SOURCE: AP/ Evan Vucci

President Barack Obama answers questions about the alledged use of chemical weapons in Syria during a news conference in the White House.

The news that U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed “with varying degrees of confidence” that the regime of Bashar al-Assad “very likely” used chemical weapons “on a small scale” in Syria, along with recent Israeli strikes against select targets in that country, has been met with an all-or-nothing debate over potential U.S. policy responses. On the one side, advocates of intervention such as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Michael O’Hanlon, a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, have used these recent developments to argue for open-ended, large-scale U.S. military intervention in Syria’s stalemated civil war. The debate between these noisy interventionists and skeptics such as political commentator and blogger Andrew Sullivan, who appear primarily interested in countering interventionist claims and rhetoric, has obscured the possibility of an American policy response that is proportional to the transgressions of the Assad regime. But the national debate over what the United States should do in regard to Syria’s civil war and its chemical-weapons arsenal should not be framed as a false, all-or-nothing choice between large-scale military intervention and doing nothing.

The most common calls of those favoring intervention remain constant: arming Syrian opposition forces, imposing a no-fly zone over the country, or using ground troops to carve out safe zones inside Syrian territory to protect civilians. These options would likely have only a marginal impact on addressing the issue at hand—the regime’s likely chemical-weapons use. The United States has already reportedly trained rebels on securing chemical-weapons sites and stockpiles, and equipping the fractured rebel movement with antiaircraft and antitank missiles is unlikely to make much of an impact on the ground against regime forces. In any event, a rebel victory appears unlikely to be as swift as necessary to preclude further use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime—with or without arms supplies from the United States and Europe.

No-fly zones would address one aspect of the chemical-weapons problem. After a no-fly zone is established, the Assad regime would find it difficult if not impossible to deliver chemical weapons by aircraft. But unless the no-fly zone is extended to cover targets on the ground that are not related to ensuring the safety of allied aircraft, a country-wide no-fly zone would not address artillery or missile chemical-weapons delivery systems. In other words, a strictly no-fly-zone approach would stop only one possible method the Assad regime could use to deploy its chemical weapons.

If the overall goal is to prevent the Assad regime from using its chemical-weapons arsenal with airpower to the furthest extent possible, an even broader air campaign against the regime’s command and control, chemical-weapons sites, and missile and artillery batteries would be necessary. While the Nuclear Threat Initiative lists 12 major chemical-weapons facilities in Syria—including three depots—the U.S. intelligence community does not have firm knowledge of where the Assad regime’s chemical weapons are at any given moment. As Director of National Intelligence James Clapper put it, the ability of the United States to secure Assad’s chemical weapons “would be very, very situational dependent.” Even a more expansive air campaign targeting Assad forces on the ground is unlikely to eliminate the threat of Syria’s chemical-weapons arsenal.

What’s more, a no-fly zone is a technically ambitious military undertaking. While likely degraded by fighting over the last two years, Syrian air defenses likely remain more formidable than those faced by the United States and its allies in Libya and the Balkans. As Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey put it, “The U.S. military has the capability to defeat that [Syrian air defense] system, but it would be a greater challenge, and would take longer and require more resources.” Keeping that system in check while allied warplanes conduct combat air patrols or take out targets on the ground would require constant efforts as well, with no foreseeable end in sight.

Advocates of a no-fly zone such as Sen. McCain argue that imposing a no-fly zone on Syria would not present the difficulties that Gen. Dempsey outlines because Israel is able to penetrate Syrian air defenses. But it is inaccurate to compare one-off Israeli air strikes against very specific targets—including strikes in which Israeli planes reportedly did not even enter Syrian airspace—to a country-wide air campaign aimed at either establishing a no-fly zone or sufficiently safe conditions to conduct air strikes against the Assad regime’s forces in the field. Quick strikes against discreet targets are a very different proposition than establishing and maintaining a no-fly zone for an indefinite period of time.

The question is not whether the United States and any partners in military action could, from a technical military perspective, establish a no-fly zone over Syria but whether doing so achieves America’s and its partners’ strategic objectives at an acceptable cost. If the overriding strategic objective is to prevent or punish the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons, a no-fly zone would fail to achieve it. Moreover, the number of aircrafts, the length of time, and hence the financial cost that such an operation would entail are much higher than those that a strike on a single target or series of targets would require. While an air campaign directed against the Assad regime’s ground forces might be more effective in addressing the chemical-weapons problem than a simple no-fly zone, it would require additional aircraft and time.

Likewise, safe zones established by U.S. or other foreign troops on the ground inside Syria to protect civilians would suffer from similar problems. They would not directly address the problem of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons and could provide tempting targets for the use of these weapons by the regime. Advocates of such safe zones should answer practical questions of logistics, rules of engagement, and diplomacy before their proposals are taken seriously, including how the forces conducting safe-zone operations would be supplied; how these forces are to defend themselves and the safe zones they establish so as to avoid the terrible fate of the Srebrenica safe zone in Bosnia; what diplomatic support the United States will get from its allies in Europe and regional partners such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Israel; and how the United Nations factors into this political-military equation.

All three options presented by the most vocal interventionists ultimately do little to address the problem of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons while at the same time drawing the United States deeper into Syria’s civil war. The two most aggressive options—some sort of an air campaign or the establishment of ground safe zones—would undoubtedly short circuit any attempts, however unlikely their prospects, to achieve a negotiated political settlement to end the civil war. Nowhere in the region—neither among America’s allies nor in the United States itself —is public opinion clamoring for the sort of intervention being advocated by Sen. McCain and others. A healthy measure of caution is needed when contemplating any military response to Syria’s civil war or the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons.

The U.S. policy response to the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons should be proportional to and directly address the actions in question. Diplomatic efforts should remain a key component both to determine the truth regarding current allegations of chemical-weapons use and to prevent their further use by the Assad regime. The Obama administration’s attempt to build the strongest and broadest possible coalition as it moves forward remains a vitally important task. Given the complex regional and international political and security dynamics, the United States cannot afford to go it alone in Syria.

Secretary of State John Kerry is traveling to Russia with hopes of reviving efforts to achieve a political solution to Syria’s civil war. Similar diplomatic efforts should be made to pressure Assad to refrain from using his chemical-weapons arsenal. Should such efforts fail and the Assad regime either uses or appears ready to use chemical weapons, the United States should be prepared to conduct limited military strikes against the regime’s chemical-weapons delivery, logistics, and command and control systems, as American Progress has argued. Such strikes would be proportionate to the imminent or actual transgression of the Assad regime’s chemical-weapons use.

The civil war in Syria remains a difficult problem, and the United States’ policy debate is ill-served by a discussion that reduces potential options to either costly, large-scale interventions that do not address the pressing problem of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons or simply doing nothing. All-or-nothing thinking should be resisted, and a broader conception of the tools at the disposal of the United States should be put forward. Keeping the United States’ response to the Assad regime’s offenses proportional should remain a guiding principle moving forward.

Peter Juul is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/Mohammad Hannon

A Syrian refugee chants anti-Assad slogans and waves the victory sign during a strike at Zaatari refugee camp in Mafraq, Jordan, Thursday, April 25, 2013.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, currently traveling in the Middle East, has confirmed British, French, and Israeli government reports that the Assad regime in Syria has likely used a sarin nerve agent against opposition forces. In letters to Sens. Carl Levin (D-MI) and John McCain (R-AZ), the Obama administration said that while U.S. intelligence agencies “cannot confirm how the [sarin] exposure occurred and under what conditions,” the United States “does assess with varying degrees of confidence that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons on a small scale in Syria.” This would mark the first use of chemical weapons since the signing of the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993—signed by all but six member states, one of which was Syria—and the first use by a state since Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons and nerve agents against Iran and his own people in the 1980s.

At the same time, Syria’s civil war continues. More than 70,000 Syrians have died in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad that began in March 2011, and 1.3 million have fled their homes and country. Neither the Assad regime nor a fractured and disorganized opposition are capable of defeating one another on the battlefield, and no political settlement is on the horizon. Syria itself appears to be heading toward a de facto partition between areas held by the Assad regime and those held by various rebel groups.

Together, the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons and the regional strain of the refugee crisis call for additional actions from the United States, its regional partners and allies, and the international community as a whole.

American strategy so far has aimed at using tools short of direct and overt U.S. intervention to bring an end to the Assad regime. These tools have ranged from international diplomacy to create a framework to end the conflict, to attempts to unify the opposition, to current efforts to train rebel fighters in cooperation with regional allies. Given these new realities, however, additional steps are now required.

Three steps the United States can take going forward to lead the response to these concerns

Demand an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting on the Assad regime’s likely chemical-weapons use

The United States should take the lead calling for in such a meeting and force Russia into active diplomacy that prevents it from serving as a shield for the Assad regime’s unacceptable behavior. A U.N. investigation team has been idling in Cyprus for more than a month now, barred from entering the country by the Assad regime. Russia has tacitly backed the Assad regime on this score, accusing “certain states” rather than the regime itself of disrupting the inspection. Moreover, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has already played the Iraq WMD card, saying reports of Assad regime chemical-weapons use are “an attempt to politicize the issue” and create an “Iraqi scenario.” Nonetheless, Russia has called for immediate investigation “on the spot” of these reports.

The United States should call an emergency Security Council session and hold Russia to these words. The Obama administration’s considerable caution on alleging the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime will prove useful in this endeavor, as they show the United States is more than eager to make sure it has the facts straight before taking action. The U.N. inspectors waiting in Cyprus should be given access to the samples and other data used by the United States and others in their assessments of Syrian chemical-weapons use, but diplomatic efforts in the Security Council should focus on ensuring these inspectors are given immediate and unconditional access to provide an independent assessment to validate existing reports of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons use.

Engage NATO and regional partners in planning the U.S. response

The Obama administration should involve NATO and regional partners in planning its response to the Assad regime’s crossing of President Obama’s red line on chemical-weapons use. Action will require precision planning, definitive American leadership and direction, and the participation of a broad alliance ready to preclude any further Assad regime chemical-weapons use by destroying appropriate military targets, including delivery systems, logistics, and applicable command and control.

Confirmed use of Syrian chemical weapons against their own people will require a necessary and decisive response from the United States and its allies. CAP recommended last December that the United States and NATO should prepare a response to Assad regime chemical-weapons use, and such planning should be accelerated if already in motion. Regional partners that are already affected by the civil war in Syria should also be consulted and included in this planning. Any plans the Obama administration makes to punish the Assad regime for chemical-weapons use should be made on a multilateral basis. Violating international laws and norms on the use of chemical weapons is a matter of grave concern to all states.

