NATO's Humanitarian Hypocrisy

Reports coming out of Sirte, Libya point to an ongoing humanitarian disaster as a pitched battle for control of the coastal city drags on. Residents say that neighborhoods are bombed and shelled indiscriminately, doctors in the overwhelmed hospitals complain of shortages of everything from medicine to fuel for their generators, while tens of thousands of people remain hunkered down in their houses, fearful of retribution if they leave the city limits.

This sounds like exactly the type of situation NATO intervened in Libya to prevent as part of their “humanitarian” mission, except many of the bombs falling on Sirte are being dropped by NATO aircraft. Sirte is the hometown of Moammar Gadhafi, and is the largest remaining stronghold of support for the old regime. The Libyan rebels have launched several attacks trying to drive into the center of Sirte, but so far all have been turned back. So they appear to be falling back to the old Gadhafi-era tactic of just blasting the city to pieces. Rebel leadership claims that the civilian population of Sirte has fled and the only people left are militias loyal to Gadhafi; or alternatively that any civilians left in the city are being used by Gadhafi militias as “human shields”.

But reporters from Reuters offer a different view. They have talked with citizens in Sirte and report that while many still support Gadhafi, they are neither fighters nor human shields. Many, instead, are simply unwilling to abandon their homes or are more fearful of rebel retribution if they were to leave town than they are of falling bombs and mortars. There is some evidence supporting their fears; several weeks ago, the UK's Telegraph newspaper reported from Tawarga , a city of 10,000, now turned into a ghost town. Tawarga was a center of support for Gadhafi that fell to the rebels, who promptly emptied it. As one rebel commander said: “Tawarga no longer exists.”

A true humanitarian mission would prevent wanton revenge attacks like this, since in addition to being morally wrong, they also make the eventual process of reconciliation between the warring sides all the more difficult. But as NATO has managed to prove, the humanitarian mission talk was all a front anyway for a policy of ridding the West of a major irritant in Col. Gadhafi. NATO gave up any pretext of a humanitarian mission when they began to act as the de facto air force for the rebel movement, including staging precision bombing runs against Gadhafi's headquarters during the rebel's final assault on Tripoli. The generals back at NATO HQ in Brussels were probably disappointed when the rebels failed to find Gadhafi's body among the rubble.

Staging a humanitarian mission means protecting civilians, all the civilians, not just the ones who agree with your worldview. Through their actions, NATO and its member nations (the United States included) have shown that what's going on in Libya is not an exercise in humanitarian intervention, but rather a perversion of it.

Kim's Excellent Siberian Adventure

Though largely overshadowed by events elsewhere in the world, North Korea's reclusive leader, Kim Jong-il has spent the past few days meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and touring sites in Russia's Far East and Siberia regions. The trip marks the first time in almost a decade that the Dear Leader has paid a visit to his former Cold War ally.

The reason for the trip, of course, is business and to boost ties between the two nations. Russia got the ball rolling by pledging a gift of 50,000 tons of wheat to perpetually-hungry North Korea. Russia's real goal though is to get North Korea to give permission for the construction of a natural gas pipeline across their territory so that Russia can ship its gas directly to South Korea. Traditionally, most of Russia's natural gas has gone west, though pipelines, to markets in Europe. But Russia in recent years has been trying to diversify their gas clientele; they are actively working on liquid natural gas (or LNG) export facilities on the Pacific coast and north central Russia that would allow them to ship gas via LNG tanker to any part of the globe. A pipeline to South Korea would also give Russia another lucrative outlet for their gas, with the pipeline likely ensuring a long-term agreement between the two countries. Of course, this will also subject the Russia-South Korea gas relationship to the whims of the always mercurial Mr. Kim, a situation that seems all too similar, from a Russian perspective that is, to their relationship with Ukraine, which is currently the major transit point for their European gas shipments. Friction between Russia and Ukraine over payments for that gas has resulted in several shutdowns of the pipeline network in the past few years, causing fuel shortages across Europe.

But Russia seems willing to risk it with North Korea. One reason for the Russian position could be the unfolding events in Libya. Russian companies, like the quasi-national energy conglomerate Gazprom, currently have large contracts with the Gadhafi regime to develop Libya's oil and gas reserves. With Gadhafi seemingly on his way out, there is fear in Russia that a new rebel-backed government will be pro-NATO and by extension, anti-Russian, meaning Gazprom and other Russian firms could find themselves frozen out of the new Libya (early word from the would-be rebel government though is that they will honor all existing oil and gas contracts). From the other side, there are signs that Kim Jong-il may be looking to once again play nice with the international community. During his visit, word was leaked that North Korea may be willing to declare a moratorium in their pursuit of nuclear weapons, a key precondition set by the international community for any talks with North Korea.

Its also been interesting to see the Dear Leader in the flesh in Russia. For the past couple of years, rumors have circulated about Kim Jong-il's health, with most centering on the belief that he suffered a major stroke. Getting news about Kim out of North Korea is always a tricky matter since the state-controlled media has a penchant for running old footage of Kim as current events coverage. In the few verifiable current pictures of him, Kim looked thin and pretty bad shape. Kim's Siberia trip seems to be agreeing with him though. While he does look markedly older (Kim is somewhere near 70 years old), he looks more like his pudgy, strangely-content self than he has in other recent images.

A Libyan Von Steuben?

