Policy Review - August & September 2011, No. 168

POLICYReview
August & September 2011, No. 168, $6.00
THE GAZA FLOTILLA AND INTERNATIONAL LAW PETER BERKOWITZ THE GOPS FIELD JON DECKER
2012
INVADING IRAN: LESSONS FROM IRAQ LEIF ECKHOLM THE PERFECT OFFICER HENRIK BERING ALSO: ESSAYS AND REVIEWS BY ANDREW STARK, CHARLES WOLF, JR., SADANAND DHUME, JAMES BOWMAN
A P u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e H o ov e r I n s t i t u t i o n
stanford university
the hoover institution was established at Stanford

University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, a member of Stanfords pioneer graduating class of 1895 and the thirty-first president of the United States. Since 1919 the Institution has evolved from a library and repository of documents to an active public policy research center. Simultaneously, the Institution has evolved into an internationally recognized library and archives housing tens of millions of books and documents relating to political, economic, and social change. The Hoover Institutions overarching purposes are: To collect the requisite sources of knowledge pertaining to economic, political, and social changes in societies at home and abroad, as well as to understand their causes and consequences To analyze the effects of government actions relating to public policy To generate, publish, and disseminate ideas that encourage positive policy formation using reasoned arguments and intellectual rigor, converting conceptual insights into practical initiatives judged to be beneficial to society To convey to the public, the media, lawmakers, and others an understanding of important public policy issues and to promote vigorous dialogue Ideas have consequences, and a free flow of competing ideas leads to an evolution of policy adoptions and associated consequences affecting the well-being of a free society. The Hoover Institution endeavors to be a prominent contributor of ideas having positive consequences. In the words of President Hoover: This Institution supports the Constitution of the United States, its Bill of Rights, and its method of representative government. Both our social and economic systems are based on private enterprise from which springs initiative and ingenuity. . . . The Federal Government should undertake no governmental, social or economic action, except where local government, or the people, cannot undertake it for themselves. . . . The overall mission of this Institution is . . . to recall the voice of experience against the making of war, and . . . to recall mans endeavors to make and preserve peace, and to sustain for America the safeguards of the American way of life. . . . The Institution itself must constantly and dynamically point the road to peace, to personal freedom, and to the safeguards of the American system.
POLICY Review
A UGUST & S EPTEMBER 2011, No. 168
Features
3 THE GAZA FLOTILLA AND INTERNATIONAL LAW Further politicization of the global legal system Peter Berkowitz 23 THE GOPS 2012 FIELD Who has the White House most worried? Jon Decker 35 INVADING IRAN: LESSONS FROM IRAQ Before the battles, what the U.S. must know Leif Eckholm 51 THE PERFECT OFFICER Military brass throughout history Henrik Bering 69 CONSERVATIVE HUMILITY, LIBERAL IRONY Getting to the bottom of two temperaments Andrew Stark
Books
81 ECONOMISTS AT WAR Charles Wolf, Jr. on Keep From All Thoughtful Men: How U.S. Economists Won World War II by Jim Lacey 86 PAKISTAN: FRIEND OR FOE? Sadanand Dhume on Pakistan: A Hard Country by Anatol Lieven and Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of Global Jihad by Bruce Riedel 91 COMPLICATED LOYALTY James Bowman on Loyalty: The Vexing Virture by Eric Felten
A P u b l i c a t i o n o f t h e H o ov e r I n s t i t u t i o n
stanford university
POLI CY Review
Au g u s t & S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 1 , N o. 1 6 8
Editor Tod Lindberg

Research Fellow, Hoover Institution
Consulting Editor Mary Eberstadt

Managing Editor Liam Julian

Office Manager Sharon Ragland
Policy Review (issn 0146-5945) is published bimonthly by the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. For more information, write: The Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford ca 94305-6010. Or visit www.hoover.org. Periodicals postage paid at Washington dc and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Policy Review, Subscription Fulfillment, P.O. Box 3 7 0 0 5 , Chicago, il 6 0 6 3 7 - 0 0 0 5 . The opinions expressed in Policy Review are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, or their supporters. E d i t o r i a l a n d b u s i n e s s o f f i c e s : Policy Review, 21 Dupont Circle n w , Suite 310, Washington, d c 20036. Telephone: 202-466-3121. Email: polrev@hoover.stanford.edu. Website: www.policyreview.org. Subscription information: For new orders, call or write the subscriptions department at Policy Review, Subscription Fulfillment, P.O. Box 37005, Chicago, il 60637. Order by phone Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Central Time, by calling (773) 753-3347, or toll-free in the U.S. and Canada by calling (877) 705-1878. For questions about existing orders please call 1-800935-2882. Single back issues may be purchased at the cover price of $6 by calling 1-800-935-2882. Subscription rates: $36 per year. Add $10 per year for foreign delivery. Copyright 2011 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.
The Gaza Flotilla and International Law

By Peter Berkowitz
n may 31, 2010, in defense of a naval blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip, Israel seized control of the Mavi Marmara in international waters, detained the passengers, and towed the ship to the Israeli port city of Ashdod. During the previous three days and without incident, Israel had boarded, inspected, and brought to Ashdod the other five ships that had set sail from Turkey as part of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. But on the Mavi Marmara, passengers wielding pipes, knives, and axes attacked Israeli commandos as they rappelled from helicopters down to the ships deck. Nine passengers were killed in the operation and several dozen were injured. Seven commandos were injured as well. The flotillas ostensible purpose was to bring humanitarian goods to the Palestinian population of Gaza. In fact, humanitarian goods had been arriving in Gaza over land through Israel, and Israel had repeatedly volunteered to deliver the flotillas humanitarian cargo through the established land
Peter Berkowitz is the Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where he chairs the Koret-Taube Task Force on national security and law. His writings are posted at www.PeterBerkowitz.com.
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Peter Berkowitz
crossings. The flotillas real and obvious goal was, as one of the organizers put it, breaking Israels siege. The international outcry in response to Israels raid on the Mavi Marmara was immediate. Little attention was given to the Turkish flotillas deliberate provocation or to the possibility that Israel had acted ineptly or unwisely. The focus rather was on the accusation, often couched as a conclusion, that Israel had acted unlawfully. On May 31, almost as soon as the news broke, un Secretary General Ban Ki Moon insisted that it was incumbent upon Israel to explain its actions to the world: I condemn this violence . . . it is vital that there is a full investigation to determine exactly how this bloodshed took place . . . I believe Israel must urgently provide a full explanation. Also on May 31, Richard Falk, un special rapLittle attention porteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the was given to the Occupied Palestinian Territory, immediately proTurkish flotillas nounced Israel in egregious violation of international law: Israel is guilty of shocking behavior by deliberate using deadly weapons against unarmed civilians on provocation or ships that were situated in the high seas where freeto the possibility dom of navigation exists, according to the law of the seas. Falk called for an investigation on the that Israel had grounds that It is essential that those Israelis acted ineptly or responsible for this lawless and murderous behavior, including political leaders who issued the orders, be unwisely. held criminally accountable for their wrongful acts. He characterized the Gaza blockade as a massive form of collective punishment constituting a crime against humanity, as well as a gross violation of the prohibition on collective punishment in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. He insisted that failure to punish Israels lawlessness would itself be criminal: As special rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, familiar with the suffering of the people of Gaza, I find this latest instance of Israeli military lawlessness to create a situation of regional and global emergency. Unless prompt and decisive action is taken to challenge the Israeli approach to Gaza all of us will be complicit in criminal policies that are challenging the survival of an entire beleaguered community. Such was Israels flagrant flouting of international law that, to end its blockade of Gaza, Falk concluded, the worldwide campaign of boycott, divestment, and sanctions against Israel is now a moral and political imperative, and needs to be supported and strengthened everywhere. Many nations promptly condemned Israel and some presumed its guilt that day. According to the bbc, within hours of the boarding of the Mavi Marmara French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner announced he was deeply shocked by Israels action and called for an inquiry, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Israel of a disproportionate use of
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force. Sweden summoned the Israeli ambassador to discuss the unacceptable action. The Turkish foreign ministry issued a statement declaring the incident a flagrant breach of international law while Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan proclaimed Israels raid totally contrary to the principles of international law and an act of inhumane state terrorism. And the Arab League called for an emergency meeting the next day to discuss Israels terrorist act.1 On June 1, the un Security Council issued a presidential statement. By condemning Israels raid and by demanding a prompt, impartial, credible, and transparent investigation conforming to international standards, the Security Council indicated that there was sufficient evidence to be concerned that serious breaches of international law had occurred. Not to be outdone, the notorious un Human Rights Council on June 2 issued resolution 14/1 on The Grave Attacks by Israeli Forces against the Humanitarian Boat Convoy.2 The hrc resolution condemns in the strongest terms the outrageous attack by the Israeli forces against the humanitarian flotilla of ships which resulted in the killing and injuring of many innocent civilians from different countries. And it authorized an independent, international fact-finding mission to investigate violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law, resulting from the Israeli attacks on the flotilla of ships carrying humanitarian assistance. The widespread accusations of unlawful conduct directed at Israel coming, it should be said, not from some abstract international community, but from officers and official bodies of the un, European states, Turkey, and Arab states were high on outrage and low on legal analysis. This is in keeping with the growing tendency in international affairs to transform hard political questions into conclusive legal judgments. The transformation increasingly yields gross abuses of law fraught with substantial political implications. The denunciations of Israels response to the Gaza Flotilla provide a case in point. To counteract the harm they can cause to a states interests when they gain international currency and exert worldwide influence, even far-fetched and perverse legal arguments must be addressed and refuted in legal terms. In fact, the legality of Israels stopping and seizing of the Mavi Marmara and the other five ships of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla turned on the legality
1 . The b b c timeline of events As it happened: Israeli raid on Gaza flotilla is available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10196585. 2 . Available at http://domino.un.org/unispal.nsf/0 / 4 d2 f5 b2 8 bb4 7 0 a8 e8 5 2 5 7 7 3 d0 0 5 1 f5 4 3 ? OpenDocument. In favor (3 2 ): Angola, Argentina, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Kyrgyzstan, Mauritius, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Slovenia, South Africa, and Uruguay. Against (3): Italy, Netherlands, and United States of America. Abstentions (9): Belgium, Burkina Faso, France, Hungary, Japan, Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Ukraine, and United Kingdom. Vote count and discussion available at http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/0/64c49cb9efca5bab852577360055adf6.
August & September 2011
Peter Berkowitz
under international humanitarian law (a part of the international law of war governing the conduct of war, also known as ihl, the law of armed conflict, or the laws of war) of the naval blockade. If the blockade was legal, then Israel was perfectly within its rights to stop on international waters ships whose announced intention was to break it, and Israeli commandos were within their rights to defend themselves against the potentially lethal attacks to which they were subject as they boarded the Mavi Marmara. Israels blockade was legal given the state of armed conflict between Israel and Hamas, the de facto ruler of Gaza; the widely accepted use of naval blockades in war; and the conformity of Israels blockade to the requirements of maritime law it was duly declared, effective, nondiscriminatory, and allowed the passage of humanitarian assistance to the civilian population of Gaza. Israel neither Many, however, continue to contend the blockhas troops ade is illegal. According to the standard argument, the blockade violates international law because stationed in notwithstanding its disengagement from Gaza in the Gaza nor summer of 2005, in which Israel withdrew every soldier and every civilian, and despite the absence of exercises the any Israeli soldiers or citizens in Gaza on May 31, functions of 2010, when the Mavi Marmara was seized Israel government continues to be an occupying power of Gaza, and as such is barred from undertaking acts of war, such as there. a naval blockade, against the Palestinian people of Gaza. The standard argument, however, is at best weak and generally groundless and incoherent. It twists well-settled concepts, distorts basic categories, overlooks or obscures crucial facts, misreads critical cases, and ignores fundamental legal principles. To put the matter succinctly, since it neither has troops stationed in Gaza nor exercises the functions of government there, Israel does not exercise effective control of Gaza, and therefore does not meet the test that international humanitarian law establishes to determine whether a territory is occupied by a hostile power. More importantly, the argument over whether Israel occupies Gaza is ultimately irrelevant to determining the legality of its naval blockade. Even if Israel were deemed the occupying power, it would not lose its inherent right of self-defense, recognized by the un charter and international law, to repel acts of aggression. By virtue of its public declarations, its bombardment of civilian populations in Israel, its unremitting efforts to conduct terrorist operations against Israel, and, after Israels December 2008-January 2009 Gaza operation, its rearmament in preparation for the renewal of rocket and missile attacks, Hamas has been in a condition of persistent, widespread, and organized war with Israel since it seized control of Gaza by force in June 2007. Accordingly, Israel is entitled under international law to impose a naval blockade to prevent Hamas from acquiring additional weapons of
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war. Of course Israel remains obliged to permit civilians humanitarian requirements to be met. The acceptance of poor arguments on behalf of the widespread opinion that the Israeli blockade of Gaza is illegal threatens the integrity of the international law of war. As in the case of the Goldstone Report before it, in the case of the Gaza Flotilla again, influential international public opinion has coalesced around a view of the law of armed conflict that substitutes propaganda for credible legal analysis. As with the Goldstone Report controversy, so too with the Gaza Flotilla controversy: Exposing the abuses to which the international law of war has been subject and setting forth a sounder view is critical to conserving it, and is a task in which all nations devoted to the rule of law have a stake liberal democracies in particular, and especially liberal democracies such as the United States that are actively engaged in armed struggle against transnational terrorists. And as with the Goldstone Report, so too with the Gaza Flotilla controversy, that task requires a critique of the majority view; a restatement of longstanding principles of the law of armed conflict; and, above all, a recovery of the imperative to strike a reasonable balance between military necessity and humanitarian responsibility, the imperative out of which the international law of war emerged and which must remain its governing goal.3
The occupation argument

o vindicate the standard argument that Israel is prohibited from maintaining a naval blockade of Gaza because it is an occupying power, proponents must overcome the well-settled definition of occupation and the established test for determining whether an occupation has come into existence. The law of occupation is rooted in two principal sources. According to Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations, territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army. The occupation extends only to the territory where such authority has been established and can be exercised.4 And Article 6 of the Fourth Geneva Convention indicates that a state achieves established authority and becomes an occupying power in a territory to the extent that such Power exercises the functions of government in such territory.5 The legal test is whether the hostile army has placed territory and its population under effective control. As Elizabeth Sampson, on the basis of an extensive review of the legal materials, observes, In the context of
3. See also The Goldstone Report and International Law, Policy Review 162 (August & September 2010), available at http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/43281. 4. Available at http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/195. 5. Available at http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/webart/380-600009?opendocument.
Peter Berkowitz
international occupation law, effective control is a term of art with no definite source, but it has developed as the standard that combines the conditions for occupation outlined in the Hague Regulations and the Fourth Geneva Convention.6 Case law and state practice, moreover, indicate general agreement that to exercise effective control in the legally relevant sense is to perform the functions of government, which typically requires troops in the territory. Israel in Gaza obviously does not meet the test as commonly understood. Israel has not had troops stationed in Gaza, or indeed any permanent presence there, military or civilian, since September 2005, when it completed the disengagement process it began the month before. When Israel left Gaza, the Palestinian Authority took over the funcDuring tions of government, which it exercised until June 2007, when Hamas violently overthrew it and took Operation control. Since then, Hamas has exercised the funcCast Lead, Israel tions of government in Gaza. In late December imposed a naval 2008, Israel launched Operation Cast Lead, the aim of which was to stop Hamass firing of shells, blockade to rockets, and missiles at civilian populations in the prevent the southern part of the country. Early on in the threeweek operation, Israel imposed a naval blockade to arrival into prevent the arrival into Gaza of weapons and other Gaza of military supplies. At the conclusion of the operation, Israel brought home all troops, but mainweapons. tained the blockade. Nevertheless, influential segments of international public opinion and international legal opinion insist that Israel occupies Gaza. The routine characterization of Gaza as occupied in, among other places, the un Human Rights Council, General Assembly, and Security Council resolutions7 is backed by a set of oft-repeated legal arguments. Among the leading advocates of the standard argument is Noura Erakat, adjunct professor of international human rights law in the Middle East at Georgetown University and the U.S.-based legal advocacy coordinator for Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights. To maintain that since its complete withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 Israel has occupied Gaza, Erakat must reinterpret the meaning of effective control. Crucial to her position is rejection of the view that a hostile military presence throughout the territory is required by the effective control test. Rather, she points to decisions by the Nuremberg Tribunal and the
6. Elizabeth Sampson, Is Gaza Occupied? Redefining the Legal Status of Gaza, Mideast Security and Policy Studies 83, available at http://www.biu.ac.il/Besa/msps83.pdf. 7. un Security Council Resolution 1860 (2009). Also, from the most recent session, which began in September 2010, General Assembly Resolutions 65/102, 65/103, 65/104, 65/105, 65/179, available at http://www.un.org/depts/dhl/resguide/r65.shtml.
Policy Review

International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that, according to her, consider an occupation ongoing provided there remains the capacity to send troops within a reasonable time to make the authority of the occupying power felt.8 Israel retains this capacity, Erakat contends, and, through repeated military operations since the Gaza disengagement, has demonstrated its willingness to use it. In practice, according to Erakat, Israel exercises control over the Palestinians of Gaza in a variety of ways. Because it controls entrance into and exit from Gaza, including control of land crossings and all air and sea access to Gaza, Israel determines the flow of people and goods in and out of Gaza. Israel controls Gazas electricity supply, giving it the power to turn the lights on and off. Israels restrictions on the entry into Gaza of dual-use goods that is, goods that can be used for military as well as civilian purposes has created a shortage of spare parts to maintain wastewater treatment plants. Furthermore, Israel retains control over some of Gazas telecommunications networks, its electromagnetic sphere, its fuel supply, and its population registry, as well as the collection and distribution of a substantial amount of Palestinian tax revenue. Among proponents of the standard argument, some of whom are Israeli, it is commonly asserted that the primary purpose of the closure policy is not to maintain security but to exert pressure. 9 Even Israels Turkel Commission Report, authorized by the government to investigate the Gaza Flotilla controversy, grants that it would be a mistake to examine the circumstances of imposing the naval blockade from a narrow security perspective only because the blockade is also intended as indirect economic warfare to put political pressure on Hamas.10 Many opponents of the blockade allege that Israel has used disproportionate force by depriving an entire civilian population of sufficient quantities of basic goods because a few militants have been firing relatively ineffectual rockets.11 Furthermore, Erakat argues, Israeli troops might as well be stationed in Gaza inasmuch as in its disengagement plan, Israel reserved the right to use force against Palestinians living in Gaza in the name of preventive and reactive selfdefense.12
8. Noura Erakat, Its Not Wrong, Its Illegal: Situating the Gaza Blockade Between International Law and the u n Response (2 0 1 0 ), 1 1 , available at http://www.law.utoronto.ca/documents/ ihrp/NouraErakatarticle.pdf. 9. Gaza Closure Defined: Collective Punishment is available at http://gisha.org/UserFiles/File/publications/GazaClosureDefinedEng.pdf. 10. The Turkel Commission Report is available at http://www.turkel-committee.gov.il/files/wordocs/8808report-eng.pdf. See part 1, page 71. 11. Victor Kattan, Operation Cast Lead: Use of Force Discourses and Jus Ad Bellum Controversies, The Palestine Handbook of International Law (2009), available at http://www.victorkattan.com/ cmsAdmin/uploads/Victor_Kattan_brill.pdf. 12. Noura Erakat, Collective Punishment or Not, Gaza Blockade Illegal (Part I) (October 22, 2010), available at http://www.thejerusalemfund.org/ht/display/ContentDetails/i/16694/pid/895.
Peter Berkowitz
What the various forms of control Israel exercises over Gaza add up to, concludes Erakat, is clear: The confluence of its ongoing control, its continuous military operations, as well as its capacity to redeploy its troops within a reasonable time demonstrate that Israel remains in effective control of the Gaza Strip.13 Therefore, despite lacking troops on the ground and the absence of any involvement in the governing of Gaza, Israel should be seen under international humanitarian law as occupying Gaza. Accordingly, the standard argument continues, Israel is barred by international law from taking military action attacks, blockades, or otherwise against it. In particular, Article 43 of the Hague Regulations imposes significantly greater limits on the force that can be legally used by an occupier than by belligerents at war, requiring that the occupier shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country.14 Accordingly, as occupier, Israel shoulders responsibility for enforcing the rule of law in Gaza. Some go so far as to suggest that any terrorist activity originating there, such as the launching of mortars and rockets, is Israels fault for failing to fulfill its obligations to maintain law and order.15 Moreover, the standard argument holds that as occupier Israel is restricted by international humanitarian law to the use of law enforcement measures to respond to violence originating within Gaza. A military response would be inherently disproportionate. Indeed, Erakat hints that even the use of firearms by Israel in the discharge of its obligation to police Gaza might be considered an extreme measure.16 If Israel were allowed under international law to use its military might rather than rely on law enforcement, it would put the Palestinian residents of Gaza in the impossible position of defending themselves against one of the worlds most powerful armies without the benefit either of its own military, or of any realistic means to defend itself.17 Israels claim that it is compelled to use military force in Gaza is, according to Erakat, nothing less than a deliberate effort to shift [international humanitarian law] by insisting that it can simultaneously be at war with the entity that it occupies.18
13. Erakat, Its Not Wrong, Its Illegal, 13, available at http://www.law.utoronto.ca/documents/ihrp/ NouraErakatarticle.pdf. 14. Available at http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/Webat/195-200053?OpenDocument. 15. Kattan, Operation Cast Lead, 109110; The occupation of the Gaza Strip and the continued renouncement of responsibility, International Law Observer (2008), available at http://internationallawobserver.eu/2008/10/24/the-occupation-of-the-gaza-strip-and-the-continued-renouncement-of-responsibility/. 16. Erakat, Its Not Wrong, Its Illegal, 15. (Erakat quotes from Marco Sassolis paper Article 43 of the Hague Regulations and Peace Operations in the Twenty-First Century.) See also Kattan, Operation Cast Lead. 17. Erakat, Its Not Wrong, Its Illegal, 20. Erakat references George E. Bisharat et al, Israels Invasion of Gaza in International Law, Denver Journal of International Law and Policy, 38:1 (2009), available at http://law.du.edu/documents/djilp/38No1/Bisharat-Final.pdf. 18. Erakat, Its Not Wrong, Its Illegal, 14.
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The critique of the occupation argument
n reality, it is proponents of the standard argument such as Noura Erakat who seek to shift international law, indeed to fundamentally rewrite it. Their view that Israel occupies Gaza cannot withstand scrutiny. It lacks foundations in the principles of international law and is at odds with common sense understandings of war and peace. The challenge for Erakat and the standard argument that she champions is to show that despite lacking boots on the ground and not performing the functions of government, Israel nevertheless exercises effective control over and therefore occupies Gaza. Such success as Erakats legal arguments have enjoyed as legal arguments depends on sophistry. Erakat treats a single potential indicator of occupation the ability to deploy troops at will as if it were a conclusive determinant, and she substitutes the colloquial meaning of effective control, namely, the ability to exercise significant influence, for the legal meaning under international law, which is to govern by force. The first part of Erakats argument for occupation that Israel can deploy troops at will in Gaza is exposed to an immediate objection: Military superiority over a neighbor does not itself constitute occupation. If it did, the U.S. would have to be considered the occupier of Mexico and Canada, Egypt the occupier of Libya, Iran the occupier of Afghanistan, and Russia the occupier of Latvia.19 In fact, Erakat suppresses the restricted circumstances under which international law regards the ability to deploy troops at will as an indicator of occupation. The icty case she cites as the leading authority, The Prosecutor v. Naletilic & Martinovic Case No. IT-98-34-T (2003), states that to determine whether the authority of the occupying power has been actually established, several guidelines provide some assistance. The court provided a list: The occupying power must be in a position to substitute its own
authority for that of the occupied authorities, which must have been rendered incapable of functioning publicly.
The enemys forces have surrendered, been defeated, or withdrawn. In

this respect, battle areas may not be considered as occupied territory. However, sporadic local resistance, even successful, does not affect the reality of occupation.
19. Avraham Bell and Justus Reid Weiner, International Law and the Fighting in Gaza (2008), 18, available at http://www.jcpa.org/text/puzzle1.pdf.
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The occupying power has a sufficient force present, or the capacity to
send troops within a reasonable time to make the authority of the occupying power felt.
A temporary administration has been established over the territory;