Nonetheless, the United States and its partners should avoid entangling itself in Syria’s civil war to the extent that doing so is possible. The actions of the regime and Islamist rebels are producing increasingly sectarian overtones to Syria’s violence. In particular, the interplay between the Assad regime and Sunni Islamist rebels has heightened the sectarian nature of the conflict, as each group leverages sectarian claims to win support. Alawites, a minority Muslim sect to which President Assad belongs, have become increasingly implicated as regime supporters, while the presence of Sunni Islamists among the rebels lends credence to the Assad regime’s black-and-white rhetoric among Alawites, Christians, and other sectarian minorities. Punishing the Assad regime for its likely chemical-weapons use should not entail more involvement in the increasingly complex Syrian civil war than is necessary.

Request that NATO and other allies begin planning for a major multinational refugee relief mission in Jordan

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, or UNHCR, is running out of money with which to assist Syrian refugees, receiving only a third of the $494 million it sought in the first six months of 2013, and Jordanian society and Syrian refugees are starting to show the strains of a situation without an end in sight.

Such a major multinational relief mission would necessarily involve the military capabilities of NATO members, such as airlift, ground transportation, medical assistance, and basic security. It could also significantly relieve the strains Jordan faces in coping with a growing Syrian refugee population. Relevant Jordanian civil and military officials and institutions should be included in this planning at appropriate stages. In particular, planning should endeavor to incorporate current Jordanian efforts to ensure that the relationship between NATO and Jordanian national efforts is as seamless as possible should these plans be implemented. Similar studies should be undertaken with regard to Lebanon, though that country’s ever-complicated domestic political situation and the potential spillover of fighting from Syria make it less amenable to a large-scale NATO-led relief mission than Jordan.

Conclusion

There are no good policy options in Syria, and the reports of likely chemical-weapons use by the Assad regime only reinforce this conclusion. The military stalemate has not yet produced incentives for a political settlement for either the intransigent Assad regime or the fractured opposition. The worsening humanitarian situation is destabilizing a key U.S. ally in Jordan and a fragile Lebanon, while the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime, when validated, crosses a red line that President Obama has repeatedly drawn.

The United States can take important steps forward by further solidifying and accelerating NATO planning on these issues, as well as making an all-out diplomatic effort in the U.N. Security Council to investigate reports of Assad regime chemical-weapons use.

Peter Juul is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress. Rudy deLeon is the Senior Vice President of National Security and International Policy at the Center. Brian Katulis is a Senior Fellow at the Center.

SOURCE: AP/Musa Sadulayev

A Chechen girl holds her brother on the balcony of a flat in a destroyed house in Grozny, Chechnya, March 15, 2007.

In the days following the dramatic manhunt in Boston for surviving terrorism suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, questions have multiplied regarding the significance of the Tsarnaev brothers’ Chechen roots. Thus far, it isn’t clear whether this connection played any role in their fatal attack on the city last week, which resulted in the deaths of three people and more than 170 casualties, but it will likely continue to be investigated in the weeks to come.

Why and how 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, killed in a firefight with Boston police on Friday, turned to violent extremism is a central question in the ongoing investigation. On Friday the FBI confirmed that it questioned Tamerlan in 2011 after a “foreign government” requested information about him, and it also emerged that Tamerlan spent several months last year in Russia’s North Caucasian republic of Dagestan, which is east of Chechnya and where the brothers’ parents currently reside. While Tsarnaev’s religious radicalization in the context of an immigrant life in the United States will be what many choose to focus on, his ethnic Chechen roots and potential links to radicals in the North Caucasus remain subjects of interest as well, despite his mainly diasporic association with the region.

The so-called Chechen connection is, perhaps, of less interest in the case of his surviving 19-year-old brother, who by many accounts was a reasonably well-adjusted American-immigrant youth. Dzhokhar allegedly identified with his religious and ethnic origins in Chechnya but was also tied to multiple subcultures, attached to his older brother, and experiencing serious academic difficulties in college.

While conflicting accounts of the family’s origins exist, we know that they lived for many years in Kyrgyzstan, one site for Joseph Stalin’s mass deportation of Chechens during World War II. The family reportedly moved to Chechnya in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and they may have returned to Kyrgyzstan as Chechnya descended into chaos and war. By 2001 they were back in the North Caucasus, in Dagestan, and they then made their way to the United States as refugees.

As the Chechen connection continues to be investigated, here are some things to keep in mind about Chechnya and the North Caucasus, as well as the potential impact of developments on U.S.-Russian relations.

1. There is no ‘Chechen’ insurgency—ethnic or religious—in Russia’s North Caucasus today.

Chechens declared independence from the Soviet Union in the final months of its existence in 1991 and continued to insist upon their independence from Russia. The Russian government sought to retake the territory by force from 1994 to 1996, in what became known as the First Chechen War. This disastrous war, causing mass casualties and destruction in Chechnya, ended in a stalemate and Chechnya’s temporary de-facto independence. This period saw a rise in crime, lawlessness, and general mayhem in the region, splits between the local government and insurgents, and an increasing Islamicization of the rebel movement, in part encouraged by the entrance of former mujahedeen—radical Islamists who fought in Afghanistan—to the region from the Arab world.

In 1999 Russia launched the Second Chechen War after insurgent Chechen forces crossed into Dagestan ostensibly to defend local Islamists from Russian federal forces, along with a series of suspected terrorist attacks. This second brutal war ended in the re-establishment of federal control over Chechnya and a drawn-out insurgency that Moscow eventually pacified, in part by co-opting some local fighters. By early 2007 the insurgency had been crushed.

Local strongman Ramzan Kadyrov is the current leader of Chechnya and has, together with Russian federal forces, kept Chechnya largely quiet. At the same time, a relatively low-level insurgency has spread throughout the broader North Caucasus region, with Dagestan as the greatest hotbed of activity. The insurgency also has a presence in regions west of Chechnya in the republics of Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria, the latter less than 200 miles east of the city of Sochi, the site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

2. Domestic terrorism was an element of the Chechen insurgency, and terrorism has played a role in the broader North Caucasian insurgency.

North Caucasian Islamist insurgents target local military, police, and other government personnel and facilities as a matter of course, often in suicide attacks. They have also engaged in several major attacks against civilians. The First Chechen War saw a rise in the taking of civilian hostages by Chechen rebels. The Second Chechen War was precipitated in part by a series of apartment bombings in Moscow and elsewhere that authorities blamed on Chechen terrorists. In 2002 Chechen terrorists seized a crowded theater in Moscow, leading to the deaths of roughly 130 civilians during the subsequent siege by government forces and their use of knockout gas. In 2004 terrorists carried out two suicide bombings in the Moscow metro and another two on airplanes, and more than 300 civilians—more than half of which were children—were killed in a terrorist attack and subsequent government rescue attempt on an elementary school in Beslan, North Ossetia, west of Chechnya.

More recent major attacks include a bombing on a Moscow-St. Petersburg train in 2009, a Moscow metro attack in 2010, and an attack in Moscow’s Domodedovo airport in January 2011. Many women, including some widows of fighters, have participated in attacks, and some of the more recent attacks have been perpetrated by non-Chechens, including Dagestanis and Ingush, the Chechens’ immediate western neighbors, as well as Chechens.

At the start of 2012, the nominal head of the pan-Caucasus insurgency, Doku Umarov, publicly called for the cessation of attacks against civilians. No terrorist attacks against major civilian targets have taken place since.

3. As an organized movement, the insurgency has been overwhelmingly focused on a local agenda.

As mentioned, Arab mujahedeen fighters found their way to Chechnya in the 1990s and exerted some influence on the insurgency. Some of these fighters also developed links with Al Qaeda, but the role of foreign fighters dwindled in the 2000s.

North Caucasian insurgents have focused overwhelmingly on their home territory, which they claim to want to transform into an “Islamic caliphate.” Chechens and other North Caucasians have never featured prominently among leadership networks in Al Qaeda or related groups, and observers continue to debate whether individuals from the North Caucasus ever fought in Afghanistan or other jihadist battlefields in any significant number. As an organized movement, the insurgency is locally focused, without a large global or anti-Western element. That being said, some individuals from the North Caucasus have been implicated in international terror plots, and some Chechens have also reportedly been fighting alongside Islamist rebels in Syria.

4. The Boston terrorist attack may provide for an uptick in the U.S.-Russian security partnership, but we should be careful not to overdramatize its significance for overall U.S.-Russian relations.

The Russian response to the Boston attack was entirely welcome, as sympathetic and supportive as have been American responses to terrorist attacks in Russia. In a call that Russian President Vladimir Putin initiated to President Barack Obama, the two leaders discussed the possibility of increased counterterrorism cooperation. The impact of the attack on U.S.-Russian relations has provided an echo of the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, which prompted a boost in the U.S.-Russian security partnership.

This may seem like a dramatic turnaround given the decline in U.S.-Russian relations over the past year, especially in light of Moscow’s January termination of an agreement on law enforcement and counternarcotics cooperation. But in recent months the U.S. and Russian governments have been seeking ways to renew security cooperation on issues such as nuclear nonproliferation and arms control via updated mechanisms. The Boston attack provides an entry point for discussions in the counterterrorism sphere.

At the same time, the history of post-9/11 relations suggests that a stable and constructive U.S.-Russian relationship cannot be built mainly on a counterterrorism foundation. One element of the Russian response to the Boston attack has been the narrative that the United States is selective in its dealing with terrorists worldwide and that this attack should convince Washington to adopt a stricter line against all forms of Islamist extremism, such as, for instance, extremist elements in the Syrian resistance. While we should welcome greater U.S.-Russian counterterrorism cooperation, we should also temper expectations that the United States and Russia will develop entirely convergent policies of counterterrorism and counterextremism—or that such cooperation will be sufficient to overcome the still-substantial challenges in U.S.-Russian relations.

Cory Welt is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for American Progress and associate director of the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.

SOURCE: AP/ Amr Nabil

Egyptian chant anti-Muslim Brotherhood slogans following a funeral service at the Saint Mark Coptic cathedral in Cairo, Egypt, Sunday, April 7, 2013. Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has failed to address the Muslim Brotherhood's denial of women's basic rights.

In the two years since the Egyptian revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood has become the dominant force in Egyptian electoral politics. The U.S. government and other international actors have attempted in good faith to work with Muslim Brotherhood government leaders and with the group’s affiliated Freedom and Justice Party to remedy the array of political, security, and economic crises that require immediate attention in Egypt. But the Brotherhood’s views on the role of women in Egyptian society and recent efforts to codify these views into law are an increasing threat to the country’s nascent democracy.

