Author Archives: markdowe1

Britain, Foreign Affairs, Islamic State, Libya, United Nations

MPs blame Cameron for the rise of Islamic State

LIBYA

Intro: British chaotic intervention in Libya left a vacuum that has let jihadis thrive

Members of Parliament on the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee have warned that the ‘ill-conceived’ military intervention in Libya by David Cameron has helped to fuel the growth of Islamic State and left the world a more dangerous place.

In a devastating verdict, MPs have savaged the former prime minister’s judgement in rushing to war in 2011, saying the intervention was based on ‘erroneous assumptions’.

The cross-party committee accuses Mr Cameron of ignoring military chiefs and a lack of reliable intelligence to pursue an “opportunistic policy of regime change” in Libya.

And it says he gave little thought to how Libya would fare following the removal of dictator Colonel Gaddafi setting the scene for the country’s descent into anarchy and chaos.

The committee says that Mr Cameron’s Libyan adventure ‘was not informed by accurate intelligence’, with ministers underestimating the threat that the country could become an Islamist stronghold.

It concludes: ‘By the summer of 2011, the limited intervention to protect civilians had drifted into an opportunistic policy of regime change. That policy was not underpinned by a strategy to support and shape post-Gaddafi Libya.

‘The result was political and economic collapse, inter-militia and inter-tribal warfare, humanitarian and migrant crises, widespread human rights violations, the spread of Gaddafi regime weapons across the region and the growth of Islamic State in North Africa. Through his decision making in the National Security Council, former prime minister David Cameron was ultimately responsible for the failure to develop a coherent Libya strategy.’

The report, dated September 14, 2016, says Mr Cameron’s failings in Libya means Britain now has a “particular responsibility” to assist the war-ravaged country and help deal with the flood of migrants heading from its shores to Europe.

But it says ministers should not deploy troops to the country until it becomes more stable, warning they would become “an accessible Western Target” for IS and other militants. The committee’s chairman, Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, said: ‘The UK’s actions in Libya were part of an ill-conceived intervention, the results of which are still playing out today.’

An international coalition led by Britain and France launched airstrikes against Gaddafi’s forces in March 2011 after the regime threatened to attack the rebel-held city of Benghazi.

Mr Cameron claimed the intervention was necessary to prevent a massacre of civilians, but the new parliamentary report says that, despite appalling human rights abuses over 40 years, Gaddafi had no record of large-scale attacks on Libyan civilians.

It says that the Government ‘selectively took elements of Gaddafi’s rhetoric at face value’ without assessing the real threat.

MPs find that ministers and officials should have realised that the rebels included a “significant Islamist element”. They add: “The possibility that militant extremist groups would attempt to benefit from the rebellion would not have been the preserve of hindsight.”

The report also criticises Mr Cameron for ordering military action despite the reservations of the then Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Richards and MPs are scathing about the lack of post-war planning for the country.

The report cites unpublished research by the House of Commons Library showing Britain spent £320million bombing Libya, but just £25million on reconstruction.

Mr Cameron did not give evidence to the inquiry, saying he was too busy. A Foreign Office spokesman said the decision to intervene in Libya was an international one, called for by the Arab League and authorised by the UN.

18 September, 2016:

When David Cameron’s legacy as prime minister is written into the history books, his decision for Britain to join France in the 2011 military intervention against Libyan dictator Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is not likely to count in his favour. Insisting he had learnt the lessons and the litany of failures of the Iraq war, Mr Cameron was keen to emphasise that, so far as Libya was concerned, Britain had the full backing of a UN Security Council resolution, and that military intervention was vital if Gaddafi was to be prevented from massacring thousands of anti-government protesters in Benghazi.

But as the damning report by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on Libya makes clear, Mr Cameron’s attempt to develop a new paradigm for military intervention in rogue states was as flawed as Tony Blair’s arguments for invading Iraq. The report concludes that the decision to intervene was not based on accurate intelligence, the threat to civilians in Benghazi was overstated and the government failed to grasp that among the rebel factions were a significant number of Islamist radical fighters.

As Mr Cameron has already announced his decision to stand down from the House of Commons, he has avoided of being in the position of defending his government’s record in Libya (and also of explaining the role Mr Blair played in encouraging him to act).

Theresa May is yet to make clear her views on how she intends Britain will respond to future global challenges. But with conflicts in places such as Syria continuing to dominate the headlines, it is vital that, if Britain does need to respond militarily, it does not end up repeating the same mistakes Mr Blair and Mr Cameron made.

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Foreign Affairs, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, United Nations, United States

Restraining Pyongyang has become problematic

NORTH KOREA

North Korea’s fifth nuclear test: The seismic activity amounted to a total of 5.3 on the Richter scale.

North Korea’s fifth nuclear test: The seismic activity amounted to a total of 5.3 on the Richter scale.