the occupying power has issued and enforced directions to the civilian population.20
No one of these guidelines is conclusive, none can be applied mechanically, and taken together they show that the core meaning of occupation under international law coincides with the common sense meaning and consists in subduing a civilian population by force and governing it by force. Taken together, the guidelines elaborated in the icty case that Erakat takes as authoritative clearly The guidelines indicate that Israels relationship to Gaza falls well elaborated in outside the legal definition of occupier. Despite the readiness of Israeli troops to defend against terrorist the ICTY case incursions and mortar, rocket, and missile attacks clearly indicate from Gaza, Hamas continues to govern Gaza; it has not been rendered incapable of functioning publicly; that Israels it has not surrendered or been defeated or withrelationship to drawn; and Israel does not administer Gaza or issue Gaza is not that and enforce directives to the civilian population. The circumstances, according to the icty Trial of occupier. Chamber, under which the laws of occupation apply absent physical occupation shed additional light on the erroneousness of Erakats view that Israels ability to send troops into Gaza is legally decisive evidence that it is an occupying power. The court explained that the forced transfer of people and forced labor are prohibited from the moment civilians fall into the hands of the opposing power, regardless of the stage of hostilities and irrespective of whether the hostile power has established an actual state of occupation as defined in Article 42 of the Hague Regulations. If a state has a degree of effective control that falls short of actual control, it will only be considered an occupier for the purposes of international law if that control is used to compel people to migrate or perform work involuntarily. In such circumstances, Geneva protections for occupied populations take effect, regardless of whether the hostile army has boots on the ground or exercises the functions of government. Such circumstances, however, are not present in Israels relation to Gaza. Israel is neither forcing anyone to leave Gaza nor compelling anyone to labor against his or her will. Once again, the very icty opinion that Erakat cites as authority for the legal judgment that Israel, despite the absence of troops and the fact of Hamass control of the government, occupies Gaza,
20. The ictys Prosecutor v. Naletillic is available at http://www.icty.org/x/file/Legal%20Library/ jud_supplement/supp42-e/naletilic.htm.
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explains why, under international law, Israel cannot properly be considered Gazas occupier. The second part of Erakats argument for occupation that Israel exercises extensive forms of control over Gaza appeals, like the first part, to certain observable facts but depends on disregarding the clear application of the law to them. To be sure, as Erakat stresses, Israel does strictly limit the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza, thus creating conditions that make it difficult for all Gazans to travel and for many to work. But extensive control is not, under the law of armed conflict, synonymous with effective control. To begin with, Erakat wrongly asserts that Israel exercises complete control over Gazas borders.21 In fact, Egypt has controlled the Rafah crossing from Gaza into the Sinai Extensive Peninsula since Israels disengagement in the summer control is not, of 2005 and maintained severe restrictions on the movement of goods and people through Rafah up under the law of until May 2011, when it relaxed restrictions. In armed conflict, addition, the effects on movement and labor stemsynonymous ming from the forms of control Israel does exercise over Gaza are exactly the opposite of those that the with effective icty specifies as necessary, in the absence of boots control. on the ground and operation of the government, to trigger application of the laws of occupation. Instead of suffering forced migration, Israeli policy causes Palestinians in Gaza to stay put; and rather than being subject to forced labor, Palestinians in Gaza find themselves, as a result of Israels response to Hamas, underemployed or unemployed. Such hardships, however, do not define occupation. In fact, they are among the consequences one would expect of war, even where the law of armed conflict is scrupulously observed. And Hamas not only believes that it is at war with Israel. It undertakes acts launching mortars, rockets, and missiles at Israeli civilian populations; continued mobilization for armed conflict; and constant planning and undertaking of terrorist incursions that meet the settled definition of aggression, namely acts that threaten a states territorial integrity or political independence.22 Although Hamass precise legal status is open to question Gaza is not a state, and Hamas came to power by overthrowing the Palestinian Authority Hamas is the de facto ruler of Gaza and has exercised the functions of government there since it seized control in June 2007. Notwithstanding its designation as a terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department and the European Union, Hamas operates in Gaza a full range of ministries, a police
21 Erakat, Its Not Wrong, Its Illegal, 12. 22. un Charter, Article 2(4), is available at http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter1.shtml.
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Peter Berkowitz
force, and a military, and makes and enforces the law. Consequently, Israel cannot be said to exercise effective control over Gaza in the legally relevant sense. Any attempt by Israel to exert the effective control Erakat insists it still retains by imposing law and order on Gaza would quickly clarify that Israel lacks effective control in Gaza, in both the legal and the colloquial sense. To have prevented Hamas from launching rockets in the first place, as Erakat and others suggest it should have, would have required Israel to mount a full-scale invasion in 2007 when Hamas overthrew the Palestinian Authority. Such an action would have made Operation Cast Lead look like a minor border skirmish.23 At the same time, Hamass launching of mortars, rockets, and missiles against Israel does not reflect a failure on its part to maintain law and order. Rather, it displays Goldstone Hamass determination to wage war against Israel, applauded Israel indeed a kind of war that is strictly forbidden by for launching international law. Hamas reaffirmed its criminal intentions in the more than 4 0 0 wake of Justice Richard Goldstones stunning investigations reconsideration, appearing April 1, 2011, in the Washington Post, in which, among other things, he of allegations withdrew the gravest charge the Goldstone Report of criminal leveled against Israel that in Operation Cast Lead Israel had, as a deliberate policy, sought to terwrongdoing. rorize the civilian population of Gaza.24 Goldstone also applauded Israel for launching more than 400 investigations of allegations of criminal wrongdoing arising from the Gaza operation and expressed disappointment that Hamas had not undertaken a single one. When asked by the New York Times to respond to Goldstones disappointment, Hamas Justice Minister Mohammad al-Ghoul said that there was nothing to investigate because shooting rockets was a right of self-defense of the Palestinian people in the face of the Israeli invasion and mass killing of Palestinians.25 Justice Minister al-Ghouls statement is factually erroneous and legally wrong, but it gives clear expression to Hamass criminal military strategy and objectives. Contrary to Minister al-Ghoul, there is no right under international law, in self-defense or otherwise, to deliberately target civilians. At
23. Bell and Weiner, International Law and the Fighting in Gaza.
24. Available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/reconsidering-the-goldstone-report-on-israeland-war-crimes/2011/04/01/afg111jc_story.html. For the scurrilous charge withdrawn by Goldstone, see Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Commission on the Gaza Conflict, Part V, Paragraph 1 6 9 0 , available at http://www2 .ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/specialsession/9 /docs/ unffmgc_Report.pdf. 25. Ethan Bronner and Isabel Kershner, Israel Grapples with Retraction on U.N. Report, New York Times (April 3, 2011), available at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/04/world/middleeast/04goldstone.html.
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Policy Review

the same time, the shooting of rockets at civilians for which Minister alGhoul matter-of-factly takes responsibility, and which the Goldstone Report properly characterized as war crimes, did not take place in response to Israels Gaza operation. Indeed, Hamas launched thousands of projectiles at Israeli civilians after Israels withdrawal from Gaza in September 2005 and before Operation Cast Lead began in December 2008. Israels Gaza operation was a response to Hamas attacks on civilians, not the other way around. Given Hamass officially declared intentions, its sustained aerial assault on Israeli civilians should not be surprising. Hamass principal aim in waging war against Israel is not to end a supposed occupation of Gaza or to break a naval blockade, but rather to annihilate Israel. Hamass Charter makes this abundantly clear: Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it (Preamble). Hamas strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine (Article 6). There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad (Article 13).26 The emptiness of the standard argument that Israel occupies Gaza was further confirmed in March of this year by an authoritative source the un Security Council.27 un Security Council Resolution 1973 adopted by a vote of ten in favor, none against, and five abstentions authorized the use of military force to protect civilians against Muammar Gadaffis fighters, imposed a no-fly zone across the entire country, and tightened the asset freeze and arms embargo established by un Security Council Resolution 1970, while at the same time declaring that Libya was not and would not be occupied.28 If, despite the extensive forms of control that nato forces and the Arab League exercise over Libya under Resolution 1973, they could not be considered occupying powers, then it follows that Israel, which exercises lesser forms of control over Gaza cannot, consistent with international law, be deemed an occupying power of Gaza.
The inherent right of self-defense

he ultimate ground of Israels naval blockade of Gaza as well as of Operation Cast Lead and of the various measures that it continues to take to protect itself against Hamas mortar, rocket, and missile attacks and more is its inherent right of self-defense. In exercising this right, Israel is obliged to honor the cornerstones of international humanitarian law: The principle of distinction requires fighters to distinguish civilians and civilian objects and prohibits attacking
26. Available at http://www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm. .
27. Eugene Kontorovich, Is Gaza still Occupied?, Jerusalem Post (June 2, 2011), available at http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=223231. 28. Available at http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/sc10200.doc.htm#Resolution.
15
Peter Berkowitz
them;29 and the principle of proportionality bars attacks on legitimate military targets that knowingly produce harm to civilians and civilian objects that is excessive in relation to the military advantage gained.30 The proper legal question to ask in regard to any exercise of force is whether it conforms to the principles of distinction and proportionality. That would be true even if Israel were regarded as an occupying power. The un Charter, Article 51, declares, Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.31 The tendency among international lawyers is to adopt a narrow reading, contending that the right of selfdefense can only be exercised in response to an A states attack, and that once the Security Council is seized inherent right of a matter states are barred from exercising their of self-defense right even if the attack continues. Yet as Abraham stems from the Sofaer points out, Advocates of a narrow interpretation of Article 51 disregard the substantial authorright of the ity that exists among scholars and in state practice individuals in the for a more flexible approach.32 That more flexible approach is more consistent with the un Charters state to defend language, which recognizes that states inherent right of self-defense is not conferred upon them by themselves. the un or by international law. Instead, as Michael Walzer argues in his classic study, Just and Unjust Wars, nations inherent right to defend themselves stems from the inherent right of the individuals who compose states to defend themselves and provides the foundation of the modern state system and the international law of war.33 Proponents of a narrow reading of Article 51, moreover, argue from the mistaken assumption that the more flexible interpretation of the inherent right of self-defense undermines international peace and security by inviting states to take the law into their own hands. But, as Sofaer stresses, Selfdefense is a key element in any sensible program to supplement the inadequate, collective efforts of the Security Council.34 History provides ample
29. Customary ihl, Rule 1, is available at http://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_cha_chapter1_rule1?OpenDocument&highlight=distinction, and Rule 7 is available at http://www.icrc.org/customary-ihl/eng/docs/v1_cha_chapter2_rule7?OpenDocument&highlight=distinction. 3 0 . Customary i h l , ihl/eng/docs/v1_rul_rule14. Rule 14, is available at http://www.icrc.org/customary-
31. Available at http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter7.shtml. 32. Abraham Sofaer, International Security and the Use of Force, Progress in International Law (2008), 561. 33. Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (Basic, 2000), 5173 ( in particular 5164). 34. Sofaer, International Security and the Use of Force, 561.
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Policy Review

evidence that the Security Council cannot be counted upon to counter aggression swiftly and decisively. Consequently, exercise of the inherent right of self-defense is critical to upholding international order and vindicating the principle that aggression is criminal and will not be tolerated. At the same time, Actions in self-defense, as Sofaer observes, should be judged by their reasonableness, as are issues of force in any other contests of law enforcement and national law.35 In international humanitarian law, the decisive measures of reasonableness are the principles of distinction and proportionality. In the last analysis, the question of the legality of Israels blockade should be whether it distinguishes civilians and civilian objects and represents a proportionate response to Hamass declared jihad against it. As the Turkel Commission Report argues, Israel is barred Israels naval blockade conforms to the requirements from invoking a of international maritime law, including allowing for right of selfthe passage of humanitarian relief to the Gazan civilian population, and so does meet the requirements defense against of proportionality.36 Moreover, as an exercise of Hamas fighters, force aimed at preventing armed attacks by Hamas, Israels naval blockade is considerably more protecErakat argues, tive of Gazas civilians than the obvious alternative, a land invasion that would inevitably cause substan- because they are tial civilian death and destruction because of nonstate actors. Hamass criminal military strategy of operating in civilian areas while disguised as civilians. Erakat displays the argumentative extremes to which she is willing to go by contending that Israels inherent right of self-defense does not apply to Palestinian aggression. Israel is barred from invoking a right of self-defense against Hamas fighters, she argues, because they are nonstate actors. Her authority for this remarkable notion is the International Court of Justice. On this occasion, Erakat, alas, accurately reports the courts opinion. She fails to note, however, that this aspect of the opinion is widely regarded as bizarre, and is inconsistent with state practice, for example that of the United States for nearly a decade in its use of armed force against the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In her most comprehensive article on the blockade, Erakat maintains that the International Court of Justices Advisory Opinion on the Legal Consequences on the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (2004)37 stands for two crucial propositions: first, that a nonstate entity cannot trigger Article 51 self-defense; and second, that attacks
35. Sofaer, International Security and the Use of Force, 561. 36. Turkel Commission Report, 100102. 37. Available at http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/index.php?p1=3&p2=4&k=5a&case=131&code= mwp&p3=4. .
17
Peter Berkowitz
that originate within occupied territory where the law of occupation applies distinguish the case of Gaza attacks on Israel from al Qaedas September 11 attack on the U.S. and therefore [un Security Council] Resolutions 1368 and 1373, which authorize the invocation of Article 51 self-defense against al-Qaeda, are distinct from, and nonapplicable to, the Occupied Palestinian Territories.38 In regard to Erakats first proposition, in providing that nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective selfdefense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations, Article 51 does not require the attacker to be a state. Nor is that surprising: Even as the rise of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction has confronted international law with novel and diffiThere have cult questions, there have always been nonstate entities, within states as well as in border regions of always been questionable territorial allegiance, that present nonstate entities threats to states territorial integrity or political independence. And it is this criterion whether an act that present threats to states presents a threat to states territorial integrity or political independence that determines whether territorial the crime of aggression has been committed and states inherent right of self-defense has been trigintegrity or gered. Subjecting one million citizens to the daily political danger, and heavy civic and commercial dislocations, of mortar, rocket, and missile attacks as well independence. as the ever present threat of terrorist incursion as Hamas has done for many years to the civilians of southern Israel threatens Israels territorial integrity and political independence and so constitutes under the international law of war criminal aggression by Hamas. Oddly, Erakat herself provides substantial and compelling scholarly authority to establish that she and the icj ruling on which she relies are in error to argue that a non-state entity cannot trigger Article 51 selfdefense. As it happens, several sources in support of the conclusion that a nonstate entity can trigger Article 51 self-defense are contained in her footnote 100, which she offers in defense of the proposition that it cant:
See e.g., Ruth Wedgwood, The icj Advisory Opinion on the Israeli Security Fence and the Limits of Self-Defense . . . (The Charters language does not link the right of self-defense to the particular legal personality of the attacker. In a different age, one might not have imagined that nonstate actors could mimic the force available to nation states, but the events of September 11 have retired that assumption.); See also Geoffrey Watson, Self-Defense and the Israeli Wall Advisory Opinion: The Wall Decisions in Legal and Political Context . . . (Watson argues
38. Erakat, Its not Wrong, Its Illegal, 1920. .
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Policy Review

that the icjs decision is expansive and sweeping and fails to conduct a proper analysis of law and fact.); See also Sean D. Murphy, SelfDefense and the Israeli Wall Advisory Opinion: An Ipse Dixit From the icj . . . (First, nothing in the language of Article 51 of the Charter requires the exercise of self-defense to turn on whether an armed attack was committed directly by, or can be imputed to, another state. Article 51 speaks of the right of self-defense by a Member of the United Nations against an armed attack, without any qualification as to who or what is conducting the armed attack. The ordinary meaning of the terms of Article 51 provides no basis for reading into the text a restriction on who the attacker must be.)39
Contrary to her apparent intention, Erakat highlights international laws convergence with the common-sense idea that states may exercise their right of self-defense against any actors, including nonstate actors, that threaten their territorial integrity or political independence. Even though Israel clearly does not occupy Gaza, it is worth noting that Erakats second proposition, that attacks coming from occupied territory can never trigger a states inherent right of self-defense, is also in error. Many articles in the Geneva Conventions that deal with the protection of civilians nevertheless recognize that in cases of military necessity humanitarian responsibilities do not cancel the right of self-defense. For example, the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol 1 (1977), Article 54, Sect. 5, concerns the obligation of occupying powers to prevent starvation and provide foodstuffs. It provides that
In recognition of the vital requirements of any Party to the conflict in the defense of its national territory against invasion, derogation from the prohibitions contained in paragraph 2 may be made by a Party to the conflict within such territory under its own control where required by imperative military necessity.40
Thus, notwithstanding the responsibilities owed by occupiers to civilians under their control, a state that is an occupying power may, in a situation of military necessity, exercise its inherent right of self-defense, which means using military force to defeat threats to its territorial integrity or political independence. And to repeat, a states exercise of its inherent right of selfdefense does not suspend international law, because it remains obliged to exercise its right reasonably, that is, in conformity with the principles of distinction and proportion.
39. Erakat, Its not Wrong, Its Illegal, 1920. .
40. Available at http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/470?opendocument. For additional examples, see the Fourth Geneva Convention, Articles 1 8 , 2 8 , 4 9 , 5 3 , 5 5 , 1 0 8 , 1 4 3 , and 1 4 7 , available at http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/380?OpenDocument; and Additional Protocol 1, Articles 62, 67, and 71, available at http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/470?OpenDocument; and Additional Protocol II, Article 17, available at http://www.icrc.org/ihl.nsf/full/475?OpenDocument.
19
Peter Berkowitz
In sum, one may plausibly argue that Israels handling of the seizure of the Mavi Marmara was inept or unwise, and one may plausibly contend that it involved the application of disproportionate force. But one cannot as Noura Erakat, the un Human Rights Council, Turkey, Arab states, and European states try to argue coherently and in keeping with well-established principles of international humanitarian law that Israels blockade is inherently illegal. In imposing a maritime blockade on Gaza that allows for the passage into it of goods that satisfy the basic requirements of the civilian population, Israel is exercising its inherent right of self-defense against Hamas, the ruling power in Gaza, which is waging against it a religious war that aims at Israels total destruction.
Conserving the international law of war

he standard arguments for viewing Israels blockade of Gaza as unlawful are unsound and insubstantial. Their popularity reflects the determination to subordinate the international law of war to partisan political goals. Since the international law of war stands or falls with its claim to transcend partisan controversies and rise above the political fray, and since the international law of war is a vital component of a freer, more peaceful, and more prosperous world order, most nations and certainly all liberal democracies have a vital interest in defending its integrity. That defense must devote considerable attention to the controversies in which Israel has become embroiled, because the sustained campaigns to criminalize Israels exercise of its inherent right of self-defense are among the gravest abuses to which the international law of war has been subject. When it comes to Israels exercise of military force, critics lawyers and non-lawyers alike exhibit a tendency to infer criminal conduct from civilian harm. This is certainly true of the Gaza Flotilla controversy and the Goldstone Report. The inference, however, which involves an elevation of humanitarian responsibility and a disregard of military necessity, is invalid under the law of armed conflict. The main tests of criminality in war are distinction and proportionality. They require fighters to strike a reasonable balance between humanitarian responsibility and military necessity, which sometimes are mutually reinforcing but also can be in tragic tension. Proper application of the laws of war necessitates an inquiry not only into the identity and suffering of civilians but also into tactics and strategy, battlefields and weapons, what troops and commanders knew and what they reasonably could have known. And thus their proper application depends not only on an understanding of fighters responsibilities toward noncombatants but also on expertise in the intricacies of battle and the requirements of victory. The inherent difficulties of applying distinction and proportionality are compounded when, as is the case with Hamas, one side unlawfully abandons the use of uniforms, refuses to carry its arms openly, hides amidst civilian popu20 Policy Review

lations, stores arms in ostensibly civilian facilities, and fires mortars, rockets, and missiles from civilian areas. Such blatantly unlawful conduct inevitably increases civilian casualties. But the international law of war is clear: Fighting forces that operate among civilians remain legitimate military targets, and fighters who use civilian areas and structures for military purposes cause them to lose their immunity. The great revolution in military affairs over the last 60 years by means of which the conduct of war has come under vastly greater legal supervision continues apace. In many respects it has made war more humane. At the same time, it has been accompanied by a politicization of the international law of war that threatens to reward terrorism and impair the right of liberal democracies to defend themselves. No cure or corrective will succeed that does not give close attention to the education of the next generation of lawyers, scholars, soldiers, and statesman. The young men and women who will assume responsibility for the preservation and elaboration of the international law of war need to be trained to appreciate both humanitarian responsibility and military necessity, and to respect the distinction between politics and law. Consequently, conserving the international law of war awaits a major reform of educational affairs.
21
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The GOPs 2012 Field

By Jon Decker
lection 2012 has already begun. In fact, its in full gear. To no ones surprise, President Barack Obama in early April formed his reelection committee, which will allow his campaign to begin raising money for what is expected to be the most expensive presidential campaign in American history. His reelection, though, is by no means a sure thing thanks in large part to the state of the U.S. economy. With the U.S. unemployment rate hovering around nine percent, the national average price of gas approaching four dollars per gallon, and the housing market nationwide continuing to fall, Republicans are preparing for a presidential election that they hope will be a referendum on President Obama and his economic policies. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll should not give Obama for America (ofa) much comfort: Only 37 percent approve of the presidents handling of the economy. With that as a backdrop, eight Republicans have already declared their candidacies for the Republican nomination sensing a real opportunity
Jon Decker, a media fellow at the Hoover Institution, is the White House correspondent for Reuters Television.
Jon Decker
to make Barack Obama a one-term president. The White House, of course, has taken notice of the polls and the competition. And it has readily acknowledged that the electoral map that won Obama the Oval Office in 2008 will be strikingly different in 2012. What follows is an evaluation of the Republican field for the nomination, who the White House fears most, and what will likely be the path to the presidency for the 2012 Republican nominee.
The candidates
ith a war chest that dwarfs his closest competitor, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is seen by the White House as the early front-runner for the nomination. Money matters for Republicans particularly in this election cycle. Obama the senator raised $750 million in 2008. With the power of the presidency, ofa is widely expected to meet or exceed that total in 2012. Romneys fundraising prowess was put on display in mid-May when he raised $10.25 million in Las Vegas in a single one-day call-a-thon. But its not just Romneys network of wealthy donors that the White House fears. Its his ability to appeal to independents that won Romney the governorship in liberal Massachusetts. Since losing the Republican nomination to John McCain in 2008, Romney has never really stopped campaigning. From Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina and Florida the states that vote first in the Republican nominating process Romney has touted his business experience as a way to attack President Obama and his handling of the U.S. economy. The attacks on Obama (and Romneys high name identification) appear to be working. Romney now leads most polls of likely Republican voters. Even more impressive, he is the only Republican presidential candidate who leads President Obama in a head-tohead match-up in some recent national polls. Romney is betting that the faltering U.S. economy combined with his business and executive experience are the perfect ingredients to secure him the Republican nomination and ultimately the White House. As his campaign spokesman told me, This election is about two things jobs and the economy. Romney gave a preview of his campaign message in the first Republican debate in New Hampshire. Obama, he argued, didnt cause the economic recession. Instead, he said, his economic policies have prolonged it. Romneys message has found some resonance with voters. An nbc/Wall Street Journal poll released in mid-June found that 62 percent of those polled believe the country is moving in the wrong direction a jump of twelve percent from a month earlier. Even the White House both privately and publicly acknowledges that the economy will likely be a focus of the 2012 presidential election.
24 Policy Review
The GOPs 2012 Field