Ensuring the rights of women should be a top priority for U.S. policy in Egypt since Egypt serves as a linchpin of the Middle East and a weathervane of progress for similar uprisings across the region. The Center for American Progress has continually said that U.S. policymakers should take a long view of the events in Egypt and help Egypt move toward a prosperous and pluralistic democracy. As U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson clearly stated in February, “To build the future Egypt deserves, Egypt will need its entire people, regardless of their faith, ethnic background, or gender.”

The Muslim Brotherhood’s position on women’s rights was most recently displayed in the group’s harsh response to a U.N. declaration on the elimination and prevention of all violence against women, which included provisions on reproductive rights, access to proper sexual health services, and efforts to reduce the economic marginalization of women. The Brotherhood contended that the document would serve as a “destructive tool meant to undermine the family as an important institution [and] would drag society back to pre-Islamic ignorance.” The Brotherhood urged all Muslim countries to reject the document, despite the fact that Egypt and most other Muslim countries signed the U.N.’s Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.

The Brotherhood’s statement is not a change in policy by the group or the Freedom and Justice Party, but it is the first publicly articulated statement on many of their long-held beliefs about gender roles. The Brotherhood’s statement, for example, argues that women should not be allowed to file legal complaints of spousal abuse against their husbands, nor should women be afforded the same inheritance rights as their brothers or sons. According to the statement, accepting the U.N. declaration’s basic human rights and civil liberties for women would “lead to the complete disintegration of society, and would certainly be the final step in the intellectual and cultural invasion of Muslim countries.”

Days after the Muslim Brotherhood made its announcement, a group of 15 senators led by Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) delivered a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry asking him to denounce the Brotherhood’s statement and ask Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to “rebuke those who dishonor women by denigrating their status in Egyptian society.” The senators urged Secretary Kerry to “continue [his] efforts to make women’s rights a global priority, especially when working with our allies in the Middle East.”

Though no longer officially part of the Brotherhood or the Freedom and Justice Party, President Morsi remains close with both organizations. Most of his key political advisors are Brotherhood members, and he campaigned as an executor for the Muslim Brotherhood’s platform. The Morsi administration tried to distance itself from the Brotherhood’s statement but did not reject it outright.

While the Morsi administration’s rhetoric on women’s rights is not as disconcerting as the Brotherhood’s, his presidency is failing to respond to several critical women’s issues, most notably the disturbing rise in sexual assaults against women in Egypt. Statements by administration officials and members of parliament suggest ambivalence or even outright hostility toward the victims of sexual assault.

When asked about the 18 reported cases of sexual assault during protests this January in Tahrir Square on the two-year anniversary of the uprisings, a Freedom and Justice Party lawmaker responded, “How do they ask the Ministry of Interior to protect a woman when she stands among men?” Another stated, “A girl contributes 100 percent to her own raping when she puts herself in these conditions.” Instead of criticizing the lack of security in Tahrir Square or blaming the attackers, conservative members of the Shura Council—the upper house of the Egyptian parliament—blamed the victims. The Muslim Brotherhood criticized the protest organizers as well for failing to separate men and women, thus enabling an environment for sexual assault.

The new Egyptian government also failed to offer specific protections for women’s rights in the new constitution. This causes concern among human rights advocates that the new constitution leaves too many opportunities for interpretations of the law that restrict civil liberties for women. Article 10 of the constitution, for example, says: “The State is keen to preserve the genuine character of the Egyptian family, its cohesion and stability … and enable the reconciliation between the duties of a woman toward her family and her work.” Human rights advocates argue that this clause is a not-so-subtle way of saying that women should be kept in traditional roles.

The Egyptian government also failed to incorporate women into the new political reality of Egypt. Female representation in parliament sharply decreased from 12.5 percent in 2010 to 2 percent after the 2011 elections, when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces removed the quota on female parliamentarians during the transition to a civilian government. Despite the growing desire among Egyptian women to participate in politics and vote in elections, 85 percent of women said no political party accurately represents their views and opinions, according to a recent survey.

The popular protests in Tahrir Square that brought an end to Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade reign as president were a call for a government founded on democratic principles and responsive to the needs and aspirations of all Egyptians. Women were at the forefront of this fight for an open, inclusive democratic government, and they played a critical role in sparking and sustaining the revolution. The global community rightfully expected a greater role for women in a new Egypt, yet over the past two years as a new government was elected and a new constitution ratified, the hopes for increased women’s rights diminished.

Promoting women’s rights isn’t just an issue of values; it’s an issue of Egyptian national interest. The hopes of a modern, successful Egypt cannot be realized if half of its population is denied basic rights.

The importance of women to the success of Egypt is particularly true in the economy. Economic opportunities for women declined in Egypt more than any other country last year, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s yearly report. Egypt cannot afford to have a female unemployment rate of 28 percent, which greatly exceeds the overall national rate of 13 percent. In a country facing an annual budget deficit of $27 billion and dwindling foreign currency reserves, Egypt needs the benefits of full female participation in the labor force. If Egypt could raise female employment levels to those of their male counterparts, the country could see a 34 percent increase in their gross domestic product, according to a new study by Booz&Co. For Egypt, empowering women is about economic survival.

But the Muslim Brotherhood’s position on women’s rights may just be one symptom of a larger and much deeper problem. The Brotherhood’s increasing power through the presidency and through the Freedom and Justice Party in the Egyptian parliament, alongside even more conservative groups such as the Salafist Nour Party, is raising concerns about a backsliding toward the authoritarian tendencies and tactics of the Mubarak regime. President Morsi’s administration and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood took a majoritarian approach to governance, demonstrated most clearly in Morsi’s November 22 decree granting himself sweeping powers in the controversial process of drafting and ratifying the country’s new constitution. This approach to governance does not lay the foundation for an effective and politically legitimate government, and it raises serious concerns about the Egyptian government’s respect for the interests of political minorities, the rights of women and religious minorities, and civil liberties.

Respecting the rights of women, religious minorities, and other vulnerable groups represents one of the fundamental pillars of U.S.-Egyptian relations, in addition to playing a constructive role in regional peace, ensuring political legitimacy, and establishing an open, competitive economy. As Ambassador Patterson said last month, “While elections and constitutions are a necessary part of democracy, they are not enough. For Egypt to complete its transition to a free democratic nation, it needs much more.”

The U.S. government should more clearly articulate the value it places on women’s rights, and all civil rights for that matter, and that it will not ignore fiery rhetoric from an ally that actively conflicts with our values. The goal of helping Egyptian women is part of a larger effort by the United States to empower women and advance their rights around the world—an effort prioritized under former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and one that should remain a priority under Secretary Kerry. As a first step in Egypt, Secretary Kerry should ask President Morsi to publicly denounce the Muslim Brotherhood’s statement on the U.N. declaration and pledge to address the most pressing issues of concern to women in Egypt such as sexual assault and economic disenfranchisement.

The United States is a global leader as an open and free society that promotes the rights of all individuals, regardless of gender or minority status, and we need to call out countries when they do not respect these rights, even when they’re our allies.

Annie Malknecht is a Research Associate with the Sustainable Security and Peacebuilding Initiative at the Center for American Progress. Ken Sofer is a Research Associate with the National Security and International Policy team at the Center.

SOURCE: AP/Charles Dharapak

President Barack Obama speaks about his proposed fiscal year 2014 federal budget, Wednesday, April 10, 2013, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington.

In its latest budget proposal to Congress, the Obama administration has requested $526.6 billion in baseline funding for the Department of Defense, a $1 billion increase from the administration’s defense budget request last year. In accordance with the long-term budget plan it announced last year, the Obama administration’s FY 2014 defense budget request holds the baseline defense budget steady at historic highs after a decade of tremendous growth.

This is a missed opportunity to realign our national security priorities. Unnecessary defense spending does not make us safer; it diverts resources away from other critical investments here at home that create jobs and rebuild our infrastructure. Moreover, many of the big-ticket items in the Pentagon’s budget request are ill suited for dealing with the complex transnational threats facing the country today, serve only to reinforce the United States’ overwhelming superiority in conventional and nuclear weaponry, and come at a considerable cost to American taxpayers.

If Congress and the administration are serious about deficit reduction and serious about cracking down on wasteful federal spending, they should both aim to return the baseline defense budget to pre-9/11 levels as soon as possible.

A budget that’s holding steady

In unveiling its FY 2013 budget request last year, the administration announced its plans to reduce baseline defense spending by $487 billion over the next decade, as mandated by the Budget Control Act. These proposed “cuts,” however, came from projected increases in defense spending; the administration’s plan would have actually held the defense budget steady over the next 10 years in inflation-adjusted dollars.

With its FY 2013 budget proposal, the Obama administration ended the irresponsible increases in baseline military spending that have occurred since 9/11, but its long-term budget plan did nothing to reverse this growth or bring the budget down from near historic highs. And unfortunately, the proposed FY 2014 budget maintains this unwillingness to return military spending to prewar levels or historical norms in real terms.

Simply put, the United States can—and should—safely reduce military spending by more and can do so more quickly than the administration’s current plan envisions.

Despite the national concern about the size of the federal deficit, the Pentagon’s budget has remained relatively stable in real terms in recent years, as shown in Figure 1. In fact, the only noteworthy reduction in defense spending since 9/11 occurred this year, in FY 2013, when sequestration required a $41 billion cut.

An alternative to sequestration

In its latest budget proposal, the administration outlines a deficit-reduction plan, including both new revenues and spending cuts, which can replace sequestration and its across-the-board cuts. This plan includes about $100 billion in cuts to the defense budget beginning in 2017.

Sequestration, with its across-the-board cuts, is not a smart way to reduce defense spending, and the administration’s desire to replace these automatic cuts with a more targeted deficit-reduction plan is understandable. By cutting all programs evenly, sequestration denies Pentagon officials the ability to manage the budget drawdown by targeting underperforming programs while protecting initiatives that have proven effective.

Yet if the administration is truly serious about deficit reduction and cracking down on wasteful federal spending, the Pentagon can afford to cut more than $100 billion, and these cuts should begin before 2019. In fact, as shown in Figure 2, U.S. military spending reached unprecedented peaks during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As the United States winds down its involvement in Afghanistan, it can return the budget to peacetime levels, which will require reductions of nearly $100 billion per year, not $100 billion per decade.

Responsible defense cuts

Over the past four years, the Obama administration has demonstrated that it is serious about protecting the United States and its interests abroad. But the country needs a defense budget that’s effective, not just enormous. In 2011 we spent more than China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Japan, India, Saudi Arabia, Germany, Brazil, Italy, South Korea, Australia, and Canada combined on our military.