The speed of the Libyan rebels charge into Tripoli on Sunday seemed to take even them by surprise. On Saturday rebel spokesmen announced that with the capital surrounded on three sides and with their forces less than 20 miles from the city center, a final assault would begin within days. Less than a day later, rebel forces were in Green Square, the plaza at the center of Tripoli that Moammar Gadhafi had used for so many photo-ops. Two of Gadhafi's sons had been captured by rebel forces, though The Man himself was still at-large as of Monday morning. It's difficult to imagine a Libya without Gadhafi, the strange Colonel has been the leader of Libya my entire life, and then some. But it is impossible to imagine him clinging to power now – rumors are circulating that he has already fled the country, perhaps to neighboring Algeria or Chad.

It has been quite a reversal for Gadhafi and for the Libyan rebels as well, who until recently, quite frankly, were a fairly inept fighting force, often winning ground one day and losing it the next. That's not meant to be an insult to the rebel fighters, but more a nod to the fact that they were not professional soldiers, but rather students, office workers and tradesmen who found themselves thrown into a war. It reminded me of another collection of citizen-soldiers, the American Colonial Army. Like the Libyans, they were a collection of average men who found themselves thrown into combat, and like the Libyans, they were initially awful at it. That is until a man named Friedrich von Steuben showed up at the American encampment at Valley Forge. While largely forgotten to history, and overshadowed by Revolution-era icons like George Washington, Von Steuben deserves at least some of the credit for winning the American Revolution.

Von Steuben presented himself to the Colonial leadership as a Prussian nobleman. He almost certainly oversold his own credentials, but Von Steuben had been trained by the Prussian military, one of the finest fighting forces in Europe. Von Steuben set about teaching the ragtag collection of farmers and merchants gathered at Valley Forge the basics of soldiering, drilling basic military concepts into them during the course of the winter. A proper Colonial Army would emerge from Valley Forge, one capable of finally standing up in battle against the British, thanks to the efforts of Von Steuben.

The sudden recent success of the Libyan rebels makes me think that they had their own Von Steuben somewhere; perhaps it was thanks to the efforts of NATO advisers, or officers who defected from Gadhafi's military, perhaps we'll never know. But somehow the Libyan rebels were able to turn themselves from a collection of amateur into an effective fighting force, and now the reign of one of the world's longest-ruling dictators appears to be at an end.

Notes on Norway

A few quick thoughts following the tragic terror attacks in Norway last Friday that have left as many as 76 people dead. If you followed the events as they happened on Friday, you will recall that details were slow to emerge, especially about the perpetrator and any possible motives. Of course a lack of information did nothing to stop posters on Internet chat boards from afixing the blame on the usual suspects – Islamic terrorists. The standard arguments were trotted out: That this is just what we should be expecting since Islam is a religion of hate, that it was the goal of Islamic extremists (and by extension of all Muslims) to create one global caliphate under sharia law; blame was assigned, Norway's immigration laws were just too lax and that this was inevitable as they took in refugees from the Arab world (like war-displaced Iraqis); and motives were suggested, primarily Norway's support for NATO missions in Afghanistan and Libya.

Of course the perpetrator turned out to be a white Norwegian guy, who in America we would describe as being a “Christian conservative”. He seems to hold himself up as some sort of crusader, warning that Norwegian (and European) identity was being lost due to immigration and who hoped that his attack would spark a inter-cultural civil war within Europe.

The obvious take away here is not to jump to conclusions when some horrid event like this occurs. Evil comes in all colors and creeds. Are there Islamic extremists who would gladly perpetrate such an act? Surely there are. But it is just as wrong to scapegoat an entire religion of a billion people for the actions of a splinter minority as it would be to call Christianity a religion of hate because of this man's actions. The terror attacks in Norway seem to be turning the focus of European security agencies onto far-right groups across Europe, many of whom have been preaching an increasingly hateful anti-immigrant (which depending on the group, can be aimed at Muslims, Africans, or even other Europeans) message. These groups will likely fall under increased scrutiny following the Norway attacks. It's worth mentioning that when the US Dept. of Justice issued a report warning of the same possibility among American extremist anti-immigrant groups, the DOJ was roundly condemned both by Republican politicians and by the taste-makers on the Right, talk-radio hosts, even though it was a man who identified with America's home-grown far-right anti-immigrant/anti-government who was responsible for the worst pre-9/11 terror attack in American history, the bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City.

One final note, during their coverage of memorial services in Norway on Monday, the BBC reported that a number of Muslims were attending services being held in cathedrals around Oslo. When one Muslim was asked by the BBC why they were attending a service in a church, they replied that it was a house of God, and that they felt the need to attend and express their grief. As Norwegians.

Chinese Stealth, American Research

China caused a stir, and something of a minor diplomatic incident, earlier this month when they undertook the first flight of their stealth fighter jet, the J-20, during a visit by US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. I wonder if the Chinese were kind enough to thank Gates for all the help America unwittingly gave China in building the jet?

According to a new report on the BBC, the J-20 owes much of its stealthy design to parts from an American F-117 Nighthawk stealth jet shot down during the NATO-led, and US-backed bombing campaign against Serbia in 1999. The F-117 was the first operational stealth aircraft employed by any military in the world; a stealth aircraft uses a combination of shape and radio wave-absorbing materials to make the airplane nearly invisible to radar. Yet somehow the Serbians still managed to shoot one down during the conflict, military sources from the Balkan region say that Chinese intelligence agents reached the crash site and retrieved parts of the aircraft, which were believed to have given Chinese engineers a great advantage in building the J-20 they recently unveiled. The story does make some sense since in 1999 there were deep ties between Serbia and China, at the time the US angrily accused China of sharing military intelligence with Serbia. (It's worth noting that during the bombing campaign against Serbia, the Chinese embassy was “accidentally” struck by an errant bomb.) It is also strange, based on the BBC report, that the United States didn't make an effort to secure the wreckage of the F-117, or at least destroy it. The crash site was allegedly visited by Chinese, American and Russian officials and even today pieces of the F-117 are displayed in a museum in Belgrade, Serbia.

