Time to Isolate the Isolationists

In the February 20th issue of National Review, Jamie M. Fly and I examine Congressman Ron Paul's foreign policy views. An excerpt follows below:

The Peril of Paul.

Republicans should isolate the isolationists.

By Jamie M. Fly and Robert Zarate

NATIONAL REVIEW

VOLUME LXIV, NO. 3 (February 20, 2012)

It has become a routine occurrence in the 2012 Republican presidential debates for the contenders to say that "anyone on this stage would be better than Barack Obama." But is this truly the case when it comes to Ron Paul?

On foreign policy, at least, it is doubtful. Paul advocates what he calls a policy of "non-interventionism," but it is, in truth, a conspiracy-minded worldview similar to that of the isolationists of decades past, or to the more recent fulminations of figures such as Pat Buchanan, who eventually abandoned the Republican party for a third-party presidential run.

Paul's isolationist foreign-policy views are a mixture of gross oversimplification and blatant misinformation -- which helps explain their seductiveness, especially to the uninformed or conspiracy-minded....

Read the whole thing (paywall).

U.S. Must Pressure Iraq to Avoid New Civil War

U.S. News & World Report's "debate club" asks, Did the U.S. withdraw from Iraq too soon? My answer, the short version of which is yes, follows below.

Iraq Stands on the Brink of Disaster.

The U.S. Must Pressure Iraq to Avoid a New Sectarian Civil War.

By Robert Zarate

U.S. News and World Report's Debate Club

January 23, 2012

By ending America's military presence in Iraq, President Obama has irresponsibly endangered that country's progress in internal security, sectarian reconciliation, and democratic reform--progress that U.S. troops had fought hard to facilitate.

President Bush's 2007 troop surge helped create the stable space needed for Iraq's sectarian groups to begin reconciling politically. In late 2010, political blocs forged the "Erbil Agreement," a power-sharing breakthrough that ended the long standoff following Iraq's parliamentary elections, and enabled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his pro-Shiite Dawa party to form a government.

Under Obama's watch, however, Maliki failed to fully implement the Erbil Agreement, and concentrated his hold on power by promoting a partisan military that protects sectarian interests, and fostering an arbitrary and corrupt judiciary system. He also personally assumed key ministry positions on defense, interior security, and national security--or delegated these roles, without parliamentary consent, to diehard loyalists. More recently, he had hundreds of Sunni Iraqis arrested for allegedly being former Ba'ath Party members.

What's troubling is that, throughout all this, America's stabilizing military presence in Iraq had afforded the Obama administration no small amount of political leverage on key players in Baghdad--leverage that the President declined to use as Maliki brazenly consolidated power.

Obama's hands-off approach to Iraq became apparent as talks faltered for a so-called "security agreement" to permit a small force of U.S. troops to remain after 2011. McClatchy Newspapers reported that, according to U.S. government records, Obama and Vice President Joe Biden apparently remained disengaged from diplomatic talks for a new security agreement, and had virtually no direct contact with Maliki this year prior to the October 2011 Iraq withdrawal announcement.

At the end of 2011, as the last U.S. troops prepared to depart, Iraqi political leaders issued a blunt warning. "Iraq today stands on the brink of disaster," wrote Ayad Allawi, the former Shiite prime minister who now leads the opposition Iraqiya coalition, Usama al-Najaifi, the Sunni speaker of Iraq's parliament, and Rafe al-Essawi, the Sunni Iraqi finance minister, in The New York Times. They cautioned that if the Obama administration continues to unconditionally support the Maliki government, Iraq will move "toward a sectarian autocracy that carries with it the threat of devastating civil war."

Given what's at stake for America in Iraq and the wider Middle East, Washington should work with Baghdad to forge, at a minimum, new legal arrangements to cooperate on military, intelligence, counterterrorism, and other security matters. At the same time, Obama must find ways to pressure, publicly and privately, Maliki to share power with rival political blocs, and avoid a new sectarian civil war. That task is made all the harder now that U.S. troops have left Iraq.

Robert Zarate, a former congressional staffer, is policy director of the Foreign Policy Initiative in Washington, D.C.

Read the whole thing at U.S. News & World Report.