Last year the Center for American Progress released an issue brief outlining politically feasible defense cuts. If implemented, these reductions would present a moderate first step toward returning the budget to sustainable levels. Here are the ideas we proposed:

• Eliminate the Navy’s purchase of the troubled over-budget F-35C jet and instead purchase the effective and affordable F/A-18E/F jet. Savings: about $17 billion over 10 years.
• Reduce the size of our ground forces to their prewar levels. Savings: about $16 billion over the next decade.
• Reform the Pentagon’s outdated health care programs. Savings: roughly $40 billion over 10 years.
• Reduce the number of deployed nuclear weapons to 1,100 by 2022 from about 1,700 today. Savings: more than $28 billion over 10 years.

Further, Congress must also accept many of the administration’s common-sense cost-savings proposals, including modest changes to health care benefits for military retirees, the creation of a new Base Closure and Realignment Commission to close down unneeded military installations, and targeted reductions or slowing down the procurement of over-budget or ineffective weapons systems.

The United States faces no existential threats or rival superpowers. We should not be spending as much on defense as we did during the Cold War. Returning the defense budget to historical norms will force the Pentagon to better manage its affairs and will help ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly.

Lawrence J. Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Alex Rothman and Max Hoffman are Research Associates at the Center.

The Center for American Progress and the Heinrich Böll Stiftung organized consultation workshops for a large group of civil-society actors in Afghanistan in November 2012 and March 2013 to generate a set of recommendations related to Afghanistan’s political system and transition in 2014. CAP and Heinrich Böll Stiftung also brought a smaller delegation of Afghan civil-society leaders to Washington, D.C., and New York City in February 2013 to understand the concerns of U.S. policymakers and the broader public and to share their views. Their paper, “Afghanistan Beyond 2014: Elections, Political Settlements, Reforms,” is the product of their deliberations. This is their paper alone.

These Afghan civil-society leaders, whose organizations are listed at the bottom of the document, focus the paper on three areas where they believe more attention is needed by Afghans and the international community—the elections, a political settlement process, and political reforms for the Afghan government—and provide specific recommendations in each category. They believe that Afghan civil society has an important role to play in preserving the gains that have been made and in leading the effort for further change. And they ask for the international community’s continued support in bolstering a more democratic, inclusive, and responsive Afghan state.

Read the paper here. This paper was also published by Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

Caroline Wadhams is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/ Ilyas Omarov

Representative from China, Germany and Russia listen during talks on Iran's nuclear program in Almaty, Kazakhstan. World powers hope Iran will respond positively on Wednesday to their new offer to lift some sanctions if Tehran scales back nuclear activity the West fears could be used to build bombs

The latest round of talks between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council—the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, and France—as well as Germany, also known as the P5+1, ended last week without notable progress on answering the outstanding questions about Iran’s nuclear program.

The P5+1 put a new proposal on the table that would require Iran to suspend, but not completely shut down, enrichment at its Fordo facility. Located near the city of Qom, the facility was first revealed in September 2009 and is now the main location of Iran’s medium-level enrichment work. For its part, Iran continued to insist that recognition of its right to enrich uranium is an essential step in negotiations.

While sources present at the talks indicated that substantial discussions occurred over these proposals, the gaps between the two sides clearly remain considerable. One Western diplomat told Reuters that, “The Iranians indicated readiness to take some steps but they were small.” According to Lady Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief and lead negotiator for the P5+1, “It became clear that our positions remain far apart.”

The key issue surrounding Iran’s nuclear program relates to unanswered questions posed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, which is the U.N. body responsible for monitoring compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty under which countries agree not to pursue nuclear weapons in exchange for access to peaceful nuclear technology. Iran joined the treaty in 1998, but in 2005 the IAEA discovered that Iran was not complying with the treaty’s terms because of failure to report its nuclear activities.

On Monday the head of the IAEA, Yukio Amano, said that his agency could not rule out the possibility that Iran was actively seeking nuclear-weapons technology, and that it is up to Iran to clarify the agency’s outstanding question.

Beginning in 2009 the Obama administration and its partners in the P5+1 have participated in several rounds of negotiations with the Iranian government in an effort to bring its nuclear program into compliance with the treaty and to satisfactorily answer the IAEA’s questions regarding the possibility of any military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear work.

Speaking at a press conference on April 7, Secretary of State John Kerry acknowledged that the Iranian election scheduled for June 2013 “complicates the choices with respect to the politics of Iran. And we’re aware of that.” But he added, “The President is determined to continue to pursue the diplomatic channel. We will continue to have discussions through the P-5+1 process. And we remain open and hopeful that a diplomatic solution can be found.”

Some members of Congress already announced that they will propose yet more sanctions against Iran, which is already dealing with the most stringent economic limitations ever applied to any country. According to Bloomberg News, this new measure “would penalize foreign countries that do business with any Iranian entity controlled by the government. It also would bar Iran from using earnings from oil exports to purchase anything other than food and medicine.”

While frustration over Iran’s intransigence is understandable, it’s unclear whether applying more pressure can accomplish what a considerable amount of pressure has thus far failed to achieve. A recent report from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace examining Iran’s behavior over the past decades determined that economic pressure is unlikely to halt Iran’s nuclear work, which “is entangled with too much pride—however misguided—and sunk costs simply to be abandoned.” The report concluded that, “The only sustainable solution for assuring that Iran’s nuclear program remains purely peaceful is a mutually agreeable diplomatic solution.”

As for next steps, it’s important to remember that there is time to deal with the problem. In an Israeli television interview in March, President Obama, citing U.S. intelligence data, said it would take Iran a year or more to build a nuclear weapon in the event that it chose to do so—which U.S. intelligence services believe it has not yet done.

As President Obama said in his speech in Jerusalem on March 21:

Strong and principled diplomacy is the best way to ensure that the Iranian government forsakes nuclear weapons. Peace is far more preferable to war, and the inevitable costs, the unintended consequences that would come with war means that we have to do everything we can to try to resolve this diplomatically. Because of the cooperation between our governments, we know that there remains time to pursue a diplomatic resolution.

Matthew Duss is a Policy Analyst with the National Security and International Policy team at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/Korean Central News Agency via Korea News Service

In this undated photo released by the Korean Central News Agency and distributed Sunday, January 27, 2013, in Tokyo by the Korea News Service, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attends a consultative meeting with officials in the fields of state security and foreign affairs at an undisclosed location in North Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his country’s army are engaging in a dangerous game of verbal brinkmanship with the United States and South Korea. While North Korea’s war of words previously consisted of symbolic acts of defiance, recent moves suggest that the country may push the issue further by restarting their Yongbyon nuclear plant and cutting off South Korean entry into the Kaesong Industrial Complex near the North and South boundary line. Whether part of a deliberate and sophisticated strategy or a simple escalation of exaggeration and recklessness, North Korea’s leader is bringing the Korean peninsula to a point of great tension, with the United States, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and the United Nations directly engaged in response.

Tensions between the United States, South Korea, and North Korea spiked dramatically following the successful December 12, 2012, long-range rocket test by the North Koreans. While the North Koreans claimed they tested the rocket to put a weather satellite into orbit, the clear dual-use military purpose raised alarm bells not only in Washington, D.C., and Seoul, but across the world as well. On January 22, 2013, the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2087, which instituted further sanctions on the North Korean ballistic-missile program.

North Korea tested another nuclear device in response to the resolution, just as it had in 2006 and 2009 following the passage of Security Council resolutions in those years, On February 12, 2013, seismic activity was detected in North Korea’s North Hamgyong province, near the border with China. North Korean state media soon claimed a third successful nuclear test, with the South Korean Ministry of National Defense saying the blast was in the range of 6 to 9 kilotons. Notably, North Korea is the only country to test a nuclear weapon since 1999; both Pakistan and India conducted two tests each in 1998 but unilaterally declared moratoriums afterward.

Speaking shortly after the test, Sig Hecker, former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and currently a researcher and fellow at Stanford University, speculated that the test used a uranium device instead of plutonium, meaning North Korea may be capable of producing two types of nuclear weapons—plutonium and uranium. In addition, Hecker believed the device tested was smaller and lighter than previous ones, suggesting a North Korean goal of miniaturizing a nuclear warhead to fit on a ballistic missile.

The test came around two weeks before Park Geun-hye was inaugurated as president of South Korea. While Park indicated that South Korea would not tolerate any military provocations by North Korea, she also opened the door to a new and constructive relationship between the two countries even after the nuclear test. Amid recent tension, Park still announced that South Korea would delink humanitarian aid from diplomatic developments on the North’s nuclear program.

On March 7 the U.N. Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 2094 condemning the North Korean nuclear test and sharpening sanctions on figures and entities involved in North Korea’s nuclear program. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said the sanctions “would increase North Korea’s isolation and raise the cost to North Korea’s leaders of defying the international community.”

War of words 

North Korea significantly ratcheted up its belligerent tone in March, even by its own bombastic standards. Among other acts, North Korea:

• Announced the country was on a war footing
• Announced that the Armistice Agreement, which ended the Korean War in 1953, was null and void (something they have done several times in the past)
• Threatened to strike the United States, South Korea, and Japan with nuclear weapons if attacked
• Released altered photos showing strike plans on the U.S. mainland
• Announced that it would only deal with South Korea in a wartime manner

State media also reported that Kim Jong-un oversaw a number of military exercises, including ones around the Northern Limit Line, or NLL, which is the disputed maritime demarcation line between North and South Korea.

These statements and acts may have been to show its “resolute opposition” to the passage of Security Council resolutions and to annual joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea that began on March 1. But more notably they may have been the North’s way of testing how the Park Geun-hye administration would react under pressure.

The White House announced on April 1 that there were no signs of large-scale North Korean mobilization, which may serve as an indication that strong deterrence moves by the United States and South Korea placed a cap on North Korean action. In addition to the U.S. deployment of B-2 bombers and F-22 fighters to participate in the joint military exercises, President Park warned that any North Korean attack would lead to a “strong response.” The U.S. military also said it would get involved early on in the event of a limited conflict. U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel made it clear that the United States would be prepared to defend its interests, as well as the interests of its allies. There are currently more than 28,000 U.S. military service members stationed in South Korea.

North Korea may also have struck such a belligerent tone for domestic reasons. Stephan Haggard, a respected scholar and professor at the University of California, San Diego, who specializes in Korean affairs, pointed out that North Korean statements were largely framed in terms of North Korea striking back against attacks by South Korea and the United States, rather than threats to launch a first strike. Once the joint military exercises end without an attack by South Korea or the United States, the North Korean regime can claim credit for preventing an attack by either country, “proving” the correctness of its “military-first” (songun) policy that has been in place for nearly two decades.

More recent moves suggest that even as the North says it is interested in jointly developing both its economy and nuclear program, it will continue to engage in provocative behavior. While a supposed economic reformer, Pak Pong Ju,* was recently appointed premier by the North Korean parliament, the regime also announced that the nuclear program would continue apace. Confirmation of this intent seemed to come on April 2, when North Korea announced that it was restarting the Yongbyon nuclear plant, which was suspended after negotiations between North Korea and the United States in 2008. Experts believe the plant could be operational within six months to a year.

