulf war games, paranoid comments by regional officials, and hollow threats from Iranian officials. By now, when an Iranian official threatens the United States, we should call it what it is: ritual. Just yesterday, an anonymous official warned, "If the Americans’ futile cyber attacks do not stop, it will face a teeth-breaking response." While novel dental threats might now be part of Iran’s asymmetric defensive strategy, Western media elevates such blustery rhetoric to the headline news, rewarding the Iranian regime with the strategic communications coup that it desperately seeks. As a State Department spokesperson noted last month with refreshing honesty: "The Venezuelans make lots of extravagant claims. So do the Iranians." When reading about the U.S. military buildup in the Persian Gulf or the serial threats from Iran, it is worth keeping two things in mind. First, as Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, then-chief of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), stated in February, “The [DIA] assesses Iran is unlikely to initiate or intentionally provoke a conflict.” In other words, the government of Iran is not looking to start a war with the United States. This is a smart call, given that the Iranian defense budget of $9 billion is less than 2 percent of the U.S. military budget of $553 billion. Iran fared poorly in its clash with the U.S. Navy in April 1988—and it would face a similar fate today. Second, short of a third party launching a preemptive strike, it is highly unlikely that the U.S. and Iranian navies will fight each other. In March, the chief of naval operations, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, described the Iranian navy as “professional and courteous.” Last month, Admiral Greenert echoed his earlier characterization, adding, " They have been…committing to the rules of the road—I’m talking about the Iranian navy. We have had some time before when the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has tended to maybe close a little too close for that. But frankly, that hasn’t happened recently. And when I say ‘recently,’ I’d say in the last couple of months." After a U.S. Navy fleet replenishment oiler fired on an Indian fishing vessel earlier this month, a U.S. official went to great lengths to say, "I can’t emphasize enough this has nothing to do with Iran." The most likely instigator of an outbreak of hostilities between the United States and Iran would be an Israeli attack on Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons program. U.S. intelligence officials do not believe that they will receive prior warning of such an attack on Iran, as Tel Aviv has never done so in the past. Last month, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Martin Dempsey described a potential Israeli strike as "destabilizing.” He continued, “I wouldn’t suggest, sitting here today, that we’ve persuaded them that our view is the correct view and that they are acting in an ill-advised fashion.” At present, senior U.S. officials are more concerned about a bolt-from-the-blue Israeli attack of Iran than ever before. The revolving door of Obama administration officials heading to Israel underscores a position revealed recently by David Sanger: "The core of the American argument [to Israel] was simple: attack Iran, and you set the program back a few years, but you solve nothing. ’We wanted to make it abundantly clear that an attack would just drive the program more underground’ [said one U.S. official]." When you read front-page headlines like "Soaring Tension in the Gulf," it is important to remember that both the United States and Iran have no intention of going to war. However, the critical—and unresolved—question is when might Israel take military action against Iran, and what would be the subsequent costs and consequences for U.S. military and national interests in the region? Despite a decade of U.S.-Israeli dialogue on the Iranian nuclear program, no one knows the answers.
    Blog Post by Micah Zenko July 27, 2012 Politics, Power, and Preventive Action
  • Iraq
    Iraq’s ’Precarious’ Future
    Ongoing violence and corruption in Iraq since the U.S. military pullout could augur a return to full-on sectarian strife and continued poor governance, says CFR’s Ned Parker.
    Interview with Ned Parker and Bernard Gwertzman June 14, 2012
  • Defense and Security
    Ask the Experts: Preventing Sexual Violence
    Last week, forty members of Congress re-introduced the International Violence Against Women Act (I-VAWA). As Amnesty International’s Cristina Finch explains, the I-VAWA “would coordinate and improve the U.S. government’s efforts to stop this global scourge by making it a priority in diplomatic and foreign assistance initiatives. This will help to ensure that the United States lives up to its international responsibility to end violence against women and girls.” Combating, mitigating, and preventing sexual violence in conflict zones has been a rhetorical priority for the international community for over fifteen years. Over the last several years, however, the issue has gained increasing traction on the international agenda. In 2008, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1820, which, for the first time, formally recognized sexual violence as a tactic of war. And in January, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon released a report, Conflict-Related Sexual Violence, which took the unprecedented step of naming and shaming specific countries where sexual violence is pervasive, whether in situations of conflict, postconflict, or civil unrest. The list included Colombia, Ivory Coast, Myanmar, South Sudan, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Egypt, Syria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). One hurdle to developing effective prevention strategies is the extreme difficulty of understanding the full scope of sexual assaults—even outside of conflict zones. In the United States, for instance, 1.1 million women experienced “nonconsensual vaginal, oral, or anal penetration” in 2005, but only 16 percent reported the incident to law enforcement. Even in conflict zones where sexual violence is reported, high impunity rates virtually assure that perpetrators go unpunished. Of course, not all victims of sexual violence are female. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), 19 percent of all rape or sexual assault victims in the United States are men. At the same time, a 2010 Journal of American Medical Association article found—under a broader definitionof sexual violence than the DOJ—rates of reported sexual violence to be 40 percent of women and 24 percent of men. In an effort to raise awareness of this nuanced, politically-loaded issue, and to better inform U.S. and international policymakers, we asked six leading scholars to respond the following question:  “U.S. policymakers are attempting to develop strategies to prevent sexual violence in conflict zones. Based on your research, what are two to three things they should know about the phenomenon? What would be your recommendations for effective policy responses?” Dara Kay Cohen is assistant professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (as of July 1, 2012) and is writing a book based on fieldwork in Sierra Leone, East Timor, and El Salvador, analyzing how the recruitment practices of armed groups can help predict whether the group is likely to commit wartime rape, especially gang rape. Elisabeth Jean Wood is professor of political science at Yale University and is writing a book on wartime sexual violence, drawing on field research in Sri Lanka, Colombia, Israel and Palestine, Peru, and El Salvador. Policymakers’ increased attention to wartime rape is a welcome change, but one that should be guided by sound research and the priorities of victims themselves. Based on our own research and others’, we clarify four common misperceptions about wartime rape. First, the rape of civilians is not ubiquitous in war—not even in ethnic conflicts—and is probably not getting worse over time. While many armed groups perpetrate rape and other forms of sexual violence, there is ample evidence that many other armed actors effectively prohibit these types of violence—even while engaging in other, sometimes brutal, violence against civilians. Armed groups that engage in high levels of rape are more often state actors, not insurgent groups, as frequently presumed. While rape has indeed been used as a form of violence in bitter ethnic war and genocide, as in Bosnia and Rwanda, there are a large number of cases where rape occurred in non-ethnic wars, as well ethnic wars where it did not. Rape is not systematically predicted by ethnic war in statistical studies. Moreover, extremely high levels of rape in wars in previous decades cast doubt on the claim that wartime rape is getting worse: the number of women and girls raped during and after the sieges of Nanking and Berlin likely exceed that of Bosnia. More likely, increased reports of wartime rape mean that we are better at detecting and reporting sexual violence than in the past—but this does not mean that the underlying incidence of rape is increasing. Second, widespread wartime rape is not an “African problem.” As a percentage of civil wars, sub-Saharan Africa experienced fewer conflicts with reported mass rape than did eastern Europe over the past thirty years. Third, when rape occurs with high prevalence, this does not imply that it is used as “a strategy of war.” The claim that rape is a strategy of war is often assumed from a pattern of widespread rape by an armed group. But rape need not be ordered to be frequent. Rape often emerges from troops on the ground and is then tolerated by the chain of command—not because commanders have recognized strategic benefits but because the costs of effectively suppressing it appear too high. There are few cases where there is evidence that rape was explicitly ordered by commanders (who are nonetheless legally responsible for war crimes committed by their troops.) Fourth, it is not the necessarily the case that victims of wartime rape are overwhelmingly female—or that the perpetrators of rape are always men. Male victims are increasingly reported, although we simply we do not know the true numbers. Used against male civilians, rape is often reported as a form of torture, confounding efforts to study the problem. In addition, recent research suggests that female combatants are sometimes perpetrators of wartime rape, and other forms of sexual violence. One reason is that women may be subject to the same pressures to commit acts of brutal violence as their male peers. Some observers argue that rape increases during war because combatants have more opportunity to rape than civilians. But most men do not rape given the opportunity; even in war, close contact with civilians is often unaccompanied by rape. Nor does rape occur as a substitute for consensual sex, as some military commanders appear to believe. High rates of rape occur in some settings where fighters have regular access to prostitutes or to sexual slaves. And this substitution argument does not explain the extreme brutality of rape or the high frequency of gang rape during war. Effective policy requires that policymakers listen to those affected by wartime sexual violence. It is important not to assume that wartime rape is the worst thing that has ever happened to victims, or that it is the highest priority of local women’s groups. Rape and other forms are sexual violence are usually not the most common forms of violence reported by women (or men) during wartime. For example, in the thousands of testimonies given to the Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, forced displacement and killing were far more frequently reported than any form of sexual violence. Maria Eriksson Baaz is associate professor at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg and The Nordic Africa Institute; Maria Stern is professor at the School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg The contexts in which wartime sexual violence occurs differ, as do the causes of conflict. Wartime rape cannot be explained by one single explanatory framework. While conflict-related sexual violence can be a strategic weapon of war reliant on orders from above in efficient military hierarchies, there are numerous examples where the opposite holds true. In such cases, wartime sexual violence is fed by fractured chains of command and weak military cohesion. Hence, understanding and addressing the role and meaning of rape in any given conflict requires an in-depth analysis of the shifting dynamics of the particular conflict and the ideology and set-up of the armed groups involved. This conclusion precludes formulating recommendations equally relevant in all contexts. However, while there are no generalized remedies to prevent sexual violence, let us highlight two common problems in policy efforts aimed at preventing sexual violence. One is the tendency to adopt quick, easy and visible remedies, such as isolated workshops on human rights and IHL, and information campaigns, rather than long-term commitment addressing the complex structural causes. One can see why such remedies are so tempting: they tend to be uncontroversial, respond to a sense of urgency, and provide visible proof for the constituency that something is being done. However, these types of superficial interventions seldom have any tangible effects. The main problem in most warring contexts is