Iraq: more cracks in the coalition

While I've often noted the withdrawal of nation-states from the so-called "coalition of the willing," this post is about Republican Senators who are now expressing much stronger frustration with the Iraq war. Senator Voinovich of Ohio, for example, recently called for gradual troop withdrawal.

However, this post focuses on the views of Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN), a widely respected foreign policy voice. On June 25, Lugar delivered a speech on the Senate floor that has received a fair amount of press coverage. These sentences were in his opening paragraph:

In my judgment, our course in Iraq has lost contact with our vital national security interests in the Middle East and beyond. Our continuing absorption with military activities in Iraq is limiting our diplomatic assertiveness there and elsewhere in the world. The prospects that the current “surge” strategy will succeed in the way originally envisioned by the President are very limited within the short period framed by our own domestic political debate.

If you read the speech, it is quite clear that Lugar has not joined the anti-war movement. He does not call for rapid withdrawal. However, he is quite skeptical about "the surge" and wants the U.S. to pursue an alternative plan that would require fewer troops:

I believe that we do have viable options that could strengthen our position in the Middle East, and reduce the prospect of terrorism, regional war, and other calamities. But seizing these opportunities will require the President to downsize the U.S. military’s role in Iraq and place much more emphasis on diplomatic and economic options. It will also require members of Congress to be receptive to overtures by the President to construct a new policy outside the binary choice of surge versus withdrawal.

Lugar foresees continuing sectarian factionalism in Iraq, a stressed US military and a domestic debate that is likely to become increasingly partisan as 2008 elections approach.

That means that the US has a narrow window in 2007 to come up with a bipartisan plan for Iraq that would focus on vital interests. His argument is grounded in realism (he approvingly mentions Henry Kissinger's views on Iraq). Lugar:

The risk for decision-makers is that after a long struggle in Iraq, accompanied by a contentious political process at home, we begin to see Iraq as a set piece -- as an end in itself, distinct from the broader interests that we meant to protect. We risk becoming fixated on artificial notions of achieving victory or avoiding defeat, when these ill-defined concepts have little relevance to our operations in Iraq. What is important is not the precise configuration of the Iraqi government or the achievement of specific benchmarks, but rather how Iraq impacts our geostrategic situation in the Middle East and beyond.

The U.S., says Lugar, cannot rest its Middle East policy on building a "stable, democratic, pluralist society in Iraq."

Lugar's sober assessment focuses on top priorities: preventing Iraq from becoming a terror safe haven, preventing Iraqi sectarian violence from sparking regional war, preventing Iranian domination of the region, and limiting the loss of U.S. credibility.

Lugar would lean heaving on the Iraq Study Group as a starting point, but notes that he would downsize and re-deploy US forces to more sustainable positions -- like Kuwait or other states, Kurdish territory, or non-urban areas of Iraq. The force remaining in Iraq would be "residual." Lugar would even downsize the large new American embassy in Iraq. Though he does not say it, such a move would send a strong anti-imperial signal throughout the world.

This changed strategy would take more than six months to accomplish and would necessarily be accompanied by a diplomatic offensive on many fronts. Note that Lugar has been calling for more diplomacy for at least 3 years. The Arab-Israeli conflict receives some attention near the end of Lugar's address, as does the need to reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil.

Let's hope the White House is listening.


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Lugar targets Bush/Kerry

Senator Richard G. Lugar, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations delivered a speech entitled "Nunn-Lugar in an Election Year" at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on August 11, 2004. The full transcript is available on the Senator's website.

The bipartisan Nunn-Lugar legislation has for many years funded efforts to dismantle and secure WMD and missile assets in Russia. The successes so far have been impressive (this is a partial list):

To date, the weapons systems deactivated or destroyed by the United States under these programs include:

6,312 nuclear warheads;
537 ICBMs;
459 ICBM silos;
11 ICBM mobile missile launchers;
128 bombers;
708 nuclear air-to-surface missiles;
408 submarine missile launchers;
496 submarine launched missiles;
27 nuclear submarines; and
194 nuclear test tunnels.

As Lugar notes in this speech, he has been concerned with this issue for many, many years. In the 1996 presidential campaign, Lugar argued that nuclear terrorism should be the #1 issue of the day and he made nonproliferation the center of his own campaign. The public and media paid scant attention.

Now, of course, people are eager to hear about this problem. Nicholas Kristof just penned a couple of pessimistic op-eds. In both, he claimed that some experts expect a 10 KT bomb to be detonated in DC or NY in the next decade.

One news blog called the first piece a "quick read to unsettle your nerves." If this sounds like fertile material for blogging, you are right. Many voices in the blogosphere have been debating the implications of the proliferation threat.

What should the US do about it?

Lugar, of course, confronts this query -- and wants to start with improvements for Nunn-Lugar.

However, the Indiana Senator first highlighted some unfortunate resistance the program has faced over the years:

Nevertheless, from the beginning, we have encountered resistance to the Nunn-Lugar concept in both the United States and Russia. In our own country, opposition often has been motivated by false perceptions that Nunn-Lugar money is foreign assistance or by beliefs that Defense Department funds should only be spent on troops, weapons, or other warfighting capabilities. We also have encountered latent and persistent Cold War attitudes toward Russia that have led some Nunn-Lugar opponents to be suspicious of almost any cooperation with Moscow.

Frankly, it seems as if Lugar has problems with many of his Republican colleagues (and the Bush White House), since they tend to be the ones who make these charges and establish most of the roadblocks.