The North Koreans also took the provocative step on April 3 of blocking South Koreans from entering the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a jointly operated industrial park on the North Korean side of the border. While South Korean workers are now being allowed to cross back into the South, a number have chosen to remain at the complex and could represent potential hostages if North Korea decides to escalate further.

The most concerning scenario, however, still remains some type of limited military confrontation on the Peninsula starting in the areas near the Korean Demilitarized Zone, or DMZ, or near the Northern Limit Line. Kim Jong-un’s inexperience makes this a particular concern. While South Korea displayed enormous restraint following the sinking of its naval vessel Cheonan by the North in March 2010 and the shelling by the North of Yeonpyeong Island in November 2010, Seoul has made it clear that it will not tolerate further provocations. A North Korean decision to test President Park could escalate rapidly beyond what the North Koreans intended.

The United States and the Republic of Korea will use their alliance to show unrivaled military strength and unwavering diplomatic resolve in response to the aggressive words and actions of the north. China and Japan also have major interests in seeing the current crisis come to an end. But North Korea’s war of words and needless provocation can only serve to push the country into further global isolation and create more hardship for the long-suffering population ruled by Kim Jong-un and his regime.

Rudy deLeon is the Senior Vice President for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress. Luke Herman is an Intern with the National Security team at the Center.

* Pak was previously premier from 2003 to 2007 and oversaw modest economic reforms passed in July 2002; these reforms, however, were reversed starting in 2005. After his removal, he was not seen again until 2010. South Korean analysts say that he is close to Jang Song Thaek and Kim Kyong Hui, who are Kim Jong-un’s powerful uncle and aunt, respectively.

SOURCE: AP/ Marco Jose Sanchez

Ray Jacques reads the San Francisco Chronicle's war special section inside a Starbucks coffee shop in San Francisco. Ten years after the invasion of Iraq, many members of the media who supported the war in 2003 are choosing not to comment.

For better or worse, the Vietnam War proved itself to be a learning experience for Americans and the U.S. government. In the military, it resulted in what became known as “The Weinberger Doctrine,” which set up a number of demanding conditions for a president to consider before committing significant numbers of troops to foreign wars. For the public, it led to the derisively termed “Vietnam Syndrome,” which combines skepticism toward the nation’s foreign policymakers with weariness about America’s often self-imposed global “policing” role in other countries.

It is unwise to rely on counterfactual history, but after the Vietnam War, it is worth examining the U.S. military’s avoidance of certain unpopular wars.  Consider, for example, the opinion conveyed by the bumper sticker “’El Salvador’ is Spanish for ‘Vietnam.’” These kind of sentiments, coupled with the military’s own desire to avoid wars that lacked strong public support, prevented U.S. proxy wars in Central America, southern Africa, and possibly the Middle East—at least for a little while.

In many respects, former President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq was an even greater catastrophe than Vietnam—one that is even less morally and intellectually defensible. And yet, as a nation, we appear to have learned virtually nothing this time around. As Peter Baker noted in The New York Times, “a conspiracy of silence” surrounded the recently observed 10th anniversary of the invasion. “Republicans and Democrats agreed that they did not really want to talk about the Iraq war,” wrote Baker.

This past month, the media has sought out some of the war’s most vocal supporters to reflect on lessons learned, if any, from their errors 10 years ago. A small percentage of the war hawks who originally supported the invasion sought to defend their initial views. An even smaller group apologized for their errors. But the overwhelming tendency among these formerly loquacious pundits and ex-officials was to change the subject away from the war itself. Read, for instance, George Packer’s 10th-anniversary essay in The New Yorker or Paul Berman’s in The New Republic or Kenneth Pollack’s interview featured in Ezra Klein’s column on Bloomberg.com to see if you can determine whether these one-time armchair warriors were expressing regret, or attempting to excuse their own lack of judgment. I sure couldn’t.

Then again, why should they reconsider? It’s not as if anyone—with the possible exception of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Bush—paid any kind of professional price for their colossal errors regarding Iraq. Certainly nobody’s career was hurt by the inaccuracy of rosy predictions about the war. Indeed, the opposite proved true: The Weekly Standard’s William Kristol perhaps predicted the outcome of the war most inaccurately, and yet he ended up with opinion columns in Time magazine and on the op-ed page of The New York Times. Once the war’s failure became clear, it’s as if the entire mainstream media decided to adopt the sentiments expressed by the liberal Washington Post pundit Richard Cohen, borrowed from the French ex-Stalinist Pierre Courtade: “You and your kind were wrong to be right; we were right to be wrong.”

Upon rereading their prewar arguments, one can understand the liberal pundits’ desire to change the subject 10 years later rather than revisit their fallacious arguments, or try to draw larger lessons from their mistakes. The liberal hawks—almost exclusively men—became men of ideas wanting to be men of action. They embraced what the historian Christopher Lasch called “the anti-intellectualism of the intellectuals”—to be bold, to reject doubt, and to fight with ideas rather than guns.

Instead of careful cost-benefit analyses of invading Iraq, these intellectual war hawks gave us airy phrases that did not address the actual difficulties the United States was likely to face in Iraq after the initial fighting was over. Many preferred to focus on what the war would do for America’s self-regard as a nation. When the twin towers went down in 2001, the liberal journalist George Packer began a collected set of essays called “The Fight is for Democracy.” Ten years later, he reminisced about his first thoughts after 9/11: “Maybe this will make us better.”

Packer and other liberal hawks, including Michael Ignatieff, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Cohen, David Rieff, Roger Cohen, and Jacob Weisberg, gained popularity in the media despite a gap in their lack of military experience. Indeed, none possessed any particular professional expertise on military strategy, Iraqi society, or the Arab world more generally. They saw their own ideas, as the neoconservative writer Jacob Heilbrunn would write, “as weapons in a moral struggle.”

Indeed, most liberal hawks gave little thought to the Bush administration’s ability to carry out the complicated tasks that would follow the relatively simple task of facing a badly armed third-world military force in open battle. Apparently they expected the postwar reconstruction of Iraqi governance and civil society to take care of itself. The hawks flattered themselves that they knew bigger, more important things than such trivial details. Author and journalist Christopher Hitchens made this plain in his 2010 memoir, when he casually observed that he and his comrades “rather tended to assume that things of [the] more practical sort were being taken care of.”

That’s as far as they got before making assertions and statements about why we needed to go to war. Now take a look at this chart to see where the war ultimately got us. The Vietnam War led to many tragic results, but at least it briefly taught the United States that wars in far-off nations were not endeavors to be taken lightly, or without an understanding of the culture we were seeking to reform—at least until 2003.

Many of the same people who treated the cautionary signals regarding Iraq so blithely 10 years ago now appear to be agitating for yet another adventure, this time in Iran. It would behoove us to ensure that we focus on the lessons of that catastrophe before embarking on yet another one. This time it won’t do to merely change the subject.

Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a CUNY distinguished professor of English and journalism at Brooklyn College. He is also “The Liberal Media” columnist for The Nation. His most recent book is The Cause: The Fight for American Liberalism from Franklin Roosevelt to Barack Obama.

SOURCE: AP/Emilio Morenatti

The United States can make efforts to support Pakistan’s democratic evolution and the success of its upcoming elections. Such efforts should include a public commitment to neutrality and respect for the electoral processes, coupled with support for an international observation mission.

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this report. For data on the February 18, 2008, parliamentary elections and the current balance of seats in parliament, see the accompanying dataset.

Over the past decade, U.S. engagement with Pakistan has experienced periods of close cooperation, mutual mistrust, and near-breakdown. Contemporary American policy attention on Pakistan since 2001 has primarily focused on the threat of terrorism and how to respond to domestic militant actors that threaten the security of the United States, Pakistan’s neighbors, and the Pakistani people. Even as the United States realigns its military investments in neighboring Afghanistan over the coming years, Pakistan will remain an important concern for U.S. statecraft, and for reasons broader than just the counterterrorism context. Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state with a growing population of approximately 190 million people—as many as two-thirds of whom are under age 30—and is strategically located between the Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, neighboring China, India, and Iran. Pakistan’s responses to its many internal political, economic, and security challenges over the coming years will have a major impact on the South Asian region and beyond.

Understanding the country’s potential future course on almost any issue requires an understanding of Pakistan’s internal political processes and how those processes might be changing. Over the past five to six years, Pakistan’s political system has experienced a heavily contested and ongoing decentralization of power. The durability of these shifts is still highly uncertain, as Pakistan’s historical cycle of military coups may attest. But understanding the competing interests of, and building partnerships with, a broad range of Pakistani political actors will be a requirement for effective U.S. engagement with Pakistan in the coming years.

Since the 2007–2008 period, the powerful central authority constructed by former military chief Pervez Musharraf during his nine-year rule as chief executive and then president of the country has since given way to a parliamentary coalition, led by the Pakistan People’s Party, or PPP, and President Asif Ali Zardari. The Pakistan People’s Party’s efforts to maintain this broad coalition against a host of rivals have served to increase the bargaining power of the parliamentary opposition, regional parties, and local political actors. Processes of administrative devolution started in 2010, and while still partial and incomplete, have further increased subnational autonomy and expanded the provincial share of national revenues. The government has also been forced to accommodate the demands of new political movements that lack institutional representation within the formal system, but have nonetheless been able to effectively mobilize public and media platforms for their causes.

Contests over the rules of the political system are not limited to the country’s elected representatives or political leaders. Pakistan’s judiciary, led by the activist Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, has moved to establish its authority over and independence from the other branches of the Pakistani system. The courts serve as both a field for competition and player in their own right, as is also the case with the broadening Pakistani media landscape. Pakistan’s powerful army, by virtue of its institutional cohesion and control over many of the country’s economic and military assets, remains the country’s single-most powerful actor. But even the army, under the leadership of Chief of Army Staff Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, has been obliged to balance its relations with civilian, judicial, and foreign leaders, and it has been courted and challenged in turn.

Against this backdrop, Pakistan’s current PPP-led coalition government has announced the completion of the current parliament’s term, the establishment of a caretaker government, and the holding of national general elections to take place on May 11, 2013. These elections and the coalition-forming negotiations to follow will also closely coincide with the scheduled expiration this year of the terms in office for Gen. Kayani, whose tenure was extended for an extra three years by President Zardari in July 2010; President Zardari, whose five-year term concludes in September but who could be potentially reelected by a new parliament; and Chief Justice Chaudhry, whose term lasts until December.