not that the perpetrators of rape are unaware that rape is wrong and a crime. A second problematic tendency in current interventions is the propensity to isolate sexual violence from other forms of violence committed against civilians. This problem is tricky, as the newly won arrival of sexual violence in the global security arena also signals a great success, which should not be underestimated or undermined. However, the resulting singular focus on sexual violence in many conflict arenas can carry some unintended and unfortunate effects. In addition to rendering us deaf to women’s (and men’s) stories of other violence committed against them, such a singular focus risks contributing to a commercialization of sexual violence, as has been the case in the DRC. This ultimately banalizes sexual violence. The fight against sexual violence is best served, not by a singular attention only to sexual violence, but by better listening to the stories of those affected by war, and by situating the prevention of sexual violence in the context of civilian protection and women’s rights more generally. Jocelyn Kelly is the director of the Women in War Program at the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative For the past five years, I have worked in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) speaking with combatants in nonstate armed groups about conflict-related sexual violence. Thinking about this blog series, I reflected on the complex process of trying to understand one of the most incomprehensible human behaviors. I have come to realize, however, that within this intricacy there are a few truths that have become a substrate for further understanding. First: dehumanization breeds dehumanization. The combatants I have worked with—from different groups and regions, men and women of all ages—say they feel profoundly, acutely traumatized by their time in armed groups. They describe their lack of access to food and other basic human needs. Predation, of all forms, becomes a norm. Sadly, many combatants say they joined armed groups to prevent the very violence they now perpetrate. And many communities that have experienced sexual violence say the children who have seen this violence are more likely to exhibit aggressive behaviors. This relates to a second truth: dehumanization is “sticky.” It can last across time and generations, igniting future cycles of violence. Communities note that sexual violence, because of its intensely private nature and impact on reproductive health, deeply disrupts social cohesion at a time when this support is most important. We think about conflict as a straight timeline: pre-, current-, and post-conflict. But these are, after all, linear concepts to determine what can, sadly, be a circular phenomenon. Keeping this in mind, I believe there are measures help interrupt the “contagion” effect of violence and prevent and address sexual violence in conflict. First, it is vitally important to identify trends of sexual violence in conflict early, and to address this issue through political pressure on armed parties and consistent punishment of perpetrators. Processes of abuse and dehumanization must be interrupted before they escalate, as they did in the case of DRC. Ensuring nonstate actors go through effective disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) processes can also interrupt cycles of violence. DDR to date has often been highly ineffective, feeding into “revolving door” demobilizations. DDR must to address combatants’ rehabilitation not only through providing sustainable and context-appropriate vocation training, but also through providing psychosocial support to help combatants reacclimatize to civilian life. Security sector reform helps ensure countries effectively transition away from active conflict by training security forces to be protective rather than predatory forces. This lays the groundwork for effective justice in the future. Finally, it is women who often face the greatest burden of conflict in general, and sexual violence in particular. Including them in political process such as peace negotiations will help ensure perpetrators of sexual violence will be held accountable for their actions. Sandesh Sivakumaran is professor at the University of Nottingham Sexual violence is committed in conflict zones by different actors to different extents for different reasons. To prevent sexual violence it is thus imperative that we understand why it is being committed in the particular conflict. Once the reasons are identified, they need to be matched to the associated lever. This is crucial as rarely can a single solution be adopted across the board. Instead, complementary measures will need to be taken that are tailored to the specific situation at hand. To illustrate: a group that purports to fight for human rights and represent the country on the world stage may be persuaded by focusing on its reputation, a factor that will have little effect on a group whose aim is to commit genocide. Opportunistic, rather than systematic, acts may be ameliorated through greater training, monitoring and sanction. A government that is reliant on another country for its war effort will be more open to change its behavior if instructed to do so by that other country than by pressure from outside organizations. In considering the necessary measures to be taken, the issue should be looked at holistically. This includes dialogue with all relevant persons, including victims and perpetrators; analyzing the cycle of violence, from prevention to prosecution; and protecting all victims, male or female, civilian or soldier.  
    Blog Post by Micah Zenko June 11, 2012 Politics, Power, and Preventive Action
  • Conflict Prevention
    Syria’s Bloody Stalemate
    A brutal crackdown continues, the opposition resists a political solution, and a divided international community offers no new alternatives, says expert Peter Harling.
    Interview with Peter Harling and Bernard Gwertzman May 15, 2012
  • United States
    A Primer on Military Force
    As I’ve written previously, policymakers and pundits have some pretty silly proposals for the use of military force. Whether it’s President Clinton,“[It would] scare the shit out of al Qaeda if suddenly a bunch of black ninjas rappelled out of helicopters into the middle of their camp,” or uberconservative Pat Robertson, “We really ought to go ahead and [assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez]…It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war,” such harebrained schemes lack a basic understanding of military strategy, geography, and logistics, not to mention international law. There is a political purpose driving every aspect of military force. According to Prussian general and strategist Carl von Clausewitz in his oft-quoted dictum, “War is nothing but the continuation of policy with other means.” Whether you are a policymaker, pundit, think tanker, or the Wall Street Journal editorial page, it is essential to clearly define your political objectives before dropping bombs or embarking on open-ended nation-building campaigns. In the 1950s and 1960s, economist Thomas Schelling put forth a game theory approach that expanded and popularized the archetypal labels for the political goals behind military power. Schelling envisioned the threat or use of force as part of an ongoing bargaining relationship between two adversaries “in which communication is incomplete, or impossible.” Schelling believed that, in order to influence an adversary’s behavior, “violence is most purposive and most successful when it is threatened and not used.” Deterrence and compellence, popularly referred to as coercive diplomacy, are the two political purposes of force developed by Schelling that are most relevant for current discussions about, say, threatening to bomb Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons facilities or attacking Syrian armed forces. Even Secretary of State Hilary Clinton is a fan: “I believe in coercive diplomacy. I think that you try to figure out how to move bad actors in a direction that you prefer in order to avoid more dire consequences.” Deterrence is the strategy of persuading a state to refrain from taking a certain action by threatening something of value. Successfully employed, deterrence convinces a state that the costs of change outweigh the costs of enduring the status quo. Deterrence fails when an adversary does what it was warned not to do. For example, in October 2006, President Bush told North Korea, “The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable.” Despite U.S. warnings, North Korea clandestinely transferred engineering and design know-how to Syria for what the IAEA called “very likely a nuclear reactor.” Bush’s threat failed to stop North Korea’s nuclear transfer, thus, deterrence failed. Compellence, or coercive diplomacy, is a three-pronged strategy. First, a specific demand is made to an adversary. Second, a specific deadline or sense of urgency to comply is communicated. Third, a credible threat of military punishment is issued. Compellence fails when the threat’s target refuses to comply, or when the only means of acquiescence is through overwhelming military power. With that in mind, the next time you hear about a policymaker proposing to bomb someone or something, consider whether the political purpose is deterrence, compellence, or simply destruction. To get you started, I’ve put together a list of recommended readings. (For my earlier primer on air power, click here.) General Daniel Ellsberg, “The Theory and Practice of Blackmail,” Lecture at Lowell Institute, March 10, 1959. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1960). Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966). Robert J. Art, “To What Ends Military Power?” International Security 4(4) 1980: pp. 3–35. Ward Thomas, The Ethics of Destruction: Norms and Force in International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001). Daniel Byman and Matthew Waxman, The Dynamics of Coercion: American Foreign Policy and the Limits of Military Might (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002). James David Meernik, The Political Use of Military Force in U.S. Foreign Policy (Aldershot, UK: Asghate Publishing, 2004). Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004). General Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (New York, NY Alfred A. Knopf/ Random House, Inc. 2005). Risa Brooks, Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Robert J. Art and Kenneth Waltz (eds.), The Use of Force: Military Power and International Politics (Rowman + Littlefield, 2009). Richard K. Betts, American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and Dilemmas in National Security (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2011). Compellence/Coercive Diplomacy Alexander L. George, David K. Hall, and William R. Simons, The Limits of Coercive Diplomacy: Laos, Cuba, Vietnam (Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1971). James T. Tedeschi et al., “A Paradigm for the Study of Coercive Power,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 15, No. 2 (June, 1971). Barry M. Blechman and Stephen S. Kaplan, Force Without War: U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument (Washington, D.C. The Brookings Institution, 1978). Richard K. Betts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1987). Alexander L. George, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War (Washington, D.C. United States Institute of Peace Press, 1991). Kenneth Schultz, Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Robert J. Art, “Coercive Diplomacy—What Do We Know?” The United States and Coercive Diplomacy (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003), pp. 359-420. Todd S. Sechser, Winning Without a Fight: Power, Reputation and Compellent Threats in International Crises (Stanford University, 2007). Kyle Beardsley and Victor Asal, “Winning With the Bomb,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 53(2) 2009: pp. 278–301. Deterrence Thomas W. Milburn, “What Constitutes Effective Deterrence?” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 3, No. 2, (June, 1959). Richard A. Brody, “Deterrence Strategies: An Annotated Bibliography,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 4, No.4, (December, 1960) . Glenn H. Snyder, “Deterrence and Power,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 4, No. 2 (June, 1960). “Force, Order and Justice,” Report of panel discussion at International Studies Association annual meeting, Kenneth Waltz, chair, April 1967, International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 3 (September, 1968). R. Harrison Wagner, “Deterrence and Bargaining,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 36, No. 2 (June 1982). John J. Mearshimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983). Paul Huth, Extended Deterrence and the Prevention of War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press 1988). Barry Nalebuff, “Rational Deterrence in an Imperfect World” World Politics 43(3) 1991: pp. 313–335. Patrick Morgan, Deterrence Now (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Gary Schaub, “Deterrence, Compellence, and Prospect Theory,” Political Psychology 25(3) 2004: pp. 389–411. Amir Lupovici, “The Emerging Fourth Wave of Deterrence Theory—Toward a New Research Agenda,” International Studies Quarterly, 54 (3) 2010, pp. 705-732. What did we miss? Post a comment with your suggestions for our next reading list.