As David Axelrod, President Obamas senior adviser, put it on cnns State of the Union: The fundamental issue is how do people feel? Do they feel like were making progress? Do they feel like were moving in the right direction? And do they feel like the person on the other side of the ballot would hold out greater hope? Right now, if you ask the Romney campaign those very questions, the answers would be: Pessimistic; No; No; and Yes. And that, the campaign argues, has created a perfect storm for Mitt Romney. But with the Republican National Convention in Tampa still almost thirteen months away, Romney has quite a few obstacles to overcome. Many Republican voters view the health care plan that Governor Romney signed into law in 2006 as the Achilles heel of his candidacy. The plan, critics charge, bears a striking resem- Many Republican blance to ObamaCare the Patient Protection voters view the and Affordable Care Act that Obama signed into health care plan law in March of 2010. Although Romney has repeatedly said that that Governor ObamaCare should be repealed, he has not Romney signed expressed any regrets for the Massachusetts health care bill that he signed into law, saying in a speech in in 2006 as the New Hampshire in March that our experiment Achilles heel of wasnt perfect; some things worked, some things didnt, and some things Id change. his candidacy. Its that qualified support for his own health care law that complicates Romneys efforts to win the Republican nomination. According to a recently released Rasmussen poll, 53 percent of likely voters favor repeal of ObamaCare. The number jumps dramatically higher when only Republicans are asked this question. If Romney hopes to win the nomination, he will need to explain to Republican primary voters exactly how his plan differs from ObamaCare. And hell have to fend off an onslaught of attacks in debates and in campaign ads. In 2008, the campaign of Senator John McCain was very effective in portraying Mitt Romney as a policyshifter and flip-flopper on a slew of issues including abortion, guns, and immigration. Mindful of that experience, Romneys Republican challengers have already begun the attacks on the early front-runner. And for the conservative base of the Republican Party, Romneys major sin of his public life is RomneyCare. If Mitt Romney can navigate himself through this gauntlet in the early primaries, he will be in a very good position to secure the nomination and take on President Obama. Mitt Romney isnt the only Republican presidential candidate talking about jobs and the economy. So is two-term Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. Pawlentys national stature rose in 2008 when John McCain let it be known that the now-50-year-old was on his vice presidential short-list. For 2012, Pawlenty has positioned himself as the solid conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. As Pawlentys campaign puts it, Governor
August & September 2011 25
Jon Decker
Pawlenty has had real results and has been a consistent conservative. In fact, Pawlenty has won praise from conservatives for: his own health care plan with market-based reforms; eliminating a $4.3 billion state budget deficit without raising taxes; and his record as a pro-life advocate. And hes won editorial plaudits from the Wall Street Journal for his recent proposal laying out his economic growth plan: entitlement reform, slashing government spending, a flatter tax system, lower corporate income tax rates, and elimination of capital gains taxes as a means to spur production and investment in American businesses. The Pawlenty campaign argues that the former governor is the only candidate in the Republican field who can get the entire party united for the November 2012 election. Without mentioning any Although many names (although the veiled reference is clearly aimed at Romney), a campaign spokesman told me that no publications other top-tier candidates will be fully acceptable to the Tea Party and no other candidate will contrast have derided as well with Obama. Pawlenty as Pawlenty also has an interesting personal story. bland, he is His father drove a milk truck, and his mother died of cancer when he was just sixteen. A trained lawyer very good at and a native Minnesotan, Pawlenty got his start in retail politics. politics when he was elected to the Eagan City Council at the age of 28. Throughout his political career, Pawlenty despite his conservative record has managed to appeal to moderates and independents. Although many publications have derided Pawlenty as bland, he is very good at retail politics. With a pleasant demeanor, Pawlenty appears at ease talking to voters of all walks of life a necessary skill to have in Iowa, and beyond. He also has an experienced group of political advisers including campaign manager Nick Ayers, the former executive director of the Republican Governors Association; Terry Nelson, who was the political director of George W. Bushs 2004 campaign; and Sara Taylor, who served as White House political director under Bush. The White House at this point in the campaign process does not view Pawlenty as a threat and has derided his record. In an interview with m s n b c in early June, former White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that when Pawlenty left office at the beginning of 2011, Minnesota had added only 6,000 jobs. Still, despite trailing Obama by nearly fifteen percent in the latest nbc News/Wall Street Journal poll, the White House believes that Pawlenty should he get the nomination would be a formidable opponent and could compete with the president for independents, particularly in the all-important swing states. For all the positive attributes associated with Tim Pawlenty, he has not yet caught on among Republicans on the national level. He failed to take on Romney over his health care plan at the New Hampshire debate a
26 Policy Review
The GOPs 2012 Field

mistake that Pawlenty now acknowledges. And the most recent Rasmussen poll (taken after the New Hampshire debate on June 13th) has Pawlenty at 6 percent among likely gop Primary Voters with Romney earning 33 percent support. The Pawlenty campaign says the polls out now do not reflect how the campaign will sort itself out seven months from now in Iowa. And they certainly have a point. At this point in the 2008 presidential cycle, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani were their partys respective front-runners. Pawlenty, though, is working hard to move higher in the polls and stand out in Iowa. The campaign has just launched the first television ad campaign by a presidential candidate in Iowa. In a liberal state, I reduced spending in real terms for the first time, took on the government The Pawlenty unions and won, appointed a conservative Supreme Court, and passed health care reform the right way campaign raised no mandates, no takeovers, Pawlenty says in the $4.2 million in 3 0 -second advertisement. If I can do it in the second Minnesota, we can do it in Washington. Although the Pawlenty Campaign says it is comquarter peting everywhere including hiring political direcRomney raised tors in South Carolina, Florida, and New $18.3 million. Hampshire the reality is that Pawlenty needs to have a strong showing at the straw poll in Ames, Iowa, in August and at the Iowa caucuses in January. Anything less than a strong second-place showing would doom Pawlentys candidacy. Money or a lack of it could also doom Pawlentys run for the White House. Campaign advisers acknowledge that fundraising has proved difficult for Pawlenty. The Pawlenty campaign reported raising $4.2 million in the second quarter compared with $18.3 million by the Romney campaign. Thats another reason why winning Iowa is so important to Pawlenty and his path to the Republican presidential nomination. Win Iowa, and the money will follow. Standing in Pawlentys way in Iowa is a fellow Minnesotan and native Iowan, Representative Michelle Bachmann. Now in her third term in Congress, the 55-year-old fiscal conservative has risen to prominence in large part due to her harsh attacks on President Obama and her courting of the Tea Party movement. Prior to the first big Republican debate in June, many analysts saw Bachmann as a fringe candidate for the Republican nomination and a stand-in for Sarah Palin because of their similar firebrand politics and personalities. But the Minnesota congresswoman had what could be considered a breakout performance in that New Hampshire debate. She introduced herself to voters as the mother of five children and the foster mother to 23 others. She positioned herself as true conservative who has at times taken on
Jon Decker
the Republican establishment in Washington. And she struck a chord with Republican voters. This election will be about economics, said Bachmann. It will be about how will we create jobs, how will we turn the economy around, how will we have a pro-growth economy? Thats a great story for Republicans to tell. President Obama cant tell that story. His report card right now has a big failing grade on it. Make no mistake about it; I want to announce tonight, President Obama is a one-term president! Her performance was called dynamic and poised, and her stock has been rising ever since. Bachmann comes in a surprising second (behind Romney), with the support of 19 percent of likely Republican voters in a new Rasmussen national telephone survey. Representative Bachmanns native ties to Iowa According to and her appeal to the Tea Party and religious conserthe Des Moines vatives, combined with her prodigious fundraising, make her a real threat to win the Iowa caucuses. Register, That possibility has thrust Bachmann into the top Pawlenty has tier of Republican presidential hopefuls. visited Iowa 30 The problem for Bachmann is that she has poor organization in Iowa and for the caucus times in the last process, the so-called ground-game is everyfifteen months. thing. Its what Tim Pawlenty has been building up for the past eighteen months and its what Mitt Romney has been looking to improve upon since losing Iowa to Mike Huckabee in 2008. According to the Des Moines Register, Pawlenty has visited Iowa 30 times in the last fifteen months, compared to Bachmanns ten days in the state during the same period. For Bachmann to position herself as the alternative to Mitt Romney, she needs to win Iowa. Her entire candidacy depends upon a victory in the Hawkeye State. Although Romney is organizing in the state, he is downplaying Iowas importance in his path to the nomination. Indicative of that is his decision to skip the Ames, Iowa, straw poll in August. That decision leaves Pawlenty and Bachmann as the frontrunners for winning the Iowa Caucuses. The winner in Iowa will then emerge as the best-positioned candidate to take on Romney in New Hampshire, which votes eight days later. Like Pawlenty, Bachmanns chances at winning the Republican nomination hinges primarily on the Iowa caucuses. Lose here, and the path is not a clear one. Win here, however, and the momentum (and the money) follows. Still, even with a win, its not clear what states Bachmann sees as winnable after Iowa particularly when the Tea Party vote will be divided among several candidates. The White House, perhaps in a bit of electoral mischief, has been publicly heaping praise on Bachmann complimenting her performance in the debate in New Hampshire while privately deriding the quality of candi28 Policy Review
The GOPs 2012 Field

dates on the Republican side. Because Bachmann is a lightning rod for voters, she is seen as unlikely to have a strong appeal beyond Tea Party activists and religious conservatives. As a result, the White House does not see her as a threat to President Obamas chances for reelection even with a weak U.S. economy. The latest entry into the race for the Republican nomination, Jon Huntsman Jr., has perhaps the most unique take on President Obama. He used to work for him. The popular two-term governor of Utah served as Obamas ambassador to China until late August. I respect the president of the United States, Huntsman said as he announced his candidacy for the 2012 nomination at Liberty State Park in New Jersey. He and I have a difference of opinion on how to help a country we both love. But the Huntsman is a question each of us wants the voters to answer is media favorite who will be the better president; not whos the better American. but then Huntsman is a media favorite but then again, again, so was so was Donald Trump just two months earlier. He is Donald Trump also little known to most Americans, describing himself as a margin of error candidate, reflecting just two months the single digits he garners in most public opinion earlier. polls. But the 51-year-old billionaire who is considered a moderate Republican believes there is a path to the Republican presidential nomination. And because Huntsman is skipping the Iowa caucuses, that path depends heavily on independent voters and starts in New Hampshire. Although Huntsman has a record of tax cuts and opposition to abortion during the eight years he served as Utahs governor, he has also taken moderate positions on same-sex civil unions, immigration, and the environment. Its those positions plus the fact that he served in the Obama administration which make it difficult for Huntsman to find appeal among the conservative base. Thats why New Hampshire, whose election rules allow independents to cast their ballots in the Republican primary, is key to his electoral strategy. [I] think, given the fluidity of the race in these early states, that we stand a pretty good chance, and were putting that to the test, said Huntsman in an interview with Politico. For Huntsman, the blueprint is one that former California Governor Ronald Reagan followed in 1980 and Senator John McCain repeated in 2008: Skip the Iowa caucuses; make a strong showing in New Hampshire and South Carolina (which also has an open primary); and follow that up with a victory in Florida, the native state of his wife and the home to his campaign headquarters. Although Huntsman has the fundraising ability to compete in those early primary states, the problem is that unlike Reagan and McCain, he is running
Jon Decker
a campaign in which he has positioned himself as a moderate. Moderates have not had a good history in winning the Republican presidential nomination. Just ask Rudy Giuliani, Richard Lugar, Lamar Alexander, or Arlen Specter. Interestingly, the White House has not lost any time attacking Huntsman their former man in Beijing. Governor Huntsman called for a more competitive and compassionate country, but he has embraced a budget plan that would slash our commitment to education, wipe out investments that will foster the jobs of the future, and extend tax cuts for the richest Americans while shifting the burden onto seniors and middle class families, the Obama campaign said on the same day Huntsman entered the presidential race. The Obama campaign and the Democratic Interestingly, National Committee are keeping tabs on Huntsman the White House (as well as Romney and Pawlenty), reflecting the has not lost any seriousness with which they regard his candidacy. If Huntsman can somehow secure the Republican time attacking presidential nomination, the White House sees him as the type of mainstream candidate who could go Huntsman toe to toe with Obama in a handful of traditionally their former red states (such as North Carolina, Virginia, and man in Beijing. Indiana) that the president turned blue in 2008. Getting the nomination, though, is the tough part. Four other candidates have taken formal steps to enter the Republican presidential primaries: Former Godfathers Pizza ceo Herman Cain; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; U.S. Representative from Texas Ron Paul; and former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. Their chances of winning a presidential primary, let alone the Republican presidential nomination, are remote. The White House and the Obama campaign team in Chicago do not consider their candidacies a threat to unseating the president. Radio talk-show host Herman Cain, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas Citys board of directors, has never been elected to political office. Despite the lack of political experience, Cain has fared surprisingly well in some early presidential polls. Rasmussen puts him at ten percent and the nbc/Wall Street Journal poll has him at twelve percent among likely Republican voters. He has also been a frequent guest on Fox News which has helped his voter id among Republican voters. However, unless Tea Party activists and religious conservatives coalesce around Cain in Iowa a scenario that is very unlikely there appears to be no discernable path for Cain to be the 2012 Republican presidential nominee. Newt Gingrichs candidacy went into free fall June 9th, when his senior campaign staff resigned en masse. Two weeks later, Gingrichs national finance chairman resigned. The mass exodus followed reports that the Gingrich campaign is already $1 million in debt.
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The GOPs 2012 Field

The 68-year-old former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has tried to run a campaign based upon his track record of helping to balance the federal budget in the mid-1990s. Instead, Gingrich has spent much of his time on the defensive. Since he announced his candidacy, the religious right has criticized his personal life. The former congressman from Georgia is married to wife number three, with whom he had an affair while married to wife number two. An appearance on nbcs Meet the Press in which he criticized House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryans Medicare reform plan led to an apology days later after criticism by fellow conservatives. Making matters worse: revelations that Gingrich, a fiscal conservative, owed more than $500,000 to Tiffanys. Gingrich will be lucky if hes still around for the Iowa caucuses in early February of 2012. Rick Santorums prospects are also gloomy. Once Gingrich will a leading Senate Republican, the 53-year-old was be lucky if hes beaten by eighteen points in his bid for a third U.S. Senate term in 2006. Santorum has touted his still around when unwavering opposition to abortion rights and gay marriage during his years in Congress in an the Iowa caucuses appeal to social conservatives. Although Santorum take place in won informal Republican straw polls in New early February Hampshire and South Carolina, the reality is that of 2012. the native Pennsylvanian has not caught fire. He remains in the low single digits in recent public opinion polls and is unlikely to win the a majority of the social conservatives and Tea Party activists that he has steadfastly courted. Like Gingrich, the real question is whether his campaign even makes it to Iowa in February. Finally, although he was not a factor in his last run for the Republican nomination in 2008, Congressman Ron Paul is running once again. The 75-year-old, antiwar libertarian is known as the intellectual godfather of the Tea Party. Paul has had an unwavering record of calling for deep cuts in the federal deficit and cutting the size of the federal government. A justreleased Des Moines Register poll of likely participants in the states Republican presidential caucuses has Paul garnering seven percent putting him in a tie for fourth place with Gingrich. With Paul unlikely to win any Republican primary, his presence in the race for the nomination will likely only divide the vote of those who identify themselves first and foremost as Tea Party supporters. Because Republican primary voters have not yet coalesced around the current front-runner, Romney, it has created a possible opportunity for three-term Texas Governor Rick Perry. Perry, as of this writing, has not declared his candidacy but has been flirting with a run. The nations longestserving governor, a former Air Force pilot, has a compelling-enough story that he could shake up the nominating process. For Perry, the pros of a presidential run are many. His aides boast of the success of the Texas economy. Since the economic recovery began in June
Jon Decker
2009, Texas has created 37 percent of Americas new jobs. Its unemployment rate of eight percent is a full percentage point lower than the national average. In addition, Team Perry also claims that the 61-year-old governor, with his pro-life and pro-guns record, could unite social conservatives and Tea Party followers. But Perry has a number of liabilities chief among them a late entry into the race. Other candidates have been campaigning for months (if not years), building organizations in numerous states and raising millions in campaign cash. Although hed be playing catch-up, getting in at such at late stage has been done before. Bill Clinton entered the race for the Democratic nomination in October of 1991. On the other hand, former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson declared himself an official candidate in September of 2007. That run went nowhere. Should Perry throw his hat in the ring, the White House is prepared to hammer home the theme that the country is not ready for another Texas Republican after two terms of George W. Bush.
Electability
olls show that whichever candidate emerges as the 2012 Republican nominee will have a very good chance to defeat U.S. President Barack Obama. A mid-June Bloomberg Poll found that only 30 percent of respondents said they are certain to vote for the president; among likely independent voters, only 23 percent said they would back his reelection. Those numbers are the reason why the Republican presidential nomination in this election cycle is so valuable. If the 2012 election becomes a referendum on the presidents job performance particularly in improving the nations economy Republicans will be in a very good position to make Obama a one-term president. Of course, even with a weak economy, a growing federal budget deficit, and declining approval ratings for the president, nothings a certainty for Republicans. Should Republican primary voters choose a nominee who cannot appeal to independents and moderate Democrats, President Obama, despite all the headwinds he faces, will likely win another term. Senator Harry Reids reelection race in November 2010 should be instructive to Republican voters. Despite Nevadas fourteen percent unemployment rate; despite the highest bankruptcy rate in the country; despite the highest home foreclosure rate in the country; Harry Reid won another six years in the U.S. Senate (and by a comfortable 5.6 percent margin). The reason: Sharron Angle. The Tea Party-backed Republican made no effort to reach out to independent voters or disaffected Democrats. Similarly, if the 2012 Republican nominee is someone who is portrayed by the mainstream media as extreme or overly partisan, Team Obama will have won half the battle. Harry Reid beat the odds and won a fifth term in
32 Policy Review
The GOPs 2012 Field

a state battered by a bad economy. He won because he made Angle the issue, not the economy. Should the gop have such a flawed nominee as their standard-bearer in 2012, President Barack Obama will likely follow that same Reid blueprint to victory.
33
N f mH New from Hoover I tit ti P Institution Press

Failing Lib ty Failing Liberty 101 ber
How We Are Leaving Young Americans How We Are Le ving Young Americans ea Unprepared fo Citizenship Unprepared for Citizenship in a Free Society or Fre Society ee
By William Damon William Dam mon
The The most serious danger the United States now faces, says serious danger United States now faces, says William William Damon, is not that of a foreign enemy but t t our t that for foreign enemy tha that countrys future may e countrys future may end up in the hands of a citize y citizenry enr incapable of sustaining the liberty that has been Americas ncapable sustainin ng liberty that Am icas mer precious legacy. In Failing Liberty most precious legacy. In Failing Liberty 101, he argues that we argues that we are to prepare todays young to re esponsible are failing to prepare todays young people to be responsible Ameri ican citizensto the detriment of their life prospects and iti t detriment f th i life pro ospect ts d American citizensto th d t i liberty e United States those of liberty in the United States of the future. He identi es future. He identi problemsthe de eclines a the problemsthe declines in civic purpose and patriotism, purpose patriotism, crises cynicism self-absorption, ignorance, m, erence crises of faith, cynicism, self-absorption, ignorance, indi erence to common good dand shows that to the common goodand shows that our disregard of civic disregard moral virtue n educational priority having tangible g and moral virtue as an educational priority is having a tangible attitudes, understanding, behavio or large e ect on the attitudes, understanding, and behavior of large ect portions youth portions of the youth in our country today. country today. Damon explains why, unless we begin to pay attent explains why, tion we begin to pay attention and as stewards priceless herita , age meet our challenge as stewards of a priceless heritage, our nation future prospects w nation and the future prospects of all individuals dwelling dwelling here years to come e er m here in years to come will su er, moving away from liberty er, moving away from liberty toward despotismand this movement will be both mand e and toward despotism movement inevitable and astonishingly quick. astonis shingly quick.
William William Damon is a professor of education at Stanford professor education at Stanford f f University, director of Stanford Center University, director o the Stanford Center on Adolescence, f Ado olescence, fellow and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. For the past fello at Hoover Institution. For twenty years, written character de elopment twenty years, Damon has written on character development n ev at life, recently The Path to Purpose: at all ages of human life, most recently The Path to Purpose: fe Our Children Find Their Calling Helping Our Children Find Their Calling in Life (2008). ren (2008 8).
May May 2011, 148 pages p ISBN: 978-0-8179-1364-9 $19.95, cloth 978-0-8179 9-1364-9

Invading Iran: Lessons from Iraq

By Leif Eckholm
he initial military successes in Iraq and Afghanistan were overcome by protracted insurgencies and political instability, resulting in tenuous gains in democratic development that came at an enormous cost. The United States is fast approaching a decade at war. In these current conditions of political and military fatigue, a U.S. invasion of Iran seems unlikely; however, the Iranian regimes pursuit of nuclear weapons and its fierce anti-Americanism create the imperative to consider a future where diplomatic and economic coercion is exhausted, and no options remain other than military action. Should a war become necessary, lessons learned during the Coalition occupation of Iraq can be instructional for conjecture on a post-invasion Iran. The similarities are many: repressive leadership, a brutal security apparatus, and a society in search of opportunity, social mobility, and political inclusion. Ethnicity and sectarianism play key roles both in public and in private life. And although Iraqi Baathism difLieutenant Colonel Leif Eckholm, USAF, works in the Strategic Plans and Policy Directorate (J5 ) for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Pentagon, where he focuses on issues pertinent to the Arabian Peninsula. Prior to this, he served as a national defense fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Leif Eckholm
fers drastically from Islamism, parallels exist in their use of oppression and state control. These key similarities and distinctions between government, society, and security in Iraq and Iran, in light of Iraqs immediate pre- and post-war environment, can illuminate the major challenges of shaping the peace in a post-war Iran.
Government, society, and security in Iraq

oalition efforts to establish a democratic Iraqi government encountered societal challenges from the beginning. The Bush administration operated under the impression that after Coalition forces toppled Saddam Hussein, Iraqis would welcome the liberators. This theory was only partly true, and the part that was true was fleeting. Of the 27 million Iraqis, 18.5 percent are Sunni Arabs and 55 percent are Shia or, in the words of Hassan al-Alawi, the country is divided between the sect of the rulers (the former) and the sect of the ruled. The fall of Saddam Hussein brought an end to Sunni Arab glory, and for them, there was no liberation in that. A sense of liberation did sweep over the Shia, and the Kurds as well, who comprise nearly 20 percent of the population, but it was shortlived. The envisioned embrace of democracy, freedom, and equality was supplanted by the distrust and suspicion that many Iraqis had for foreign occupiers and for indigenous rival sects and ethnicities. The Coalition that swept away the regime could do nothing to assuage the pain caused by the mass graves filled with victims of Saddams brutality a malice that left over 150,000 Shia dead, an estimated 3,000 Kurdish villages destroyed, 1.5 million people displaced, and up to 180,000 Kurds killed under orders of Saddams cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid. As summer replaced spring in 2003, retribution among separate Iraqi social classes emerged, and internecine violence increased as Iraqis settled old scores in the absence of law and order. Without ample military forces or a coherent plan to protect the population, security in Iraq disintegrated, and the liberators morphed into occupiers, rekindling memories of the British occupation after World War I during the formation of the modern Iraqi state. A study of this period reveals a historical Iraqi loathing for occupation and a proclivity for heightened sectarian animosity relative to other Islamic societies. In April 1920, the League of Nations mandated that Britain prepare Iraq for self-rule. Having endured British occupation since 1914, most Iraqis were not receptive to an indefinite extension of colonial administration, and in defiance, on June 30, 1920, Iraq embarked upon a six-month, Shia-inspired insurrection against the British. The British, reports William Roe Polk in his book Understanding Iraq, lost 1,654 men and spent six times what they had spent during their entire World War I Middle East campaign. Horrified by the losses and the financial drain, the British taste for a presence in Iraq soured. They put in motion a series of measures that would
36 Policy Review