Writings in 2011

A list of selected writings from 2011. -- ed.

Jamie M. Fly and Robert Zarate, "FPI Bulletin: Bringing the Iraq War to an Irresponsible End?" (Washington, D.C.: Foreign Policy Initiative, December 14, 2011).

Robert Zarate, "Washington Post Debunks Nuclear Spending Hyperbole," The Weekly Standard Blog (November 30, 2011).

Robert Zarate, "The Military's Steep Cuts," The Weekly Standard Blog (October 17, 2011).

Robert Zarate, "Panetta: Further Cuts Will Truly Devastate Our National Defense'," The Weekly Standard Blog (October 14, 2011).

Jamie M. Fly and Robert Zarate, "Time to Abandon 'Reset'?: Obama's Hope that Russia Would Change Under Medvedev Has Not Worked Out," National Review Online (October 10, 2011).

Jamie M. Fly and Robert Zarate, "Ron Paul is Wrong About Defense Spending and the Deficit," The Daily Caller (September 29, 2011).

Jamie M. Fly and Robert Zarate, "FPI Bulletin: What Congress Can Do to Hasten Assad's Exit"

Robert Zarate, "Sequestration's Hidden Trillion Dollar Cut to Defense," The Weekly Standard Blog (September 16, 2011).

Robert Zarate, "General Calls Deep Defense Cuts 'Very High Risk'," The Weekly Standard Blog (July 28, 2011).

Robert Zarate, "Will the IAEA Get Tough on Syria?," The Weekly Standard Blog (June 7, 2011).

Robert Zarate, "Syria Plays Cat and Mouse with World's Nuclear Watchdog," The Weekly Standard Blog (June 7, 2011).

Jamie M. Fly and Robert Zarate, "Syria's Nuclear Impunity: Bashar al-Assad's Lengthening Rap Sheet," The Weekly Standard (June 6, 2011).

Jamie M. Fly and Robert Zarate, "FPI Bulletin: Now is Not the Time to Show a Lack of Resolve on Libya" (Washington, D.C.: Foreign Policy Initiative, June 2, 2011).

FPI Analysis on Defense Spending and the Super Committee

The Foreign Policy Initiative, where I work, released last week an study, FPI Analysis: Defense Spending and the Super Committee. It begins:

President Obama and Congress arrived at a grand bargain to raise the debt limit on August 3, 2011. But due to the debt-limit deal's far-reaching and controversial terms, great uncertainty looms over the future of Department of Defense (DoD) spending.

Known as the Budget Control Act of 2011 (Public Law 112-25), the debt-limit deal created a "Super Committee" of twelve lawmakers to hammer out a bill that reduces the federal deficit over ten-years by more than $1.2 trillion. However, if this bill doesn't become law by mid-January 2012, then the debt-limit deal's so-called "trigger" provision will automatically reduce defense spending in not just one, but two ways. First, it will establish new long-term caps to limit discretionary spending that will cut over $550 billion from what the Pentagon (based on Obama's fiscal year 2012 budget proposal) was projected to spend in the next ten years. Second, the trigger provision's multi-year "sequestration" cuts will further slash roughly $600 billion more in the worst-case scenario. In all, the trigger provision could effectively cut anywhere from $575 billion to over $1 trillion from projected defense spending over the next decade.

As this analysis details further below, the Defense Department's civilian and military leaders--including Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey--have described further deep cuts to the Pentagon's budget as "devastating" and "extraordinarily difficult and very high risk."

Read the whole thing.

"Syria's Nuclear Impunity" by Fly and Zarate

The Weekly Standard just published "Syria's Nuclear Impunity," an article that I co-wrote with Jamie M. Fly, executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI):

Syria's Nuclear Impunity

Bashar al-Assad's lengthening rap sheet.

By Jamie M. Fly and Robert Zarate

The Weekly Standard

June 6, 2011, Vol. 16, No. 36

Contrary to what the Obama administration might hope, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is no reformer. Even with the Syrian government's murderous crackdown against its unarmed opposition, the White House is not getting the message. Yet Assad's true colors should have been plainly obvious at least as far back as September 2007, when an Israeli airstrike destroyed the secret Al Kibar nuclear facility near the Syrian town of Deir al Zour. Built with North Korean assistance, Al Kibar was a plutonium-producing reactor that, once completed, could have been used to generate fissile material for nuclear weapons....