    Blog Post by Micah Zenko May 9, 2012 Politics, Power, and Preventive Action
  • Sudan
    How to Defuse Sudan Conflict
    Sudan and South Sudan appear to be on the brink of war. The United States and China must press both sides to return to the negotiating table, says CFR expert Jendayi Frazer.
    Interview with Jendayi E. Frazer and Christopher Alessi April 26, 2012
  • Conflict Prevention
    Understanding Illicit Networks
    We all know that, in recent decades, businesses have internationalized their operations like never before, but a less well-known result of globalization is that transnational criminal enterprises have also benefited enormously. Sophisticated illicit networks have emerged around the world, adept at exploiting the disjunction between global economic integration and the persistence of sovereign states. Global commerce now relies on countless shipping containers, which are rarely checked for contraband. The liberalization of capital movements and the ubiquity of information technology enables money laundering at the push of a button. Law enforcement authorities, trapped within national borders and independent jurisdictions, are running in place as illicit actors hopscotch across sovereign frontiers and exploit asymmetries in the policing of trade in narcotics, humans, weapons, and other illicit commodities. To better understand how information technology both facilitates transnational crime and might also be harnessed to combat it, Google Ideas and CFR have launched a new roundtable series on Illicit Networks. The first joint workshop, on March 21 (“Illicit Actors: Mapping Networks, Assessing Tactics”), convened twenty prominent experts to discuss the evolving landscape of transnational crime. The wide-ranging discussion (summarized more fully here) produced several important insights. The biggest gap in combating illicit actors is solid data. Statistics on the scope of transnational crime are notoriously unreliable. Even the best databases, such as those maintained by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), depend on inputs from national governments, who have been known for political or resource motives to either downplay or exaggerate the scale of illegal activities in their country. Beyond reliable data sets and statistics, law enforcement actors lack case-specific ethnographic studies and market awareness to accurately map the supply, demand, and transit of illicit commodities. Without trustworthy data on critical price points, societal norms, and relationships among criminals, efforts to fight transnational crime will remain disadvantaged. Especially in an era of budget cuts and constrained resources, better data would help the United States and its partners understand where resources would be most useful—rather than just throwing money at the problem. The relationship between criminals and states is variable and dynamic: As I point out in my book Weak Links, the conventional image of the honest nation-state besieged by illicit actors is simplistic. Criminals are naturally drawn to states—or territories of states—where corruption is rife, the rule of law absent or imperfectly applied, and gaps in public services or economic opportunity provide openings for illicit actors. In some egregious (though hardly isolated) cases, the state itself becomes a fully-fledged criminal enterprise. Charles Taylor’s Liberia, for example, relied on illicit trade in diamonds, timber, and gold. Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia similarly profited from illicit trade. The acclaimed journalist Moises Naim nicely describes this “mafia state” phenomenon in the forthcoming May/June issue of Foreign Affairs. Terrorists and criminals are both illicit—but very different—actors. Particularly since 9/11, national security officials have worried that occasional partnerships between transnational terrorists and criminals might become a full-blown “nexus.” This remains unlikely. To be sure, the two groups will continue to appropriate each others’ methodologies. Mexican drug cartels have used gruesome tactics to terrorize would-be snitches, rival gangs, and law enforcement, just as jihadists have used kidnapping and engaged in (or taxed) drug trafficking to secure resources.  At the same time, there are inherent limits to any strategic partnership, given the fundamentally divergent motivations of criminals, who seek financial gain, and terrorists, preoccupied with political (and in some cases religious) objectives. When it comes to the illicit, the impact of technology cuts both ways: The revolution in information and communications technology has opened new vistas for transnational criminality. The internet, cell phones, and computer systems provide illicit networks with new tools to traffic in illegal goods and launder the proceeds around the world. And yet state authorities can in principle exploit many of those same technologies, albeit with frequent legal restrictions, for instance by wire-tapping phone conversations, monitoring email communications, or using video surveillance technology. From a global governance standpoint, the challenge for governments is to harmonize law enforcement approaches, nurture the capacity of well-intentioned but struggling nations, and sanction noncooperative jurisdictions. For local populations, what is formally illegal may not seem illicit. Efforts by political authorities and law enforcement agencies to combat transnational criminal activities must consider local perceptions. In some areas, particularly impoverished regions lacking effective state presence (or where the state is historically mistrusted), criminal networks may provide impoverished populations not only with employment opportunities but also essential social services—and thus enjoy a “Robin Hood” halo. (And as one workshop participant noted, “George Washington was as dependent on the illicit arms trade to equip his Continental army as African warlords are today.”) Particularly when linked to insurgency movements, illicit networks can nurture an alternative form of governance that Vanda Felbab-Brown of Brookings labels “protostates.” In sum, the fight against illicit networks is often a competition between states and criminals for the allegiance of the population—one that the state can win only by delivering basic services, including human security. Such theories clearly hold implications for U.S. foreign policy priorities—like the “war on drugs” in Colombia and Mexico, and the war in Afghanistan, where the Taliban is deeply involved in the opium trade. The label “organized crime” fails to capture the diversity of today’s criminal networks: When we think of organized crime, we still imagine hierarchical, mafia-like structures that might be countered by eliminating their leadership. In fact, the landscape of illicit actors is far more diverse and fluid, dominated by decentralized, horizontal networks of varying size. Some focus intently on local markets and controlling of local territory. But other networks forge strategic partnerships across countries, and (like corporations) shift product lines and distribution channels in response to law enforcement efforts and changing input costs. Once a “pipeline” is established, they use the same conduit for new illicit commodities, often with the assistance of brokers like the infamous arms traders Leonard Minin and Viktor Bout.