The prospect of an elected civilian government transferring power through the electoral process at the end of a full term in office to another civilian successor is an unprecedented event in Pakistani history. Precisely forecasting the outcome of the upcoming election is outside the scope of this paper’s ambitions, as any such predictive attempts are complicated by a number of factors. These include the country’s well-established history of overt or covert military intervention in past elections; an absence of robust public opinion polling data; varying standards for voter registration between elections; and the considerable risk of exogenous incidents—such as the 2007 assassination of former PPP leader Benazir Bhutto, or former Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s disqualification from office in 2012 on contempt of court charges—that can disrupt “normal” political processes.

With these caveats in mind, in an effort to better inform analysis of the forthcoming general election campaign and results, this report overviews the major political dynamics that have characterized the current Pakistani government’s tenure, and previews the elections by assessing the principal political competitors, their bases of support, and the likely points of dispute before and after elections are held. Even as the Pakistani political system becomes more complex, the United States retains continued interest in engagement across a broad range of security, economic, and diplomatic concerns. Moves to set the conditions of competition and the boundaries of authority will form the primary driver of Pakistani politics for the foreseeable future, and understanding those processes will be critical for shaping effective U.S. policy toward Pakistan.

Colin Cookman is a political analyst whose work focuses primarily on issues related to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and American policy toward the region.

SOURCE: AP/Majdi Mohammed

Palestinian farmer Khader Khader, 31, picks olives on his land in Nisf Jubeil, near the West Bank city of Nablus, October 22, 2012. Palestinian farmers have recently started turning the rocky hills of the West Bank into organic olive groves, selling their oil to high-end grocers in the United States and Europe.

Statement from John Podesta

I applaud the efforts of the Middle East Investment Initiative, National Insurance Co. Ltd, and the U.S. Overseas Private Corporation to launch the Palestinian Political Risk Insurance, or PPRI, project later this month. The project, conceived by President Bill Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative and developed by the Center for American Progress and Middle East Investment Initiative, demonstrates that public-private partnerships can help forge win-win solutions for Israelis and Palestinians even during challenging political periods.

The idea behind Palestinian Political Risk Insurance is both simple—increased economic opportunities for Palestinians, particularly those that incentivize best business practices,  benefits Palestinians and Israelis—and proactive—society should not wait for a peace agreement to begin addressing critical day-to-day problems. This insurance is not intended to resolve the conflict or all the economic problems affecting the Palestinian economy; instead, it focuses on finding a piece for one small but key part of the puzzle by mitigating risks to international trade for Palestinian businesses. In addressing this problem, Palestinian Political Risk Insurance can make an immediate impact on the ground and can show that progress is achievable even on the most difficult issues, such as those that relate to security challenges.

I am proud to have been part of an effort where so many individuals and organizations came together to turn President Clinton’s vision into a reality. Whether it was international law firms and insurance experts, dedicated Palestinian companies, leading private-sector businessmen, or senior Israeli security experts, there was always a group of people committed to help move the project forward. I hope the project will serve as a model for similar efforts in the future.

— John Podesta, Chair of the Center for American Progress

Column: An Innovative Step to Support Palestinian Trade

This column is part of a series based on seven days of meetings in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Tel Aviv, Israel, with top officials and experts from the Israeli government, Palestinian Authority, and other international organizations.

This month’s expected launch of the Palestinian Political Risk Insurance, or PPRI, project comes at a critical period for the Palestinian economy and Israeli-Palestinian relations. Palestinian economic conditions have deteriorated in recent years, which have led to general protests and increased tensions between the two sides. These conditions threaten both Palestinian and Israeli security.

While a political solution is the only way to resolve these problems over the long term, there are interim practical steps that the private sector can take, which can make a small but immediate and lasting impact on people’s day-to-day lives. The Palestinian Political Risk Insurance project is such a step. It addresses a market gap in the Palestinian insurance sector with the goal of encouraging local investment and economic development. Although efforts such as the Palestinian Political Risk Insurance project are not a substitute for a political process to end the conflict, they are necessary for improving daily life on the ground regardless of how the political process unfolds.

What is Palestinian Political Risk Insurance and how does it help?

Palestinian Political Risk Insurance is a new and innovative insurance product that will be sold to Palestinian businesses that ship goods out of the West Bank. Currently, the local insurance market does not cover trade losses resulting from certain risks of movement and access, political violence, and trade disruption. These risks arise out of the unique security environment in which the businesses operate.

As a result of Israeli security concerns, for instance, nearly all shipments sent out of the West Bank must go through a crossing point where they are offloaded from a Palestinian truck by forklift and reloaded onto another truck on the other side of the barrier that runs between Israel and the West Bank. In some cases, the forklifts drop the shipments or damage the products. In other cases, delays at the crossing points prevent goods from reaching the buyers on time. As one example, from February through March in 2010, a Palestinian multilock door and metal closet company lost approximately $4,500 from damages during the forklift transfer process.

Since insurance companies do not cover these losses, this business has had to self-insure against the risk of loss—that is, setting aside funds to pay for losses in case they occur. Reserving capital for losses has prevented this business from reinvesting that capital in its own company, which has in turn made it more difficult for the business to expand, create jobs, and seek new markets.

By protecting against certain losses that other insurance policies do not cover, fewer companies will experience unexpected losses that hurt their bottom lines. Therefore, the insurance increases trade predictability for companies that purchase the coverage, which encourages private-sector investment and job creation—the pillars of sustainable economic growth. The insurance is also intended to improve Palestinian and Israeli security and economic sectors by complementing a U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, secure supply chain logistics program that increases incentives for traders to improve management and security practices.

The insurance is a practical step—one that is supported by all parties—that can make a meaningful difference in people’s daily lives. The insurance project does not overlook the importance of working toward a political solution; instead, it addresses one problem that that needs to be resolved regardless of the political situation.

How does Palestinian Political Risk Insurance work?

A local Palestinian insurance company will sell and operate Palestinian Political Risk Insurance akin to other business insurance products. Businesses such as stone and marble producers, wood and metallic furniture companies, and textile firms, for example, will have options for what type of coverage to purchase and how much coverage is necessary, and will pay premiums and file claims directly with the insurer.

Since the insurance provides benefits to those who purchase it, project partners envision Palestinian Political Risk Insurance being a sustainable product backed exclusively by the private insurance and reinsurance markets. To that end, Palestinian Political Risk Insurance will first be launched as a limited pilot program, during which time partners will test the product and gather data in order to determine whether and how to expand the coverage. Partners will also provide technical assistance to the local insurance company during the pilot program in order to build capacity in the Palestinian insurance industry and reduce reliance on foreign aid over the long term.

Palestinian Political Risk Insurance’s role in the Palestinian economy

What we really need to do in order to have sustainable economic development is possibilities for exports, for sure. In order for the economy to be able to grow in excess of six or seven percent minimally; for it to be able to absorb new entrants into the labor force, not to mention the need for us to actually reduce the high unemployment rates that exist right now; that I believe must be the most important objective of any rational economic policy.
— Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, September 21, 2010

Prime Minister Fayyad’s statement that opportunities for exports are important for sustainable economic growth is espoused by others such as the World Bank. The Palestinian territories are a small area scarce in natural resources; there are approximately 4 million people living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which combined is nearly the size of Delaware. The West Bank is also landlocked. As such, international trade can play a major role in helping sustain long-term economic growth in the Palestinian territories.

Despite the importance of external trade to the local economy, companies that ship goods outside the Palestinian market face many obstacles. In response to the second Intifada, a Palestinian uprising that began in 2000, Israel started building a barrier along parts of the 1949 Armistice Line, or “Green Line,” and within the West Bank. Israel’s objective for the barrier is to limit the instances of terrorist attacks across the Green Line, inside Israel. These attacks declined following its construction. As part of the barrier’s creation, most unofficial passages between the West Bank and Israel were closed and people and goods were required to transit only at designated crossing points. Congestion and certain security practices at the crossing points created a new set of challenges. Conditions at the crossing points have improved in recent years but basic challenges still remain.

Appreciating Israeli security concerns, the barrier, crossing points, and other movement and challenges related to access have had a significant impact on Palestinian trade. Exports decreased from $763 million in 1999 to $306 million in 2002. They have slowly increased since then, reaching approximately $720 million in 2011. During this period, businesses in Gaza largely lost their ability to ship their goods from this coastal strip except in limited cases, following Hamas’s takeover of the security apparatus in Gaza. The Israeli market has long served as the main destination for Gaza and West Bank goods shipped outside the local market; 85 percent of those goods went to Israel in 2011.*

In order for there to be a substantial increase in Palestinian goods shipped outside the local market, a series of steps would need to occur, such as an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement and the removal of additional movement and access restrictions. Even if those other steps occur, however, businesses will still need risk-management tools because certain challenges to trade will likely always remain, such as borders and designated crossings points into Israel—the destination for the majority of goods shipped outside the Palestinian market.

For that reason, insurance tools such as Palestinian Political Risk Insurance that mitigate trade risks will remain important in both the short and long term. They are market-based solutions that decrease the risk of loss, increase trade predictability, and encourage investment, which is helpful to fostering and sustaining economic activity. An improved Palestinian economy has a beneficial economic, political, and security impact for Palestinians and Israelis.

Both the insurance and previously mentioned USAID logistics program are consistent with the overall Palestinian institution-building approach. They are programs that encourage the private sector to adopt international best practices, ones that private markets in other countries follow—sometimes incentivized by government programs—in order to improve stability and security and encourage growth in their local economies.

An international public-private effort

The Palestinian Political Risk Insurance effort is what the Clinton Global Initiative is about. We have Palestinians, Americans, Europeans, Israelis, insurance experts, business people, lawyers, financial sector specialists, regional specialists, all contributing their time, energy, and resources to meet this challenge and make a difference in this very important part of the world.
— President Bill Clinton, May 22, 2008

The insurance product is an outcome of a long and consistent international cooperative effort. President Clinton initiated the concept for the insurance product at the inaugural Clinton Global Initiative Meeting in 2005, and the Center for American Progress, led by Chair John Podesta, directed the effort to turn President Clinton’s idea into an operational project. CAP formed a steering committee that grew to include Palestinian banking and insurance officials, U.S. business and insurance leaders, Israeli and international partners, and technical experts to develop the product. In addition, CAP initiated a series of market surveys with support from The Portland Trust, a British nonprofit with offices in Tel Aviv and Ramallah; ConnectME, a social enterprise focused on economic development in the Middle East and North Africa; and USAID to ensure the end product met the needs of the Palestinian business community.