Of course China doesn't seem to have taken the most valuable lesson from the F-117 wreckage; namely that stealth technology isn't all that it is cracked up to be. Even though building a stealth jet today is the holy grail of the world's most advanced air forces, the planes do have one glaring weakness – while it is possible to make the aircraft itself nearly invisible to radar, it's not possible to disguise the turbulence it leaves as it moves though the air. Just like a boat leaves a wake in the water as it moves, so to does an airplane. And while American officials dismissed the Serbian downing of the F-117 in 1999 as a “lucky shot”, in fact the Serbs had figured out a clever way to use Doppler radar (the same kind your local weatherman uses) to track the wake of the F-117. All they had to do then was shoot at the point where the wake was starting to hit the airplane.

Getting back to the Chinese J-20, in addition to thanking the US, China probably also owes Russia a debt of gratitude as well. A few weeks ago, the Washington Post published this article about how despite their best efforts, the Chinese defense industry has had little luck in creating durable jet engines for their air force and were looking into long-term deals with Russia for a supply of aircraft engines. Just a little something to keep in mind next time you read an article about the growing might of the Chinese military.

Tali-scam

If you've read this site for awhile, you probably know that I've been pretty critical of the whole US/NATO mission in Afghanistan; but the latest story about the Taliban imposter warlord takes the cake. In case you missed this one, here's a brief recap:

For the past few months the idea of negotiating with at least the more moderate elements of the Taliban has been gaining traction, the rationale being if more reasonable pieces of the Taliban could be peeled away and reintegrated into the Afghan establishment, it just might put an end to the insurgency. Symbol of these efforts were the ongoing negotiations with one Mullah Akthar Mohammad Mansour, a “senior leader” with the Taliban. NATO thought that Mansour was valuable enough to lay a lot of cash on him (six figures by some accounts) and fly him in for meetings with President Hamid Karzai. Sounds great, except that the “Mullah Akthar Mohammad Mansour” wasn't the real Mullah Akthar Mohammad Mansour, a fact that the coalition is just learning now. Who this pseudo-Mansour was/is – whether he was a simple scam artist, a Taliban agent or something else entirely – will remain a secret since he snuck across the border into Pakistan and disappeared once the jig was up. Beyond being hugely embarrassing for the coalition to be scammed like this, what does the pseudo-Mansour affair say about the coalition's whole vaunted counter-insurgency strategy in the first place? The core idea of COIN is that you get to know your adversary on a personal level so that you can out maneuver him in the hearts and minds of the general population; but how well can the coalition know their enemy though if they don't even realize that one of their top commanders is in fact an imposter?

The Taliban imposter story would be criticism enough of the ongoing Afghan mission, but it comes out at the same time as the results of Afghanistan's recent parliamentary elections are being made public, and while attempts are being made to present them as a triumph of democracy, it's looking like the Afghans have succeeded in running an even more corrupt election than their last fraud-plagued vote. So far Afghanistan's Independent Election Commission (IEC) has managed to toss out 1.3 million ballots – about one-quarter of all votes cast and more than the million votes tossed out in Hamid Karzai's reelection last year – along with about 10% of the elected candidates. And here's where things start to get interesting: in the last election, the fraud swung heavily in favor of Hamid Karzai, ballot boxes were stuffed with Karzai votes, those for his main challenger Dr. Abdullah Abdullah were tossed out; this time the vote seems to have gone heavily against the Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group and traditional cultural elites.

One explanation being put forward is that the Taliban is also heavily Pashtun, so vote turnout was lowest in the provinces where the Taliban is most active allowing other ethnic groups, like the traditionally oppressed, but largely peaceful Hazaras, to turn out in large numbers, giving them a larger-than-expected share of the Afghan Parliament. But a simpler explanation is also emerging – a good, old-fashioned money for votes scam. There are reports in several news outlets that members of the IEC contacted various candidates and offered to give them more votes (or take away votes from rival candidates) for the right price. Backing up this claim are stories of elected candidates suddenly being told that they in fact “lost”. The situation is worst in heavily-Pashtun Ghazni province, which weeks after the vote still has no official results due to widespread claims of fraud. The situation has gotten so bad that Afghanistan's Attorney General Mohammed Ishaq Aloko announced he'll be launching an investigation into vote totals across the country as well as into the IEC itself. In other words the situation is quickly turning into Florida 2000, only on a country-wide scale and with heavily-armed terrorist militias.

And just to put a sad post-script on this whole story, check out this photo-essay from Foreign Policy of pictures of Kabul in the early 1960s, during that all-to-brief time when Afghanistan looked like it was on its way to becoming a modern, democratic, fairly-liberal state.

Did Wes Clark Almost Start World War III?

That's the inference being made by James Blunt in a new interview with the BBC. Blunt is probably best known in the United States for his soft rock hit single “You're Beautiful”; but before making his mark on the airwaves, Blunt was a cavalry officer in the British military. In 1999 he was leading troops as part of the NATO mission in Kosovo aimed at halting the fighting between the Kosovars and Serbian forces. A key point in the NATO strategy to establish security in Kosovo was to gain control of the airfield outside the capital, Pristina; but in a surprise move Russian forces swept through Kosovo and seized the airfield ahead of the NATO troops. While the Russians were supposedly part of KFOR, the international alliance that had come together to halt the fighting in Kosovo, suspicion ran high in the US/NATO command that the Russians were in fact trying to hinder the KFOR mission on behalf of their traditional allies, the Serbians who feared Kosovo would breakaway from Serbia (a fear that turned out to be correct).