    Blog Post by Stewart M. Patrick April 23, 2012 The Internationalist
  • South China Sea
    Armed Clash in the South China Sea
    In April 2015, the author wrote an update to this memo to reflect recent developments in the South China Sea. Read the update. Introduction The risk of conflict in the South China Sea is significant. China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines have competing territorial and jurisdictional claims, particularly over rights to exploit the region's possibly extensive reserves of oil and gas. Freedom of navigation in the region is also a contentious issue, especially between the United States and China over the right of U.S. military vessels to operate in China's two-hundred-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). These tensions are shaping—and being shaped by—rising apprehensions about the growth of China's military power and its regional intentions. China has embarked on a substantial modernization of its maritime paramilitary forces as well as naval capabilities to enforce its sovereignty and jurisdiction claims by force if necessary. At the same time, it is developing capabilities that would put U.S. forces in the region at risk in a conflict, thus potentially denying access to the U.S. Navy in the western Pacific. Given the growing importance of the U.S.-China relationship, and the Asia-Pacific region more generally, to the global economy, the United States has a major interest in preventing any one of the various disputes in the South China Sea from escalating militarily. The Contingencies Of the many conceivable contingencies involving an armed clash in the South China Sea, three especially threaten U.S. interests and could potentially prompt the United States to use force. The most likely and dangerous contingency is a clash stemming from U.S. military operations within China's EEZ that provokes an armed Chinese response. The United States holds that nothing in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) or state practice negates the right of military forces of all nations to conduct military activities in EEZs without coastal state notice or consent. China insists that reconnaissance activities undertaken without prior notification and without permission of the coastal state violate Chinese domestic law and international law. China routinely intercepts U.S. reconnaissance flights conducted in its EEZ and periodically does so in aggressive ways that increase the risk of an accident similar to the April 2001 collision of a U.S. EP-3 reconnaissance plane and a Chinese F-8 fighter jet near Hainan Island. A comparable maritime incident could be triggered by Chinese vessels harassing a U.S. Navy surveillance ship operating in its EEZ, such as occurred in the 2009 incidents involving the USNS Impeccable and the USNS Victorious. The large growth of Chinese submarines has also increased the danger of an incident, such as when a Chinese submarine collided with a U.S. destroyer's towed sonar array in June 2009. Since neither U.S. reconnaissance aircraft nor ocean surveillance vessels are armed, the United States might respond to dangerous behavior by Chinese planes or ships by dispatching armed escorts. A miscalculation or misunderstanding could then result in a deadly exchange of fire, leading to further military escalation and precipitating a major political crisis. Rising U.S.-China mistrust and intensifying bilateral strategic competition would likely make managing such a crisis more difficult. A second contingency involves conflict between China and the Philippines over natural gas deposits, especially in the disputed area of Reed Bank, located eighty nautical miles from Palawan. Oil survey ships operating in Reed Bank under contract have increasingly been harassed by Chinese vessels. Reportedly, the United Kingdom-based Forum Energy plans to start drilling for gas in Reed Bank this year, which could provoke an aggressive Chinese response. Forum Energy is only one of fifteen exploration contracts that Manila intends to offer over the next few years for offshore exploration near Palawan Island. Reed Bank is a red line for the Philippines, so this contingency could quickly escalate to violence if China intervened to halt the drilling. The United States could be drawn into a China-Philippines conflict because of its 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with the Philippines. The treaty states, "Each Party recognizes that an armed attack in the Pacific Area on either of the Parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common dangers in accordance with its constitutional processes." American officials insist that Washington does not take sides in the territorial dispute in the South China Sea and refuse to comment on how the United States might respond to Chinese aggression in contested waters. Nevertheless, an apparent gap exists between American views of U.S. obligations and Manila's expectations. In mid-June 2011, a Filipino presidential spokesperson stated that in the event of armed conflict with China, Manila expected the United States would come to its aid. Statements by senior U.S. officials may have inadvertently led Manila to conclude that the United States would provide military assistance if China attacked Filipino forces in the disputed Spratly Islands. With improving political and military ties between Manila and Washington, including a pending agreement to expand U.S. access to Filipino ports and airfields to refuel and service its warships and planes, the United States would have a great deal at stake in a China-Philippines contingency. Failure to respond would not only set back U.S. relations with the Philippines but would also potentially undermine U.S. credibility in the region with its allies and partners more broadly. A U.S. decision to dispatch naval ships to the area, however, would risk a U.S.-China naval confrontation. Disputes between China and Vietnam over seismic surveys or drilling for oil and gas could also trigger an armed clash for a third contingency. China has harassed PetroVietnam oil survey ships in the past that were searching for oil and gas deposits in Vietnam's EEZ. In 2011, Hanoi accused China of deliberately severing the cables of an oil and gas survey vessel in two separate instances. Although the Vietnamese did not respond with force, they did not back down and Hanoi pledged to continue its efforts to exploit new fields despite warnings from Beijing. Budding U.S.-Vietnam relations could embolden Hanoi to be more confrontational with China on the South China Sea issue. The United States could be drawn into a conflict between China and Vietnam, though that is less likely than a clash between China and the Philippines. In a scenario of Chinese provocation, the United States might opt to dispatch naval vessels to the area to signal its interest in regional peace and stability. Vietnam, and possibly other nations, could also request U.S. assistance in such circumstances. Should the United States become involved, subsequent actions by China or a miscalculation among the forces present could result in exchange of fire. In another possible scenario, an attack by China on vessels or rigs operated by an American company exploring or drilling for hydrocarbons could quickly involve the United States, especially if American lives were endangered or lost. ExxonMobil has plans to conduct exploratory drilling off Vietnam, making this an existential danger. In the short term, however, the likelihood of this third contingency occurring is relatively low given the recent thaw in Sino-Vietnamese relations. In October 2011, China and Vietnam signed an agreement outlining principles for resolving maritime issues. The effectiveness of this agreement remains to be seen, but for now tensions appear to be defused. Warning Indicators Strategic warning signals that indicate heightened risk of conflict include political decisions and statements by senior officials, official and unofficial media reports, and logistical changes and equipment modifications. In the contingencies described above, strategic warning indicators could include heightened rhetoric from all or some disputants regarding their territorial and strategic interests. For example, China may explicitly refer to the South China Sea as a core interest; in 2010 Beijing hinted this was the case but subsequently backed away from the assertion. Beijing might also warn that it cannot "stand idly by" as countries nibble away at Chinese territory, a formulation that in the past has often signaled willingness to use force. Commentaries and editorials in authoritative media outlets expressing China's bottom line and issuing ultimatums could also be a warning indicator. Tough language could also be used by senior People's Liberation Army (PLA) officers in meetings with their American counterparts. An increase in nationalistic rhetoric in nonauthoritative media and in Chinese blogs, even if not representing official Chinese policy, would nevertheless signal pressure on the Chinese leadership to defend Chinese interests. Similar warning indicators should be tracked in Vietnam and the Philippines that might signal a hardening of those countries' positions. Tactical warning signals that indicate heightened risk of a potential clash in a specific time and place include commercial notices and preparations, diplomatic and/or military statements warning another claimant to cease provocative activities or suffer the consequences, military exercises designed to intimidate another claimant, and ship movements to disputed areas. As for an impending incident regarding U.S. surveillance activities, statements and unusual preparations by the PLA might suggest a greater willingness to employ more aggressive means to intercept U.S. ships and aircraft. Implications for U.S. Interests The United States has significant political, security, and economic interests at stake if one of the contingencies should occur. Global rules and norms. The United States has important interests in the peaceful resolution of South China Sea disputes according to international law. With the exception of China, all the claimants of the South China Sea have attempted to justify their claims based on their coastlines and the provisions of UNCLOS. China, however, relies on a mix of historic rights and legal claims, while remaining deliberately ambiguous about the meaning of the "nine-dashed line" around the sea that is drawn on Chinese maps. Failure to uphold international law and norms could harm U.S. interests elsewhere in the region and beyond. Ensuring freedom of navigation is another critical interest of the United States and other regional states. Although China claims that it supports freedom of navigation, its insistence that foreign militaries seek advance permission to sail in its two-hundred-mile EEZ casts doubt on its stance. China's development of capabilities to deny American naval access to those waters in a conflict provides evidence of possible Chinese intentions to block freedom of navigation in specific contingencies. Alliance security and regional stability. U.S. allies and friends around the South China Sea look to the United States to maintain free trade, safe and secure sea lines of communication (SLOCs), and overall peace and stability in the region. Claimants and nonclaimants to land features and maritime waters in the South China Sea view the U.S. military presence as necessary to allow decision-making free of intimidation. If nations in the South China Sea lose confidence in the United States to serve as the principal regional security guarantor, they could embark on costly and potentially destabilizing arms buildups to compensate or, alternatively, become more accommodating to the demands of a powerful China. Neither would be in the U.S. interest. Failure to reassure allies of U.S. commitments in the region could also undermine U.S. security guarantees in the broader Asia-Pacific region, especially with Japan and South Korea. At the same time, however, the United States must avoid getting drawn into the territorial dispute—and possibly into a conflict—by regional nations who seek U.S. backing to legitimize their claims. Economic interests. Each year, $5.3 trillion of trade passes through the South China Sea; U.S. trade accounts for $1.2 trillion of this total. Should a crisis occur, the diversion of cargo ships to other routes would harm regional economies as a result of an increase in insurance rates and longer transits. Conflict of any scale in the South China Sea would hamper the claimants from benefiting from the South China's Sea's proven and potential riches. Cooperative relationship with China. The stakes and implications of any U.S.-China incident are far greater than in other scenarios. The United States has an abiding interest in preserving stability in the U.S.-China relationship so that it can continue to secure Beijing's cooperation on an expanding list of regional and global issues and more tightly integrate China into the prevailing international system. Preventive Options Efforts should continue to resolve the disputes over territorial sovereignty of the South China Sea's land features, rightful jurisdiction over the waters and seabed, and the legality of conducting military operations within a country's EEZ, but the likelihood of a breakthrough in any of these areas is slim in the near term. In the meantime, the United States should focus on lowering the risk of potential armed clashes arising from either miscalculation or unintended escalation of a dispute. There are several preventive options available to policymakers—in the United States and other nations—to avert a crisis and conflict in the South China Sea. These options are not mutually exclusive. Support U.S.-China Risk-Reduction Measures Operational safety measures and expanded naval cooperation between the United States and China can help to reduce the risk of an accident between ships and aircraft. The creation of the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement (MMCA) in 1988 was intended to establish "rules of the road" at sea similar to the U.S.