grant Iraq a shaky independence in 1932. They established a Sunni-led monarchy and filled key posts with Sunnis; this alienated the Shia community from the new Iraqi government, a trend that endured until 2003. These early years of state development were characterized by Sunni cronyism, patronage, and volatility, culminating in the overthrow of the Britishinstalled monarchy in 1958. A decade of immense political and social instability ensued, ending as the Iraqi Baath party seized power in 1968. Saddam soon emerged as its leader, and his ruthless consolidation of Sunni power hidden under a veneer of Baathist ideology capped 82 years of authoritarian government littered with war, repression, corruption, and intrigue. Placed against this backdrop, the power shift associated with the Shia political ascendancy after the fall of Saddam made building trust, democracy, and stability in Iraq extremely As the invasion problematic. of Iraq loomed, The historical relevance of this social and political turmoil was misunderstood, and this led to an enviexiled Iraqi ronment where planning for post-war Iraq was opposition largely overlooked. In sheer numbers, the several hundred thousand soldiers that General Shinseki, groups began then Army chief of staff, recommended to Congress to jockey for to establish security in postwar Iraq was rebuffed on power. the Hill two days later by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who stated that such numbers were widely off the mark. From a planning perspective, occupying a country, dismantling its government, and rebuilding its institutions are clearly challenges that require extensive integration between civilian and military branches, but the opposite happened. A holistic approach between the Departments of Defense and State was never defined. In his book Fiasco, Thomas Ricks points out that the first and only time the entire interagency convened, at the operator level, to discuss in detail integration of postwar activities was not until February 21, 2003, just four weeks before combat commenced with a force of 145,000 troops, well below General Shinsekis recommended level. In lieu of exhaustive postwar planning, a higher than warranted reliance was placed upon the advice of various Iraqi exiles, all of whom were divided in their individual views and interests. With the invasion looming, exiled Iraqi opposition groups in America, Europe, and Iran, as well as Kurds living in northern Iraq, ramped up their efforts to jockey for power in postwar Iraq. Each had its own idea for the future political framework, and it soon became clear that visions of the new Iraq differed greatly among exiles. From this disunited exiled front, the Bush administration selected a 65-person committee that would, according to Ali Allawi, a former exile who served in the Iraqi government early during the occupation, place a mantle of legitimacy on the opposition. A six-man leadership council was also formed, composed of Jalal Talabani, Massoud Barzani, Ahmed Chalabi, Abdul el-Aziz al-Hakim, Ayad Allawi, and Adnan
Leif Eckholm
Pachachi. Subsequently, these six men served on the 25-member Iraqi Governing Council, which was established by and served under the United States-led Coalition Provisional Authority (cpa). But as the Governing Council began to overhaul the Sunni-dominated system under the gaze of the cpa, the legitimacy of the exiles proved weaker than expected. Many of these cpa-backed exiles suffered from the skepticism aroused by their extended absence and triumphant return, riding into Iraq on the heels of an American conquest. While serving in Iraq in late 2003 to help its transition to democracy, Larry Diamond observed this frustration during a public session in Balad when a man in the crowd declared, The members of the Governing Council do not represent the Iraqi people, and his remark brought the loudest ovation of the day. To hardcore Iraqi nationalists, the former exile groups with cpa CPA Order 1 endorsement evoked the historical memory of removed the four British occupation; hence, the Governing Councils top echelons of legitimacy was inherently stained. The exiles carried the membership weight in the Green Zone, however, and their influence there prompted three key decisions, which of the Baath evoked sharp criticism for their contribution to the breakdown in security and intensification of the Party from all insurgency: de-Baathification, disbanding the miligovernment tary, and institutionalizing an ethno-sectarian quota system for power-sharing in the new government. posts. cpa Order 1, entitled De-Baathification of Iraqi Society, removed the four top echelons of the membership of the party from all government posts and banned their future employment in the public sector. To Sunni Arabs, this signaled that Shia and Kurdish exile groups had the ear of the cpa and that a Shia power grab was in motion, with full American support. Although dismantling the party and its political institutions was a necessity, the impartiality of its application toward members regardless of party loyalty prompted a wave of Iraqi middle-class migration, which was unfortunate since not all of them were die-hard Saddam loyalists. Many of the newly disenfranchised Sunni technocrats, professionals, government officials, and bureaucrats joined the Baath Party to gain perks and create a better life, in some cases to survive, and they could have played key roles in the new Iraq. Instead, they migrated to neighboring countries amid the Shia political ascendency and the emerging sectarian crisis. The more extreme elements went underground to join the Sunni insurgency. cpa Order 2 unilaterally disbanded the armed forces, the Republican Guard units, the intelligence and security services, and their associated ministries. This decision represented a misunderstanding of the society and the security apparatus in Iraq. Aside from the security services and the 25,000strong Special Republican Guard forces loyal to Saddam, most of the 400,000 military rank-and-file were Shia and Sunnis loyal to Iraq. And
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although the army predominantly consisted of conscripts and officers whose professional abilities and privileges had suffered under the sanctions regime, it was still a respected institution and vital to the Iraqi identity. Loss of self and dignity accompanied the loss of livelihood when the army was dissolved. True, a large portion of this military disappeared as the invasion commenced, but when the dust settled, they were not called back. Rather than attempting to employ Iraqs army, or portions of it, to help the Coalition protect the population against Salafists, hardcore Baathists, and Iraqi nationalists, it was disbanded. The Coalition thus could not initially check the influx of foreign jihadists or discern the evil from the innocent in a way that native Iraqis might have. The Coalition remained the sole security guarantor while undermanned for the postwar chaos. This resource deficiency and cultural divide Violence swept prompted heavy-handed treatment of Iraqi civilians, across Iraq as which, according to Ahmed Hashim, author of Iraqs Sunni Insurgency, exacerbated and perpetuat- the CPA and the ed the Sunni rebellion. former exiles As violence swept across Iraq, the cpa and the former exiles controlled the nascent government forcontrolled the mation inside the Green Zone. In light of the government supreme complexity of the postwar environment, and considering that Iraq had no prior experience of formation inside democracy, the pace was aggressive. In less than two the Green Zone. years, an interim constitution would be written and adopted, an interim government would be chosen through a complex system of caucuses, a constitutional assembly would be directly elected, a permanent constitution would be drafted and approved by assembly and ratified by popular referendum, and a permanent government would be elected for a four-year term. An early handoff of sovereignty to an Iraqi body helped the Shia-based former exile groups solidify their power gains, but in the rush to form a government, Shia and Kurdish leaders influenced the cpa to institutionalize identity politics and adopt a quota system of government, which divided Iraq permanently along ethnic and sectarian lines. This development exacerbated the previously muted sectarian discord inherent to Iraqi society. No longer repressed by Baathist secularism, a religious-based political awakening began to spread across Arab Iraq. When combined with Kurdish demands to codify protection against future abuses of central power, political discourse in Baghdad fragmented. Although the ethno-religious schisms along Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish lines were predictable, the further fracturing within sects along disparate political ideologies was surprising, the most notable of which emerged among, but was not restricted to, the followers of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and the younger cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr. After twelve years of house arrest under Saddam Hussein, the prominence of Grand Ayatollah Sistani in the political arena signaled that the
Leif Eckholm
Shia, after thirteen centuries of political repression, would demand the lions share of power in the new Iraq. As the most respected Shia religious scholar and jurist in the country, he commanded unparalleled religious authority and political influence. Unlike the dominant religious thread in neighboring Iran, however, Sistani endorsed representative democracy; consequently, many of the Shia-led exile groups sought Sistanis endorsement to bolster their legitimacy. The emergence of Muqtada al-Sadr signaled something altogether different. A young cleric lacking the religious clout of Sistani, he rallied support of the urban poor around the banners of Shia Islamism and fierce opposition to foreign occupation. Next to Sistanis quietism and support of representative democracy, his fiery activism and Islamist ideology stood in stark contrast. Discord between these Shia rivals and their followers played out politically during Iraqi elections and violently on the streets of Iraq. Sunni cohesion initially suffered a similar fate. Unorganized in the new political disorder and deeply suspicious of the Shia revival, Sunnis lacked strong leadership, and they began to splinter along Baathist, Islamist, nationalist, and tribal lines. As inter- and intra-sectarian tensions deepened, the security environment declined. To make matters substantially worse, the horrific violence levied on Shia communities by Sunni Salifi Jihadists, best-characterized by AbuMusab al-Zarqawi, sparked an explosion of sectarian bloodshed. In the midst of an escalating Sunni-Shia civil war, Iraqis were voting along these same sectarian schisms, deepening the divide. Thus, the predominant SunniShia division worsened as a result of holding democratic elections before political consolidation was achieved. Seven years after the fall of Saddam, the effects were still visible in the wake of the March 2010 parliamentary elections, where this institutionalized identity-based political system paralyzed the Iraqi government formation for over eight months, and its future remains fragile and uncertain.
Government, society, and security in Iran

n 1 9 7 9 , ayato l l a h Khomeini led a revolution that swept Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi from power. Khomeini mobilized a radical religious movement against the Shah by depicting his Western-leaning secular domestic and foreign policies as anathema to Irans traditional culture and Shia identity. To strengthen the movement, he convinced more moderate elements to join the revolutionary vanguard by promising to replace autocratic leadership with representative government. In the years that followed, however, Khomeini ignored his democratic promises. Instead, he marginalized, purged, or executed his opposition, and he established a Shia theocracy with himself at the head. Once he controlled the levers of military force, Khomeini secured the survival of clerical rule, and he consolidated power within it. Real political power is wielded through
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a system of clerical councils which collectively rule above the fray of electoral politics. Even though a president and parliament are popularly elected, the candidates, their platforms, and the laws they pass must meet the approval of these powerful mullahs. In the end, Khomeini did not deliver democracy, but the hope for it survived in many Iranians, quietly, beyond the reach of the regimes oppression. Over the years, inflation, unemployment, and recession resulting from a chronic crisis of efficiency have led to a steady decline in the political legitimacy of Irans clerical elite. Popular dissatisfaction to this effect boiled over in the aftermath of the 2009 Iranian presidential elections. In June 2009 the world witnessed the largest mass mobilization of opposition in Iran since the 1979 Islamic ReJvolution. President Ahmadinejad, the incumbent hardliner, In June 2009 prevailed over the reformist front-runner Mir the world Hossein Moussavi amid widespread accusations of voter fraud. When Supreme Leader Ayatollah witnessed the Khamenei prematurely endorsed the election results, largest mass millions of people flooded the streets to protest the election rigging. According to one of post-revolumobilization of tionary Irans key political thinkers, Hossein opposition in Iran Bashiriyeh, the apparent collusion of the supreme since 1979. leader irreversibly undermined the religious legitimacy of the Islamic government, and it validated the political frustration felt predominantly by the urban middle classes, who consider their vote to be of no consequence in the political system. In order to silence the popular unrest, in typical fashion the regime unleashed a brutal wave of repression. It succeeded in quelling the uprising, but it escalated the enmity between the ruler and the ruled, and many Iranians who dream of regime change longed for the world to show its support. Here a valuable lesson can be drawn from the Iraq experience. Irans popular desperation should not be construed as an invitation for outside military intervention. American forces should not expect a liberators adoration. Like Iraq, Irans similar experiences with foreign control during modern state formation gave birth to an enduring sense of nationalism that could render foreign armies unwelcome and likewise undermine an extended modern-day occupation. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, British and Russian interests in Iran revolved around its strategic location, trade, and oil. Repeatedly throughout this time period, the ruling monarch entered into treaties and granted concessions to foreign powers that engendered an increased foreign presence and filled the royal coffers, yet penalized Iranian citizens individual economic interests. As a result, the merchant class aligned with the religious ulama to protest on the grounds of economic distress and Islamic principle. This marked the emergence of religious politics in modern Iran as well as nationalism predicated on anti-British and anti-Russian encroachment. War and strategic interests provoked a Western presence until the Islamic
Leif Eckholm
Revolution in 1979, and throughout this period a strong sense of Iranian nationalism fueled a popular discontent. Similar to the Iraq experience, against the historical backdrop of ardent opposition to foreign domination, any consent to a modern-day occupation would be short-lived. The occupation unfortunately would not. Drawing further conclusions from Iraq, invading forces would need to be prepared for a deeply embedded and enduring insurgency, due to extreme challenges presented by terrain, resolve, and the security apparatus present in Iran. Admittedly, an American-led invasion of Iran is unlikely. During a speech at West Point in February 2011, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made the claim that any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head Iran has triple examined. Should tensions over nuclear ambitions the population rise to the point of military intervention, an air campaign seems a more likely course of action. Military and four times airstrikes provide a stand-off capability that could the land mass of severely hamper or delay Irans march towards Iraq; it has vast weapon production without bearing the cost of occupation and reconstruction, but not without a mountain ranges price of its own. Targeting the key nuclear infraand deserts and structure sites like the Bushehr Research Reactor, the Arak Heavy-Water Reactor/Plutonium Separation formidable Facility, the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Plant, and guerrilla forces. the Esfahan Nuclear Technology Center would certainly be a major setback to Irans nuclear ambitions, but the regime has devoted considerable effort to hide, diversify, and protect its nuclear assets, and the regimes determination to acquire nuclear weapons actually may well increase after such a strike. Furthermore, the regime would remain in place and likely benefit from a nationalistic reaction that would strengthen domestic political support. Proponents of a more comprehensive military intervention will argue that a full-scale invasion is the only means by which to crush the regime and its military apparatus, guarantee total elimination of the Iranian nuclear enterprise, and create a window for democratic change. But the price of invasion would be astronomical, and the nationalistic reaction would be fierce; thus, the projected cost in life and treasure must be weighed against the envisioned, yet unpredictable, advantages of a new regime in Tehran. In his book The Persian Puzzle, Kenneth Pollack makes a strong case against invading Iran by way of comparison to Operation Iraqi Freedom. Iran has triple the population, four times the land mass, vast mountain ranges and deserts, large cities, formidable guerrilla forces, all of which combine to produce an ideal landscape for a highly effective and protracted insurgency. Trained Iranian guerillas could inflict heavy damage on occupation forces along lengthy supply lines through harsh terrain and as they
42 Policy Review

move through crowded city streets. Pollack also points out that required troop levels in this occupation scenario, using the equation of one soldier per 50 inhabitants that General Shinseki utilized in his Iraq pre-war assessment, rise above 1.4 million troops, nearly double the current end-strength of the active duty U.S. Army and Marines combined. Even if this number is halved, absent a provocation of Desert Storm proportions prompting a massive Coalition and full-scale activation of U.S. Guard and Reserve forces, providing the troop levels required to completely dominate the security environment is improbable, creating a high risk of insurgent effectiveness. This risk can be mitigated by anticipating an insurgency this time around, allowing civilian and military planners to apply a counterinsurgency doctrine from the onset of hostilities. But understanding what spawns insurgency and predicting its players are Occupation vital to successful planning. In the wake of a foreign invasion, the religious forces in Iran sectarianism that ripped Iraq apart would occur on a could expect far lesser scale. In Iraq, the Sunni Arab minority fierce ruthlessly held power over a Shia majority, but in Iran, the Shia represent 89 percent of the popularesistance from tion, and this majority sect rules. Further, foreign the Islamic Islamic extremists that of the kind that poisoned Iraq are ill-positioned to create another sectarian battleRevolutionary ground, since the wave of radical Salafists that came Guard Corps. from neighboring Sunni Arab states would find no refuge across Irans Persian-Shia landscape. Repressed ethnic grievances, however, do create a concern. Aside from the Persian majority, Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen, Baluchis, and Lors make up half of Irans 70 million people, and their sense of discrimination and deprivation vis--vis the regime in Tehran is widespread, giving cause for some of the most severe ethnic violence in Irans modern history. Separatist movements could arise from an implosion of the central government, and violent reprisals avenging longstanding state-sanctioned abuses are likely. Occupation forces must consider these ethnic enclaves as highly volatile and move swiftly to establish security to prevent a repeat of the ethnic and sectarian redressing that occurred in Iraqs lawless days after Saddams demise. These disputes over sect and ethnicity will not monopolize the conflict, however, as blood will shed most readily over the Revolutionary ideology, between those willing to abandon it and those resolved to defend it at all costs. Occupation forces in Iran would experience the greatest resistance from those with the most to lose the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (irgc) loyal to the ruling clerics, and its force multiplier in societal intimidation, the Basij militia. The 120,000 strong irgc was originally established by Ayatollah Khomeini as an independent military wing to counterbalance the conventional military and defend the regime against internal threats to
Leif Eckholm
the Revolution. Since then, it has evolved into a ruthless and effective machine of domestic repression. They are well-equipped, and preparations for a U.S. invasion would involve an elaborate dispersal of substantial military arsenals. Seamlessly blending into society, transitioning with ease between the roles of citizen and insurgent, well-versed in paramilitary activity and domestic intimidation, the irgc would present considerable challenges to an occupying force, both directly and indirectly by way of internecine violence. According to a 2010 rand report, the Basij claim active numbers near 300,000 and a mobilization capability of five million or more, and they have proven extremely loyal to the Islamic government throughout its tenure. At Khomeinis urging, the Basij demonstrated unyielding allegiance to the Revolution during the Iran-Iraq war, clearing minefields ahead of military forces in At Khomeinis human sacrificial waves. Today, they are everyurging, the Basij where, and they possess a notorious ability to intimidate the population into submission. In the present demonstrated age of suicide bombers, a tiny fraction of Basij miliunyielding tiamen with like resolve could produce a highly allegiance to the potent operational effect. A foreign invasion would most likely prompt the Revolution irgc and Basij to commence insurgent activities during fighting from the onset of military engagement. Falling back behind an advancing army and attacking logistics between Iran and communication lines is representative of Irans and Iraq. national defense strategy of drawing out a campaign, inflicting high costs, and wearing out the invading forces by attrition. The likelihood of co-opting the irgc to assist with security in a postwar environment where regime change and democracy replace the revolutionary order is low. However, blunting or bifurcating an irgc-led insurgency should be attempted by exploiting existing factionalism, appealing to pragmatism, and applying another valuable lesson learned in Iraq. The irgc has evolved over time. Once exclusively security-minded, it has now made extensive inroads into the political and economic fabric of Iranian society. It oversees or owns important interests in oil and gas, mining, transportation, defense, agriculture, and construction, with net worth well into the billions of dollars. In the 2008 parliamentary elections the irgc captured about a third of the seats. President Ahmadinejad himself was at one time a commander in the irgc. According to rand, the resulting reality is that the irgc is now a factionalized entity, consisting of an older, more security-conscious generation intent on preserving the regime, and a group of younger, business-oriented members, rising in power and influence, open to a less-confrontational worldview. Regime change would create winners and losers, and exploiting personal interest and factionalism during a period of upheaval might sway key irgc figures, prominent in
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business and politics, to abandon the Revolutionary order and invest in a new republic. Therefore, a blanket repeat of de-Baathification applied to the irgc should be avoided if possible. Disbanding the irgc as a paramilitary force is critical, but banning government officials affiliated with the irgc, past or present, would ostracize key players in important public and private institutions. It could stimulate a migration of professionals and technocrats and drive a significant number of them underground, leaving no option but armed resistance. Unfortunately, the extent to which irgc members would choose political reconciliation over armed resistance is uncertain. More likely is the likely rejection by many ordinary Iranians of such an arrangement. After decades of irgc cruelty and corruption, reconciliation may prove incomprehensible, but until the irgc lays down arms, peace will be untenable. Unlike in Iraq, As for the Basij, when planning the counterinsurthe 350,000gency, they should not be underestimated; yet, according to Abbas Milani, head of Iranian studies member Iranian at Stanford University, they should not be overesticonventional mated either. Like the irgc, even among this resolute stratum there is potential for fracture. For force should be some, the revolutionary fire of Khomeinis era has expected, initially extinguished. Now the material world, as much as at least, to heavens promise, motivates Basij involvement. Much like Baath party membership brought access resist a foreign to higher pay and certain other perks, Basij training invasion. is an avenue to obtain loans, scholarships, subsidies, and other advantages. In the face of overwhelming American firepower, their resolve could fade, and economic incentives could prove effective in motivating counterinsurgent behavior among the Basij. Providing these incentives and disincentives to the irgc and Basij are important lessons from cpa Order 1, but persuading Irans conventional military, the Artesh, to assist in post-war security is a lesson learned from cpa Order 2, and would be a course of action worth pursuing. Unlike Iraqi conventional forces, many of whom disappeared as the war commenced, the 350,000-member Iranian conventional force should be expected, initially at least, to resist a foreign invasion. But the army, the Artesh, is significantly outclassed by Coalition firepower, so conventional resistance against heavily armed forces would be brief. Dissuading the members of the Artesh from joining an underground insurgency should be the top priority. It is worth noting that the professional army mounted several coup attempts in 1980, but they ended in failure, and high-ranking officers and opposition forces were purged from its ranks shortly after the Islamic Revolution. Since that time, the Artesh has largely retained an apolitical allegiance to the state, a characteristic defined under the Shah and continued under Ayatollah Khomeini. During the uprising in June 2009, there were even reports that members of the Artesh refused their orders to violently
Leif Eckholm
repress the demonstration, leaving the dirty work to the irgc. Therefore, once Coalition military forces inevitably overcome the Artesh, take Tehran, and unseat the clerical regime, an attempt to co-opt the Artesh is in order. Gradually marginalized since the Revolution by the rise of the irgc, underpaid and under-resourced by comparison, they are neither revered nor detested in Iran, making them a prime target for co-opting. Their assistance in establishing security might be acquired by providing higher pay and institutional survival, and promising a return to military preeminence in the new Iran. Driving these wedges between the conventional and paramilitary security forces is essential to securing the people and establishing enough space for political maneuvering. Crossing into the political arena, a bifurcating In an invasion strategy that targets the ruling clerical establishment of Iran, driving is just as critical, for it too is a house divided. For over a century, Irans ulama, have debated the propwedges er role of religion in politics. Some Iranian ayatollahs, similar to Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq, subscribe to between the Quietism, where religion rules the spiritual realm, conventional and clerics merely guide temporal leaders in their and paramilitary quest to rule justly in accordance to Islam. For them, democracy best facilitates this pact. Others, like security forces Khamenei, and Khomeini before him, hold fast to would be the idea of velayat-e faqih (guardianship of the jurist), where a government with supreme power in essential. the hands of Islamic jurists is mandated. Ayatollah Khamenei knows this rift between religious thought is paramount to Irans political future. Beginning in October 2010, he travelled four times from Tehran to Qom, the center of Islamic learning in Iran, where according to Alamal Hoda, a close associate of Khamenei, he tried to put down an insurrection in the seminaries 100 times more serious than the insurrection in the streets. Attempting to eliminate clerics from the political discourse would demonstrate a gross misunderstanding of this religious schism and the opportunities it presents. Its vital to differentiate between the religious legitimacy that many of these ulama still possess, akin to that of Ayatollah Sistani in Iraq, from the waning political legitimacy, due to ineffective and repressive government, of those currently in power. Allowing top quietist and reformist ayatollahs, who, like Sistani, support democracy, to enter a new political discourse is fundamental to the legitimization of government in the post-Revolutionary era. There is a true silver lining, and it exists in the strong constitutional legacy in Iran and the democratic undercurrent present in society since the Constitutional Revolution roughly a hundred years ago. During this period, a powerful alliance between merchants, clerics, and the intelligentsia forced constitutional limitations on a ruling monarch, heretofore unprecedented in the Middle East. The intent of the movement was to codify a true constitu46 Policy Review

tional monarchy, requiring legislative approval on important matters of state such as foreign loans and treaties, and to guarantee personal rights and freedoms. Initial success was short-lived, however, as absolute power migrated back to the Shah, but the Constitution and the Parliament, or the Majles, have survived, and they symbolize to the politically disenfranchised the lost promise of genuine democracy. Akin to Americas reverence for its Constitution, many Iranians romanticize the constitutional revolutionary period and aspire to revitalize this vision if freed from the suffocating oppression of the ruling clerics and the revolutionary guards. Furthermore, the democratic veneer in Iran, preserved in legislative and presidential elections since 1979 albeit restricted, but largely free from corruption until 2009 opens the possibility that democratic institutions, legitimate popular sovereignty, and the passage of a new constitution could go more smoothly in Iran once proper security is established to create the necessary political space. Here lies the role of the opposition. The uprisings after the 2009 presidential elections demonstrated the legitimate existence in Iran of a political opposition willing to work within a democratic framework yet frustrated by the complete absence of a social contract between the rulers and the ruled. This should encourage would-be interventionists to avoid picking a winner from the vast Persian diaspora as planning for a postwar political solution unfolds. For those willing, Iranian exiles can provide great value in terms of cultural knowledge, language assistance, institution building, and the strengthening of civil society. Some could offer important links to current members in government and security, providing avenues to communicate and encourage participation in a new order. There will be ample opportunity for exiles to return and participate in government, but any political capital they wield must be self-acquired. Lessons from Iraq suggest that legitimacy of political figures dependent on foreign backing will come under pressure as parties compete for power in the emerging system. However democracy materializes as a byproduct of regime change, it must be left up to the Iranian opposition to shape it.
Learning lessons
s the sun set on Saddams Iraq, the high hopes for peace, freedom, and democracy evaporated as the Coalition faced an altogether different reality in the postwar environment. Insufficient planning and integration between the State Department and the Department of Defense led to uninformed decision-making, reversing the momentum gained by the military success. Paying closer attention to Iraqs relevant history of occupation and repression, its political, social, and military cultures, and the inherent ethno-religious schisms would have revealed the promise of ethnic and sectarian violence in the absence of Baathist tyranny and the perils of building democracy in a land devoid of a democratic heritage. In a race
Leif Eckholm
to dismantle the institutions of the old guard, many Sunnis willing and able to share in Iraqs rebirth were marginalized or demonized. The cpas reliance on Iraqi exiles in government formation at the expense of resident actors put a Coalition stamp on an unfamiliar Governing Council that harkened back to the British occupation and detracted from its popular support. An overly sanguine strategy to expeditiously transfer sovereignty ignored the adequate troop levels and timeline necessary to establish comprehensive security first, grass roots legitimacy next, and democratic institutions third, once the political climate was adequately set. Should America embark upon regime change in Tehran, shaping the peace will be every bit as gruesome, but understanding how miscalculations with respect to government, society, and security led Understanding to increased violence and instability in Iraq could be instructive in a postwar Iran. Like Saddam, the what happened Supreme Leader has sacrificed his political legitimacy, yet he still commands the monopoly of force, after the U.S. and his will to use it repressively keeps a lid on the invasion of opposition. Mass uprisings following the 2009 presidential elections demonstrated the growing Iraq could be popular frustration, but this should not be interpretinstructive in a ed as a national call for foreign intervention. An postwar Iran. ephemeral sense of liberation would fade in the face of a violent insurgency, powered by a militarized irgc and Basij militia with numbers conceivably reaching into the millions. Like Iraqs Sunni insurgency, motivation for resistance would stem from the eclipse of power. It would be heightened by the strong religious element embodied by the Islamic Revolution, which presents the potential for suicide bombers to excite chaos on a massive scale. The extent to which the irgc and the Basij have infiltrated the fabric of Iranian society requires enormous troop levels to protect those Iranians willing to work with an emerging government, necessitating large-scale activation of reserve forces and the existence of a strong Coalition. While clearly resistance would be robust, it could possibly fracture along factional lines most prevalent in religious ideology, debates over the role of Islam in politics, conflicting economic interest, and the vision of Irans proper place in the international community. Preserving the integrity of the Artesh, co-opting their allegiance to an emerging government, and ensuring their return to prominence in the new Iran could be the most significant factor in securing the landscape, protecting the population, and curbing the effects of the irgc. Ensuring open political participation for all in favor of representative government, including irgc politicians and businessmen, will make armed resistance more costly for them, and such a measure could expedite reconciliation and buy-in to the new order. On the other hand, it might stimulate wide-scale resentment among a population long terrorized by the irgc, and reconciliation may not come easy. The existence of a con48 Policy Review

stitutional heritage in Iran and a democratic framework for popular presidential and legislative elections puts the starting point for an Iranian transition to democracy well ahead of where the Iraqi Governing Council stood in 2003. This advantage is aided further by the existence of opposition leaders on the ground in Iran who can put an immediate stamp of legitimacy on the new government that the former Iraqi exiles originally lacked. Even so, optimism is not a prudent policy. Because of the opacity of Iranian society, it is impossible to assess the true nature of factionalism and the extent to which regime insiders will desert the Revolution for a new future. If there is one essential takeaway from Iraq, America should comprehensively integrate preparations between civilian and military agencies to lay out a host of different outcomes, and then plan for the worst.
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N f mH New from Hoover I tit ti P Institution Press