According to Blunt, General Wesley Clark, then the NATO Supreme Commander Europe, ordered NATO forces to attack and “destroy” the Russians and take control of the Pristina airfield by force. Blunt, who was at the head of the NATO column approaching the airfield, would have led the attack, but the orders seemed so crazy to him that he called up his own superior officers for clarification. Commander of the British forces, General Sir Michael Jackson ordered Blunt and his troops to stand down, saying: “I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War III.” The NATO troops instead encircled the airbase; the Russians, who had rushed into Pristina in such a hurry that they didn't bring enough supplies for a siege offered to share command of the airbase two days later.

Now frankly I've always thought of Wes Clark as one of the better voices out there on foreign affairs, but his command to attack the Russians is just daffy and very possibly could have led to WWIII. I'd be tempted to doubt Blunt, except for the fact that Jackson backs up his account, and if you remember any of the news accounts from the KFOR mission, then you remember that Sir Mike Jackson was most definitely a no BS kind of guy.

For his part, Blunt says that even if Jackson had not backed him up, he still would have refused General Clark's order to attack the airfield and the Russians, even though it likely would have meant his court martial, since the orders were so blatantly reckless. He explained to the BBC that a “sense of moral judgment is drilled into us as soldiers in the British army” as to why he would have refused Clark's orders.

Russia Joins US In Afghan Drug Raid

Four agents from Russia's drug enforcement agency joined American troops last week in a raid on drug labs operating in Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan. The joint US-Russian operation destroyed four labs – three producing heroin and one morphine – and seized an estimated 200 million doses of heroin according to the Russian government. The raid marks Russia's first military action in Afghanistan since the Soviet Red Army withdrew from the country in 1989. Cheap Afghani heroin has become a major public health problem in Russia. With easy access into Russia via former Soviet states like Tajikistan, heroin has been flooding Russian cities with disastrous results – an estimated 30,000 people died from heroin overdoses in Russia last year alone. Russia, meanwhile, has been critical of the US/NATO military operation in Afghanistan, saying that they are not doing enough to curtain poppy cultivation (the poppy flower provides opium, the source material for heroin/morphine) or to destroy Afghan labs that produce the drugs, since Afghan heroin is a major problem for Russia but not Europe or the United States.

Of course one person not happy with last week's raid was Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who called the Russian participation in the raid a “violation” of Afghanistan's national sovereignty and threatened that “Afghanistan will respond seriously to any repetition of such actions.” In making his statement, Karzai played up latent resentments in Afghanistan over the Soviet Union's decade-long occupation of their country. No word on whether or not Karzai was upset that the raid might have cut into his brother Ahmed Wali’s drug business (perhaps the “serious response” Karzai threatened would be Ahmed Wali's drug connections sending more cheap heroin into Russia...). There were subsequent media reports that Hamid Karzai approved the drug raids, which is the kind of flip-flop that will do nothing to calm fears that Karzai is too unstable to actually effectively govern his country.

That was one of the issues raised by former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer in his recent deconstruction of American foreign policy towards Afghanistan. It is an article worth reading, but the highlights include a critique of the top US commander, Gen. Petraeus' assertion that the recent US “surge” in Afghanistan is working. Scheuer notes that Petraeus is making these claims just before the Congressional elections, and that Petraeus made similar claims about the success of the “surge” in Iraq just before the 2008 US elections; claims that today look overly optimistic at best, or outright dishonest at worst, given the deteriorating security situation in Iraq. Turning back to Afghanistan, Scheuer shoots a lot of holes in the conventional wisdom pushed by US policymakers that if the United States were to withdraw, Afghanistan would once again become a Taliban safe-haven (a point we've made here on a number of occasions as well). He goes on to say that while the early stages of US/NATO involvement allowed some of Afghanistan's ethnic minorities access to a political process that had formerly excluded them, the focus during the past few years on the southern and eastern parts of the country, dominated by Afghanistan's largest group, the Pashtuns, have largely reversed these gains, having the effect of restoring the Pashtuns to their historical role as the dominant force in Afghanistan, increasing the likelihood of yet another civil war in the country.

Finally, the BBC recently published another interview with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader who eventually put an end to the Red Army's Afghan mission. As he has said publicly before, Gorbachev stated that it would be “impossible” for the US/NATO coalition to win in Afghanistan and suggested that the United States withdraw their forces if they did not want to wind up with “another Vietnam.” The irony here is that the case for US backing of Islamic militants in Afghanistan following the Soviet invasion in 1979 was presented as a way to suck the Soviet Union into their version of Vietnam. Gorbachev again repeated a claim to the BBC that when the Soviet Union decided to withdraw their military from Afghanistan, they struck a deal with the United States and Pakistan that they would also stop funding militants within Afghanistan and all would allow the country to develop as “a neutral, democratic country, that would have good relations with its neighbors and with both the US and the USSR.” Gorbachev contends that the US, via Pakistan, continued to support the anti-government militants in Afghanistan in violation of this agreement, which led to the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal and eventually to the rise of al-Qaeda.