Read the whole thing.

Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter (2009)

Re-upping this content. -- ed.

Robert Zarate and Henry Sokolski, eds, Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter (Strategic Studies Institute, 2009).

Book review in Foreign Affairs magazine.

ABOUT THE BOOK

(Jump down to the Table of Contents)

Pioneers of nuclear-age policy analysis, Albert Wohlstetter (1913-1997) and Roberta Wohlstetter (1912-2007) emerged as two of America's most controversial, innovative and consequential strategists. Through the clarity of their thinking, the rigor of their research, and the persistence of their personalities, they were able to shape the views and aid the decisions of Democratic and Republican policy makers both during and after the Cold War. Although the Wohlstetters' strategic concepts and analytical methods continue to be highly influential, no book has brought together their most important essays--until now.

Edited by Robert Zarate, Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) research fellow (2006-2009), and NPEC executive director Henry Sokolski, Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter (2009) demonstrates not only the historical importance, but also the continuing relevance of the Wohlstetters' work in national security strategy and nuclear policy. It is the first book to make widely available over twenty of Albert and Roberta's most influential published--and unpublished--writings on:

• methods of policy analysis and design;
• nuclear deterrence through survivable, controllable and therefore credible strategic forces;
• nuclear proliferation and the military potential of civil nuclear energy;
• spiraling arms-race myths versus the real, observable dynamics of strategic competition;
• the revolutionary potential of non-nuclear technologies of precision, control, and information; and
• the continuing need for prudence and pragmatism in the face of changing dangers.

In addition, Nuclear Heuristics provides readers with an introduction to the Wohlstetters' work by editor Robert Zarate; and short commentaries on Wohlstetter writings by Henry S. Rowen (2005 WMD Commissioner and former Assistant Secretary of Defense), Alain C. Enthoven (former Assistant Secretary of Defense), Henry Sokolski (2008 WMD Proliferation and Terrorism Commissioner and former Pentagon official), Richard Perle (former Assistant Secretary of Defense and emeritus Defense Policy Board chairman), Stephen J. Lukasik (former Director of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency, now DARPA), and Andrew W. Marshall (Director of the Office of the Secretary of Defense's Office of Net Assessment).

Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter is a must-read and an indispensable resource for policy makers, military planners, and strategic analysts, as well as for students who aspire to these positions.

 

NUCLEAR HEURISTICS: TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface (2009) by Henry Sokolski

Acknowledgments (2009)

Introduction: Albert & Roberta Wohlstetter on Nuclear-Age Strategy (2009) by Robert Zarate

I. Analysis and Design of Strategic Policy

Commentary: How He Worked (2009) by Henry S. Rowen

Theory and Opposed-Systems Design (1968) by Albert Wohlstetter

II. Nuclear Deterrence

Commentary: On Nuclear Deterrence (2009) by Alain C. Enthoven

The Delicate Balance of Terror (1958) by Albert Wohlstetter

Excerpts on "Missile Gap" from General Comments on Senator Kennedy's National Security Speeches (1960) by Albert Wohlstetter

On the Genesis of Nuclear Strategy: Letter to Michael Howard (1968) by Albert Wohlstetter

III. Nuclear Proliferation

Commentary: Timely Warnings Still--The Wohlstetters and Nuclear Proliferation (2009) by Henry Sokolski

Nuclear Sharing: NATO and the N + 1 Country (1961) by Albert Wohlstetter

Spreading the Bomb without Quite Breaking the Rules (1976) by Albert Wohlstetter

The Buddha Smiles: U.S. Peaceful Aid and the Indian Bomb (1978) by Roberta Wohlstetter

Signals, Noise and Article IV (1979) by Albert Wohlstetter, Gregory S. Jones and Roberta Wohlstetter

Nuclear Triggers and Safety Catches, the "FSU" and the "FSRs" (1992) by Albert Wohlstetter

IV. Arms Race Myths vs. Strategic Competition's Reality

Commentary: Arms Race Myths vs. Strategic Competition's Reality (2009) by Richard Perle