In 2007 President Clinton spoke with President George W. Bush about Palestinian Political Risk Insurance, after which President Bush encouraged the U.S. Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the U.S. government’s development finance institution, to support the project. In 2008 the National Insurance Co. Ltd, or NIC, a Palestinian insurance company based in Ramallah, and the Middle East Investment Initiative, or MEII, a U.S.-based nonprofit with offices in the Middle East, also became project sponsors. The Middle East Investment Initiative and National Insurance Co. Ltd played critical roles in the project’s development, including designing and carrying out market surveys and creating the terms and conditions for the pilot program.

Throughout the seven-year process, many other organizations and individuals assisted in advancing the project, often on a pro bono basis. Leading business people offered key financial and technical support, senior insurance experts helped to ensure Palestinian Political Risk Insurance conformed to international best practices, international law firms provided strategic and technical assistance, and U.S., Israeli, and Palestinian officials provided critical support related to the project’s political and security angles.

Conclusion

While political risk insurance is just one small piece of the larger effort to support the Palestinian economy and local and regional stability, it should not be ignored. As one piece of the Palestinian institution-building effort, the Palestinian Political Risk Insurance project demonstrates that progress on this track is both possible and important, and has a direct impact on people’s daily lives. It also shows that international public-private partnerships can help forge win-win solutions for Israelis and Palestinians during challenging political periods, even on sensitive day-to-day issues such as those related to security restrictions.

Ian Bomberg is a project manager at the Middle East Investment Initiative. He previously managed the Palestinian Political Risk Insurance project’s development at the Center for American Progress. Rudy deLeon is the Senior Vice President of National Security and International Policy at the Center.

* The economic relationship between Israelis and Palestinians is governed by the 1994 Paris Protocol. The protocol holds that Israelis and Palestinians are part of a “customs envelope,” part of which means that goods sent from the West Bank to Israel are not considered to be Palestinian exports because Palestinian-controlled areas are not a separate country. But many entities such as the World Bank combine Palestinian goods sent to Israel with Palestinian goods sent abroad when calculating total Palestinian “exports.” The export data in this article cite figures that use those combined numbers.

See also:

• Maintaining the Delicate Balancing Act in the Israel-Egypt Security Relationship by Brian Katulis
• 5 Key Findings from CAP’s Recent Discussions in the Middle East by Rudy deLeon, Brian Katulis, and Matthew Duss
• Achieving a Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Matthew Duss
• Remarks at the 13th Annual Herzliya Conference in Herzliya, Israel by Rudy deLeon

SOURCE: AP/Mario Tama

In this December 17, 2011, photo, soldiers from the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, attend a casing of the colors ceremony by handwritten names of soldiers at Camp Adder, now known as Imam Ali Base, near Nasiriyah, Iraq.

See also: The War in Iraq: A Timeline of Events by Ken Sofer

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this issue brief.

Ten years ago this month, the United States invaded and occupied Iraq. This anniversary is an appropriate time to examine, once again, the costs and benefits to U.S. national security from our intervention there.

On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush stood aboard the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and declared to the country and to the world that “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

As Americans would quickly find out, President Bush’s declaration of victory was severely premature. Iraq would soon be in the throes of a violent insurgency and, eventually, a full-blown sectarian civil war.

Ten years after that speech, the U.S. military has exited Iraq. Iraq has made progress but still struggles with insecurity and deep political discord. Though the level of violence has remained down from its 2006–2007 peak—when dozens of bodies could be found on Baghdad’s streets every morning—Iraq still endures a level of violence that in any other country would be considered a crisis. Still, the end of former Iraq President Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime represents a considerable global good, and a nascent democratic Iraqi republic partnered with the United States could potentially yield benefits in the future.

But when weighing those possible benefits against the costs of the Iraq intervention, there is simply no conceivable calculus by which Operation Iraqi Freedom can be judged to have been a successful or worthwhile policy. The war was intended to show the extent of America’s power. It succeeded only in showing its limits.

The tables and charts below tell the tale. We have grouped these costs into three categories:

• The human costs, dealing with American and Iraqi casualties
• The financial costs, dealing with the expense of the war and of the continued care for its veterans
• The strategic costs, dealing with the impact of the Iraq intervention on U.S. power and influence in the Middle East and on the global stage

Before turning to those tables and charts, however, we would like to make two additional points.

First, it is critical to remember the shifting justifications for the U.S. intervention in Iraq. The Iraq invasion was sold to the American public on the basis of Saddam Hussein’s supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction and his alleged relationship with Al Qaeda. When both claims turned out to be false, the Bush administration justified the intervention on the idea that a democratic Iraq would be an ally in the “war on terror” and an inspiration for democratic reform in the Middle East. These arguments remain, at best, highly questionable.

Second, the authors would like to make clear that this analysis of the costs of the Iraq war in no way diminishes the sacrifice, courage, and honor displayed by the U.S. military in Iraq. Americans troops have served and died in Iraq at the behest of the American people and two of their commanders-in-chief. This is why it is important to draw the correct lessons from our nation’s invasion of Iraq. In order to do that, its costs must be examined honestly and rigorously.

Human costs

The numbers for total deaths and Iraqi civilian deaths represent the lower end of estimated deaths caused by the Iraq war. We would like to acknowledge that other studies, such as those carried out by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Iraq Family Health Survey, estimate much higher civilian deaths as a result of the war.

• Total deaths: Between 110,663 and 119,380
• Coalition deaths: 4,803
• U.S. deaths: 4,484
• U.S. wounded: 32,200
• U.S. deaths as a percentage of coalition deaths: 93.37 percent
• Iraqi Security Force, or ISF, deaths: At least 10,125
• Total coalition and ISF deaths: At least 14,926
• Iraqi civilian deaths: Between 103,674 and 113,265
• Non-Iraqi contractor deaths: At least 463
• Internally displaced persons: 1.24 million
• Refugees: More than 1.6 million

Financial costs

• Cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom: $806 billion
• Projected total cost of veterans’ health care and disability: $422 billion to $717 billion

Strategic costs

The foregoing costs could conceivably be justified if the Iraq intervention had improved the United States’ strategic position in the Middle East. But this is clearly not the case. The Iraq war has strengthened anti-U.S. elements and made the position of the United States and its allies more precarious.

Empowered Iran in Iraq and region. The Islamic Republic of Iran is the primary strategic beneficiary of the U.S.-led intervention in Iraq. The end of Saddam Hussein’s regime removed Iran’s most-hated enemy (with whom it fought a hugely destructive war in the 1980s) and removed the most significant check on Iran’s regional hegemonic aspirations. Many of Iraq’s key Iraqi Shia Islamist and Kurdish leaders enjoy close ties to Iran, facilitating considerable influence for Iran in the new Iraq.

Created terrorist training ground The years of U.S. occupation in Iraq created not only a rallying call for violent Islamic extremists but also an environment for them to develop, test, and perfect various tactics and techniques. These tactics and techniques are now shared, both in person and via the Internet, with extremists all over the region and the world, including those fighting U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Iraq continues to struggle with the problem of terrorism, and ranked first in the 2012 Global Terrorism Index published by the Institute for Economics and Peace.

Loss of international standing. While abuses are perhaps inevitable in any military occupation, the images and stories broadcast from Iraq into the region and around the world have done lasting damage to the United States’ reputation as a supporter of international order and human rights. Gen. David Petraeus has said that the damage done to the United States’ image by Abu Ghraib is permanent, calling it a “nonbiodegradable” event.

Diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan. Rather than stay and finish the job in Afghanistan as promised, the Bush administration turned its focus to Iraq beginning in 2002, in preparation for the 2003 invasion. Special Forces specializing in regional languages were diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq, and Predator drones were sent to support the war in Iraq instead of the hunt for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Stifled democracy reform. While the Arab Awakening of 2011 is a potentially positive development, there’s no evidence that the Iraq war contributed to this in any positive way. A 2010 RAND study concluded that, rather than becoming a beacon of democracy, the Iraq war hobbled the cause of political reform in the Middle East. The report stated that

“Iraq’s instability has become a convenient scarecrow neighboring regimes can use to delay political reform by asserting that democratization inevitably leads to insecurity.” Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has shown little interest in strengthening the institutions of Iraq democracy, but rather focused on consolidating his own power. Rather than supporting democratic forces in neighboring Syria, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has repeatedly voiced support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Fueled sectarianism in region. The invasion of Iraq replaced a prominent Sunni Arab State with one largely controlled by Iraq’s Arab Shia majority. While the end of the oppression of Iraq’s Shia majority is a positive thing, this shift has exacerbated regional tensions between Shia and Sunni, including in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Lebanon, and Bahrain (where the U.S. Fifth Fleet is based). Lingering disputes in Iraq between Sunni and Shia Arabs, Kurds, and Turkmen also continue to invite exploitation by both state and non-state actors.

More detailed costs

Veterans

• Total U.S. service members who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan: More than 2 million
• Total Iraq/Afghanistan veterans eligible for VA health care: 1.6 million
• Total Iraq/Afghanistan veterans who have used VA health care since FY 2002: 896,000 (56 percent of eligible veterans)
• Total Iraq/Afghanistan veterans with PTSD: At least 260,000 (29 percent of those veterans who have used VA health care; does not include Vet Center or non-VA health care data)
• Suicide rate of Iraq/Afghanistan veterans using VA health care in FY 2008: 38 suicides per 100,000 veterans
• National suicide rate, 2007: 11.26 per 100,000 Americans

Iraq reconstruction (as of September 30, 2011)

• Total funding: $220.21 billion
• Iraqi government funds (including Coalition Provisional Authority spending): $145.81 billion
• International funds: $13.75 billion
• U.S. funds (2003-2011): $60.64 billion
• Total U.S. unexpended obligations: $1.62 billion
• Average U.S. daily expenditure: $15 million per day

Matthew Duss is a Policy Analyst and Director of Middle East Progress, and Peter Juul is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress.

See also:

• The War in Iraq: A Timeline of Events by Ken Sofer

SOURCE: AP/Oliver Weiken

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, chairs the weekly cabinet meeting in his Jerusalem offices, Sunday, February 3, 2013.

Endnotes and citations are available in the PDF version of this issue brief.

This issue brief is part of a series based on seven days of meetings in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Tel Aviv, Israel with top officials and experts from the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.

The Middle East remains in a precarious period of transition as President Barack Obama heads on his first trip as president to Israel, Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Jordan this week. In this time of great uncertainty in the Middle East, the United States requires reliable partners to advance its national security interests and values in the region. President Obama’s visit is aimed at underscoring the importance of U.S. cooperation with Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians at this critical juncture. The challenges posed by Iran, Syria’s civil war, a still-violent Iraq, Egypt’s transition, and the Middle East uprisings require the United States to work with pragmatic actors to deal with complicated security, political, and economic challenges.