Intro: North Korea’s increasingly forceful stance is making the international community extremely nervous

Some said it was just a matter of time until North Korea carried out another nuclear test. Kim Jong Un, who inherited power from his father in 2011, has accelerated the pace of nuclear bomb testing and the firing of ballistic missiles. Pyongyang would not have been pleased earlier this year with the imposition of new sanctions and would have been agitated with stern talks last week at the ASEAN summit. On September 9th, a national holiday that celebrates the founding of North Korea’s communist regime by Mr Kim’s grandfather, the country announced it had carried out its fifth test.

Troubling. Not least because of the force of the test. The explosion appeared to be at least 10 kilotons, and perhaps as many as 30, making it by far the most powerful device North Korea has yet tested. It triggered an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.3, alerting South Korea of the event before its troublesome neighbour confirmed it.

North Korea’s increasingly forceful stance is making the international community extremely nervous. Intelligence suggests the country has a stockpile of some 20 devices to which one is being added every six weeks. The earlier underground detonation carried out in January almost certainly was not the hydrogen bomb that North Korea had claimed, but that was followed by a series of missile tests. The claim in Pyongyang that it can now send a missile to America may be bluster, but it could almost certainly strike targets in both South Korea and Japan.

Of more concern is the question of whether North Korea can miniaturise a nuclear warhead that could be attached to one of those missiles, and robust enough to endure a trajectory that would take it into space and back. The North boasts that this is now possible, although analysts and observers are sceptical of this claim. But there is no doubt that North Korea is making rapid progress in the development of its nuclear programme. It has clearly become a priority for Mr Kim, who seems to be devoting even more of his country’s relatively meagre resources to it than his father did.

Japan and those in other neighbouring states have become increasingly anxious. They are concerned that the young Mr Kim is far less predictable than his father. While the strength of his grip on the regime is unknown, three of North Korea’s five nuclear tests have been carried out during his five-year rule. This suggests he remains adamant in projecting strength domestically. That might be because he feels insecure, but might equally reflect self-confidence.

The United States, Japan and South Korea have responded with predictably harsh statements. Even China, North Korea’s closest ally, said it ‘resolutely’ condemned the test. Despite Barack Obama having made nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament a personal priority, having pushed for a nuclear deal with Iran and visiting Hiroshima (one of the two Japanese cities on which America dropped nuclear bombs during the second world war), there is worrying little that America and its allies can do to restrain Mr Kim.

In response to the test in January, the United Nations tightened sanctions on North Korea in March. New measures include a somewhat leaky ban on exports of coal and other minerals, one of North Korea’s main sources of foreign exchange. The U.S. added further sanctions of its own in July, specifically naming and citing Mr Kim. Yet, none of these measures have appeared to change Mr Kim’s behaviour for the better, and is quite likely to have infuriated him still further.

Exhorting China to put more pressure on North Korea will be the main strategy of the triumvirate (America, Japan and South Korea), since the North Korean regime relies on China for its economic survival.

The Chinese government has become increasingly frustrated by Mr Kim – it voted in favour of the UN sanctions this year, though it has not always applied them rigorously. It is concerned that the collapse of Mr Kim’s regime might bring American troops to its frontier on the South Korean peninsula, along with a flood of refugees. China’s relations with America and its allies in Asia are also not at their best at the moment. It is disgruntled over the agreement between South Korea and America to host THAAD, a missile defence system, and has been unsettled over issues in the South and East China Seas. The West’s best hope of restraining North Korea is not only proving to be a slender one but hugely problematic.

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Books, Foreign Affairs, Government, Politics, United States

Book Review: The Long Game

AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY UNDER BARACK OBAMA

The Long Game

The Long Game is an apologia by Derek Chollet: a vindication of Mr Obama’s distinctive approach to grand strategy.

WHEN Barack Obama demits presidential office and comes to write his political memoirs they will no doubt be an elegantly persuasive account of the ideas that guided his presidency. But until then “The Long Game”, an apologia by Derek Chollet, is a vindication of Mr Obama’s distinctive approach to grand strategy and is likely to be the closest that anyone will come to understanding the thinking behind U.S. foreign policy that has many critics.

Mr Chollet is qualified and well placed in delivering such a resounding defence of the Obama leadership. He has served in senior positions in the State Department, the National Security Council and the Pentagon and has been close to the action during Mr Obama’s tenure of the White House. His contention is that the foreign-policy establishment in Washington has underestimated the extent of the president’s achievement. Policymakers at home lambast Mr Obama for having overlearned the lessons of Iraq, for his extreme caution and aversion to the use of America’s hard power in support of global order and for a reluctance and unwillingness to shoulder the burdens of leadership. This, say some, has dismayed allies and emboldened foes.

Detractors on the left have been horrified by his cold-bloodied use of drones to kill America’s enemies, his determination to commit to a costly nuclear modernisation programme and his bombing of more countries than George W. Bush. So which is he, asks the author: a woolly-headed liberal idealist or an unsentimental realist?