A Kindler, Gentler Military Junta

Sometimes you wonder what people are thinking… Foreign Policy magazine reports that last year, a consulting firm founded by the men responsible for the prosecution of Sierra Leone’s President Charles Taylor on charges of crimes against humanity offered their services to the neighboring West African nation of Guinea to educate his military on how to observe the basic norms of human rights law. If that’s not odd enough, the training material included a PowerPoint presentation with slides that included such nuggets of wisdom as: soldiers should not shoot civilians (you would kind of hope you wouldn’t need to teach basics like that).


Ultimately the training sessions never took place because of an attempted coup against Guinea’s current junta chief Captain Moussa Dadis Camara. It got me thinking though about the over-reliance on PowerPoint presentations these days and reminded me of a story I read back when Poland was being brought into NATO. A group of Polish generals were brought to observe a NATO mock military maneuver, the day of course started with a PowerPoint presentation about the upcoming operation. This being the 1990s, the Poles were duly impressed by the (then) hi-tech presentation, but they pointed out to their American and European hosts that in a real battle, while NATO command were off preparing their PowerPoint slides, the Poles would be out in the field killing their troops.

Medvedev Meets His (Paris) Match

In-depth interviews with the Russian president in the Western media are somewhat of a rare occurrence, so I wanted to make sure to link to this story about Dmitry Medvedev’s recent sit-down with Paris Match magazine.

The motivation for the interview was France’s launching of the “Year of Russia”, a yearlong celebration of Russian culture and Russo-Franco relations. Beyond the kind of platitudes you’d expect him to give towards France during such an occasion, along with some warm memories of a trip to Paris, Medvedev actually had a few interesting things to say about international affairs. Among them are Medvedev’s belief that a new set of regulations need to be introduced into the global financial markets (something France’s Nikolas Sarkozy has been pushing for during the past few months), and that while Russia doesn’t view NATO as a threat, they’re also are not happy with the ongoing expansion of the military alliance. As for Iran, Medvedev didn’t seem terribly interested in slapping a new round of sanctions on the country, saying instead that it’s up to Iran to make a decision on bringing their nuclear program inline with international norms. On the domestic side Medvedev said there was still a lot of work to do in battling corruption and that Russia needs to diversify their economy away from its current over-reliance on extracting raw minerals. He also insisted again that he and Vladimir Putin have a “good relationship”.

A full transcript of the interview can be found here.

We'll Build If You Pay

Russia's envoy to NATO Dmitry Rogozin has offered his country's help in rebuilding Afghanistan, so long as someone else picks up the bill. According to the Russian business daily Kommersant, Rogozin said that Russia could assist the Afghans in rebuilding more than 100 structures originally built by Soviet engineers during the Cold War, along with also helping to repair the country's energy and road networks. The Soviet Union provided monetary and technical assistance to Afghanistan for decades during the Cold War; the Soviet invasion in 1979 was meant to prop up Afghanistan's communist government.

But in a twist, Rogozin is saying Russian help today should be paid for not by Russia but by NATO members who cannot send troops to Afghanistan. Even though there is a NATO mission ongoing in Afghanistan to support the government of President Hamid Karzai and fight the Taliban, not every NATO member-nation is actively supporting the effort. No word yet from NATO on Rogozin's offer.

Meanwhile, it will be interesting to see what (if anything) President Obama says about the United States' involvement in Afghanistan during tonight's State of the Union address. Keep an eye out tomorrow as well for a major speech by President Karzai where he may talk about a reconciliation offer to some members of the Taliban.

Bosnia, A Test Case for Multilateralism

In my latest post over at The Mantle I tackle the topic of Bosnia, actually former Senator Bob Dole's take on the situation in Bosnia, which he worries could be split apart because of gridlock within the government between the Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat/Bosnian Muslim sides. With the specter of a new Balkan war in the background, Dole calls for the US to get involved to fix the political situation or risk disaster. My take though is that Bosnia could provide serve as a great test case for the new era of multilateralism that President Obama has made the center point of his foreign policy.

Give my whole argument a read over at The Mantle.

Obama's Nobel Prize? (and an honor for Bill Clinton too)

I'll admit, I was pretty surprised to wake up this morning to hear that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. It's nice to know that he was pretty surprised himself.

Don't get me wrong, I think Obama, in broad terms, is on the right path in International Affairs: his multilateral approach to world affairs is correct - no single power dominates the world and future cooperation will depend on building coalitions to tackle global problems; I agree with his calls in Ghana and at the United Nations for countries to work together on common problems and for people around the world to hold their governments accountable fpr their actions (or inactions); he's right to try to "reset" relations with Russia; and while I think trying to rid the world of nuclear weapons is a pipe-dream, the goal at least is a nice one.

But I have to wonder what the Nobel Committee was thinking - Obama has great promise (their rationale in giving him the Prize), but little concrete success so far. Historically the Nobel Peace Prize has gone to people or groups in recognition of a past success, like when Menachem Begin and Mohamed Anwar Al-Sadat won in 1978 for signing the historic peace deal between Israel and Egypt, not to people for what they may do in the future.

And as Obama was getting his Nobel Peace Prize, former President Bill Clinton was getting an award of his own - a giant statue of himself to be unveiled in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. The Kosovars hail Clinton as the man who convinced NATO to launch an aerial bombing campaign against Serbia, bringing to an end what the Kosovars say was a Serbian genocide against them and eventually setting the stage for them to declare independence from Serbia.

No word yet on whether Clinton will travel to Kosovo to see his likeness unveiled.