Corn Etha Corn Ethanol anol
Who Pays? Wh Bene Who Pays? Who Bene ts? ho
By Ken G. Glozer Ken Gloze er
In the rst decade of the twenty- rst century, both the Bush In the rst decade of the twenty- rst centur y, both the Bush and Obama administrations, along with Congress, have been and Obama administrations, along with Congress, have been enamored of an energy policy that relies on federal mandates enamored of an energy policy that relies on federal mandates e and impor t tari to promote domestic ethanol use as cureand import tari s to promote domestic ethanol use as a cure all for host of problems. Yet the rationale for those policies all for a host of problems. Yet the rationale for those policies o does not rest on any objective empirical evidence that they does not rest on any objective empirical evidence that they work or are more ective than policy of simply relying on work or are more e ective than a policy of simply relying on competitive markets to realize our goals of energy security, competitive markets to realize our goals of energy security, economic security, and environmental quality. In this book, economic security, and environmental quality. In this book, Ken Glozer provides factual evaluation of the major claims Ken Glozer provides a factual evaluation of the major claims made by those who have advocated an ethanol policy for the o made by those who have advocated an ethanol policy for the past thir ty years and answers number of important questions: past thirty years and answers a number of impor tant questions: When did the policy star t? How did it evolve? Are petroleum When did the policy start? How did it evolve? Are petroleum e impor ts and budget costs reduced? Who pays and who imports and budget costs reduced? Who pays and who bene ts? bene ts? After detailed review of the history of the policy since 1977, After a detailed review of the histor y of the policy since 1977, the author presents the results of an evaluation of the claims the author presents the results of an evaluation of the claims made by the architects of the Renewal Fuels Standard (a made by the architects of the Renewal Fuels Standard (a mandate that requires an increasing percentage of ethanol e mandate that requires an increasing percentage of ethanol to be blended in all gasoline sold in the United States). He to be blended in all gasoline sold in the United States). He compares the current interventionist policy to competitive compares the current inter ventionist policy to a competitive market policy using Energy Information Administration o market policy using Energy Information Administration projections for each. His surprising ndingsthat federal o e projections for each. His surprising ndingsthat federal ethanol policy has little to do with energy and everything to e ethanol policy has little to do with energy and ever ything to do with wealth transfers from consumers and taxpayers to corn fe do with wealth transfers from consumers and taxpayers to corn and ethanol producersis particularly compelling because, and ethanol producersis par ticularly compelling because, after three decades of federal subsidies, ethanol remains after three decades of federal subsidies, ethanol remains e e uneconomical even with the subsidies, trade protection, uneconomical even with the subsidies, trade protection, and blending mandate. Glozer s sobering conclusion is that and blending mandate. Glozers sobering conclusion is that taxpayers and consumers are the victims of the current policy. taxpayers and consumers are the victims of the current policy. They have no choice but to pay and pay and receiv no bene ts They have no choice but to pay and pay and receive no bene ts ve in return. in return. Ken G. Glozer is currently president of OMB Professionals, a Ken Glozer curre tly president en Profe sionals, ess Washington, DC based energy consulting rm. He was a senior Washington, based energy consulting rm. was executive service career professional with the White House O ce executive service care profe eer essional White ce of Management and Budget in the energy, environment, and Management B energy, environm t, y men agriculture areas for twenty-six years. agriculture areas for twenty-six years. o six
April April 2011, 256 pages p ISBN: 978-0-8179-4961-7 $19.95, cloth 978-0-8179 9-4961-7

The Perfect Officer

By Henrik Bering
ilitary establishments cherish heroes that confirm their self-image, and as the embodiment of British cool, Sir John Moore has few rivals: Described by his biographer Carola Oman as an Achilles without the heel, Moore was one of Britains most accomplished commanders during the Napoleonic wars, and he has a timeless quality about him. Having risen in the army ranks due to ability rather than wealth, he served in the hotspots of the war against the French: in the West Indies, in Egypt, in Sicily, and on the Iberian Peninsula. With his direct and unaffected manner, he was the very opposite of a show-off like the navys Sir Sydney Smith, who had blocked Napoleons advance at Acre and who was busy promoting himself as a second Nelson. Reporting home on the battle of Alexandria, Smith turned up at the Admiralty decked out in a Turkish outfit, complete with turban, shawl, and two pistols in his girdle. Smith was long on daring, but short on judgment. Moore had both. Needless to say, the two of them did not get along.
Henrik Bering is a writer and a critic.

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Policy Review
Henrik Bering
In the British effort to drive the French out of Egypt, where Napoleon had left his army to fend for itself after Nelson had destroyed the French fleet in Abukir Bay, General Moore was sent to coordinate with the Ottoman army in Jaffa; his equanimity was deemed to have a calming effect on the volatile Orientals. In the ensuing battle of Alexandria, the reserve under Moore bore the brunt of the French onslaught and stood firm despite running out of ammunition, confirming Moores image as a man impossible to alarm. The surrender of the garrisons of Cairo and Alexandria marked the definitive end of the French adventure in Egypt. Not only could Moore fight. His reputation as a trainer of men was established as commander of the Light Brigade at Not only could Shorncliffe Camp on the Kentish coast, whence he directed defense preparations against the force Moore fight. Napoleon had assembled across the Channel during the 1803-1805 invasion scare. Moore did not He also had a share the enthusiasm for Prussian tactics shown by reputation as a Sir David Dundas, the armys adjutant-general, trainer of men, whose drill manual boiled the Prussian method down to eighteen maneuvers, to which Moore established as referred dismissively as those damned eighteen commander on maneuvers: Prussian precision maneuvers might look fine on the parade ground, but on the battlethe Kentish field, they were outdated. coast. What Moore sought, he noted, was not a new drill, but a new discipline, a new spirit that should make of the whole a living organism to replace a mechanical instrument. Thus the much looser light infantry tactics that became known as Sir John Moores system required not so much men of stature as it requires them to be intelligent, hardy and active. The point was to encourage to the utmost the initiative of the individual, treating soldiers as men and not as machines. A well-read and humane man, he was sparing in his use of the lash. Of the 52nd, there is not a better regiment and there is none where there is less punishment, he proudly noted. What was to be his final assignment was with the British expeditionary force on the Iberian Peninsula, an ill-planned and ill-led venture. Moore had to take over after its commander was recalled. The efforts of the Spanish allies had collapsed, but in a daring move, designed to lure Napoleon north, Moore attacked his line of communication, forcing the French emperor to move against him personally, but managing to give him the slip. In disgust Napoleon left it to Marshal Soult to take over the chase. A retreat is considered the most depressing maneuver a commander can undertake. After untold sufferings in the Spanish winter and casualties of 3,000 dead and 500 wounded that had to be left behind, Moore managed to get his force into position to be extracted by the navy. But first they had
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The Perfect Officer

to make a stand to beat off their French pursuers, which they successfully did in the battle of Corunna. Moore, however, was among the casualties. A French cannonball smashed his shoulder, and he was buried in his cloak in one of the bastions. Moores death was mourned in Britain like Wolfes before Quebec. His diversion had upset Napoleons schemes in Spain and a planned thrust against Portugal. Wellington paid tribute to Moore after Waterloo for having saved the British army, allowing it to fight another day, much like Dunkirk in our own time. Throughout the conflict, he had kept promoting Moores protgs. As a result of Moores system, which stressed the effectiveness of aimed fire, the French suffered great losses, particularly among officers: The English were the only troops who were perfectly practiced in the use of small arms whence their firing was much more accurate than that of any other infantry, a Frenchman wrote. Another grumbled about the killing power of the rifle: It was an unsuitable weapon for the French soldier, and would only have suited phlegmatic, patient assassins.
An officers work
f all the jobs in the world, then as now, the wartime officers is the most dangerous and demanding, physically and emotionally. It is his job to order men to do something they would rather not, i.e., expose themselves to mortal danger. He must care about his subordinates, yet he cannot afford to identify too closely with them individually, as the mission always comes first. In return, the men need to know that he will not expend their lives frivolously. Needless to say, and as John Moores example starkly demonstrates, he must be willing to lay down his own life. On the plus side, as Moores career also illustrates, the job can also be one of the most challenging intellectually. Clausewitz, distilling the lessons of the Napoleonic wars in On War, pointed out that In war, everything is simple, but the most simple thing is difficult to perform, since the other side gets a say, too. Thus Clausewitz wished to expose the error in believing that a mere bravo without intellect can make himself distinguished in war. The German armys manual from 1936, Truppenfuhrung, goes further: War is an art, a free creative activity resting on scientific foundations. It makes the highest demands on a mans entire personality. Among the characteristics required in a successful commander are imagination, intuition, and an ability to improvise, all qualities associated with a free and independent mind. The commanders we revere are invariably the ones who have broken the rules. Thus, Nelson spoke of the need for an officer to use his head when given an order that runs counter to the overall mission: To serve my king, and to destroy the French, I consider the great order of all, from which the little ones spring; and if one of these little orders
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Henrik Bering
militate against it (for who can tell exactly at a distance?) I go back and obey the great order and object. Of course, this is not without risk, as a penchant for ignoring orders is generally not encouraged in the armed forces. What further characterizes a great commander is the ability to keep calm under stressful circumstances, the ability to tune out irrelevant information and to keep functioning when things go wrong. It was famously remarked about Napoleons Marshal Massena that his mental faculties redoubled amid the roar of the cannon. Superior generalship explains why Napoleons armies for so long could terrify the rest of Europe, and why the resource-poor South in the American Civil War held out against the industrial North for four years before finally surrendering. The same goes for the Wehrmachts performance in World War II; it took the Allies five-and-a-half years to smash the German Juggernaut. Fortunately, as the war progressed, Hitlers constant interventions and overrulings of his generals ended up being an Allied asset. Counterinsurgency wars pose even greater demands in terms of creativity and adaptability. As Mark Moyar, a lecturer at the U.S. Marine Corps University, demonstrates in A Question of Command, good conventional commanders do not necessarily make good counterinsurgency commanders. In the Peninsular War, Napoleons marshals, Soult, Ney, and Massena, the finest conventional commanders of their day, had to fight both British and Spanish regular forces and merciless guerillas, and proved incapable of the task, showing for the first time that Napoleon was not invincible. Similarly, notes Moyar, generals Grant and Sheridan had triumphed in their Civil War battles, but in the immediate post-Civil War years they proved themselves to be less than skillful in handling the South. Sheridans frustration comes through in his statement that if he owned Hell and Texas, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell. Because of their mailed-fist approach to force and their lack of empathy for legitimate Reconstruction grievances, Moyar says, resentment kept seething among the Southern elites. All of which highlights the crucial importance of officer selection, which according to Moyar should be a top priority. The perfect officer as William Pitt once referred to John Moore is clearly the elusive ideal every military organization strives for and wishes to produce: How have various armies set about the task, what are the obstacles, and how come there arent more of him around?
When they falter
ack in the mid-1970s, the British psychologist Norman Dixon caused a stir with his book On the Psychology of Military Incompetence by suggesting that generals be judged by the same criteria normally reserved for pilots and platoon commanders. He caused further heartburn by suggesting that those characteristics which are required
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in a war leader, i.e., an open mind and an ability to cope with uncertainty, tended to be the exact opposite of what he found among men tempted by an army career: These were often immature and insecure individuals drawn to the armys offer of a well-ordered and controlled existence. Thus, he viewed military organizations as conformist, anti-intellectual, and reactionary institutions, institutions that attract and then reinforce the very characteristics that will prove antithetical to competent military performance. He found it ironic that one of the most conservative of professions should be called on to engage in activities that require the very obverse of conservative mental traits. Dixon denied having any subversive intent. His purpose was not to mock the profession, but to study failure and its originators because the price of their mistakes can be so terIn the Second rifyingly high. For devotees of the military to take Boer War, exception to the study of military incompetence is as Generals unjustified as it would be for admirers of teeth to complain about a book on dental caries, he wrote. Methuen and Whereupon he proceeded to reel off a massive list Buller foolishly of hopeless commanders: General Braddock in the War of Independence ordering his troops not to hide ordered frontal behinds tress when ambushed by French-led Indians attacks over because seeking cover was an unprofessional and cowardly thing to do. Lord Elphinstone, who after open ground. the Kabul uprising naively accepted Afghan promises of free passage for his army out of the country and saw his entire force wiped out as a result. Or Lord Raglan, who with moon faced complacency let his troops rot in the Crimean winter for want of firewood, blankets, and greatcoats. In his whole life, Raglan had read only one book, The Count of Monte Cristo, which was of little use in the Crimea. The American Civil War had already demonstrated that frontal attacks over open ground are a bad idea, but in the Second Boer War, we find Generals Methuen and Buller ordering them against Boer marksmen hiding in narrow trenches, with disastrous consequences. At Colenso, Buller had forbidden his own troops to dig trenches and foxholes on aesthetic grounds, as this would disturb the pleasant terrain and soil their uniforms. Lord Roberts, who replaced Buller as commander in chief, castigated his fellow officers for obsessing with order and regularity while neglecting to encourage individuality and imagination. That the Brits had learned nothing from their experience against the Boers became obvious in World War I, where attacks across open country were still the order of the day. The set procedure adhered to by Field Marshal Haig, and never varied, consisted of a massive bombardment, followed by a brief pause, followed by the infantry attack. This allowed the German machine gunners just enough time to emerge from their dugouts and greet the oncoming infantry.
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Despite a bad start, to Dixon, World War II represented a major advance in military competence and in the determination not to spend mens lives frivolously: Still, the war afforded plenty of examples of cock-ups, such as the Norwegian campaign, the failure to acquire intelligence before the Ardennes offensive, or the ill-considered parachute drop at Arnhem. In the Far East, you had General Percival in Singapore refusing to order defensive measures against the coming Japanese onslaught, deeming them bad for the morale of troops and civilians. If all this were just a question of lack of intelligence, if all those screwing up were idiots, the problem would be easier to address. Regrettably, they were not. A case like Percival is particularly interesting, notes Dixon, as Percival disproves the traditional bloody fools theory: The general was a sophisticated man and was considered a brilliant staff officer; yet he made a disastrous decision.
To build a better officer