The answer, as it happens, is neither. Chollet argues that Mr Obama is misunderstood because he likes to play what the writer calls the “long game”. The book portrays the analogy of a president trying to be Warren Buffett in a foreign-policy debate that is dominated and driven by day traders. He has an unwavering view of what is in America’s long-term interests and refuses to be forced by impatient demands for action to intervene in ways that may be temporarily satisfying but have little prospect of success at acceptable cost.

To this end, Chollet asserts with reasonable conviction that Mr Obama has formulated what amounts to a long-game checklist, a series of principles that should be applied to managing American power and making strategic choices. The first of these is balance: balance between interests and values, between priorities at home and abroad, between declared goals in different parts of the world, and between how much America should take on and how much should be borne by allies. And balance, too, in the use of the whole toolbox – military power, diplomacy, economic leverage, and development. Mr Chollet openly contrasts this with the lack of balance Barack Obama inherited from George W. Bush: a tanking economy, more than 150,000 troops deployed in two wars and sagging American prestige.

The other key principles of the Obama checklist drawn upon are: sustainability (avoiding commitments that cost too much to stick with); restraint (asking not what American can do but what it should do); precision (wielding a scalpel rather than a hammer); patience (by giving policies the time and effort to work); fallibility (the modesty of what can be achieved); scepticism (a caution of being wary of those peddling easy answers to difficult questions); and, exceptionalism (the recognition that because of its enormous power and attachment to universal values America has a unique responsibility in the world that cannot be ducked).

For the author this mix of cautious pragmatism and realism finds an echo in the approach of two Republican predecessors, Dwight Eisenhower and the first George Bush, whose reputations have grown considerably since their departure from office. Mr Chollet believes that this president’s foreign policy will look pretty good too once hindsight kicks in.

Perhaps. Eminently sensible, however, the checklist appears to be, rather than setting the appropriate conditions for action, it might also be used as a way to do too little, too late. By and large, and it is worth acknowledging, Mr Obama did manage to get right his policies towards China (the ‘rebalancing’ towards Asia was timely and has been quite effective) and Russia (the ‘reset’ of the first term delivered some benefits; when Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and opted for confrontation with the West, Barack Obama responded accordingly). But in Afghanistan, Iraq and, significantly, in Syria, the Obama doctrine has had terrible consequences.

In Afghanistan, Mr Obama’s long-debated troop surge was fatally undermined when he announced that U.S. forces would start to come home in 18 months. He repeated the error in May 2014, announcing that the residual American force in Afghanistan would be fully withdrawn by the end of 2016. He has had to reverse that false promise. By setting timetables for forced reductions unconnected to conditions on the ground, Mr Obama has given encouragement to the Taliban and left Afghan security forces wilfully exposed.

President Obama’s decision to pull all American forces out of Iraq at the end of 2011 was even more disastrous. He used the excuse of the difficulty of negotiating a new status-of-forces agreement with the Iraqis to do what he wanted to do all along. Had a few thousand American troops been left in Baghdad, Mr Obama and his administration would have known much more about the Maliki government’s subversion of the US-trained and US-equipped Iraqi security forces, as well as having had some leverage to prevent it. Some might argue that the emergence of Islamic State in 2014, an organisation that has been able to take and hold Iraqi cities, is a direct result of Mr Obama’s insouciance. Right wing elements in America certainly think so.

The catalogue of errors in Syria is far too long to itemise. Mr Obama’s extreme reluctance to do anything to help the moderate rebels, as well as his failure to punish the regime for crossing his previously declared ‘red lines’ on the use of chemical weapons were turning points that has contributed to the scale of the catastrophe which has since unfurled in the country. While Mr Chollet is reluctant to blame Mr Obama, he was among those arguing for the president to take a different course of action.

Undoubtedly, though, the one clear unambiguous policy success that Mr Obama’s long game can claim is the nuclear accord and deal with Iran. Patient and tactful diplomacy, along with the building of international support for a crippling sanctions regime, combined with a credible threat of military action if all else failed, resulted in an agreement that has effectively dealt with concerns about Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb over the next decade or so. If the deal holds, it will be the defining achievement of the Obama presidency. Not every problem facing American resolve can be approached in the same painstaking, deliberative way.

The president is far from being the inept wuss portrayed by his critics. But nor is he the master of grand strategy that Mr Chollet makes him out to be. His loathing and contempt of the interventionist excesses exploited by his predecessor, his wariness of arguments of “doing more”, a disdain for military advice and his ingrained pessimism about the utility of hard power have had the effect of reducing America’s capacity to do good in a brutally torn world. If Mr Obama is succeeded by Hillary Clinton, she is likely to provide a modest and welcome corrective. If Donald Trump is the next president, the long game that has underpinned most of the Obama doctrine, whatever its defects, will be sorely missed.

– The Long Game: How Obama Defied Washington and Redefined America’s Role in the World. By Derek Chollet. $26.99 and £17.99.

 

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