-Soviet Incidents at Sea Agreement (INCSEA), but it has not been successful. Communication mechanisms can provide a means to defuse tensions in a crisis and prevent escalation. Political and military hotlines have been set up, though U.S. officials have low confidence that they would be utilized by their Chinese counterparts during a crisis. An additional hotline to manage maritime emergencies should be established at an operational level, along with a signed political agreement committing both sides to answer the phone in a crisis. Joint naval exercises to enhance the ability of the two sides to cooperate in counter-piracy, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief operations could increase cooperation and help prevent a U.S.-China conflict. Bolster Capabilities of Regional Actors Steps could be taken to further enhance the capability of the Philippines military to defend its territorial and maritime claims and improve its indigenous domain awareness, which might deter China from taking aggressive action. Similarly, the United States could boost the maritime surveillance capabilities of Vietnam, enabling its military to more effectively pursue an anti-access and area-denial strategy. Such measures run the risk of emboldening the Philippines and Vietnam to more assertively challenge China and could raise those countries' expectations of U.S. assistance in a crisis. Encourage Settlement of the Sovereignty Dispute The United States could push for submission of territorial disputes to the International Court of Justice or the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea for settlement, or encourage an outside organization or mediator to be called upon to resolve the dispute. However, the prospect for success in these cases is slim given China's likely opposition to such options. Other options exist to resolve the sovereignty dispute that would be difficult, but not impossible, to negotiate. One such proposal, originally made by Mark Valencia, Jon Van Dyke, and Noel Ludwig in Sharing the Resources of the South China Sea, would establish "regional sovereignty" over the islands in the South China Sea among the six claimants, allowing them to collectively manage the islands, territorial seas, and airspace. Another option put forward by Peter Dutton of the Naval War College would emulate the resolution of the dispute over Svalbard, an island located between Norway and Greenland. The Treaty of Spitsbergen, signed in 1920, awarded primary sovereignty over Svarlbard to Norway but assigned resource-related rights to all signatories. This solution avoided conflict over resources and enabled advancement of scientific research. Applying this model to the South China Sea would likely entail giving sovereignty to China while permitting other countries to benefit from the resources. In the near term, at least, such a solution is unlikely to be accepted by the other claimants. Promote Regional Risk-Reduction Measures The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China agreed upon multilateral risk-reduction and confidence-building measures in the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), but have neither adhered to its provisions (for example, to resolve territorial and jurisdictional disputes without resorting to the threat or use of force) nor implemented its proposals to undertake cooperative trust-building activities. The resumption of negotiations between China and ASEAN after a hiatus of a decade holds out promise for reinvigorating cooperative activities under the DOC. Multilaterally, existing mechanisms and procedures already exist to promote operational safety among regional navies; a new arrangement is unnecessary. The United States, China, and all ASEAN members with the exception of Laos and Burma are members of the Western Pacific Naval Symposium (WPNS). Founded in 1988, WPNS brings regional naval leaders together biennially to discuss maritime security. In 2000, it produced the Code for Unalerted Encounters at Sea (CUES), which includes safety measures and procedures and means to facilitate communication when ships and aircraft make contact. There are also other mechanisms available such as the International Maritime Organization's Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS) and the International Civil Aviation Organization's rules of the air. In addition, regional navies could cooperate in sea environment protection, scientific research at sea, search and rescue activities, and mitigation of damage caused by natural calamities. The creation of new dialogue mechanisms may also be worth consideration. A South China Sea Coast Guard Forum, modeled after the North Pacific Coast Guard Forum, which cooperates on a multitude of maritime security and legal issues, could enhance cooperation through information sharing and knowledge of best practices. The creation of a South China Sea information-sharing center would also provide a platform to improve awareness and communication between relevant parties. The information-sharing center could also serve as an accountability mechanism if states are required to document any incidents and present them to the center. Advocate Joint Development/Multilateral Economic Cooperation Resource cooperation is another preventive option that is underutilized by claimants in the South China Sea. Joint development of petroleum resources, for example, could reduce tensions between China and Vietnam, and between China and the Philippines, on issues related to energy security and access to hydrocarbon resources. Such development could be modeled on one of the many joint development arrangements that exist in the South and East China seas. Parties could also cooperate on increasing the use of alternative energy sources in order to reduce reliance on hydrocarbons. Shared concerns about declining fish stocks in the South China Sea suggest the utility of cooperation to promote conservation and sustainable development. Establishing a joint fisheries committee among claimants could prove useful. Fishing agreements between China and its neighbors are already in place that could be expanded into disputed areas to encourage greater cooperation. Clearly Convey U.S. Commitments The United States should avoid inadvertently encouraging the claimants to engage in confrontational behavior. For example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's reference in November 2011 to the South China Sea as the West Philippine Sea could have unintended consequences such as emboldening Manila to antagonize China rather than it seeking to peacefully settle their differences. Mitigating Options If preventive options fail to avert a crisis from developing, policymakers have several options available to mitigate the potential negative effects. Defusing a U.S.-China Incident The history of crisis management in U.S.-China relations suggests that leaders in both countries go to great lengths to prevent a crisis from escalating to military conflict. Nevertheless, pre-crisis steps could be taken to limit the harmful consequences of a confrontation. Political agreements could be reached that would increase the possibility that communication mechanisms in place would be employed in a crisis. Steps should be taken to enhance operational safety at sea between U.S. and Chinese ships. Confidence-building measures should also be implemented to build trust and promote cooperation. Mitigating a Regional Crisis with China Dispatching air and naval forces to the immediate vicinity of an armed clash to defend U.S. interests and deter further escalation should always be considered an option. Such actions, however, must be balanced against the possibility that they will produce the opposite effect, encouraging an even stronger response from China and causing further escalation of a confrontation. A less risky option would be to threaten nonmilitary consequences—diplomatic and economic sanctions––to force China to back off and deter further military action. But here again such measures may only inflame hostilities and escalate the crisis. It is also doubtful in any case whether such measures would be supported by many in the region given China's economic importance. Several less provocative responses might contain a budding crisis while avoiding further escalation. One option for the United States would be to encourage a mediated dialogue between involved parties. However, while Southeast Asian states may welcome a neutral mediator, China would probably oppose it. Thus, such an effort would likely fail. Direct communication between military officials can be effective in de-escalating a crisis. States involved should establish communication mechanisms, include provisions for both scheduled and short-notice emergency meetings, and mandate consultation during a crisis. Emergency meetings would focus on addressing the specific provocative action that brought about the crisis. Operational hotlines, including phone lines and radio frequencies with clear protocols and points of contact, should also be set up. To be effective, hotlines should be set up and used prior to a crisis, though even then there is no guarantee that they will be used by both sides if a crisis erupts. China and Vietnam have already agreed to establish a hotline; this could be a model for other states in the region and China. The goal would not be to resolve underlying issues, but to contain tensions in the event of a minor skirmish and prevent escalation. Recommendations Against the background of rebalancing U.S. assets and attention toward the Asia-Pacific region, the United States should takes steps to prevent a conflict in the South China Sea and to defuse a crisis should one take place. Although the possibility of a major military conflict is low, the potential for a violent clash in the South China Sea in the near future is high, given past behavior of states in the region and the growing stakes. Therefore, both U.S. and regional policymakers should seek to create mechanisms to build trust, prevent conflict, and avoid escalation. First, the United States should ratify UNCLOS; though it voluntarily adheres to its principles and the Obama administration has made a commitment to ratify the convention, the fact that the United States has not yet ratified the treaty lends credence to the perception that it only abides by international conventions when doing so aligns with its national interests. Ratifying UNCLOS would put this speculation to rest. It would also bolster the U.S. position in favor of rules-based behavior, give the United States a seat at the table when UNCLOS signatories discuss such issues as EEZ rights, and generally advance U.S. economic and strategic interests. Second, nations with navies active in the South China Sea—including the United States, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines—should better utilize the CUES safety measures and procedures to mitigate uncertainty and improve communication in the event of a maritime incident. Under current arrangements, observing CUES procedures is voluntary. Participating countries should consider making compliance compulsory in order to guarantee standardized procedures. Countries should also engage in multilateral and bilateral maritime exercises to practice these procedures in a controlled environment before a contingency unfolds. Third, the United States should make clear its support for risk-reduction measures and confidence-building measures among claimants in the South China Sea. The United States should continue to voice its support for full implementation of the China-ASEAN DOC and subsequent agreement on a binding code of conduct. Beijing needs a favorable regional security environment and therefore has important incentives to work out a modus vivendi with its neighbors, but will not likely do so absent pressure. Agreement on a binding code of conduct will require unity among all members of ASEAN and strong backing from the United States. In the meantime, cooperation should be further developed through expanded ship visits, bilateral and multilateral exercise, and enhanced counter-piracy cooperation. In addition, cooperation on energy and fisheries should be further promoted. Fourth, the creation of new dialogue mechanisms—such as a South China Sea Coast Guard Forum, an information-sharing center, and a joint fisheries committee—would provide greater opportunity for affected parties to communicate directly and offer opportunities for greater coordination. Fifth, the United States should review its surveillance and reconnaissance activities in the air and waters bordering China's twelve-mile territorial sea and assess the feasibility of reducing their frequency or conducting the operations at a greater distance. Any modification of U.S. close-in surveillance and reconnaissance activities requires assessment of whether those sources are uniquely valuable or other intelligence collection platforms can provide sufficient information about Chinese military developments. The United States should not take such a step unilaterally; it should seek to obtain a concession from Beijing in return lest China interpret the action as evidence of U.S. decline and weakness. Sixth, the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement process should be made effective or abandoned. There is a pressing need for the United States and China to agree on operational safety rules to minimize the possibility of a conflict in the years ahead. A more formal "incidents at sea" agreement should be considered. Seventh, Washington should clarify in its respective dialogues with Manila and Hanoi the extent of the United States' obligations and commitments as well as the limits of likely U.S. involvement in future disputes. Clarity is necessary both to avoid a scenario in which regional actors are emboldened to aggressively confront China and to avert a setback to U.S. relations with regional nations due to perceptions of unfulfilled expectations.