And On The Fourth Day, Biden Totally Steps In It

Vice-President Joe Biden had been doing a fairly good job during his visit to Ukraine and Georgia this week of supporting both countries without upsetting US efforts at resetting relations with their touchy neighbor, Russia. That is until his speech today to Georgia's Parliament and a visit to Georgians displaced by last summer's conflict with Russia.

Biden told the refugees that Russia "used a pretext to invade your country" and had "isolated itself more" because of the conflict. I'm sure that went over well with the Georgians, but it's not really a good description of last August's events unless you call the Georgian military's attacking the South Ossetian city of Tskhinvali in the middle of the night a 'pretext', then sure, Russia used a pretext to invade Georgia.

The reality of the situation is that no one has clean hands over last summer's conflict. For months before the conflict, both the Russian and Georgian sides were trying to provoke each other - an expression of the deep personal dislike between the leaders of the two countries: Russia's Vladimir Putin and Georgia's Mikhail Saakashvili. The European Union has been sitting on a report that puts most of the blame for last year's conflict squarely on the Georgian side, saying it was sparked by Georgia's attack on South Ossetia (an idiotic attempt of bringing the breakaway region back under Georgia's control after 15 years). And as for Biden's other claim - that Russia is "isolated" - he might want to check with the EU, NATO and his boss, Barack Obama - all of whom are working to rebuild relations now with Moscow after a lull following the conflict. So much for pretext and isolation…

Biden went on to tell the Georgian Parliament, to a standing ovation, "we will not recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states and we urge the world not to recognize them." So far South Ossetia and Abkhazia have been recognized as independent states only by Russia (and Nicaragua). But while we are urging the world not to recognize Georgia's breakaway regions, we do want them to consider Serbia's breakaway region, Kosovo, as its own country. I’ve yet to hear a good explanation from the US government as to why the difference. The main reason seems to be that Georgia is an ally of ours while were not too crazy about Serbia.

As you'd expect, Biden's comments have already angered Russia (according to the BBC this evening), I am sure there will be more fallout there in the coming days. Biden did tell Georgian authorities that getting South Ossetia and Abkhazia back by force was not an option, and that Georgia needed to do more to "deepen" their democracy. President Saakashvili pledged (again) to institute democratic reforms, but he's promised reforms a number of times in the past without actually doing anything to make them a reality.

And there's my problem. I think that the United States should support the peaceful, democratic development of both Georgia and Ukraine and support the Georgians and Ukrainians, but we should do nothing to encourage or support the utterly dysfunctional governments of either state. Neither Georgia nor Ukraine is ever going to move forward until they get rid of their current, petty leaders.

VP Biden On Cheer-Up Tour of Georgia, Ukraine

Vice-President Joe Biden is heading overseas for a visit to two of our Eastern European allies, Georgia and Ukraine. The context for the visit is basically to tell them not to worry, that even while the United States is trying to 'reset' relations with Russia, we won't forget about them and their desire to join NATO. But supporting their NATO ambitions now is exactly the wrong thing to do.

First, it violates (again) a pledge that the United States made to the newly-independent Russia just after the end of the Soviet Union back in the 90’s when the countries of Eastern Europe were clamoring for NATO membership: don't worry, we won't let NATO expand into the former Soviet Union. It's a promise that the US has already broken by supporting the membership of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. (And if you want to know why US-Russian relations are in a bad state, broken NATO promises are a big reason).

But second, promises aside, neither Georgia nor Ukraine deserves NATO membership, at least not now. NATO membership has been one of the 'rewards' to Eastern/Central European countries for making the transition from Communism to Democracy. But the governments of both Ukraine and Georgia are a mess. Ukraine has been paralyzed by political infighting for almost two years; their parliament just ended its session this week with a fistfight among some of its members. Meanwhile in Georgia, protesters have occupied parts of Tbilisi for three months now, charging that President Mikhail Saakashvili has become exactly the same kind of petty autocrat that he helped depose during Georgia's much-celebrated 'Rose Revolution'.

Biden's also going to Georgia to tell them (and Russia) that the US supports their 'territorial integrity' and their claim to the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia that Russia has recognized as independent countries. Of course in May during his own 'reset' mission to Serbia, Biden told the Serbs that the United States did recognize the independence of their breakaway region Kosovo, that Kosovo was gone and the Serbs needed to stop their crying about it. Mix messages Mr. Vice-President?

Meanwhile European officials are delaying the release of a report into last summer's conflict between Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia because the report, apparently, will put a lot of the blame on the Georgian side by suggesting they started the fighting - a move that's not politically popular with the British (or the US for that matter), who want the blame for the war to fall squarely on Russia. EU officials say they don't want to release the report now because they're worried about raising tensions in the region.

Like Biden's visit isn't going to do that, especially given Biden's penchant for, shall we say, going off script? I expect there's a good chance that Biden's visit will undo all the progress that Presidents Obama and Medvedev made in mending US-Russian relations two weeks ago in Moscow.

Russia: energy resources could spark future wars

Securing sources of energy could lead to wars in the near future and the oil and gas rich regions of the Arctic, Central Asia and Caspian Sea may be the battlefields according to Russia's National Security Strategy paper released this week.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed off on the report, which goes on to say that Russia must be prepared for the scenario where nations resort to the use of military force to secure needed oil and gas reserves. Russia borders all three of the energy-rich regions cited in the strategy.

A commentary on the report posted by the Voice of America keyed in on another segment of the strategy paper where Russia says that expansion of NATO to countries neighboring Russia is "unacceptable" - the United States so far has been a strong backer of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. The continuing plans for a US-backed anti-missile shield to be based in Poland and the Czech Republic was also cited as a "security threat" to Russia in the report.