ixon is certainly right in stressing the need to subject the selection of commanders to close scrutiny. In what has become known as Von Mansteins Matrix, German Marshall Erich von Manstein, in Lost Victories, breezily distinguishes between four kinds of military personality: There are only four types of officer. First, there are the lazy, stupid ones. Leave them alone, they do no harm . . . Second, there are the hard-working intelligent ones. They make excellent staff officers, ensuring that every detail is properly considered. Third, there are the hard-working stupid ones. These people are a menace and must be fired at once. They create irrelevant work for everybody. Finally, there are the intelligent lazy ones. They are suited for the highest office, i.e., suited for the top job since they are likely to choose the simplest solutions and hence the easiest to translate into action on the battlefield and they are good at delegating. Of von Mansteins four categories, the lethal combination is obviously the third, the stupid and hardworking officer. Not only will he create irrelevant work for others, but he is also likely to squander the lives of others to further his own ambition. Dixon was also right in pointing out that military establishments have a track record of resistance to innovation and new ideas, and the people who represent them. As the Boer war correspondent A.G. Hales complained, The English cling to old traditions like sand crabs cling to seaweed in storm time. Stellar examples cited include General J.F.C. Fuller, one of the British armys most brilliant minds in the interwar years and a leading proponent of tank warfare whose career was ended in 1933 by a military establishment still emotionally attached to the horse. Captain Liddell Hart, whose essay Mechanization of the Army lost out in a military competition to an entry
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entitled Limitations of the Tank, suffered a similar fate. According to Liddell Hart, who became military correspondent for the Times of London, a good idea can only succeed if the man proposing it is willing to sacrifice himself. What finally brought the brass around was the fact that the Germans had so enthusiastically embraced the tank and proved its worth in Poland and France. According to Dixon, it was 1941 before the British began to implement the lessons of 1916. The same resistance is found in the navy, where innovations often have been introduced only because they had been successfully adopted by rival navies. In the past, the book notes, it has often taken great upheavals such as the French and the Russian Revolutions to open armies up to the innovative and ambitious. Napoleon was an obscure captain from Corsica, and many of his commanders came from modest backgrounds. The bustling, classless Mishandled potty America that developed in the 19th century likewise training is of encouraged talent. Generally, Dixon says, the most course a riveting successful military organizations are those not subject, but as encrusted in rituals and stuck in set ways of doing business, like the Boers of the old days, or the explanation of Israelis today. So far, so good. But Dixon goes over the top military failure it when, after a tremendous buildup of trenchant is so sweeping as analysis and amusing detail, he triumphantly conto be useless. cludes that since not all incompetent generals can be dismissed as stupid, instead what unites them is an authoritarian and obsessive personality, brought on by unhappy childhoods and dominant mothers; anal obsessiveness thus becomes the great unlocking secret to military failure. Mishandled potty training is of course a riveting subject, but as a portent and explanation of military failure it is so sweeping as to be useless. What, for instance, is one to make of boy-man like T.E. Lawrence, who was as weird and immature as they come, requiring the occasional spanking to keep him happy, yet proved to be a highly successful commander in the desert? (Curiously, Dixon presents Lawrence as an example of an officer with an undamaged ego.) Or, as Eliot Cohen and John Gooch wonder in Military Misfortunes, where does this leave Douglas MacArthur, who demonstrated his brilliance in insisting on the Inchon landing over the objections of pretty much everyone else, but then totally misjudged the Chinese response when advancing up to the Yalu river: Was he struck by a sudden attack of anal retentiveness between June and October 1950? the authors ask acidly. In analyzing failure, instead of operating with abstractions like the military mind, and automatically heaping all the blame on a single individual, Cohen and Gooch recommend also paying close attention to the organizational weaknesses of the armies that generals command. In addition, they introduce the notion of complex failure, involving more than one kind
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of error, and they demonstrate in their case studies how various factors interact to produce catastrophe. This model is especially useful in analyzing modern war, where responsibility no longer rests on one person, but is spread out over a great many people. While in World War I, for instance, it is certainly true that Haig, French, and the rest had plenty of flaws, John Baynes in his book Morale argues that the best answer to complaints about British generals is given by pointing out the inability of the ultra professional German high command and general staff to produce any better ideas. Rather than the result of faulty potty training on the part of the commanders, the problem was that at that point in time, conditions favored the defense even more than usual. Command and control functions had not followed suit with weapons development, leaving the commander back in his chateau unable to exploit developments on the battlefield. The airplane was still in its infancy, and the tank came late in the game and was used incorrectly, piecemeal rather than in mass, and unaccompanied by infantry. By succumbing to routine psychobabble, Dixon himself becomes a caricature, namely the caricature of the anally obsessed psychoanalyst, to whom the world consists entirely of permanently impaired potty performers.
The Germans
ixons argument may have ended in caricature, but the classic problem, as he framed it, persists: How do you combine the need for obedience and discipline with the need for imaginative and independent thought? How does one overcome the boredom, inertia, and inevitable leveling down effect of large organizations, which tend to encourage the mediocre, but cramp the gifted? As Dixon himself admits, military life does require rules, drill, and discipline: Without it armies would cease to function. War fighting is a team effort. If every officer were just to follow his own inclination, chaos would ensue. Moreover, deadly weaponry requires strict supervision, and makework activities can be needed to keep soldiers occupied in dull periods. Drill is equally important for producing reflex responses in times of intense stress, where freezing up would be a natural reaction. At the start of World War I, for instance, the Germans were convinced the Brits had more machine guns than they actually had because of the speed with which the Tommys handled their bolt-action rifles. That kind of speed is only achieved by endless repetition. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, among those who have best understood how to fuse these opposites was the German Wehrmacht in World War II. As British Field-Marshal Lord Carver has argued, contrary to whatever preconceptions one might have about the Prussians as rigid automatons, German commanders generally left their subordinates a
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greater freedom of action than did most British commanders. Or most American ones, one might add. Thus Field Marshal von Manstein flatly states in Lost Victories, the blind obedience of the Prussian is a myth. Mansteins leadership philosophy, as set out in his memoir, was that a commander define the goals clearly and unambiguously and deploy his forces accordingly, and then let his subordinates get on with it. Too-tight control means that initiative is lost and opportunity left unexploited. The commander should of course carefully monitor their performances and intervene if things develop in an unwanted direction. The Israeli military analyst Martin van Creveld attributes the Wehrmachts frighteningly effective performance during World War II to its fighting power, or The key element Kampfkraft, which he defines as the sum total of mental qualities that makes armies fight. As he of fighting power notes in his book, Fighting Power, while weaponry is leadership. In and tactics undergo changes due to the advance of screening for technology, the nature of fighting power remains constant. Thus, according to his equation, within officers, the the limits of its size, the military worth of an army equals the quantity and quality of its equipment Germans looked multiplied by its fighting power. at all-around Because of Germanys limited resources and the personality. risk of a two-front war, van Creveld writes that victory needed to be quick. Partly out of necessity, but partly deliberately, the Germans starved the armys rear of talent and staked everything on the aggressiveness of its frontline officers, the production of which its whole system of rewards and promotions was geared toward. It went for quality and quality was what it got. In this, without a doubt, lay the secret of its fighting power. The key element of fighting power is leadership. In screening for officer material, the German emphasis was on all-around personality, rather than on intelligence and education alone. Intelligence is important, but even more important is character. A man can be clever and a coward. Or he can be indecisive. What the Germans were looking for was determination, the individuals willingness to assume responsibility, and his ability to handle adversity. Here van Creveld uses the German word: the officer had to be Krisenfest, crisisproof, i.e., steady in emergencies. Those with the final say were the regimental commanders. They had a vested interest in making the right choice because, after having completed their training, the newly commissioned officers reported for duty in their original regiment. On a more advanced level, candidates for the general staff received part of their training at the front, since in the German view war is the best teacher of war. Unavoidably, this meant casualties, but the benefits of direct experience were thought to outweigh the downsides.
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All efforts centered on fostering group cohesion. Here van Creveld cites the French 19th-century military theorist Ardant du Picq, according to whom four brave men who do not know each other are less likely to take on a lion than four less brave men who know each other well. Thus German regiments recruited locally, and close ties were maintained between training units and parent divisions, with officers being rotated between frontline duty and training units. As important, each field division had its own replacement battalion, and replacements joined their units in marching battalions, often commanded by officers newly recovered from wounds and now returning to active duty; they never travelled alone. The Germans rotated whole units in and out of the front, not individuals. These were complicated ways of operating, van Creveld says, but they produced results. Creating a self-contained world, the system produced soldiers of great resilience, who fought on long after any hope of victory had evaporated. Van Creveld cites Colonel Trevor Dupuys findings: On a man to man basis the German ground soldier inflicted casualties at about 50 percent higher rate than they incurred from the opposing British and American troops under all circumstances, whether attacking or defending. But it also made soldiers of the German Army indifferent to the outside and capable of committing atrocities that forever tainted its image. So strong was the grip in which the organization held its personnel that the latter simply did not care where they fought, against whom or why. Thus the point of his study of the German system, van Creveld notes, is not to advocate a return to outdated forms of organization or to boost the secret or not so secret admiration for the Wehrmacht found in some quarters. His dispassionate analysis aims solely at highlighting those universal and emulable aspects of the system which address the social and psychological needs of the frontline soldier.
The Americans
y comparison, the U.S. officer selection process was much more impersonal and centralized, and had more of an assembly line feel to it. Focusing less on fighting power, the U.S. trusted its huge industrial might to get the job done: Superior firepower would decide the outcome. Bringing this to bear, van Creveld says, was above all a triumph of logistics, and he cites the characterization of General Marshall as the organizer of Victory. Thus, though U.S. regulations echoed the language of the German ones, speaking of initiative and imagination, the American emphasis, says van Creveld, was on scientific management. And while in determining officer potential, the Germans emphasized character and went to great lengths to consider the whole personality, the Americans relied on standardized tests
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and were chiefly concerned with intelligence. Once his training was over, the school commanders would never again see the officer, who was assigned wherever a vacancy existed. There were good reasons for this way of going about things. The U.S. had not planned to go to war, which meant that its forces had to undergo a dramatic expansion. According to the books figures, U.S. Army ranks swelled from a small force of 243,000 officers and men to one of more than eight million; for its officer corps, this meant a 40-fold expansion. Thus the U.S. Army was basically an army of civilians in uniform with officers and men hurriedly thrown together from all parts of the country. While from the administrative point of view the American approach was a perfectly logical way of proceeding, from the more intangible vantage of creating cohesion and producThe American ing quality it was less advantageous. A less experiapproach to its enced officer corps also meant that less could be left to the discretion of the individual officer, who officers was required greater supervision and control from perfectly logical above. In its regulations, the U.S. was forced to use a but did not much more prescriptive approach, spelling out in detail how to handle a wide variety of situations. always create Thus, rather than following Pattons recipe for cohesion and deep and daring thrusts, Eisenhower, mainly for alliance reasons, but also out of caution, chose the produce quality. more workmanlike solution of advancing against Germany over a broad front, which required less skill on the part of the officers. This was a case of the limitations of the organization of which the commander found himself in charge deciding his approach. Still, while much is explicable, van Creveld refuses to find any excuse for an inhuman and harmful system in which new replacements had to make their way alone to their units and were thrown into the battle lines without knowing a soul, an error that was repeated in Vietnam. And one in which rear echelon officers often would gain faster promotion than front line ones. After the war, the U.S. Army asked the former German Chief of the General Staff Franz Halder to critique the U.S. effort and offer his suggestions for improvement. Compared to the German concept of war, the American regulations display a repeated tendency to try and foresee situations and lay down modes of behavior in great detail, he wrote. The problem in providing set procedures is that the officers responses become more predictable and thus vulnerable to countermeasures. Halder further advised that this sentence be included in U.S. Army instruction: In war, the qualities of the character are more important than those of the intellect. Fortunately, for whatever faults one may find with the U.S. approach, it was good enough for the American soldier to win the war. And not only did he win the war. He did so without assaulting, raping, and otherwise molesting too many people, writes van Creveld. Wherever he came, even
Henrik Bering
within Germany itself, he was received with relief, or at any rate without fear. To him, no greater praise than this is conceivable. After World War II, as David Hackworth notes in About Face, his classic, primal-scream critique of American war leadership in Vietnam, the American Army took over a great many things from the Wehrmacht, from weapons systems all the way down to the uniform. Somebody up there was definitely fascinated by the German war machine, he writes. It seemed that we copied virtually everything the Germans had to offer except their leadership and discipline techniques. Colonel Hackworth was the embodiment of the American warrior spirit, a highly decorated officer who became disillusioned with conditions in the U.S. Army and retired amidst much controversy. But his analysis of what ailed the U.S. Army of his day Colonel remains among the most trenchant. In Korea, where Hackworth he first saw fighting, Americas industrial and techwrote, Under nological supremacy was, after the initial shock, enough to bring about a stalemate. And up through Eisenhower, it the 1950s, the trends towards what Hackworth was all describes as impersonal, almost corporate army were strengthened, designed for the big war in management. Europe. Under Eisenhower, it was all management. Officers became Officers became managers. But that was not the kind of war the U.S. found managers. itself facing in the 1960s. When things heated up in Vietnam, the old reliance on firepower did not work: Vietnam was a war that was fought on platoon, company, and battalion levels, but very little time was devoted to individual and small unit training. The U.S. Army Infantry School at Fort Benning would only pay lip service to counterinsurgency, he writes: Instead, they derived all the wrong lessons from the stalemate in Korea and made them the standard for Vietnam. Hackworth describes the base camp mentality of Vietnam as an outgrowth of the static days of the Korean war. To win in Vietnam we need a Wingate, a Giap, Rommel or Jackson McNair type soldier, he writes. But I doubt if our present system will produce such individuals. They are abrasive, opinionated, undiplomatic, nonconformist and effective. The Patton kind, he notes would be invaluable in time of war, but is a disturbing element in time of peace. Instead, the U.S. had developed a conformist zero defects mentality, where the slightest admission of error was enough to derail an officers career. To satisfy the bureaucratic obsession with meaningless statistics and phony measurements of success such as the body count, number of bombs dropped, and sorties flown, officers were forced to lie to obtain promotion. If, as the German 1936 Truppenfuhrung manual put it, a readiness to assume responsibility is the most important of all qualities of leadership, this is not the best way to set about it.
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The ratings inflation of the period meant any attempt to evaluate even the best young officer objectively and realistically was in essence cutting his throat. In this environment, the ones getting ahead were the bureaucrats in uniform, the dancers and prancers Alexander Haig being a pet peeve while the real fighters were sidelined. Hackworth cites an officers efficiency report: Lieutenant Col. Gibson has strong emotional feelings and frequently expressed his opinion that a soldiers duty is to fight. This attitude limits his value to the service, his desire for self improvement, and adversely affects his subordinates. Equally counterproductive was the rotation system, the purpose of which was to give as many officers as possible a taste of the command experience in a war zone. But the Company cos tour was a mere three months, which meant that just when he The rotation was getting the hang of it, he was yanked out, system was Hackworth writes. The practice of the constantly intended to give rotating company, battalion, and brigade commanders through Vietnam was not leading to an army as many officers with great depth in experienced battlefield leadership . . . but instead to the loss of more blood and as possible a taste more lives. of the command At one point, Hackworths superior tells him to experience in a prepare for bigger things, to which Hackworth responds: I am not over here to prepare myself for war zone. bigger things. We are fighting a war. I want us to win. What bigger things are there? This sentiment is echoed by a general quoted in Prodigal Soldiers, James Kitfields brilliant study of how the generation of officers coming out of the Vietnam debacle set about rebuilding Americas armed forces, It was almost as if the services were using Vietnam to train officers for the next war, as opposed to fighting the one very much at hand. The rebirth of the U.S. Army as a professional army, as told by Kitfield and others, is a stirring story. Inspired by the old gi Bill after World War II, to attract bright officer material the army would pay for their education in exchange for a stint in uniform. A new doctrine was introduced, the AirLand Battle, which involved deep strikes behind enemy lines. New training facilities were created, offering ultra-realistic combat training that forced officers to confront their weaknesses and admit mistakes. The new slogan of the professional army was Be all you can be, presenting the army as an attractive career choice, not a last resort. By the time of the Gulf War, the U.S. had built a superb conventional army. Norman Schwarzkopfs imaginative plan, striking deep in the enemys rear, was brilliantly executed except for the end, which was bungled because of the political decision to stop the war too early, which allowed the Republican Guards to escape. In Round II, a decade later, the initial phase went beautifully, as Tommy Frankss forces sliced through the Iraqi defense and resistance simply melted
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away. But when the war turned into an insurgency, a different mindset and a wider set of skills were needed, and army planners had to scramble to study the counterinsurgency lessons of Vietnam, which had been suppressed in the mistaken belief that the U.S. would never again become involved in this type of war. Here the urgent need was once more for the unconventional officer, and the same applied in Afghanistan with the resurgence of the Taliban. At the start of Afghanistan and Iraq, precious few American civilian or military leaders understood the leader centric nature of counterinsurgency, writes Mark Moyar in A Question of Command. Under the baking Afghan sun we are rediscovering, by way of pain, that the first determinants in war are human. In unpleasant, faraway villages, the U.S. needed intuitive thinkers who understood the local dynamics, the All too often intricate tribal patterns and customs, and could in the past, U.S. transmit this understanding to their men. Colonel Michael Starz, quoted in David Cloud promotion and Greg Jaffes The Fourth Star, has described the challenge posed by the alien universe of Iraq, where boards have been dominated all normal moral laws have been suspended: Loyalty is constantly shifting here and there is no by conventional moral component to it. It is so foreign to our way of thinking and it is hard to respect. But you have to officers who remember it is a different way of looking at the block innovative world. Similarly, when engaged in urban fighting, the thinkers. U.S. officer could not just use Stalingrad rules and waste everybody inside, as the Russians did in Chechnya. He had to work under complicated rules of engagement, constantly escalating and de-escalating, often risking the lives of himself and his troops in the process. And with the media on hand to second-guess his every move, he always had to consider the political side of his actions. Which brings us back to the promotion process: All too often in the past, U.S. promotion boards have been dominated by conventional officers, blocking the advancement of innovative thinkers. Unfortunately, some of this still goes on. In an op-ed in the Boston Globe, Renny McPherson, a former Marine Corps intelligence officer, found it significant that that when Stanley McChrystal was fired as commander of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan for his injudicious comments, General Petraeus had to take a step down to take over, suggesting a scarcity of commanders with the requisite qualifications at the top. While joint fighting is the name of the game, McPherson noted, crossing service lines is still not encouraged. McPherson based his piece on a longer article he co-wrote for Parameters, the U.S. Army War College journal, for which 37 high officers were interviewed: All of them praised the value of broader experience for todays complex battlefield, such as attending joint schools, acquiring a Ph.D., working with civilian agencies, or serving with
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nato partners, but noted that these were regarded as career distractions. These officers, he wrote, succeeded despite the military training priorities, not because of them. We dont educate to be generals, one complained. Because of frustration with the system, too many officers are leaving. In A Question of Command, Mark Moyar found it equally telling that in December 2007 Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had General Petraeus flown back home to preside over the U.S. Armys promotion board to make sure some of the clever and outspoken colonels from the war in Iraq got promoted to brigadier general. The often-voiced objection that one cannot afford solely to concentrate on producing counterinsurgency officers but must also be prepared to fight a more conventional type of war Moyar meets head on: Todays officer must be able to handle both conventional and asymmetrical warfare, he believes. And while good conventional commanders may not always prove themselves adept at handling counterinsurgency, a good counterinsurgency leader will also be a good conventional leader. The trick then is to scatter such leaders in strategic positions throughout the organization, which will invariably lift its performance. Smart officers tend to pick smart disciples.
The Israelis
f modern armies, the Israelis have managed to strike an effective balance between obeying orders and the need for independent thought. As David Ben-Gurion wrote in The Way and the Vision, We need the spiritual advantage more than any other army in the world, because we are few. Surrounded by neighbors intent on throwing them into the sea, the Israelis are fighting for survival, a powerful motivator: To limit casualties and international fallout, their wars must be won quickly and decisively. They need constantly to anticipate, as even a single defeat could spell catastrophe. Formed in 1948, the core of the Israel Defense Forces (idf) officers came from the Palmach, the Haganahs elite commando force during the British Mandate in Palestine. The i d f fought the 1 9 4 8 War of Independence, a war in which the officers task included leading Jewish newcomers straight off the boats into battle after a short weapons demonstration. Many had never touched a rifle before. The Israelis prevailed, but by the early 1950s, many officers had left the army, and Israel found itself illequipped to respond to the constant Fedayeen cross-border terrorist attacks. The idf doctrine of taking the war to the enemy was established with the 1954 creation of the 101 elite unit, headed by Major Ariel Sharon, which world retaliate deep behind ceasefire lines against Egyptian positions in the Gaza strip and Palestinian targets in Jordan, and which reported directly to the General Staff. The aggressive spirit of the unit, which was merged with
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the paratroop brigade later that year, offered a model for the rest of the army. The result was seen in the Six Day War. Culturally, the Israelis are programmed to argue, and this invariably translates into the army. From the very start, the Palmach had downplayed the value of discipline and hailed free spiritedness. Thus, Israeli soldiers do not salute their officers, and they address them by first name. In officers training, the emphasis is on initiative and self reliance; officers are encouraged to raise questions and suggest alternatives; however, once the discussion is over, they obey. As Moshe Dayan once put it, I would rather harness ten wild horses than prod lazy mules. A fundamental difference between the U.S. and the Israeli system is that the idf is a conscript army which relies heavily on A fundamental its reserves: Men serve for three years, women for 21 months; for the men follows 20 years in the difference reserves, usually with the same group they were conscripted with. While navy and air force applicants between the attend officer school directly, the idf chooses its U.S. and the officers among soldiers who are already in the serIsraeli system is vice and have already been tested. Thus everybody in the idf starts out as a private, and those who that the IDF show promise are encouraged to apply for officer is a conscript school. When their training is finished, they return to their original units, which strengthens cohesion. It army which also means that every general knows from his own relies on its experience what war looks like from the privates perspective. reserves. As regards discipline, one should not be deceived by the informality. As an example of the Israeli notion of discipline Dixon mentions General Tals tightening up of the rules when taking over as commander of the armored corps in 1964, which he ordered not out of concern for discipline for its own sake, but for the entirely functional reason that a tanker had been killed in a training exercise due to not having followed the correct procedures in storing ammunition. But as Dixon points out, even the best armies can become complacent and lose their sharpness. This was the case in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the Israelis were taken by surprise and faced near disaster before turning the situation around. A birds-eye view of the war and of the breakdown is afforded by the memoir of retired air-force Brigadier General Iftach Spector, Loud and Clear. Having first fought in the Six Day War, Spector commanded a squadron of Phantom Orange Tails during the Yom Kippur War. In this war, the Israeli high command was badly surprised by new mobile sam 6 batteries which rendered its plans of attack useless: The Israelis lost 104 aircraft, almost all to anti-aircraft and Soviet missile defenses. Finding the high command in disarray, issuing contradictory and incoherent orders, Spector was
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forced to use his own judgment, in some instance aborting hopeless missions and finding other targets: We knew how to improvise, and when all the rules were thrown in the trashcan and procedures torn up, the Orange Tails found ways to survive in the heart of danger and do our job. That the Israelis managed to turn things around was thus not due to the high command, nor to Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, who completely lost it, but to officers like Spector in the air and his idf colleagues on the ground, who knew how to take charge when the system failed. Afterwards, retired General Chaim Herzog provided an in-depth analysis of what went wrong in The War of Atonement, including the acute intelligence failure. As for the battlefield lessons, while in World War II it had taken some thirteen attempts for a tank to wipe out its target at 1,500 meters, it now stood an even chance of accomplishing the task with a single shot; at the same time, guided antitank missiles had doubled the reach of an infantry man. Both developments had profound implications, also for future American doctrine. A similar lack of preparation was found in the idfs unimpressive performance in the Second Lebanon War, when, after a long period of police-type duty in Gaza and the West Bank, dealing with rock-throwers and suicide bombers, the idf was faced with Hezbollah, a wholly different animal, an Iranian-backed organization halfway between a militia and a more professional force, which had antitank weapons and thousands of rockets and mortars, and knew how to use them. This led to another round of intense self-examination and the development of new tactics; many weaknesses had been corrected in time for the 2008 Cast Lead operation against the Hamas terrorist regime in the Gaza. As is the case with his American and British colleagues, the Israeli officer faces enemies who, realizing they cannot prevail in a conventional conflict, launch their attacks while hiding among the civilian population a war crime. To further complicate matters, in Israeli civil society, one finds the same legalistic approach to war, the same collaboration between the media and the legal system as in the U.S. Unavoidably, this debate affects the Israeli armed forces. Thus, Iftach Spectors judgment failed him on the question of targeted killings in Gaza, when in 2003, he was the senior signatory of a statement by 28 veteran and active-duty pilots, who refused to hit targets in Gaza and on the West Bank. On numerous occasions, the Israeli Air Force and the idf have refrained from hitting terrorist targets to avoid civilian casualties. But in some instances, where the target was deemed important enough, they have gone ahead. One such case was the 2004 killing of Sheikh Yassim, a founder of the Hamas; nine bystanders were killed. Another was that of Nizar Rayan, Yassims successor, who placed his whole family on the roof in the mistaken belief that the Israelis would not hit him during Cast Lead. In each instance, a careful assessment was made to determine whether the international outcry was worth enduring.
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Today, Israeli officers ask why the targeted killing of Sheikh Yassim, a man who had ordered numerous suicide attacks against Israeli civilians, would produce international outrage, while there was general approval when Osama Bin Laden was killed. What exactly, they wonder, is the difference? Objectively, both idf and Israeli Air Force officers have shown themselves to be ultra careful in avoiding civilian casualties, as testified to by professionals such as Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander in chief of the British forces in Afghanistan, who noted that no army in human history had done more to reduce civilian suffering than the Israelis during Cast Lead in Gaza. Since then, to further reduce civilian distress in future wars, the Israelis now train a group of army officers to serve as humanitarian officers, to be attached as an organic part of the battalion and the brigade. This carries more weight than civilian outsiders. Unfortunately, however careful the Israelis are, this is unlikely to help them, as proved by the un-sponsored Goldstone Report, which alleged Israeli war crimes in Gaza during Cast Lead while passing lightly over Hamas methods. By the time Judge Richard Goldstones retractions came in the Washington Post, the damage had been done. In the court of world opinion, while Israels enemies are free to commit any atrocity, even the smallest accident is held against the Israelis. Under such conditions, even the perfect officer would come up short.
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Policy Review
Conservative Humility, Liberal Irony

By Andrew Stark
hree books on American conservatism were published last year by prominent university presses, and taken together they raise an intriguing question. . Its not that the books themselves say anything deeply novel. In fact each devotes itself to crafting its own variation on a well-worn theme: that in both domestic and foreign policy, American conservatism is a camp divided against itself. In domestic affairs, the intramural conservative conflict pits libertarians (or economic conservatives) against traditionalists (a.k.a. social or religious conservatives). As David Courtwright, for example, tells it in No Right Turn: Conservative Politics in a Liberal America, American conservatism exhibits a sociological disunity between libertarians who believe in the free market, with its assumption that the pursuit of individual self-interest leads to maximal social well being, and Christian conservatives, who worry that capitalism create[s] . . . temptations, intrusions, and distractions at odds with conservative religious values and moral self-discipline. In The Rise and Fall of
Andrew Stark is a professor of strategic management and political science at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Conflict of Interest in American Public Life (Harvard University Press, 2000 ) and Drawing the Line: Public and Private in America (Brookings Institution Press, 2010 ).
Andrew Stark
Modern American Conservatism: A Short History, David Farber gives the same point a historic spin: In the 1960s, William Buckley worried that some economic conservatives failed to pay obeisance to the Christian verities, whereas Barry Goldwater was uncomfortable mixing religion and politics. The upshot is that while libertarians are noninterventionists when it comes to government, believing that each individual knows best how to pursue his own interests, social conservatives are interventionists. They see a role for government in soulcraft in the molding of character through aid to parochial schools, for example, or measures to strengthen the traditional family. When it comes to foreign policy, as the books recount it, conservatives are equally riven. In Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement, Justin Vaisse explores at length the Warnings of a tension between what he terms the neoconservative conservative moralism of Robert Kagan and William Kristol, with its overriding goal of spreading global democcrack-up in racy, and the realism of Henry Kissinger and Brent either foreign or Scowcroft, with its supreme doctrinal principle that domestic policy America should act beyond its borders only to the extent that its interests dictate. David Farber chimes have of course in on this point as well: Phyllis Schlafly and other prominent conservatives, he writes, were somelong been times mortified by President George Bushs vigorous sounded. use of state power . . . abroad. While realists thus lean heavily toward noninterventionism in almost all cases, neoconservatives are much more open to intervention on the international stage. Each book, not surprisingly, concludes on a pessimistic note about the prospects for conservatism in America. For Farber, these twin tensions suggest that American conservatism may have outlasted its historic purpose. According to Vaisse, although neoconservatism may have a long-term future, its fortunes now seem on the decline. Courtwright, though disclaiming any explicit predictions, concludes that the conservatism of the last 40 years was a messy failure. Warnings of a conservative crack-up in either foreign or domestic policy have of course long been sounded, and conservatives themselves frankly acknowledge and debate the libertarian/social conservative and realist/neoconservative tensions. But in coming out at the same time, and in so fully exploring both conservatisms domestic-policy and foreign-policy fault lines, these books raise questions without answering a deeper issue: Is there, perhaps, an intellectual connection between conservatisms two tensions, the libertarian/social-conservative conflict in domestic affairs, and the neoconservative/realist divide in foreign policy? And if so, does such a connection actually point to a deeper coherence within contemporary American conservatism?
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Interest and restraint, values and freedom
ere is one way of identifying a pattern a kind of symmetry between the two tensions. Consider realists, for whom the keynote of U.S. foreign policy should be the pursuit of American interests. This is a goal that America most reliably promotes when it acts, as Vaisse describes the realist position, in a restrained manner, resisting the temptation to rush off to police far corners of the globe in the name of American ideals, such as freedom and human rights. Owen Harries, a conservative foreign-policy intellectual of the realist school, emphasizes the same key word in his writings: restraint. For Harries, America can conserve its global power its dominance in human, military, and financial resources only if it restrains itself from expending that power unless U.S. interests are directly threatened. If interest and restraint are the watchwords of foreign-policy realism, values and freedom occupy analogous roles in the foreign-policy doctrine that has come to be known as neoconservatism. For neoconservatives, as Vaisse shows, America should be animated on the global stage by the promotion of its values, not simply its interests, and central among those values is the ideal of freedom, along with allied concerns such as democracy and human rights. In recognizing a moral imperative in Americas acting abroad to promote the value of human freedom, instead of restraining itself to matters of direct national self-interest, neoconservatism offers a comparatively interventionist foreign policy. So conceived, conservatisms foreign-policy tension is related to its domestic-policy tension as a kind of mirror image. For in the conservative domestic-policy tension, it is freedom that becomes a matter of self-interest, and restraint a question of moral values. So, for example, domestic-policy libertarians champion freedom. But being by nature relatively unmoralistic, libertarians advance freedom not as a moral value as do neoconservatives in foreign policy but simply because it is the most effective mechanism for advancing the interests of individuals, especially their interests in the marketplace. The market, as George Will says in describing this position, is an expedient, not an ultimate value, much less the ultimate arbiter of all values. Conversely, social conservative domestic-policy intellectuals advance restraint. But since they focus much more on morality David Courtwright calls them moral conservatives they advance restraint not merely as a matter of self-interest, as foreign-policy realists do when they advocate restraint in the national interest, but as a personal moral value, or virtue. The virtues of self-reliance and self-restraint, as Will says, underpin the traditional structures of family, neighborhood, and church. As a first cut, then, when we look in tandem at conservatisms twin policy tensions, foreign and domestic when we search for a set of concepts
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through which each of the four conservatisms can be related to the others a pattern seems to emerge. The four dovetail, with realism treating restraint as the best means of advancing national self-interest, neoconservatives viewing freedom as a moral value, libertarians vaunting freedom as the best means of advancing personal self-interest, and social conservatives advocating restraint as a moral value.
Humility
ven at this level, although the four dovetail, the tensions that Courtwright, Farber, and Vaisse identify of course do not disappear. But the fact that the two tensions at least show a relationship raises the possibility that, if we burrow down further, we might be able to identify a deeper principle that all four conservative doctrines hold in common. And in fact there is such a principle. Each in its own way realism and neoconservatism in foreign policy, libertarianism and social conservatism in domestic policy exhibits a kind of humility about human abilities. That doesnt mean that all conservative thinkers advance their views with humility, nor that humility is the only principle to be found in each of the four doctrines. Far from it. Its simply that if we lend the four conservative doctrines what the legal scholar Ronald Dworkin calls a constructive interpretation a constructive interpretation looks for the best, most appealing norm that a set of doctrines can be taken to serve or express or exemplify then that norm is humility in the case of American conservatism. Or, put another way, each of the conservative doctrines carries within itself the notion that its very difficult for human beings, when they act as political creatures, to get matters right. This is perhaps most evident with realism in foreign policy. Its principal nostrum that restraint is almost always in the nations interests stems from a fear of foreign entanglements or quagmires. It originates, in other words, in a worry that even a carefully delimited sacrifice of those interests, say a modest expenditure of treasure or manpower in the name of humanitarianism (e.g., Rwanda), or an initially circumscribed military campaign in the name of democratization (e.g., Iraq), will inevitably snowball out of the control of officials and strategists, imperfect mortals that they are, into ever larger sacrifices at ever increasing cost. Above all, then, humility about what we can manage abroad is to be counseled. There is a parallel between this central concern of realism in foreign policy, and that of libertarianism in domestic policy. Libertarianisms key principle that individual interests are always served by policies that maximize freedom stems from a fear that even an initially circumscribed sacrifice of freedom, say a modest state intervention in the name of equity (rent controls, for example, or limiting the deductibility of ceo salaries) risks embarking government on a slippery slope. Events can easily slip out of the
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control of officials and regulators, with the result that ever greater amounts of market freedom get sacrificed. Rent controls, for example, cause apartment shortages which create pressure for government-subsidized housing; limitation of ceo salary deductibility leads corporations to reward their executives through other mechanisms which themselves provoke calls for additional regulation. If there is a common temperament to both forms of conservative noninterventionism, foreign-policy realism, and domestic-policy libertarianism, it is a basic humility about our hobbled abilities, as fallible beings, to bend the world to our will. Each doctrine originates in a sense that human affairs can quickly ramify beyond the ability of policy makers to control. Even small deviations from restraint in foreign policy, or from personal freedom in domestic policy, lie beyond our Both social capacity to safely manage. The most initially modest tinkering is almost always a fools errand of hubris. conservatism and Though it is perhaps less obvious, conservatisms neoconservatism two interventionisms, foreign-policy neoconserfundamentally vatism and domestic-policy social conservatism, also display a fundamentally display a temperament of humility. The neoconservative doctrine that foreign policy temperament should promote freedom as a moral value rests, at of humility. least in its current iteration, on the view that there are limits to what America can do on its own to shape world events. It is unclear, as Robert Kagan writes, whether the United States can operate effectively over time without the moral support or approval of the democratic world. In order to attain that approval, the U.S., contra realism, can neither appear to be acting, nor in fact act, as if only its self-interest mattered. It must act in ways that benefit all humanity or, at the very least, the part of humanity that shares its liberal principles. One can thus discern a nonhubristic view of Americas capacity to go it alone, as opposed to a hubristic view that America can remake the world in its own image, within neoconservative arguments for interventions abroad to promote the moral value of freedom. Of course, neoconservatives may ultimately be wrong to think that promoting the values of freedom that other democracies share, and not simply restraining itself to acts that further its own national interests, is going to win for America the hearts and minds of the worlds free nations, getting them to put their shoulder to the wheel. The point is simply that, for neoconservatives, those nations will be more willing to do so if America shows that it is prepared to subordinate its own interests to its value of freedom that it is willing to sacrifice men and treasure to vigorously promote freedom abroad than if it restrains its international forays only to those that advance its own interests. The ultimate orientation, though, is one of humility: America needs the help of other nations, and treating the promotion of global freedom as a key moral value is the best way of winning that support.
Andrew Stark
In a kind of echo of foreign-policy neoconservatism, domestic social-policy conservatism which sees personal restraint as a key moral virtue rests, too, on an orientation of humility. Individuals need the help of government in cultivating the personal virtue of restraint; they cannot do it on their own. Government intervention to promote sobriety, chastity, prudence, reverence, moral fiber, and respect for persons and property are all vital ingredients, social conservatives believe, in the soulcraft that instills the virtue of restraint. That is because our own individual capacities are limited. In the absence of government policies that encourage restraint, social conservatives fear, too many of us would be incapable of properly handling personal freedom on our own, instead indulging it to the point where we would no longer remain capable of either exercising or defending it. Intervention by the state to cultivate the virtue of restraint, whether through the support of religious education, the encouragement of family values in popular culture, or the promotion of abstinence in the schools, becomes necessary. Both variants of conservative interventionism, neoconservative foreign policy and social-conservative domestic policy, thus rely on a kind of humility too. Neoconservatism stems from the awareness that it lies beyond the nations capacity to act boundlessly and alone, and that it must therefore attract international support by promoting the value of freedom. Social conservatism stems from an awareness that it lies beyond the capacity of individuals to act properly when they are left alone without boundaries, and that they thus must rely on government to bolster within them the virtues of restraint. More broadly, if there is a conceptual level at which all four conservative doctrines exhibit the same principle at which their tensions, the two domestic and the two foreign, melt away it is in the underlying temperament of humility that they all exhibit. It may be a humility about governments capacities to manage even small deviations from restraint in foreign policy (realism) or from freedom in domestic policy (libertarianism). Or it may be a humility about human capacities to pursue freedom internationally unassisted by other democracies (neoconservatism) or to display restraint in personal life unassisted by our own government (social conservatism).
Irony
here is, though, another way to look at all of this. Why focus on the tension between interventionists and noninterventionists in either domestic- or foreign-policy conservatism, one might ask, when American liberalism, in both its foreign and domestic policy variants, is cloven in much the same way? After all, in foreign policy, liberal noninterventionists have long sought to end what they view as American interference with the self-determination of other nations, while interventionists have consistently urged America to work assiduously, even if its not a priority as far
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as the nations interests are concerned, to promote humanitarian goals environmentalism, public health, labor standards, and civil rights abroad. Likewise, when it comes to domestic policy, there have always been liberal noninterventionists who call upon government to retreat in almost every arena having to do with moral values religious education, the definition of marriage, abortion, sex on tv while liberal interventionists have repeatedly sought governments active presence in areas having to do with economic matters: taxation, redistribution, regulation. Whatever the cracks in conservatism may be, surely they are met one for one by those in liberalism. Again, though, this is old news. At this stage, it might be more revealing to ask not whether conservatisms various tensions are simply matched by liberalisms, but whether if Are liberalisms conservatisms various interventionisms and noninvarious tensions terventionisms are reconcilable in a basic temperareconcilable in ment of humility liberalisms, too, are reconcilable in some fundamental stance or another. And in some or another fact they are: in a basic temperament not of humility fundamental but of irony. Each of American liberalisms two nonintervenstance? tionisms, its foreign-policy stance that shrinks from imperialistic interference in the self-determination of other nations and its domestic-policy stance that recoils from imposing moral strictures on the lives of individuals, is driven to accept the irony that other nations, or other individuals, may well use the resulting freedom to in fact undermine freedom. A belief that other nations should be free to determine their own regimes according to their own norms and cultures, the linchpin of liberal foreign-policy noninterventionism, entails their being free to adopt the despotism of a Chavez, or the theocracy of a Khameini. Similarly, a belief that other individuals should be free to pursue their own lifestyles according to their own beliefs and values, the keystone of liberal domestic-policy noninterventionism, necessarily implies their being free to pursue multicultural values that may be at odds with Americas creedal freedoms, including the freedoms of expression, association, physical well-being, choice of mate, the determination of ones occupation, and even the selection of ones clothing. It is not that these ironies are figments of the liberal imagination. Its just that conservatives by and large do not get hamstrung by them, believing that pursuing freedom internationally means bringing other nations closer to an American understanding of freedom and democracy, thus implacably opposing foreign despotism or theocracy, and that pursuing freedom at home means integrating groups into a shared American understanding of freedom, thus resolutely contesting domestic groups that would freely opt for a conflicting value system. Liberalisms noninterventionist strands, both foreign and domestic, thus require an acceptance of the irony that to promote freedom for other nations
Andrew Stark
and individuals involves allowing for and accepting that they might well choose to undermine those freedoms. By the same token, liberalisms interventionist strands, both foreign and domestic, are fixated on the ironic possibility that when nations and individuals pursue their own interests they might actually act to undermine those interests. In foreign policy, liberal interventionism rests on the idea that whenever America allows itself to act self-interestedly on the world stage, it risks tainting its conduct in the eyes of other nations. Norman Podhoretz captures this liberal foreign-policy irony well when he writes that for liberal interventionism, selflessness is critical. Because (for example) the Gulf War had been fought to secure a major source of our supply of oil, it had been tainted by self-interest in the eyes of liberals. But to those same liberal eyes, no clear national interest or material For liberal advantage was visible in the Bosnian or Kosovo interventionists, interventions: both were undertaken, or so it was America should thought, purely for humanitarian reasons, and for the sake of protecting people whose human rights pursue the were being violated by Milosevic. Hence they were interests of other permissible, even mandatory. Ironically, the best way of commanding the internations and not national legitimacy that will ultimately conduce to the national interest is, then, to adopt a foreign polijust its own cy that often is explicitly not aimed to achieve the interests. nations interests. The difference here with neoconservative interventionism is worth noting. For neoconservatives, foreign policy should also frequently depart from Americas self-interest, but the accent lies in departing from the interest, not the self. In other words, for neoconservative interventionists, America should promote its own values values of freedom, democracy, and civil society and not just its own interests. For liberal interventionists, America should pursue the interests of other nations in peacekeeping, environmental protection, fair trade and not just its own interests. For neoconservative foreign-policy interventionists, the stress is on principle as opposed to interest; for liberal foreign-policy interventionists, it is on altruism as opposed to selfishness. These may often lead to the same specific foreign-policy stance, such as intervention in Kosovo, but the underlying animus differs. Whatever their comparative merits on other scores might be, there is less irony to the neoconservative idea that pursuing the nations principles is compatible with the nations long-run interests than there is to the liberal idea that pursuing other nations interests is compatible with the nations long-run interests. Finally, liberal domestic-policy interventionism interventionism in the marketplace rests as well on the irony that, as the philosopher Norman Bowie puts it, the collective pursuit of self-interest by all members of a society has the collective result of undermining the interests of all. When we each merely pursue our own economic interests working harder, driving
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costs down, and buying more we at the same time undermine our own interests in personal well-being, job satisfaction, and the environment. Government intervention is thus required to provide safety nets, mandate decent working conditions, and prohibit environmental degradation. As with liberal foreign-policy interventionism, so with liberal domestic-policy interventionism: Both are shaped around an ironic awareness that the pursuit of self-interest, whether national or personal, often actually undermines those interests. But of course, to go too far in barring the pursuit of selfinterest, whether national or personal, can be counterproductive too.
The Enlightenment
y goal here lies not in vindicating conservatism over liberalism, but in considering whether, because of its foreign and domestic policy tensions, American conservatism has, as David Farber says, outlasted its historical purpose. I have suggested that its tensions are resolvable at a certain level, but to fully examine Farbers proposition, we need a historic perspective as well. And from a historic perspective, the first thing to note is that its strange that American conservatisms various strands find reconciliation in a basic temperament of humility, as liberalisms do in a series of ironies. After all, as Michael Oakeshott and Lionel Trilling in their different ways noted, it is conservatism that has historically been associated with irony. As for liberalism, it was certainly once deeply linked to a sense of humility: or, in John Stuart Mills usage, a sense of fallibility. Since no one can claim a monopoly on truth, Mill argued since we should all be humble with respect to our own beliefs we must cultivate a climate of liberal pluralism in which ideas can clash, with the stronger arguments driving out the weaker. These images of conservatism and liberalism in which conservatism is linked with irony and liberalism with humility are rooted in a particular time and place, the era of the European Enlightenment and its aftermath. Conservative writers from Maistre to Tocqueville had to rely on irony because, however nostalgic they may have been for the age-old aristocratic or clerical order, with its claims to pride or infallibility, they understood that it was dying. The better rhetorical strategy, then, was not to try to defend that old order a lost cause but to call attention to the contradictions, the ironies, in the rising thought of Enlightenment liberalism. Albert O. Hirschman, whose 1991 book The Rhetoric of Reaction analyzed this phenomenon, put it this way: Because of the stubbornly progressive temper of the [Enlightenment] era, conservatives were up against an intellectual climate in which a positive value attached to whatever lofty objective [was] placed on the social agenda by self-proclaimed progressives. Conservatives were thus not likely to launch an all-out attack on that objective but rather would understandably attempt to demonstrate
Andrew Stark
that the action proposed [to reach it would] produce . . . the exact contrary of the objective proclaimed . . . Attempts to reach for liberty [would] make society sink into slavery, the quest for democracy [would] produce oligarchy and tyranny, and so forth. For everything pursued in the name of a given liberal value, conservatives found reason to argue that it would backfire, causing a setback by the lights of that same value or another closely aligned. Enlightenment-era conservatives thus used liberal values to challenge and impeach liberalism itself, searching, as outsiders, for ironies within liberalism. Enlightenment liberals, of course, had no converse need to appeal to the conservative values of hierarchy and tradition in order to challenge conservatives: no need, that is, to find ironies internal to conservatism. Instead, since it was their own liberal value system that was rising, they used it to attack conservative values of prescription and authority from the outside. No longer willing to accept prescribed ideas simply because they were laid down by self-professedly infallible ecclesiastical or political authorities, Enlightenment liberals placed stress on the idea that no one is infallible. No one has an a priori claim to the truth; and religious, political, and intellectual life can proceed only on the basis of a personal and institutional awareness of the universality of human fallibility. Proponents of any given ideology aristocratic, democratic, socialist, theological, atheistic would all have to display sufficient humility about their own access to the highest truth and wisdom to allow their mettle to be tested in the marketplace of ideas, where only the most rationally argued and empirically valid would prevail.
Conservatism: Not dead yet