    Contingency Planning Memorandum by Bonnie S. Glaser April 11, 2012 Center for Preventive Action
  • Americas
    Countering Criminal Violence in Central America
    Overview Violent crime in Central America—particularly in the "northern triangle" of Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala—is reaching breathtaking levels. Murder rates in the region are among the highest in the world. To a certain extent, Central America's predicament is one of geography—it is sandwiched between some of the world's largest drug producers in South America and the world's largest consumer of illegal drugs, the United States. The region is awash in weapons and gunmen, and high rates of poverty ensure substantial numbers of willing recruits for organized crime syndicates. Weak, underfunded, and sometimes corrupt governments struggle to keep up with the challenge. Though the United States has offered substantial aid to Central American efforts to address criminal violence, it also contributes to the problem through its high levels of drug consumption, relatively relaxed gun control laws, and deportation policies that have sent home more than a million illegal migrants with violent records. In this Council Special Report, sponsored by the Center for Preventive Action, Michael Shifter assesses the causes and consequences of the violence faced by several Central American countries and examines the national, regional, and international efforts intended to curb its worst effects. Guatemala, for example, is still healing from a thirty-six-year civil war; guns and armed groups remain common. El Salvador's ironfisted response to widespread gang violence has transformed its prisons into overcrowded gang-recruiting centers while doing little to reduce crime. Even relatively wealthy countries like Costa Rica and Panama are threatened by poor police capacity and significant problems with smuggling and money laundering. Virtually all countries are further plagued by at least some level of public corruption. While hard-hitting or even militarized responses to criminal violence often enjoy broad public support, Shifter writes, Nicaragua's experience with crime prevention programs like community policing and job training for youth suggests that other approaches can be more effective at curbing crime. Shortages of local funding and expertise remain problematic, however, and only large-scale, national programs can effectively address national-level problems with corruption or the quality of the legal system. Moreover, many of the root causes of the region's violence are transnational—the international trade in drugs, guns, and other contraband being only the most obvious example. Multilateral organizations have stepped in to support national-level responses, as have Central America's neighbors. The UN's flagship effort, the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, supports domestic prosecutions of organized criminal gangs and their allies in Guatemala's government. In recent years, the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank have contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to efforts to improve regional collaboration on anticrime initiatives; last year they pledged $1.5 billion more over the next few years. Colombia and Mexico have both provided advice and training for Central America's police services and judiciary. The United States is also contributing significant resources. Washington now provides about $100 million annually, targeted mainly at drug interdiction and law enforcement, though some funding also goes toward institutional capacity building and violence protection. Still, much more remains to be done, and Shifter offers several recommendations for U.S. policymakers. Strengthening the judiciary and law enforcement services should, he says, be a central goal; the region's ineffective and corrupt legal systems are severely hampering efforts to curb the violence. He also advocates rethinking U.S. policies that contribute to violence in Central America, including drug laws, gun control policies, and immigration rules regarding violent offenders. Countering Criminal Violence in Central America provides important insights into the varied causes of criminal violence in the region. Its authoritative and nuanced analysis acknowledges the strengths and weaknesses of ongoing efforts to address the problem, and it offers thoughtful recommendations on how those efforts might be built on and improved. Despite the daunting complexity of the challenges underpinning the region's growing violence, this report successfully argues that this trend can—and should—be reversed.
    Council Special Report by Michael Shifter April 6, 2012 Center for Preventive Action
  • United States
    You Might Have Missed: Drones, Afghanistan, and the North Korean Nuclear Program
    Chris Woods and Emma Slater, “Arab spring brings steep rise in U.S. attacks in Yemen,” Bureau of Investigative Journalism, March 29, 2012. At least 26 US military and CIA strikes involving cruise missiles, aircraft, drones or naval bombardments have taken place in the volatile Gulf nation to date, killing hundreds of alleged militants linked to the regional al Qaeda franchise. But at least 54 civilians have died too, the study found. In the latest attack, US drones struck three areas of the rebel-held city of Zinjibar on March 22, killing up to 30 al Qaeda-linked militants, according to Yemen intelligence officials. Naval vessels – possibly American – also bombarded the city. The missile strike ‘targeted vehicles and bases of the al Qaeda group. A lot of people were apparently killed and their vehicles were completely destroyed at the scene,’ eyewitnesses told news agency Xinhua. At least five US attacks – some involving multiple targets – have so far taken place in Yemen this month alone, in support of a government offensive to drive militants from key locations. In comparison, Pakistan’s tribal areas, the epicenter of the CIA’s controversial drone war, have seen just three US drone strikes in March. Mark Hosenball and John Shiffman, “U.S., European officials probe Iran nuclear smuggling,” Reuters, March 28, 2012. U.S. officials said they are investigating 30 percent more cases this year than three years ago. U.S. agencies have deployed agents posing as arms brokers at more than 20 undercover companies targeting smugglers, said the officials, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity. Undercover arms smuggling investigations typically take two to four years to unfold, one of the officials said, which is why he expects an increase in indictments soon. "We’ve got some good undercover cases going," a senior U.S. official said. Craig Whitlock, “Australia may host U.S. drones at Cocos,” Sydney Morning Herald, March 28, 2012. A controversial proposal for a joint Australian-US military air base in the Indian Ocean could lead to the launch of drone spy flights across the region, according to officials quoted in Washington. The proposed base on the Australian-controlled Cocos Islands would form part of a major expansion of ties between Canberra and Washington as the Pentagon looks to shift its forces closer to south-east Asia. U.S. Department of State, Daily Press Briefing, March 28, 2012. QUESTION: But what about the whole idea that you don’t link food with political discussions? MS. NULAND: Well, we’ve talked about this before. We talked about it on the day that this initially came up. We don’t link food with the nuclear issue, but we do have to have confidence in the commitments that the government is making to us with regard to the monitoring situation before one could go forward. This is a government that turned around in a matter of weeks and undid what it had said on the nuclear side, so how can one have confidence in what they’ve said on the monitoring side? And we’re not going to send food to a country where it might be diverted to the elites. That’s not what the American taxpayers want to support. QUESTION: But that does make it sound like it’s a link. MS. NULAND: There’s a link in the sense that we don’t have confidence in the good faith of the government. QUESTION: I’m confused by that because you said that nutritional assistance, not food aid, would be done in such a way that it would be impossible to divert. You were talking about baby vitamins and things like this. MS. NULAND: But again, we have to be able to get it in in the way that we’ve agreed, we have to be able to distribute it with the groups that we’ve agreed, we have to be able to have the monitoring ourselves on it that we’ve agreed to. All of that requires the government’s cooperation. QUESTION: Well, have they said that they won’t cooperate on that particular issue? MS. NULAND: We haven’t had those conversations. We’ve simply said: Do not have your space launch here. QUESTION: So how do you know that they wouldn’t keep their word if it were a matter of -- MS. NULAND: Because we have no confidence in their good faith right now. QUESTION: But I don’t understand on it. I’m sorry. Just – I don’t understand how this is not linking your dissatisfaction with them on the nuclear and political issue and the food assistance. You don’t know whether they would make good on their commitments to allow monitors and food, on the food, because you won’t talk to them because you’re mad at them about the nuclear issue. MS. NULAND: We don’t have confidence in their good faith. If they want to restore our confidence in their good faith, they can cancel the plans to launch this satellite. QUESTION: No, but how is that not linking it, Toria? MS. NULAND: We – as I said, we have concerns about whether one can make a deal of any kind with this government. It’s a – they are separate issues, but they come together at the point of whether the government’s acting in good faith. (3PA: As I pointed out in a previous blog post, when the latest U.S.-North Korea deal was reached, the Obama administration claimed that a rigorous monitoring system was in place to assure that the 240,000 tons of nutritional assistance—delivered in monthly shipments—would not be diverted to the regime in Pyongyang. Since North Korea announced that they will launch a ballistic missile—in violation of that agreement and earlier UN Security Council resolutions—apparently that rigorous monitoring system will no longer work.) Angus Reid Public Opinion, “Support for Afghanistan Mission Plummets to All-Time Low in United States,” March 26, 2012. For the first time in three years, a majority of Americans voice opposition to the mission in Afghanistan, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found. In the online survey of a representative national sample of 1,012 American adults, 52 per cent of respondents oppose the military operation involving American soldiers in Afghanistan, while 38 per cent support it. Since February 2010, support for the mission has fallen by 16 points, while opposition has risen by 14 points. (3PA: For the full report, click here.) Vicki Divoll, “Targeted killings: Who’s checking the executive branch?” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2012. Leahy should redirect his attention from asking for memoranda from the Justice Department to focus his committee’s energy on the real issue facing Congress: Should the president of the United States be able to order the killing of an American citizen with no review outside his own executive branch advisors? Even if Leahy trusts this president to tread cautiously with such enormous, unchecked power, what about the next one, or the one after that? “Drug Policy in Latin America: Burn-out and Battle Fatigue,” The Economist, March 17, 2012. The illegality of this successful export business means that its multi-billion-dollar profits go to criminal gangs. Their battles for market control have a high cost: according to the UN, eight of the world’s ten most violent countries are in Latin America or the Caribbean. Drugs are not the only business of organized crime, but they account for the bulk of the gangs’ income and thus their firepower. Honduras, a strategic spot on the trafficking route, has the world’s highest murder rate, about 80 times that of western Europe. Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, “The Fiscal Year 2012: Department of Defense Budget Request,” February 16, 2012. REP. HUNTER: If you were to fully fund defense and take away a hundred percent as best as you could, a hundred percent of risk using your own threat assessment tools and analysis, what would that funding be? What would you ask for? SEC. GATES: I have only half-jokingly said in meetings in the department that if we had a trillion-dollar budget, I would still have unfunded requirements. REP. HUNTER: Yeah, that’s right. SEC. GATES: The services would still be able to come up with a list of things that they really need. I think that the budget that we’ve provided at $553 billion for FY ’12 mitigates risk to the extent that I think is reasonably possible. And I think that we have -- we are investing in new capabilities -- the $70 billion that the services are going to be able to invest from their savings in new capabilities or in added numbers I think helped mitigate that risk. You can never reach a point -- just as there is no such thing as perfect security, there is no such thing as eliminating risk. REP. HUNTER: Mr. Secretary, if I may, and I’m going to run out of time and I have one more totally separate question. If you got to that highest point that you could where you started getting diminished rate of return, what would that number be, roughly? SEC. GATES: I think that we are at a point with the 553 (billion dollars) where we can do that. REP. HUNTER: Okay. So fully funding defense and every requirement is at 553 (billion dollars)? SEC. GATES: We will never fund every request. REP. HUNTER: But if you did, sir, what I’m asking is, what’s that number, roughly? SEC. GATES:  I have no idea how much -- REP. HUNTER: You haven’t thought about what it would cost to really satisfy the requirements of all the different services? SEC. GATES: Nobody lives in that -- nobody lives in that world. REP. HUNTER: No, but what you’re supposed to do is tell us how do we – how get to zero threat, and Congress then decides what to fund. SEC. GATES: And I’m telling you you are never going to get to zero threat. REP. HUNTER: We can try. SEC. GATES: You could spend $2 trillion and you’ll never get to zero threat. REP. HUNTER: But that’s what we would like to hear from you, Mr. Secretary, is that it would cost -- SEC. GATES: I’m just telling you. REP. HUNTER: -- $2 trillion, and we could cut that by 75 percent, and here we are at the 550 (billion dollars), right? (3PA: Yesterday, Representative Paul Ryan told a forum on the defense budget: “We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice. We don’t think the generals believe their budget is really the right budget." Ryan’s comments brought to mind this exchange between Hunter and former Secretary Gates. There are some hawks on Capitol Hill who simply do not believe that the Pentagon budget proposal process could ever contain a ‘high enough’ number.) Syria Tracker (3PA: The Syria Tracker is a map developed through crowdsourcing by individual activists and NGOs to track the violence in Syria.)  