But despite those hurdles, other observers said that the National Security Strategy showed positive signs of Russia wanting a peaceful, constructive relationship with its former Cold War adversaries, the report itself even states that Russia seeks an "equal and full-fledged strategic partnership with the United States on the basis of coinciding interests." Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs magazine said, "the absence of tough rhetoric (in the report) reflects expectations that new agreements with the United States could be reached." He added that after years of tough talk from the Bush administration, it has taken Russian officials some time to believe that US-Russian relations could actually change in any meaningful way under President Obama. (See also this post about European-Russian perceptions and how they affect international relations.)

The Canwest News Service this week published the details of a meeting between Russian and Canadian officials that show progress between the two sides over the Arctic region. It’s estimated that a quarter of all the undiscovered oil and gas deposits left on Earth lie under the Arctic Ocean. With sea ice retreating as a result of global warming, the view of the Arctic is quickly changing from one of a frozen wasteland to a potential economic bonanza.

But that change in attitude has caused a rise in tensions among the nations bordering the Arctic - when it was a wasteland the countries surrounding it didn't worry too much about national boundaries, but now they are becoming more and more eager to assert their territorial claims. In their meeting, Russia supported Canada's claim for jurisdiction over the Northwest Passage - a potentially very lucrative commercial searoute that could shave weeks off the journey from Asia to Europe or the East Coast of North America, while also suggesting Russia, Canada and Denmark submit a joint proposal to the United Nations to determine national boundaries on the floor of the Arctic Ocean.

What's the big deal there? Oil and natural gas. Russia is attempting to claim that a vast tract of the seabed (extending right up to the North Pole) is in fact part of the Russian landmass and that rightfully all of the oil and gas beneath it therefore belongs to them. Denmark is pushing the same claim for their side (keep in mind that Greenland technically belongs to Denmark, hence their interest in the Arctic). Having the United Nations fix national boundaries would help to lessen some of the Arctic tensions.

The National Security Strategy paper will guide Russian security and government priorities through 2020.

Is another summer war coming for Georgia?

A sequel to last August's conflict in Georgia - the one that saw Russian troops push almost to Georgia's capital Tbilisi and Georgia lose what little control they had over their two breakaway regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia - is looking more and more likely.

Let's start with NATO's ill-conceived decision to go ahead with exercises this week in Georgia. Rightly or wrongly, Russia is terribly paranoid about NATO's eastward expansion, especially where Georgia and Ukraine are considered. NATO's response has been that these exercises were scheduled more than a year ago, before the August conflict between Georgia and Russia, and that Russia was even invited to participate. That may all be true, but given the war and the tense feelings, postponing the exercise until things were calmer would have been the wise move. But NATO didn't want it to seem like Russia was bossing them around, so for pride’s sake, NATO went ahead with the Georgia exercise, despite the possibility they could destabilize the fragile peace in the region (an ironic move for an organization dedicated to promoting peace and security).

But Russia isn't blameless either. Just after the NATO exercises began, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed two pacts giving Russia jurisdiction over Abkhazia and South Ossetia's borders with Georgia - a move the European Union, in turn, says will destabilize the region. This will put Russian troops eye-to-eye with the same Georgian forces they faced last August. And its not the first military agreement Russia has signed with the two regions they (and Nicaragua) recognize as independent nations - Russia has been setting up military bases in both places and recently agreed to establish a new naval base in Abkhazia, which could one day host part of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Then there's Georgia itself, which, to put it bluntly, is a mess. Opposition protests against Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili are moving into their second month, with rallies drawing tens of thousands demanding he step down - they blame Saakashvili for failing to go through with democratic reforms, for ruining the economy and for the disastrous August war. Last week an entire tank battalion in the Georgian army, stationed just outside Tbilisi, briefly mutinied, before surrendering peacefully.

Saakashvili blamed the mutiny on Russian agents; the opposition said that Saakashvili staged the whole thing to discredit them, while the commander of the battalion said that his troops revolted to protest the ongoing fight within the government. None of the explanations are good for Georgia though - if Saakashvili's right then Russia has infiltrated Georgia to such a degree then its only a matter of time until he's gone; if the opposition's right then there is no telling what Saakashvili might do to stay in power; and if we take the commander at his word then it shows a deep level of frustration among members of the military with the civilian government and a growing willingness to take action.

So Georgia seems to be teetering on the edge while being pushed by forces both external and domestic. But what makes a second conflict this summer such a possibility is how almost every side can see how more fighting would be in their best interests.

Saakashvili has staked much of his reputation on getting back the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia (a desire which led to last summer's war) - he could see a new conflict as a way of boosting his own reputation, while also hoping that new fighting would spark 'rally 'round the flag' feelings among his fellow Georgians. At the same time, the opposition could view a new war as the final nail in Saakashvili's coffin and hope that it would be the thing most Georgians would need to see him as an incompetent, unstable leader and finally turn on him.

Russia could also see a renewed conflict as a way of finally getting rid of the wildly pro-Western Saakashvili and hopefully replacing him with a more pro-Moscow leader. Russia would like a Georgian leader more willing to follow Moscow's lead on energy policy (Georgia currently hosts the only oil pipeline from Central Asia that does not pass through Russian territory) and desperately wants to reopen land routes to Armenia, a strongly pro-Moscow ally in the region, but one that is also cut off from Russia (a big problem for the Russian military forces based there).

Finally Abkhazia and South Ossetia could see a new conflict as a way of deepening their economic ties to Moscow and gaining more recognition as independent nations from the international community.