The Case for Strategic Force Defense (1969) by Albert Wohlstetter

Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back? (1976) by Albert Wohlstetter

On Arms Control: What We Should Look for in an Arms Agreement (1985) by Albert & Roberta Wohlstetter

Arms Control that Could Work (1985) by Albert Wohlstetter and Brian G. Chow

V. Towards Discriminate Deterrence

Commentary: Towards Discriminate Deterrence (2009) by Stephen J. Lukasik

Strength, Interest and New Technologies (1968) by Albert Wohlstetter

How Much is Enough? How Mad is MAD? (1974) by Albert Wohlstetter

Bishops, Statesmen, and Other Strategists on the Bombing of Innocents (1983) by Albert Wohlstetter

Connecting the Elements of the Strategy: Excerpt from Discriminate Deterrence (1988) by the Commission on Integrated Long Term Strategy

RPM, or Revolutions by the Minute (1992) by Albert Wohlstetter

VI. Limiting and Managing New Risks

Commentary: Strategy as a Profession in the Future Security Environment (2009) by Andrew W. Marshall

End of the Cold War? End of History and All War? Excerpt from an Outline for a Memoir (1989) by Albert Wohlstetter

The Fax Shall Make You Free (1990) by Albert Wohlstetter

The Bitter End: The Case for Re-Intervention in Iraq (1991) by Albert Wohlstetter and Fred S. Hoffman

What the West Must Do in Bosnia: An Open Letter to President Clinton (1993) by Albert Wohlstetter and Margaret Thatcher

Boris Yeltsin as Abraham Lincoln? (1995) by Albert Wohlstetter

About the Editors and Contributors

 

For updates, bookmark Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com.

"The Nukes We Need" by Lieber and Press

Here's something all folks interested in nuclear strategy should read and re-read, regardless of whether you're inclined to agree with the article's conclusions:

• Keir Lieber and Daryl Press, "The Nukes We Need," Foreign Affairs, Vol. 88, No. 6 (November-December 2009).

Note: To read the article, you'll have to sign up at ForeignAffairs.org for a free username and password. It's worth the time to sign up, so if you haven't done so, then do it

But if you're supremely lazy, then you can read the article at Scribd.com.

Aligica & Weinstein's "The Essential Herman Kahn"

Somehow I managed to miss this, but The Essential Herman Kahn: In Defense of Thinking, an edited volume by Paul Dragos Aligica and Kenneth Weinstein, is out now, and has been since April. I got an early peek of this book last year; it is excellent, providing readers with a representative selection of Kahn's thought-provoking -- and sometimes controversial -- writings.

For more on Kahn, check out this blog post that I wrote last year on Ten Common Pitfalls, a clever internal memo that Kahn and Irwin Mann wrote in 1957 at the RAND Corporation think-tank in Santa Monica, CA; and Hudson Institute's bio page on the late strategist/futurist.

Nuclear Heuristics reviewed by Lawrence Freedman in Foreign Affairs (May/June 2009)

Sir Lawrence Freedman, professor of war studies at King's College London and nuclear historian par excellence, reviewed Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, the book that Nonproliferation Policy Education Center executive director Henry Sokolski and I co-edited, in the May/June 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs.

To get a copy of Nuclear Heuristics, you can:

• Download a free PDF version from the Strategic Studies Institute's website;
• Order a free second-printing of the book's softcover version from the Strategic Studies Institute's website (while supplies last); or
• Buy a softcover version of the book from Amazon.com.

Wohlstetter Book Now Available

• Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, edited by Robert Zarate and Henry Sokolski (Strategic Studies Institute, January 26, 2009), with commentaries by Henry S. Rowen, Alain C. Enthoven, Richard Perle, Stephen J. Lukasik and Andrew W. Marshall.

Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter (2009) is now available via the website of its publisher, the U.S. Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute (SSI). The book's table of contents is available here.

Edited by Robert Zarate and Henry Sokolski, the book can be downloaded in digital form (.pdf); or online users can fill-out a form to request SSI to send them a free copy of the book's softcover version (shipping inclusive).

Also, a limited number of the book's softcover copies may be made available from time-to-time by independent booksellers for purchase on Amazon.com.

For more, visit Albert Wohlstetter Dot Com.