What about the Democrats? Well, Lugar certainly has their attention:

During the recent Democratic primary season, we even experienced a bidding war in which candidates competed to offer the most effusive endorsements and the largest funding increases for the Nunn-Lugar program and other non-proliferation efforts. Howard Dean and John Edwards called for a tripling of funds devoted to Nunn-Lugar, while John Kerry called for a “major” increase in funding without specifying an exact amount.

Of course, cash alone isn't enough.

Stop me if you've read this before, but Lugar argues that the success of non-proliferation efforts hinges on diplomacy as well.

At this stage, diplomatic breakthroughs with resistant Russian authorities are almost a prerequisite to putting major funding increases to work. Although the Russian government has opened a remarkable number of facilities to the Nunn-Lugar program, others remain closed. Convincing Russia to accelerate its dismantlement schedules, to conclude umbrella agreements that limit liability for contractors, and to open its remaining closed facilities are the most immediate challenges for Nunn-Lugar. Whoever wins election in November must make the removal of these roadblocks a priority.

Again, this sounds like one of Kerry's talking points.

Lugar closed with a dozen non-proliferation goals, though he was really mixing ends (stopping North Korean and Iranian bombs) and means (diplomacy, transparency, etc.). Still, the US clearly needs to have a multi-faceted policy and anyone serious about WMD proliferaiton will need to ponder the range of problems Lugar mentions.

Zinni, Clancy and Lugar

I've already blogged about General Anthony Zinni on several occasions. So I have little to add to his latest entry into the news cycle, except to note: (a) the coauthor of Battle Ready is a registered Republican who voted for Bush in 2000 and worked for the administation from 2001 to 2003; (b) Zinni coauthored his book with popular writer Tom Clancy, who now also argues against the war in Iraq; and (c) Zinni was former chief of the Central Command, so he should have some credibility on this issue.

Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) also received a lot of attention for his commencement remarks at Tufts University, Saturday May 22. If you read the speech on his website , someone has put the key "quote-worthy" points in italics and/or boldface. Much of it is clear criticism of US foreign policy (and the implementation of the "war on terror") under the Bush administration.

Lugar strongly implies that the US has been over-valuing military solutions at the expense of diplomatic and economic tools:

To win the war against terrorism, the United States must assign U.S. economic and diplomatic capabilities the same strategic priority that we assign to military capabilities. There are no shortcuts to victory.

Lugar sounds like a peacenik.

Or a retired foreign service officer:

We have yet to alter the status of foreign affairs as the neglected sibling of national security policy. The Defense Budget is more than 13 times larger than the Foreign Affairs Budget. As a percentage of gross domestic product, foreign affairs programs are still about 40 percent below their average levels of the 1980s.

The neocons, of course, are much more worried about the impoverished defense budget.

Lugar says that this over-valuing the military at the expense of diplomacy has very serious implications:

The September 11 attacks may have jarred the United States out of its complacency toward foreign threats. But our ability and will to exert U.S. leadership outside the confines of military action have been eroded by inattention, budget incrementalism, and an increasing partisanship that afflicts foreign policy decision-making. As a result, we are conducting diplomacy without sufficient funding and sometimes without public support in an era when we are depending on diplomats to build alliances, reconstruct nations, and explain the United States worldwide.

That should wake some people up in the White House. Heck it sounds like it could readily fit within a Kerry speech.

Lugar is not fond of renewed American unilateralism. He sees great danger in such an approach:

Unless the United States commits itself to a sustained program of repairing and building alliances, expanding trade, pursuing resolutions to regional conflicts, supporting democracy and development worldwide, and controlling weapons of mass destruction, we are likely to experience acts of catastrophic terrorism that would undermine our economy, damage our society, and kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people.

The United States, as a nation, simply has not made this commitment.

This quote appears above the speech in italics and then in bold within the body of the address.

I guess he really means it.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is now a bipartisan "who's who" of critics of Bush foreign policy. These Republicans have made news recently: Lugar (IN), Hagel (NE), and Voinovich (OH). Chafee, of course, voted against the war, and recently pointed out "there's never been any connection between Osama bin Laden and Iraq. They're very, very different issues. And Afghanistan is [interrupted] a long way from Iraq."

Nonpartisan Opposition to US Iraq Policy

I missed today's "Meet the Press," but former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich was apparently a lot more critical of the US policy in Iraq than was NY Senator Hillary Clinton.

The über-blogger Atrios makes a fundamentally important generalization from this data, and I think he's exactly on-point:

in the wider world of opinion shapers there has been plenty of criticism by those who are otherwise ideological allies of this gang.

By attempting to portray this as a partisan debate, the media successfully delegitimizes the opposition, who are "of course" simply trying to score political points, according to the Cokie Roberts school of political journalism.

There's been plenty of non-partisan criticism of the administration's policy from its typical allies (the military analyst on Fox News I mentioned this week, Senators Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar, the Weekly Standard...even General Wes Clark fell into this category before he declared as a Democratic candidate for President).

When media voices (or Republican TV commercials) say that Democratic opposition to the war reflects partisan politics, they are trivializing meaningful debate and implicitly challenging the patriotism of critics.

Over the three months I've been blogging, I've tried to present lots of reasons why the war in Iraq was bad policy. The unilateral war divides the US from its closest allies (threatening NATO and the UN), it diverts attention and resources from the war on terror, and potentially exposes the US to years and years of costly occupation of a hostile and dangerous land.

These are real concerns, not partisan.

Most of the opponents of Iraq war favored the Afghan war and want to prosecute the war on terror more effectively.

I will be quite surprised if the 2004 presidential election is framed as a rational discussion of the best anti-terror (or Iraq) policy.