hen writers link irony to conservatism, or make claims for the centrality of humility to liberalism, they are thus thinking of bodies of argument that unfolded in the wake of the European Enlightenment and its aftermath. They are thinking of a rising liberalism besieging a declining authority-based aristocratic and clerical order, in which both sides made recourse to those ascending liberal values. In America today, however, the situation is different. Enlightenment liberalism is no longer new, its meaning and implications having been most fully adumbrated and explored for 200 years in the American creed. Enlightenment liberalism, though, faces challenges from new authoritarian opponents: opponents, that is, who draw their authority from their dominance of either secular society (e.g., China) or theocratic apparatuses (e.g., Iran). This has consequences for both American liberalism and American conservatism and for humility and irony. American liberals, who have for two centuries been elaborating the principles of a liberal order in which individuals are free to pursue their own
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interests, have for some time been bumping up against the ways in which those principles can fall into conflict as each is pursued more fully. Think of how the quest for positive liberty can erode negative liberty, for example, or how guaranteeing equality of result can diminish equality of opportunity. Hence, what characterizes American liberalisms various strands, at the most basic level, is a continuing confrontation with a series of ironies, among them how the promotion of freedom abroad (understood as self-determination) can lead to a flowering of unfree regimes; how the promotion of freedom at home (understood as diversity) can lead to the flourishing of unfree cultural enclaves; how the promotion of the nations interests abroad can undermine them, as when America is seen to be motivated by the desire to accumulate its own wealth and power; and how allowing free rein for the pursuit of American individual interests at home can undermine them, as conservatives are when the market generates perverse social externalities such as environmental pollution or financial col- animated by the lapse. Whats key is that unlike conservatives of the conflict between Enlightenment era, who exploited the ironies of liberalism as outsiders, for liberals today, who confront Americas creedal them as insiders, they pose vexing, perplexing, and values and their even paralyzing tradeoffs. authoritarian American conservatives, for their part, are less hamstrung by conflicts within Americas creedal libopponents. eral values than they are animated by the conflict between those values and their authoritarian opponents. But unlike Enlightenment liberals, who demanded that their authoritarian opponents aristocrats, clerics, and their defenders admit their own fallibility, for contemporary conservatives it is not so much the hubris of Americas opponents, but the hazards of Americas own overreaching in a dangerous world, that calls for constant monitoring and reflection. Thus realists worry about the capacity of government to properly manage even small deviations from the pursuit of American self-interest abroad, while libertarians worry about the capacity of government to manage even small deviations from the unfettered pursuit of individual interest in the marketplace at home. Neoconservatives worry that advances in freedom abroad cannot be attained by America without the help of other free nations in providing political, economic, and moral support, while social conservatives worry that advances in personal freedom at home cannot be managed by individuals without the help of government in buttressing family, church, and community. A sense of humility about human capacity has thus become the temperament that the major branches of American conservatism hold in common. Not all American conservatives are paragons of humility, certainly, nor are all liberals caught in a thicket of irony. My observation is simply that if one goes looking for a temperament that the various strands of American
Andrew Stark
conservatism all share, a good candidate is humility, just as irony is for liberalism. This temperamental level is of course only one of many from which to examine these two sprawling, vaguely bordered bodies of thought and opinion. But, when we do view the two from this underlying plane, Farbers claim that American conservatism has become a superannuated, dead ideology seems problematic certainly to the extent that history is a guide. After all, in the Enlightenment, it was a sense of humility that animated the rising ideology and a fixation on irony that characterized the one in stasis. If that principle still holds, then American conservatism has a vital role to play. Or put it this way, in thinking about America today: Has there ever before been both such a need to strategically defend basic Enlightenment principles from external assault, coupled with such an awareness of the difficult internal tradeoffs involved in further refining and developing those principles? If not, then its hard to believe that American conservatism has outlasted its historic purpose.
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Books Economists at War

By Charles Wolf, Jr.
J i m L a c e y . Keep From All Thoughtful Men: How U.S. Economists Won World War II. N av a l I n s t i t u t e P r e s s . 2 8 8 Pages. $34.95
o understand the story line of this unique piece of military history requires deciphering its elliptical title and suspending disbelief in its subtitle. The title is quoted from a memorandum written in October 1942 by the U.S. Armys chief military supply officer, General Brehon Somervell, in which he urged President Roosevelts War Production Board to reject and suppress the findings of two U.S. economists, Robert Nathan and Simon Kuznets, pertaining to the establishment of targets for U.S. military production required to wage and win the war against the Axis Powers. In the event, the Somervell critique was rejected, the Nathan/Kuznets findings were
Charles Wolf, Jr. holds the distinguished corporate chair in international economics at the RAND Corporation, and is a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution
accepted, and three years and nine months later the war was won! Hence, the subtitles hyperbole. (Incidentally, and largely unrelated to this story, Kuznets received the Nobel prize in economic science in 1971.) Jim Lacey, a retired military officer with twelve years active-duty experience in the U.S. Army infantry, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of Leeds, is a professor of strategy, war, and policy at the Marine War College and an adjunct professor in the John Hopkins National Security Program. Keep From All Thoughtful Men is a morsel of revisionist military history whose focus is on top-level logistics: specifically, military requirements (for both U.S. and Allied military forces, plus Lend Lease for the U.K., and later the Soviet Union), the industrial production capabilities to meet these requirements, the anticipation of shortfalls and bottlenecks that might disrupt and prevent meeting the requirements, and whether and how to limit if not remedy the shortfalls and their consequences. Underlying the logistics of war in general and of World War II in particular is the military strategy that generates the requirements, while the feasibility of meeting requirements depends on both existing production and financing capabilities, and on opportunities and realistic possibilities for expanding these capabilities within a specified time period. One might expect that military history focusing on these matters would be dull and dreary, reflecting the dismal science that fills many of KFATMs pages. Indeed, substantial parts of the book are devoted to discussing the size of the U.S. Gross
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National Product in 1942, its maximum potential growth in the following year, and the availability of critical raw materials, industrial facilities, machine tools, and skilled and unskilled labor to fuel this growth. The profusion of numbers in KFATM makes it a moderately heavy read, especially if compared to other recent revisionist histories of World War II which focus on such eyecatching and exciting subjects as Winston Churchills ravishing of India in an attempt to preserve the British empire, or the questionable morality of carpet bombing of Dresden and Frankfurt by the raf, let alone Americas atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But KFATM, though occasionally heavy reading, remains lively, because it connects the logistic issues to the bureaucratic politics in which they were immersed. Lacey recounts the issues through the key actors and organizations that represented conflicting positions on the main issues, interlarding his narrative with brief vignettes characterizing the principal players in the bureaucratic wrangling that ensued. As they are tracked in KFATM, the key issues can be summarized in terms of the feasibility of matching requirements for military forces to the industrial production needed for equipping them, and doing so in a specified time period. In the event of a mismatch, the critical issue that emerged was the length of delay that would result. The military services asserted early in 1942 that defeating Germany and the Axis Powers in Europe through a successful invasion of the continent would require U.S. forces of fourteen million. (At the wars peak, mobiliza82
tion actually reached twelve million.) Production targets were derived by linking the manpower total to the weapons and munitions required to equip the targeted ground, air, and naval forces and the sea and air transport needed to move and supply them. The debate focused on the feasibility of matching force requirements to production capabilities to achieve a successful invasion in 1943. Laceys account of the ensuing feasibility debate is based on careful reading and analysis of key memoranda and minutes of meetings (which are included as appendices) among the principal military and civilian participants concerned with the issues. The debate pitted General Somervell, Admiral Robinson (chief of Naval Procurement), and Undersecretary of War Patterson (acting for Secretary Stimson) against the three economists, Robert Nathan, Kuznets, and Stacy May. (All of the latter were top staff members of the War Production Board.) In the middle, initially leaning either one way or the other, toward the military or toward the economists, were Donald Nelson (Chairman of wpb), Vice President Henry Wallace, General George Marshall (chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff), Harry Hopkins (special assistant to the president), Charles Wilson (vice chairman of w p b , formerly c e o of General Motors, and a subsequent secretary of defense), Ferdinand Eberstadt (also a vice chairman of w p b ), Leon Henderson (administrator of the Office of Price Administration), and other luminaries of the time. Several of these dramatis personae might well have been designated by Hollywood central casting. Somervell
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was described at the time as out of the tradition of the Elizabethan Englishman, all lace and velvet and courtliness outside, fury and purposefulness within . . . working . . . conscientiously to water down his own tripledistilled portion of the grapes of wrath . . . His problem is not to work up a temper but to control one. The principal protagonist on the other side was Robert Nathan, described in KFATM as a huge bulk of a man with a kettledrum voice. He is no dreamy brain-truster. Rather, he is more like a wrestler than a thinker and talks more like a barker than a savant. (Some 3 0 years after the events recounted in the book, Bob Nathan became a close friend of mine. The quotation is accurate as concerns his voice and demeanor. It omits the facts that he was a sharp and well-trained economist with a lively if sometimes acerbic sense of humor.) In contrast to Nathan, Kuznets was a scholarly archetype: low-key, thoughtful, deliberate, balanced, and soft-spoken. Among the three economists, Kuznetss analytical care and clarity in parsing the issues, and addressing them with facts and opinions the latter clearly labeled as such wherever they were expressed provided much of the substantive material in the debate. The crux of what Lacey refers to as The Great Feasibility Debate in the autumn of 1942 was the question of whether the materiel and related industrial output that the American economy could produce would be sufficient for the U.S. and the British to launch a decisive invasion of Europe in 1943. Strongly in favor of an affirmative answer to this question were General
Marshall and Undersecretary of War Patterson, as well as General Somervell; also, initially leaning toward this position, which they later deserted, were Harry Hopkins on behalf of the president, as well as wpb Chairman Nelson. Later, and most reluctantly, Marshall also changed his mind. Nathan tasked Simon Kuznets, as
In the autumn of 1942, the question was whether the materiel and related industrial output that the American economy could produce would be sufficient for the U.S. and the British to launch a decisive invasion of Europe in 1943.
chief of the Analysis and Research Section of Nathans w p b Planning Committee, to study and answer this output question. In formulating it, Nathan distinguished three variants of the feasibility concept: production goals that were feasible now (that is, in October 1 9 4 2 ), characterized as minimum feasibility; goals that would be feasible with an all-out effort (realistic maximum feasibility); and production goals feasible under ideal conditions. Kuznetss study appeared six months later, in March 1942.
he sections of his report are a model of clarity, de-jargonized prose, careful marshalling of facts, and plain acknowledgment of uncertainties and opinions.
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The reports first section concentrates on macroeconomics: the actual gnp in 1941, and expectations for 1942 and beyond. Kuznetss estimates include allowance for nonmilitary civilian consumption and investment, especially for consumers durable goods, for producers goods, and for distribution costs.1 He acknowledges the assumptions made in each case, generally opting for assumptions that are optimistic from the standpoint of the maximum share of g n p that would be available for expanding investment and production for military uses. The next three sections of Kuznetss feasibility study contain analyses of raw materials supplies, industrial facilities including machine tools, and labor supply, respectively. These sections foreshadow what became the field of input-output analysis in the later development of economics. The reports second section concentrates on raw materials that are critical for meeting established requirements for aircraft, for additional army equipment besides aircraft (at the time, the Air Force was still part of the Army), for naval and maritime shipping, and for Army and Navy construction. Based on what he admits is an incomplete picture of essential needs, Kuznets concluded that he and others
1. Kuznetss report uses Gross National Product, rather than the more frequent current use of Gross Domestic Product. The difference between gnp and gdp is the amount of the product that accrues to foreign (i.e., non-national) recipients, e.g., earnings of U.S. companies owned by foreign nationals versus earnings accruing to U.S. nationals from their ownership of foreign companies. If earnings paid to U.S. owners of foreign companies exceed earnings paid to foreign owners of U.S. companies, gnp will exceed gdp; if earnings paid to foreign owners of U.S. companies exceed earnings paid to U.S. owners of foreign companies, gdp will exceed gnp.
who have studied the problem expected there would be in 1942 a definite shortage in rubber, nickel, tnt and smokeless powder, and very likely also critical shortages in aluminum, vanadium, wool, and toluol. Looking forward to 1943, the report further anticipated that the war munitions program . . . seems to be impossible because of supply shortages for copper, zinc, nickel, rubber, ammonium nitrate, as well as an acute shortage of such basic materials as steel and aluminum when allowance is made for essential civilian uses. Section three of Kuznetss report, dealing with industrial facilities, is relatively more optimistic than is the section dealing with raw materials. Nevertheless, using several contemporary studies done outside wpb, and comparing requirements and current shipment rates for specific types of machine tools and special purpose instruments, the Kuznets report anticipated a shortage . . . of specific types of tools so great . . . it would take over 2 years to provide the units required in 1942. The report concludes in its fourth section that next to foreign raw materials that cannot be easily replaced, the supply of labor is the most fundamental factor in evaluating the feasibility of a huge production program. This section then proceeds with conservative estimates (that is, ones deliberately chosen to be on the low side) of manpower requirements in 1942 for military production and construction, for civilian production and agriculture, and for the armed forces themselves. These estimates are expressed in terms both of numbers of workers and military personnel, and in dollar terms required for
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payments to those who would be employed in military and civilian production. The report concludes that the combined totals are beyond the bounds of possible labor supply, as well as beyond the available financing derived from Kuznetss calculations of the size and attainable growth of national income in 1942. Nathan followed the Kuznets feasibility study with his own distillation of it, as well as recommendations based on the study. As discussed in KFATM, Nathans action memorandum emphasized the serious disruptions that would result from the shortfalls and bottlenecks forecasted by Kuznets, and recommended scrupulous attention to improvements in production control and scheduling. In effect, the Nathan and Kuznets efforts led to a recommendation that goals for 1942 would have to be stretched out through 1943, and hence that the intended major invasion of Europe must be delayed at least until 1944. This was the economists bottom line in the Great Feasibility Debate. Unsurprisingly, General Somervell responded with a vigorous and at times abrasive dissent from the Kuznets report, and from Nathans recommendations that were largely based on it. Expressing agreement that production control and scheduling should be improved, he went on to express complete disagreement with everything else in the economists findings and recommendations, explicitly dissenting from the reports findings because the data are unreliable and the variations between Mr. Kuznets probabilities are not percentage-wise enough to justify a wholesale change in goals. He went on to say that aspects of the
report show a complete lack of understanding of the [production] problem. Furthermore, Somervell expressed his preference to trust . . . proper decisions from the President, Mr. Nelson, and military personnel knowing something of production, than to this board of economists and statisticians . . . without any responsibility or knowledge of production. His concluding recommendation was that the report be carefully hidden from the eyes of thoughtful men hence, the title of Laceys book. Some of the details touched on in this review, and their elaboration in the book, resonate with policy debates we currently engage in. Both similarities with and differences between 1 9 4 2 and the current debates warrant further reflection. The wrangling in 1942 was no less heated and intense in the midst or at least early stages of World War II than is our wrangling now in the midst of three smaller wars. Nor were the wranglers, or at least some of them, any less intense or vituperative than are the wranglers today. Partisanship was also intense then as now, although the parties in contention had less of a political slant than a professional one (for example, military vs. business vs. economic). Another difference between the wranglings was the nearly total absence of concern then about how the media would play one position or another, while now much if not all of the disputation seems to be governed by anticipating and influencing media play. Reflecting on the issues then compared with those we currently argue about, its not at all clear that ours are any more complicated than the issues which KFATM addresses: For instance, analyzing and costing alternative poli-
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cies for Medicare seems to me no more complicated or difficult now than was the analysis of feasibility in 1943 and its translation into something calculable and usable for policy purposes at that time. A final as well as still more sobering thought prompted by reading Laceys book is this: Its not at all clear whether the quality and depth of analysis of such current policy disputes as those concerning Medicare, or paring the federal deficit, or managing war endings in Iraq and Afghanistan reach let alone exceed the level accompanying the feasibility debate seven decades ago. Salmaan Taseer, governor of Punjab province, for speaking up for an illiterate Christian woman on death row under Pakistans harsh blasphemy laws. Two months later, Taliban militants murdered Shahbaz Bhatti, federal minister for minority affairs, and the only Christian in the overwhelmingly Muslim nations cabinet. In May came the dramatic U.S. raid on Osama bin Ladens compound in the garrison town of Abbottabad, near Islamabad. Since then Islamist militants have assaulted a naval base in Karachi and killed 40 people in separate bombings of a market and a police station in Peshawar. Over the same period, U.S.-Pakistan relations challenging at the best of times have struck a new low. The most recent downturn began in January after Pakistani authorities arrested Raymond Davis, a cia operative posted at the U.S. embassy, for shooting two motorcycle-borne men in what was most likely a botched robbery. Despite his diplomatic immunity, Pakistan imprisoned Davis for nearly two months before releasing him in return for a reported blood money payout of between $2.1 million and $3 million to the dead mens relatives. In July, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Cheifs of Staff, accused the Pakistani armys spy agency, InterServices Intelligence, of green-lighting the killing of a prominent local journalist who had written about the radicalization of the countrys armed forces. The Abbottabad raid raises troubling questions about Pakistans complicity in hiding the worlds most wanted terrorist. But even before, U.S. officials had stepped up criticism of Islamabad for not doing enough to
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Pakistan: Friend or Foe?