    Blog Post by Micah Zenko March 30, 2012 Politics, Power, and Preventive Action
  • United States
    The Power of Witness: Imagery and Mass Atrocities
    * coauthored with my research associate, Emma Welch Warning: This blog post contains graphic images. Last week, I was fortunate to attend a workshop at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Power of Witness: The Use of Technology in Preventing Mass Atrocities.” Among the topics discussed were the current and potential use of journalists, victims’ reporting, satellites, aircraft, and drones (presented by myself) to reveal to the outside world what is happening on the ground. It was remarkable to hear from a wide range of dedicated people who utilize innovative technologies and collaborative arrangements to document prospective war crimes for dissemination to the media, people in the target country, foreign leaders, criminal tribunals, the global public, and others. Of course, harnessing the power of witness is not a new endeavor. As Martha Finnemore notes in her book, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force, the domestic debate surrounding intervention for humanitarian purposes is highly contested. Finnemore describes the influence of the media to “arouse public opinion and influence policy…by increasing exposure and creating familiarity where little existed previously.” Over the past 150 years, intervention proponents have increasingly relied on vivid and graphic imagery from the target country to rally support to their cause—including U.S. policymakers, for better or for worse.  In 1995, U.S. ambassador to the UN Madeline Albright fought to declassify three CIA satellite photographs of Srebrenica in order to show them to a closed session of the UN Security Council. Of course, such imagery is subject to interpretation and exploitation by internal opposition groups, exiles, or foreign governments to justify military interventions. On February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell briefed the UN Security Council on “Iraq: Failure to Disarm,” which included photographs (remember the “mobile biological warfare agent production plants?”) and audio clips that purportedly confirmed the existence of Iraq’s WMD program, which did not exist. Consider this brief survey of how powerful imagery emerged from foreign conflicts or major wars, and the impact it had on the homefront, policymakers, or the international community. Crimean War (1853-1856) The Crimean War is considered to be the first media war, in which the telegraph and camera enabled news and images from battles to be transmitted to the homefront in hours instead of weeks. For the first time, the British public saw photographs of the front line that brought far-off battlefields to life. Armenian massacres (1915-1916) The Ottoman Turks deported hundreds of thousands—some argue more than a million—of Armenians to the desert of Syria. Western news organizations captured the unfolding events, as many Armenians died en route from starvation or were killed by Ottoman forces. Today, most scholars and historians consider this a clear act of genocide, although the Turkish government strongly rejects the claim and resists the use of the word by any government to describe the Armenian mass deaths. New York Times, December 15, 1915 Times of London, 1915 World War II (1939-1945) World War II was a watershed in the global understanding of atrocities and genocide (a term coined in 1943 by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, which combined the Greek prefix genos, meaning family or race, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing), largely due to the horrific images that emerged from concentration camps in Europe after the arrival of Allied soldiers. The construction of a new global human rights regime was a direct response to the Nazis’ Final Solution, in the hopes that signatories to the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide would ensure that the five specific acts that comprise genocide wouldn’t happen again: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Vietnam War (1960-1975) The Vietnam War was the first fully televised war, in which the American public received regular updates on the conflict through photographs and videos. (For just one example, see the real-time CBS News video that captured an Army platoon under fire from mortars and sniper.) Photojournalism played a large role in shaping public opinion on the war, particularly through its more graphic images. Now-infamous images, such as the photograph by Eddie Adams of a general shooting an unidentified man in the head, defied the U.S. government’s portrayal of the war effort fueled the Vietnam protest movement in the United States. This photo ran on front page of the New York Times under the headline "Street Clashes Go On in Vietnam, Foe Still Holds Parts of Cities; Johnson Pledges ‘Never to Yield.’” Cambodian genocide (1975-1979) The Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot carried out a widespread and systematic genocide, killing approximately 1.7 million people, or roughly 20 percent of the population. In its policy of internal “purification,” the regime deported the urban population to the countryside where brutal labor conditions, disease, and starvation killed hundreds of thousands. The government also targeted and executed political groups and suspected opponents or rivals. The killing ended when the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia in January 1979; the first images of the atrocities committed were taken by Vietnamese soldiers. Images of victims from the Tuol Sleng Prison, also known as the “S-21” interrogation and extermination center. In total, there are over five thousand photographs of prisoners at the facility; the vast majority of victims are unknown. The exhumation of the Choeung Ek killing fields in 1980 offered some of the first concrete evidence of the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime (Yale Archives/Ben Kiernan). Bosnian War (1992-1995) In August 1992, a number of Western newspapers, including Newsweek and Time Magazine, called for intervention by publishing images as proof of a “new Holocaust” occurring in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over the course of the conflict, an estimated 200,000 Muslims were killed by Bosnian Serb forces. Rwandan genocide (April-June 1994) Over three months, Rwanda witnessed an ethnic cleansing campaign that killed an estimated 800,000 people, largely carried out by the Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority (although moderate Hutus were targeted as well). The international community reeled at the speed and scale of the genocide, which defied all conventional norms of conflict prevention and early warning. Horrific images emerged from Rwanda over the course of the genocide as the world stood paralyzed. Kyrgyzstan (June 2010) On June 10, 2010, violence erupted in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbek communities. Over the next four days, it is estimated that between 500 and 2,000 people were killed as well as over 400,000 displaced. Satellite images (as seen below) tracked and mapped the conflict as it escalated. In particular, such images captured “SOS” signs written on roadways and buildings. Map of “SOS” signs throughout Osh (© 2010 Digital Globe). For most of recent history, news and images of conflicts and atrocities reaching the outside world were dependent on reporters, photographers, and a small number of activists on the ground. However, technology and social media such as camera phones, blogs, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have permanently and dramatically altered the way the world communicates and receives news. During the so-called “Green Revolution” in Iran in 2009, the brutal suppression of non-violent protesters by the regime was extensively documented by ordinary people organizing demonstrations and sending updates, photos, and videos on Twitter. An excellent report by the RAND Corporation describes the power of social media as a particularly effective tool to “generate political opposition, shape political discourse, and facilitate action in the face of a powerful regime” in Iran and beyond. Today, news reports on the protracted conflict in Syria rely heavily on reports from citizens on the ground via Skype, videos taken on phones uploaded to YouTube, and updates posted on Facebook. According to one estimate, 80 percent of the videos of the Syrian conflict that have been broadcasted by mainstream news organizations were shot by amateur videographers. In addition, unmanned U.S. intelligence drones have flown over Syria, collecting information and monitoring the Syrian military’s movements. Due to technology and social media, there is unequivocal evidence of atrocities committed, but still amost no on-the-ground access for UN or human rights investigators to better verify the accounts. In 2009, former British prime minister Gordon Brown reflected on the emerging power of social media: "You cannot have Rwanda again because information would come out far more quickly about what is actually going on and the public opinion would grow to the point where action would need to be taken.” While we hope that will be the case, it is the responsibility of the international community to use the power of technology to better inform and shape its decision-making process in order to take actions commensurate with the political will, available resources, and potential to make a real impact.  