All in all it is likely to mean another summer of conflict in the Southern Caucasus. The simple fact of history is that when people want to go to war, they usually find a way.

Georgia mutiny fizzles, problems remain

The Georgian government managed to peacefully resolve a mutiny by an entire tank battalion stationed just outside of the capital, Tbilisi on Tuesday. And while the mutiny may be over, the underlying problems in Georgia remain.

Soldiers at the Mukhrovani military complex briefly revolted, demanding that the government of President Mikhail Saakashvili and his political opponents stop their feuding and begin dealing with the country's problems. Opposition groups have been staging massive protests in Tbilisi for the past three weeks, demanding that Saakashvili resign for failing to bring about democratic reforms, mismanaging the country's economy and for leading Georgia into a disastrous war against Russia last summer.

Col. Mamuka Gorgishvili, commander of the rebel tank battalion said, "watching the country being torn apart by the current standoff is unbearable," to explain why his troops chose to revolt.

But now that the uprising is over, for now, the finger-pointing has begun in earnest. Saakashvili is, of course, blaming the Russians for the uprising at Mukhrovani, saying it was part of a larger Russian-led coup attempt aimed at driving his government from power. Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin dismissed Saakashvili's accusation as being ridiculous. "If Saakashvili gets diarrhea, it must also be the hand or foot of Moscow," Rogozin said on Russian television, a humorous way of pointing out that Saakashvili now routinely blames all of Georgia's problems on Russia.

Georgia's opposition leaders, meanwhile, blamed the uprising on Saakashvili himself, suggesting that he staged the whole thing as a way of undermining the protests going on against his government and derailing a planned day of civil disobedience across Georgia. "What we saw looked like a one-man theater show," said opposition leader David Gamkrelidze after the uprising ended.

One thing is for sure; this won't be the end of the problems in Georgia, or the protests against Saakashvili.

Amnesty International accuses NATO of war crimes, ten years later

One of the world's top human rights groups is demanding that NATO be investigated for possible war crimes committed in Serbia ten years ago.

Last month marked the ten-year anniversary of the bombing campaign NATO launched to force Serbia to end military operations against separatists in the (then) Serbian province of Kosovo. At the time, NATO said the air campaign was needed to force a halt to atrocities NATO claimed the Serbs were committing against the Kosovars (since then evidence has come out that the Kosovars were committing atrocities of their own against the Serbs, but that's another post).

Now Amnesty International is calling for an investigation into what they're describing as a 'war crime' committed by NATO forces – the bombing of the headquarters of Radio Television Serbia (RTS) on April 23, 1999, an attack that killed 16 civilians and wounded 16 others. At the time, NATO claimed that RTS – located in the heart of Belgrade, far removed from Kosovo - was a legitimate target because it was the source of a massive anti-Kosovar propaganda that was stoking the Serbs to fight.

Amnesty disputes this claim, saying that RTS was a civilian installation, and thus exempt from attack under international law, and even if you accept the propaganda claim, NATO used 'disproportionate' force in the attack – then also grounds for a war crimes charge. They are calling on NATO member states to launch their own investigations.

That's pretty unlikely, but it’s (yet) another blow to NATO's credibility, which is at a pretty low level these days. For a different slant on the RTS bombing, check out this piece by Belgrade-based media outlet B92. The RTS headquarters still remains in ruins in the middle of Belgrade, the families of those killed in the attack are pushing for the site to remain a memorial to their loved ones.

NATO stirs the pot in Georgia

Here's one for the truly bad ideas file - next month NATO is planning to hold a large-scale exercise in Georgia. The exercise, dubbed "Cooperative Longbow 09/Cooperative Lancer 09" (and who is in charge of naming these things over at NATO anyway?), will bring together more than a dozen nations at a site just 12 miles from the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

The NATO exercise comes less than a year after the Russia-Georgia conflict last August, and just as NATO-Russia relations were showing some signs of improvement. As you can expect, Russia, which views NATO's presence in neighboring countries Ukraine and Georgia as a threat to Russian security, is not happy.

NATO points out though that the exercises were planned more than a year ago (before the August 2008 conflict) and that Russia was even invited to participate. Besides, they say, it’s basically just a logistics exercise - no heavy or light weaponry will be involved, so there is no threat at all to Russian security.

NATO and Georgia are eager to go forward with the exercise to prove to Russia that it doesn't have veto power over where or with what countries NATO operates. But there is another issue in play that the folks at NATO are ignoring. Right now there are ongoing protests in Georgia against the rule of President Mikhail Saakashvili, who the opposition not only blames for (from Georgia's point-of-view) the disastrous August war, but who they are also slamming for mismanaging the economy and failing to deliver on long-promised democratic reforms.

Unfortunately there is no way that Saakashvili isn't going to try to use next month's NATO exercises to his advantage in dealing with the opposition protests. I'd expect Saakashvili to push the NATO exercise as a way to legitimate his own rule (i.e. would NATO be partnering with Georgia if I wasn't a democrat?); I wouldn't be surprised if Mikhail were also to use them as a justification for cracking down on the so-far peaceful protests under the banner of 'national security'. And then there's the self-governed breakaway region of Abkhazia, which is threatening to hold its own military exercises in response to the NATO operation.

This is why NATO should steer clear of Georgia for the time being - not to appease Russia, but because Georgia's democracy isn't stable enough or developed enough to justify partnership with the organization. By going forward with the exercise, NATO is inserting itself into Georgian politics, it’s another mission bound to blow up in their face.