By Sadanand Dhume
Anatol Lieven. Pakistan: A Hard Country. P u b l i c A f f a i r s . 5 7 6 pages. $35.00 B ru c e R i e d e l . Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of Global Jihad. Brookings Institution Press. 180 pages. $24.95
ven by the standards of a turbulent land, this has been a tumultuous year for Pakistan. In January, a bodyguard assassinated Sadanand Dhume is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, and a South Asia columnist for the Wall Street Journal.
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combat terrorism or to eradicate safe havens used to target nato troops in Afghanistan. According to a Fox News poll post-Abbottabad, three out of four Americans would like the U.S. to cut off aid, which has totaled upward of $20 billion since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. For its part, Pakistan has responded to U.S. concerns with belligerence rather than contrition. Parliament passed a resolution condemning the U.S. for violating Pakistans sovereignty in Abbottabad and demanding an end to drone strikes. Pakistani officials have allegedly leaked the name of the cia station chief in Islamabad to local newspapers, a particularly reckless act in a nation crawling with militants. And in a show of priorities bewildering to many Americans, the ISI has arrested locals who (unknowingly) helped the U.S. track bin Laden rather than those who gave him shelter. Against this backdrop Pakistan careening from one crisis to the next and the U.S.-Pakistan relationship at its lowest point in years come two contrasting books from experts on the country. Anatol Lieven is a British journalist and historian, and a fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington. In the 1980s, Lieven covered Pakistan and Afghanistan for the London Times, and Pakistan: A Hard Country follows a long tradition of books by foreign correspondents, among them Christina Lambs Waiting for Allah, Owen Bennett Joness Pakistan: Eye of the Storm, and Mary Anne Weavers Pakistan: In the Shadow of Jihad and Afghanistan. His experience as a reporter gives Lieven both the tone of an insider and a vast affection for the
country, which he credits for giving him some of the best moments of his life. In an attempt to explain the worlds sixth-most populous nation in under 6 0 0 pages, Lieven ranges widely, touching upon everything from the rise and fall of landed families in the Punjab to the sloth of the national police to the garish dcor in wealthy homes. To this ambitious task the author brings both thoroughness and an impressive familiarity with his subject. Each of Pakistans four provinces gets a chapter, as do matters that illuminate the countrys day-to-day workings: politics, the economy, the justice system, and so on. Despite this grabbag approach, two themes stand out: the struggle between moderate and fundamentalist strains of Islam in the worlds first country created as a homeland for Muslims, and the role of the military in national life. Lieven builds a meticulous case for the essential moderation of Pakistani society, and against what he sees as overheated speculation that Pakistan may go the way of Iran and succumb to a full-blooded Islamist revolution. Despite the rise of the Pakistani Taliban over the past three and a half years, and the existence of a plethora of jihadist groups, many with strong links to the i s i , the odds of a jihadist takeover of the Pakistani state, and with it of the countrys 1 0 0 -odd nuclear weapons, strike him as exceedingly slim. To begin with, widespread support for Islamist rebellion as opposed to concentrated pockets of support exist only in the Pashtun dominated areas of Northwest Pakistan, which contain only 5 percent of the countrys population. Unlike Shia Iran, largely
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Sunni Pakistan houses no unified and centralized form of Islam. And while Islamism in the Indian subcontinent dating back to the 18th-century fundamentalist Shah Waliullah, who founded Deobandism, the subcontinental equivalent of Wahhabism has largely been an urban phenomenon, Pakistan remains mostly rural. Sufi shrines such as the famous Sehwan Sharif in Sindh whose dervishes Lieven memorably likens to thousand-year-old hippies act as breakers against any Islamist tide. Dim prospects for a Pakistani Khomeini aside, the portrait of society that emerges from Lievens travels is hardly reassuring. Conspiracy theories, it appears, are the norm rather than the exception. Most Pakistanis Lieven interviews believe that the U.S. runs their country as a neocolonial client state. The overwhelming majority both the masses and educated elites think the 9/11 attacks were not in fact carried out by al Qaeda, but were part of an elaborate plot by either the U.S. or Israel (or both) intended to provide a pretext for the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan as part of the U.S. strategy of dominating the Muslim world. Everyone from senior military officers to black-coated lawyers to students at an elite boarding school with a British sounding name spout bizarre theories about scheming Christians and Jews. A brief interview with Mehmood Ashraf Khan, a leading light of the 2007 Lawyers Movement that helped depose the military regime of General Pervez Musharraf and was often portrayed by the international press as a vanguard of Jeffersonian ideals, captures the flavor of such thinking.
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At the Lal Masjid [Islamabads Red Mosque, the scene of a 2007 battle between pro-Taliban militants and the army] thousands of innocent women were killed. I believe that this was really done by Jews and Christians to create civil war in Pakistan . . . . They say that the Taleban are burning girls schools, but very little of this is being done by the Taleban. Most is being done by other forces to discredit the Taleban. India has dozens of consulates in Afghanistan, not to help the Karzai administration, but to help the Taleban to destroy Pakistan.
Lieven does not dwell much on terrorism beyond providing useful potted histories of Pakistans alphabet soup of jihadist and sectarian (anti-Shia) groups, among them Lashkar-e-Taiba, Jaish-e-Mohammed, and the Pakistani and Afghan variants of the Taliban. Nonetheless, on occasion he comes up with a nugget of insight, such as the observation that while most Taliban fighters are educated in madrassas, most Pakistani terrorists boast a government education, and quite often a higher education as well. In a somewhat clumsy but nonetheless accurate metaphor, Lieven likens Pakistans jihadist world to a cloud of interplanetary gas in which individuals join some clump for one operation and then part again to form new ad hoc groups for other attacks. On the military, Lieven takes a curiously sentimental line quite at odds with the dominant view of Pakistan watchers. Indeed, the book is studded with encomiums to the only Pakistani institution that works as it is officially
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meant to. No fan of the countrys squabbling politicians, at times Lieven puts the word democracy in quotes to suggest his regard for its Pakistani variant. He appears to recoil in horror at the thought of elected civilian politicians in charge of military appointments. He worries about soldiers finding it harder to find brides on account of being seen by their compatriots as American lackeys in the war on terror. Somewhat disingenuously, Lieven downplays evidence of Pakistans nuclear proliferation to Iran and Libya to make the case that a purely nationalistic impulse drove what Pakistans own leaders have referred to as the Islamic bomb. Indeed, except for a passing jab at the armys obsession with India and the disputed territory of Kashmir, Lievens book reads a bit like it was written by a generals houseguest. At times one cant help but wonder whether the authors self-declared affection for the country finds its deepest expression in regard for its men in khaki. or a contrasting view of that institution, and of the threat emanating from Pakistan more broadly, one can turn to Bruce Riedels Deadly Embrace. Riedel, a senior scholar at the Brookings Institution and one of Washingtons most widely respected South Asia hands, chaired President Obamas interagency review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan completed in 2 0 0 9 . As a former c i a officer and advisor to three presidents on the Middle East and South Asia, Riedel has had a ringside view of Pakistans evolution over three decades, and of its dysfunctional relationship with the U.S.
Riedel builds his narrative around the four major jihads that have shaped Pakistans history over the past 30-odd years. The fanatical general Zia ul-Haq seized power in a coup in 1977, and used his twelve years in office to Islamize his own society while co-opting U.S. and Saudi Arabian support to wage a successful holy war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The oneeyed Taliban leader Mullah Omar rose to prominence in the mid-1990s and, with extensive support from the Pakistani government, briefly established perhaps the worlds most brutal Islamist regime in Kabul before being swept from power by the U.S. and its allies in 2001. Omar gave shelter to Osama bin Laden and his vanguard of Arab terrorists in the run up to the 9/11 attacks. Lastly, what Riedel terms the global jihad encompasses continued threats from al Qaedas senior leadership in Pakistan, its allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan, al Qaeda franchises in other parts of the global Muslim community, and sympathizers embedded among immigrants in the West, including 8 0 0 , 0 0 0 Britons of Pakistani descent. To put it mildly, Riedels view of what he calls the most dangerous country in the world is not as sanguine as Lievens. He believes that theres a serious possibility albeit not yet the probability of a jihadist takeover of the country either by a militant faction of the army or a militant Sunni Islamic movement led by the Taliban. He also worries that if Pakistans jihadism problem remains unchecked sooner or later a Pakistanbased terror attack on India is going to lead to Armageddon. He acknowledges that Pakistans so-called syndicate
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of terrorism al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, and the Punjab-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (let) share neither a single leader nor a single goal. But at the same time, they often collaborate closely, and at root share the same antipathy toward Westerners, Indians, Israelis, and Jews. Riedel traces much of the problem to Pakistans military. He describes the pious General Zia as the grandfather of global Islamic jihad. On his watch, the isis strength rose from 2000 people in 1978 to 40,000 people (with a $1 billion budget) a decade later. The intelligence agencys links with jihadist groups have come under renewed scrutiny following the Abbottabad raid and this years trial of the Pakistani-American Mumbai attacks plotter David Headley in Chicago. Riedel peels back layers of history to underscore the depth and durability of those ties. The jihadist camp President Clinton fired cruise missiles at in 1998, in a failed attempt to target bin Laden after al Qaeda attacks on U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, was built by Pakistani contractors and funded by the isi, making the agency the Saudis real hosts. The militarys ties with the let are equally deep. Many of the terrorist groups camps are adjacent to army bases. Retired officers from elite units such as the Special Services Group help train let fighters. Often the let and the army recruit from the same villages in the Punjab. Not surprisingly, given their contrasting views of what ails Pakistan, Lieven and Riedel offer startlingly different prescriptions to policymakers in Washington. Lieven appears less concerned with the destabilizing effect
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of Pakistan on the rest of the world than with what he sees as the destabilizing effect of the U.S. on Pakistan and the horrors that could ensue should this lead to its collapse. In Lievens reckoning, a Pakistan left to its own devices poses much less of a danger than one pressed to change. Or, as he puts it, if Pakistan is not South Korea it is also not the Congo. Accordingly, he believes that the U.S. should not contribute to the destruction of Pakistan no matter how grave the provocation. He calls for an end to the war in Afghanistan, a resolution of the Kashmir dispute, and a correction of Washingtons alleged tilt toward India. For Riedel, nuclear-armed Pakistan is far too reckless and unstable to afford the U.S. the luxury of a handsoff approach. Within the country the problem lies in the outsized role of the army and the isi in national life and its corrosive effect on democracy. (Generals have ruled the country directly for 34 of its 64 years as an independent country, and indirectly for much of the rest.) During that time successive U.S. administrations have undermined civil government in Pakistan, aided military dictators, and encouraged the rise of extremist Islamic movements that now threaten the United States at home and abroad. If at its core Lievens book calls for a return to the U.S.-Pakistan relationship of the 1980s when Washington worked closely with Pakistans jihad-happy generals and mostly ignored its nuclear program then Riedels demands exactly the opposite. In this view, the building blocks of the Pakistani state need to be rearranged rather than reinforced.
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A sensible Pakistan policy, as outlined by Riedel, would make strengthening its fragile civilian institutions the underlying goal of all U.S. engagement. The U.S. needs strong intelligence and military-to-military ties with its Pakistani counterparts, but unlike in the past these should not come at the cost of stunting Pakistani democracy. To encourage reform, Washington needs to draw red lines against Islamabads support for terrorism specifically its longstanding ties with both the l e t and the Afghan Taliban. Recalcitrant i s i officials, including the powerful director general, ought to be targeted with sanctions should they refuse to cooperate. The long term goal: to reorient the Pakistani army away from India and toward counter-terrorism and counterinsurgency. Lieven is a fine writer and a talented historian, and his book offers a better guide than Riedels to the architecture of the Pakistani countryside, say, or the many cultural contradictions of contemporary Pakistani life. But its Deadly Embrace that policymakers must reach for first. At a philosophical level, it recognizes that radical Islam must be opposed, for it cannot be appeased. By distinguishing between ordinary Pakistanis and the institutions that govern them, and pointing out that democracy, however messy, is the only alternative to the military-jihadist complex that has stunted Pakistans economy and tarnished its international reputation, Riedel makes a valuable contribution to the debate in both Washington and Islamabad. The Obama administration could do a lot worse than follow his advice.
Complicated Loyalty
By James Bowman
Eric Felten. Loyalty: The Vexing Virtue. S i m o n & S c h u s t e r . 3 1 0 Pages. $25.00
oya lt y, l i k e c o u r ag e , chastity, and other qualities associated with honor, is a pre-Enlightenment virtue, and, for that reason, there are many people today for whom it is no virtue at all. The Enlightenment was itself impossible until mere loyalty had been degraded, at least among the intellectual elites, to a species of primitivism by the new prestige of universal moral principles. People, that is, had to come to the point of realizing that there were higher goods than that of loyalty to the honor group or to the family, clan, tribe, nation, or religious affiliation that had always in the past produced the most salient honor groups. In many parts of the world, as we learned after 9/11, people have not realized that unto this day. But the question of our time is this: Do these higher loyalties to abstract truth and morality and justice and equality simply abolish the other, more primitive sorts of loyalty to ones own people, or is there still a place for
James Bowman, author of Honor, A History and Media Madness (both published by Encounter), is a resident scholar at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
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them in our enlightened and egalitarian world? Both honor and loyalty are opposed to the moral consensus of the Enlightenment not only because they routinely cut against and challenge those universal values on behalf of personal ties ties which all but the most stern moralists among us are still too likely to find it easy to value above abstract principle but also because they are not themselves susceptible to generalization or universalization. You cant meaningfully talk about loyalty without specifying what you mean to be loyal (or disloyal) to. Every loyalty has its origins in the human and the particular: this rather than that; a rather than b; and (often) love rather than duty. A loyalty that is universalizable would be a contradiction in terms. If youre loyal to everybody, youre loyal to nobody. From the enlightened point of view, therefore, every loyalty harbors within itself a potential disloyalty and especially a disloyalty to those general principles on which we of the age of Enlightenment rely to justify our disloyalties. Chief among these is of course the abstract concept of the truth. I wish that the new book by the Wall Street Journal columnist Eric Felten, titled Loyalty: The Vexing Virtue, though it is packed to its handsome covers especially the front one decorated with an image of a dogs head with cogent examples, ancient and modern, of this eternal tug-of-loyalties, had also taken the trouble to notice that the English word truth itself originally meant loyalty. Doing so would perhaps have helped Felten to make the virtue just a little less vexing to himself and others. As trewth,
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trauthe, or troth (the last still surviving as an archaism with plight), loyalty or fidelity was the normal meaning of the word throughout the Middle Ages, and it only began to be an unambiguous equivalent of the Latin veritas in the later 16th century. Trauthe is the normal Anglo-Saxon word for loyalty, dating back to well before the Norman Conquest, while the later French words loyal and loyault were rarities in the language before they began to take over the duties of trauthe in the 16th century. That we have so completely forgotten the original meaning of the word, and even made it antithetical to loyalty, is one indication that the idea of a higher loyalty to truth, once an oxymoron, is now built into the language. Some such historical note explains why loyalty is so vexing to those of us who, like Felten, have been taught from earliest childhood that truth is or ought to be a higher loyalty than the organic and naturally formed loyalties to individuals and groups that are a normal part of life and especially of growing up. What mother today teaches her child, as General Douglas MacArthurs mother taught him, that the rule of life was: Never lie; never tattle? That seemingly contradictory advice almost ended the generals military career before it began when he was the victim of savage hazing at West Point and refused to name his persecutors. It was not the least of Stalins crimes against human nature when he tried to make heroes out of children who informed on their parents. And it was no small tribute to that nature that even the story of Comrade Pavlik, 13-year-old Pavel Morozov, who supposedly turned his father in to the gpu in 1932 as a
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resister to collectivization, was (as scholars now believe) a complete fabrication. As anyone with children knows, their natural bent is much more towards loyalty to people rather than to abstract truth, let alone to a totalitarian state. Even as adults, even in a tolerant and democratic country, most of us are likely to find that such primitive and (dare we say?) natural loyalties as that of children to parents and parents to children somehow refuse to stay in their subordinate positions and routinely challenge our attachments to general principles, even those that otherwise seem so obvious and unbreakable. Felten is very thorough in his examination of those conflicted loyalties that he finds so vexing, but just as hard cases make bad law, so does a concentration on the darker side of loyalty, which such treatment inevitably entails, run the risk of obscuring what is good and what ought to be uncontroversial about loyalty but often isnt. For instance, the tension between our officially approved morality and the strong pull of unofficial attachments to individuals and groups we care about is responsible for a lot of the guilt that these days is such an important part of our public debate. Loyalty to country, which we call patriotism, is in bad odor on the left because it so often involves us in what idealists see as an assertion of national (or racial) superiority to our fellow creatures in other countries and an arrogant assertion of our power to dominate or subjugate them. Even when we are attacked as we were on 9/11, loyaltyskeptics have a free hand to require that our response should be moderated by international law and international
organizations and alliances and based on general principles of law and justice rather than blind patriotism. No one must be allowed to suppose that we have placed loyalty to the United States ahead of loyalty to principle. Yet, carried to its logical conclusion, putting principle ahead of country would make it impossible to defend ourselves. Though President George W. Bush was widely criticized for paying insufficient attention to such principle in going to war in Iraq, even he spent an inordinate amount of time and energy attempting to formulate a principled rationale for the invasion and subsequent occupation rather than simply asserting an American right to intervene. Likewise, President Obama, whose foreign policy once took as its starting point a more humble American approach to the rest of the world, now justifies his intervention in a Libyan civil war as necessary to prevent civilian casualties. In practice, arrogating to ourselves the right to defend general principles looks nearly indistinguishable from the arrogance of asserting American power wherever we please. Feltens range of reference, from Aristotle to Frank Sinatra, is impressive, but at times it seems slightly facile as the quotations and examples pile up without leading us anywhere, except to a restatement of what has already been said. They all relate to each other and to the point being made at the moment which is nearly always some version of how loyalty is vexing and morally problematical in various ways but it is often hard to see how they point beyond themselves to any larger conclusion about how we come to have such a dubious or devalued sense of
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loyalty or about the cultural consequences of living with one. If this excellent and tremendously learned book has a fault, it is that there is no overarching intellectual framework, especially a historical one, as a way of organizing its numerous examples. If it is not an impertinence in a reviewer, I would like to suggest one. It involves the growth of the media culture and the stake of the media in the devaluation of loyalty. For the media could no more live without the oxygen of disloyalty than they could without the promise of exposing those hypocrisies that lesser loyalties so often involve people in. The triumph of the media and the media culture is nowhere more evident than in the unfashionability of the virtue of loyalty. There are many reasons for this, of course, but none is more important than the fact that the media depend for their profitability and, indeed, their very existence on disloyalty. The whistleblower is the paradoxical hero of the medias honor group paradoxical because honor is extended by no other group to the betrayer of confidences. The rat or stool pigeon is typically despised as much by those he rats to as he is by those he rats on. But the media love him because they cannot do without him. In a fascinating article in the online journal Spiked, the British sociologist Frank Furedi recently wrote of how leaking, or the disclosure of confidential information, used to be perceived as an act of disloyalty, irresponsibility or betrayal. However, since the late 1970s, it is secrecy, confidentiality, and privacy that have been increasingly stigmatized. So what was once castigated as an act of betrayal leaking is
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now recast as the heroic deed of a brave whistleblower. This is what has led to the medias lionization of the Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, which also
reveals the growing influence of conspiratorial thinking on journalism. Numerous journalists have internalized the idea that what is really important today is not the story, but the story behind the story. The decline of the authority of knowledge has led to a situation where journalists now see leaks as the source of the real truth. Many journalists are now more comfortable explaining an event by reducing it to a covert plot rather than providing a rigorous analysis of the social and political causes of a chain of events.
The amount of media attention given to the rival left and right conspiracy theories of the truthers and the birthers, absurd though both of them are, is one measure of the structural importance of secret information and therefore of the disloyalty required to reveal it in a political culture shaped by media assumptions. Not only does this way of looking at the world dominate the medias thinking, it also creates an inexhaustible demand for more betrayals of confidence and a corresponding decline in the social valuation placed on loyalty. Politicians and bureaucrats are not the only ones who have worked out how to manipulate the media by preying on this assumption that the truth is something that is hidden and only to be revealed by skillful sleuthing on the part of journalists which in turn depends on the acts of disloyalty by
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which they routinely acquire their information. Felten would seem to be employing his considerable talents in a losing cause if his aim is, as it often seems to be, to rehabilitate the virtue of loyalty for an age which tends to see it as suspect if not downright corrupt in itself. Eminently sensible and fair-minded, he always gives full weight to the Enlightened arguments against loyalty even as he nudges us back towards an appreciation of a virtue too often neglected. Sometimes, indeed, he bends over too far backward to loyaltys critics, as when he writes that Hitlers and Stalins appeals to loyalty are such that one hesitates to call it a virtue at all. But loyalty to both Hitler and Stalin was predicated upon previous acts of disloyalty. They demanded a place for the state ideology above those quotidian and organic loyalties to family and friends and their countrys traditional institutions, which had to be abolished before they could come to power. The judges at Nuremberg thought Nazi war criminals had a higher loyalty than loyalty to the party, but the party itself had justified itself in similar terms vis--vis those ordinary human decencies it required its members to forsake. For there is no villainy so doubledyed that it cannot be claimed on its behalf to have been committed in the name of some higher loyalty than the one it has violated. The media have contributed much to the paradigm of the pull of the (discreditable) personal against the (creditable) principled, which Felten, in common with most of us, tends to regard as characteristic of moral dilemmas, but this is at least partly because we assume the priority of principle over personal ties of loyalAugust & September 2011 95
ty. The Kantian categorical imperative, of course, demands no less, but this principle which insists that we not act on that maxim which we cannot will to be universal is often of limited use to us in our dealings with the real world. It would inculpate anyone who fights a war, for example, no matter how good the cause, although no one, apart from the pacifist fringe, would have us simply disarm. Emmanuel Levinas, in the reductio ad absurdum of Enlightenment thought, may tell us that our duty to strangers can be no less than our duty to loved ones, but no one, possibly not even Levinas, would behave as if this were true if called upon to rescue either strangers or loved ones from a burning building. Felten has an interesting chapter about this kind of dilemma called The Ever Ready Accomplices in which he has a number of stories to tell of firemen, policemen, doctors, and so forth with duties to a community who, nevertheless, attend to their own families first. Family loyalty falls under the heading of particularism, he tells us, which for many modern ethicists is a dirty word. He himself appears to have some doubts as to whether these ethicists are right to depreciate family loyalty, but he is always pretty evenhanded in presenting us with the pros and cons of family loyalty, citing both the family who defied doctor-decreed triage to get their elderly relative out of a New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina and the former Delaware politician who asked for his familys help in covering up the murder of his mistress or David Kaczynski, who turned in his brother Theodore, the Unabomber, to police.
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I think we can agree that David did the right thing, even though it was a betrayal of family loyalty, he writes. Perhaps we can, but perhaps we also need to hang on to at least the shadow of the stigma that David Kaczynski himself seems to have felt for his disloyalty when he tried to turn his brother in anonymously and also to remember that Theodore was himself, like most terrorists, something of a theorist of disloyalty and full of talk about those higher truths that supposedly justified his hateful deeds. I think we can also agree that, although he gives every consideration to these and other arguments of loyaltys Enlightened enemies, Felten eventually comes out at the right place when he concludes that without some reasonable expectation of loyalty where loyalty is due, there can be no trust, no friendship, no love.
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Policy Review - August & September 2011, No. 168

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