    Blog Post by Micah Zenko March 29, 2012 Politics, Power, and Preventive Action
  • United States
    The 2012 Nuclear Security Summit: Obama’s Work in Progress
    An edited version of this post originally appeared on CFR.org as a First Take. On his first foreign trip as a U.S. senator in 2005, Barack Obama accompanied Senator Richard Lugar on a week-long tour of WMD facilities in the former Soviet Union. Afterward, Senator Obama often spoke about the trip, in particular the vast amount of poorly secured lethal materials that he witnessed at the sites. As a presidential candidate, Obama declared, “The single most serious threat to American national security is nuclear terrorism.” While President George W. Bush deserves credit for highlighting the seriousness of nuclear terrorism and committing the resources to work with Russia to secure nearly all of its potentially loose nukes, nuclear security has been a top-tier priority for Obama.  As early as July 2008, he vowed to “lead a global effort to secure all loose nuclear materials around the world during my first term as president.” Building on the work of the Bush administration, the potential threat of nuclear terrorism has been markedly reduced due to the high-level focus produced by the initial Nuclear Security Summit in April 2010 and reinforced by the current summit in Seoul, South Korea. The practical effect of both summits is the development of a clearly articulated workplan that prioritizes strategic objectives and specifies national commitments for the forty-seven participating countries. These pledges are voluntary and nonbinding, and there are no enforcement measures to compel compliance. Yet, approximately 80 percent of national commitments from the first Nuclear Security Summit have been fulfilled. This was not due to diplomatic pressure or economic sanctions, but was instead driven by national leaders’ fear of embarrassment that they could not deliver on their promises, combined with U.S. technical and financial assistance. For example, Ukraine (as a Soviet republic) once maintained a stockpile of five thousand nuclear weapons; last week, it shipped its remaining weapons-grade uranium to Russia, where it will be blended down to low-enriched uranium to fuel civilian research reactors. Despite the sustained progress of the Nuclear Security Summits, President Obama will not meet his four-year deadline. In December, Obama administration officials backtracked, claiming that the deadline was more of a “forcing function” that would accelerate U.S. nuclear nonproliferation programs and mobilize international support for nuclear material security.  Moreover, there is still no comprehensive and coordinated U.S. government plan to secure all nuclear materials. National Security Council officials recently admitted to GAO investigators that “developing a single, integrated cross-agency plan that incorporates all these elements could take years.” For most, the word “nuclear” immediately brings to mind Iran or North Korea. Yet, Iran does not have enough fissile material to fuel a nuclear weapon; together, Iran and North Korea have less than a fraction of 1 percent of worldwide nuclear material. Today, thirty-two countries possess 1 kilogram or more of weapons-usable nuclear material. Preventing nuclear terrorism requires, in large part, locking down all of that material—at least in accordance with the latest IAEA guidelines. Raising awareness among the forty-seven national leaders attending the Nuclear Security Summit increases the likelihood of achieving the ultimate goal of nuclear material security. However, lasting and effective nuclear security is not a one-time pledge, but rather an ongoing process that will only end with the universal elimination of all weapons-usable material. Since that will not occur anytime soon, world leaders will need sustain the progress of the past two years with the results to be reported at the next Nuclear Security Summit in 2014.
    Blog Post by Micah Zenko March 27, 2012 Politics, Power, and Preventive Action
  • Conflict Prevention
    A “New Deal” for Fragile States? Promises and Pitfalls
    For the past decade, the challenge of weak and failing states has dominated the U.S. foreign policy agenda. Once dismissed as third tier strategic concerns, poorly governed and conflict-ridden states rose to unprecedented prominence after 9/11. Al-Qaeda’s ability to launch the most devastating attack on the United States in U.S. history from one of the most wretched countries on earth persuaded George W. Bush, in the words of the 2002 National Security Strategy, that the nation was “now threatened less by conquering states than we are by weak and failing ones.” Allied nations and international organizations from NATO to the United Nations drew the same conclusion, describing the world’s forty-odd fragile states as “weak links” in the chain of global collective security, generating risks ranging from jihadist terror to transnational crime, WMD proliferation to infectious disease. Relief and development actors likewise seized on this chance to secure greater official attention and resources for fragile states, though for different reasons. As humanitarians rightly pointed out, such countries are the overwhelming source of the world’s refugees and internally displaced peoples, not to mention the location of the world’s gravest human rights abuses—including some that might merit intervention under the emerging norm of the “responsibility to protect.” Activists also observed that the inhabitants of fragile states remain the farthest from the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), home to the world’s “bottom billion.” Despite this extraordinary attention, the United States and the world community have struggled mightily to develop effective strategies for improving the political legitimacy and institutional capacity of the world’s weakest states, so that they can deliver effective governance—including physical security, political representation, economic stability, and essential services—to their inhabitants. Hope may be on the horizon, however. Late last autumn, a prominent group of actors gathered at the Fourth High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (November 29-December 1, 2011, in Busan, South Korea)—including fragile states, major donor nations, and international organizations--announced a “New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States.” Significantly, the driving force behind this initiative was not the wealthy donor community, but a group of nineteen fragile and conflict-affected states themselves—including countries like East Timor, Liberia, and Burundi. This fact is critical. Too often, the donor community has only paid lip-service to the principle of “country leadership and ownership.”  Their initiative may demonstrate that rhetoric will be translated into action. The “New Deal” has several path-breaking components. First, donor and fragile states alike endorse five core “Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Goals” (PSGs) that will guide their efforts. These include the promotion of legitimate politics, civilian security, impartial justice, employment, and efficient management. Indicators will be developed by September 2012 to help measure progress towards realizing these goals. Second, the donor community has committed to support “inclusive country-led and country-owned transition out of fragility,” focused on a partnership not only with the ruling regime but—critically—other societal representatives. Donors will collaborate with national “stakeholders” to conduct baseline and follow-up “fragility assessments” and to better evaluate the sources of fragility and potential resilience. On the basis of these assessments, donors pledge to help national actors develop “one national vision and one plan out of fragility,” with the responsibilities of donors and national stakeholders spelled out in a formal “compact.” Third, donors and fragile states commit to providing external aid and managing national resources more effectively, and to aligning these resources for results. They mutually agree to ensure greater timeliness and predictability in the delivery of aid, to improved transparency in its allocation and uses, and to use external aid to strengthen national institutions and systems (rather than leech capacity from them, as so often happens). On paper, the New Deal has a lot going for it, promising better behavior from outside actors and fragile states alike. But there’s at least one huge stumbling bloc to bringing this new partnership to fruition: the ugly reality of fragile state governance. At its foundation, the New Deal presumes that governing regimes in fragile states are weak but well intentioned. In practice, of course, many such states are fragile because they are run by corrupt, even kleptocratic, elites who will go to great lengths to keep their grasp on power. Such regimes have little incentive to embrace truly open, participatory politics—much less transparent revenue management. One look at the list of nineteen fragile state partners—which includes Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and even Somalia—suggests how hard it may be to turn the document’s fine words into effective state-building partnerships. This is not to call the New Deal useless, merely to suggest its immediate application may be limited to well-meaning governments whose leaders—Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia, perhaps—are genuinely committed to good governance and willing to accommodate the political aspirations of a wide variety of domestic actors. Given these obstacles, the United States and other major donors have wisely decided to implement the “New Deal” on a pilot basis, which pairs particular donors with specific fragile states (Australia and East Timor, the United Kingdom and South Sudan, for example). Over the longer term, however, the New Deal could begin to transform expectations—both within the donor community and among fragile state regimes—about the conditions under which fragile states will be eligible for significant development assistance. In embracing the “New Deal,” the donor community has raised the normative bar—suggesting that significant aid will depend on genuine internal processes of societal consultation, in the form of “credible and inclusive processes of political dialogue.”  For such implied conditionality to have an impact, of course, the donor community will need to display solidarity in its approach to engaging some of the world’s most dysfunctional countries—a tall order, given the rising influence of non-traditional donors like China, which has been less than circumspect about engaging authoritarian and corrupt regimes.
    Blog Post by Stewart M. Patrick February 1, 2012 The Internationalist
  • Conflict Prevention
    Updates to 2012 Preventive Priorities Survey
      2012 Preventive Priorities Map.   Last Thursday, the Center for Preventive Action team published our fifth annual Preventive Priorities Survey (PPS): a list of thirty contingencies ranked by their relative importance to U.S. national interests and likelihood of them occurring in 2012. The goal of the PPS is to help inform the U.S. policy community about the relative urgency and importance of competing conflict prevention demands. The PPS was released as a one-page document and as a map, color-coded according to tiers. Accompanying the PPS, I wrote a piece for TheAtlantic.com explaining the methodology, and participated in a corresponding interview with CFR.org. In addition, the PPS results were featured on CNN.com, Peacefare.net, and Outsidethebeltway, among other places. The primary splash of the survey, however, was its inclusion in multiple English-language news outlets in South Asia (i.e., Hindustan Times, Times of India, The Express Tribune), which all focused on the upgrade of U.S.-Pakistan military confrontation to Tier I and the downgrade of a severe Indo-Pak crisis to Tier II. On Facebook, we conducted an interactive poll, where participants were asked to vote on which contingency should be the U.S. government’s top priority in 2012, or to list their own contingencies. Of approximately 110 people who participated in the poll, the top five responses were:                           Intensification of the European sovereign debt crisis (23) Resumption of conflict in Sri Lanka due to continued oppression of the Tamil People (23) The government of U.S.A must ensure economic stability/job production (16) A U.S.-Pakistan military confrontation (16) Conflict among India, Pakistan, or China over water resources (4)   We’ve also received a number of e-mailed comments and feedback in various Internet forums. Several people dismissed entirely the premise of “foreign policy experts” trying to predict future hotspots, while others argued that the predictions would result in a self-fulfilling prophecy whereby the contingencies would occur. Excluding methodology, we received several thoughtful additions or subtractions to the list of contingencies:                   A Cuban civil war triggered by the deaths of Fidel and Raul Castro, and fueled by money from Cuban exiles living in Florida. Possible ethnic violence between Serbs and Kosovars in Kosovo, where the United States still has over 700 troops more than a dozen years after the NATO air war ended. “Washington is hardly going to be involved in Balkan affairs beyond providing purely logistic and/or advisory support to its EU partners.”   With the broad range of countries and issues present, we’ve assuredly missed or miscategorized some contingencies. What do you think should be included on the list?
    Blog Post by Micah Zenko December 14, 2011 Politics, Power, and Preventive Action