President Obama will arrive in the region at a time when many voices are questioning the ability and willingness of the United States to lead. Budget battles in Washington combined with the rebalance to Asia and the complexity of the challenges in the Middle East cause many in the region to doubt the United States. President Obama’s visit offers an important opportunity for the United States to assume a leadership role in dealing with security threats such as Iran and Syria, political challenges such as the historic changes sweeping many countries in the Middle East, and diplomatic challenges like the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The window for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is closing. Many Israelis and Palestinians told us that if no progress toward a two-state solution is made during President Obama’s second term in office, it may never happen. The Palestinian Authority is facing a severe political and financial crisis, and its collapse would create even more problems in a region of turmoil.

During the past four years, the Obama administration demonstrated strong support for Israel’s security and political interests—it built close military and intelligence cooperation with Israel on dealing with Iran and managing change in Egypt, and it provided historical levels of military assistance. A new government in Israel offers an opportunity for our two countries to forge a deeper cooperation on diplomatic fronts, including practical steps to deal with the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The following findings and recommendations are based on seven days of meetings in Jerusalem, Ramallah, Bethlehem, and Tel Aviv with leading Israeli and Palestinian government officials and a wide range of independent analysts, academics, and journalists.

Key findings

1. Israel’s prevailing postelection focus is on domestic issues such as the budget and equality of burden sharing at home. President Obama arrives in a country that has been sharply focused on its internal policy debates for the past few months. After nearly two months of negotiations among political parties, a new governing coalition was formed and finalized during our trip. In meetings with a diverse group of Knesset members, including several ministers in the incoming government, the leading discussions focused on the challenges Israel’s leaders face going forward in addressing the issues that dominated the election campaign earlier this year: strengthening the economy, addressing government budget deficits, and dealing with divisions among Israeli constituencies about which groups pay for and receive the most benefits from government services.

• Security remains a priority. Regional security concerns remain ever present, with great uncertainty on all fronts for Israel, including relations with Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iran, and Turkey. (see finding 3 below) But these security concerns do not animate the political discourse as much as the domestic priorities.
• There are few political incentives to tackle the Palestinian issue. There is little sense of urgency in Israel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict beyond continued concerns about possible security threats from the Gaza Strip. Israelis seem resigned to the status quo and lack a clear sense of the next possible steps forward. Even among those Israelis who express more concern about the need for a two-state solution to the conflict, there is little clarity about the pathway forward to advance that agenda.

2. The Palestinian Authority is weak and fragile, and its leaders feel undermined by recent events and trends in the region. On his visit, President Obama will find the Palestinian Authority teetering on the brink of collapse. The Palestinian Authority has limited control over small portions of the West Bank and has no influence in the Gaza Strip, where it lost power in a civil war with Hamas nearly six years ago. Recent financial assistance cuts and the withholding of tax revenues last year by Israel have undermined the Palestinian Authority’s financial stability. It also suffers from political infighting among some of its key leaders. One bright spot, however, continues to be the Palestinian security forces, which have become increasingly capable and professional as a result of substantial investments, particularly by the United States and Jordan.

• Costs of the Israeli occupation. Restrictions resulting from the continued occupation of the West Bank, including control of 60 percent of the West Bank classified as “Area C” under the Oslo II Accords—the section of the West Bank designated by agreement as being under Israel’s military and civilian control—hamper economic growth, the efforts to build Palestinian Authority institutions, and basic urban-planning efforts by the Palestinians. Several Palestinian Authority officials and one mayor noted during our visit the problems presented by the lack of basic property rights and guarantees, in part due to the uncertainty about the status of the majority of West Bank land that falls under Israeli administrative, regulatory, and legal control. Private-sector economic efforts ameliorate a very negative economic environment, but in an environment of continuing legal and regulatory uncertainty, these efforts do not provide a solution on their own.
• Costs of the U.N. gambit. A number of Palestinian Authority officials and advisors to whom we spoke recognize that its move to upgrade their status at the United Nations last year from nonmember observer entity to nonmember observer state was a net negative. While Palestinian leaders have characterized the move as an act of desperation to keep the possibility of a two-state solution alive, there seemed to be realistic recognition of the considerable costs to the Palestinians of continuing to pursue that path.

3. Major threats and great uncertainty in the broader regional landscape worry Israelis and Palestinians alike. President Obama arrives in the region at a time of great uncertainty in the broader region. Israelis and Palestinians live in a narrow slice of territory wedged between countries that are facing severe breakdowns in their internal security. A number of Israelis repeatedly told us that the dominant and most immediate threat to Israel’s security is no longer conventional military threats—one analyst said it was fragility in the Arab world, rather than strength, that was Israel’s key problem. Palestinian Authority officials worry about the turmoil in Egypt and uncertainty in Jordan—two countries that have long offered the Palestinian Authority political backing and diplomatic support. Palestinian Authority officials view efforts to engage and support Hamas by regional actors like Qatar, Turkey, and the newly elected Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt with great unease.

• Syria: The continued civil war in Syria and its possible spillover effects in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq are the most uncertain security threat.
• Egypt: The political leadership changes in Egypt from former President Hosni Mubarak’s government in 2011 to the current government led by figures from the Muslim Brotherhood has created concerns for leaders in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israelis worry about increased security threats from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and possible long-term challenges in managing bilateral relations with an Egyptian government more responsive to the popular sentiments than was the Mubarak regime. Leaders in the Palestinian Authority worry about possible shifts in Egyptian support toward more backing of Hamas, the rival Palestinian group.
• Jordan: Israelis and Palestinians both expressed concerns about the pressures Jordan feels from multiple directions—a growing number of Syrian refugees from the north, continued threats from unrest in Iraq from the east, and internal stability challenges due to grave economic challenges and internal political uncertainty.
• Iran: The Iranian nuclear question and Iran’s support for terrorist groups in the region remain important components of the policy discussions in Israel. Israelis continue to raise the differences in threat perceptions and timelines between the United States and Israel with regard to Iran, but they also acknowledge that the levels of coordination between the two countries are strong. Officials in Israel’s security institutions seem to express more trust and confidence in the United States on handling Iran than Israel’s political leaders. Furthermore, there is deep concern about Iranian support for terrorist networks that destabilize the broader region.
• Turkey: Turkey’s moves in recent years to take a more activist approach that appeals to popular sentiments in the Arab world has garnered Turkey some sympathy in the region, but it has also contributed to fracturing bilateral relations with Israel.

The Obama administration faces a complicated political and strategic communications environment in Israel and the broader region. One main objective of President Obama’s visit to the region is to offer reassurances to partners in Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and Jordan that the United States will continue to offer vital support. The Obama administration will take many steps to speak directly to the Israeli public about our countries’ shared interests and values. Throughout the trip and after it is over, the Obama administration should anticipate multiple responses in making sure that its message is properly heard.

• A diversity of views in Israel. In Israel, President Obama will have many important opportunities and difficult challenges in advancing his message. Israel has a vibrant and open media landscape with a diversity of voices. This opens the door to a direct dialogue with the Israeli public. Every utterance of the president will be parsed and spun from a range of perspectives inside of the country. Israel’s center left will look for more statements on advancing a two-state solution; others will want more details on U.S. plans on Iran. Despite recent repeated assurances on Iran that the United States is prepared to act and recent military exercises aimed at demonstrating preparedness for serious military options, many Israelis remain unconvinced that the United States is prepared to act. Many cite the recent inability of the Bush administration to prevent North Korea from getting nuclear weapons.There will most certainly be protests during the president’s visit. Some Israelis have announced that they will protest President Obama’s speech to Israeli youth because students from a university in Ariel, a settlement in the West Bank, were not invited to the speech. In addition, some groups advancing particular interests—such as the advocates for the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard—will seek attention on the trip, as seen in the numerous banners in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with the images of President Obama and Pollard with the phrase “Yes You Can.”
• Palestinian hopelessness. President Obama is facing widespread frustration from Palestinian public. Palestinians feel beleaguered and troubled by the dire economic situation and the weakness of Palestinian Authority institutions, and are deeply dissatisfied with a process that has delivered little in terms of either improvement in their daily lives or progress toward a two-state solution. “It’s now or never,” was a common sentiment expressed during our visit by Palestinians about the possibility of a two-state solution to the conflict.
• Efforts in the United States to make support for Israel a partisan wedge issue, and U.S. media campaigns that undermine U.S. leadership in the region. During President Obama’s first term, new issue advocacy organizations appeared in the United States that generally undermined the quality of the policy debate. These different groups are likely to seek to use the president’s trip to Israel as an opportunity to advance their own narrow agendas rather than to build a stronger foundation of bipartisan support for U.S. leadership and engagement in the region.

5. There is some skepticism that the United States is prepared to act and lead on key issues in the region. The strong focus on domestic issues in last year’s presidential election in the United States, the overriding concentration on the budget battle with Congress, and the rebalance toward Asia have all left the impression that the Obama administration will not offer a lasting and sustained commitment to the problems of the Middle East region.

Recommendations to the Obama administration

President Obama’s trip to the Middle East must be more than just focused on strategic communications and setting a new tone for the second term. The Obama administration needs to make sure it follows up with concrete policy steps connected to a broader strategy.

The president should send the clear message that the United States remains prepared to remain a leader in dealing with regional security threats such as Iran and the civil war in Syria. He should also underscore that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the long-term interests of the United States, and that the United States remains committed to investing in a two-state solution.

1. Continue to expand security cooperation with Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, and Turkey and seek to integrate this cooperation within wider regional security efforts. At a time of major turmoil and uncertainty in the region, the United States needs to take steps to enhance its security coordination with closer partners.

• Israel: The United States should follow the model it used with Israel over the past two years to enhance the quiet, behind-the-scenes coordination and sharing of information on Iran and apply it to the emerging security challenges, including Syria’s civil war. The two countries should launch more expansive security dialogues on the regional security threats. The important efforts to utilize the security framework established in the Israel-Egypt peace treaty helped deal with new security threats in places like the Sinai Peninsula.
• Jordan: The United States should continue active efforts to work with Jordan’s intelligence and military to safeguard against new security threats emanating from Syria and Iraq.
• The Palestinian Authority. The United States has made important investments in building Palestinian security forces, and the Obama administration and Congress should work together to ensure that these investments continue. These investments have paid tangible dividends for Israel, demonstrated by the fact that 2012 was the first year since 1973 that no Israeli civilians were killed by terrorism emanating from the West Bank.
• Turkey: The United States should continue to explore with Israel the possibilities of bridging the considerable gaps between Turkey and Israel that have appeared since 2008. Recent public statements by Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have further reduced the trust Israelis have in Turkey. Any attempt to reestablish normal bilateral relations between Israel and Turkey should seek to address concerns about core values as well as security interests.

2. Continue close coordination with Israel on Iran. Senior Israeli defense officials, military and civilian, are constructive in discussing the combined allied options for dealing with the Iran threat—both the nuclear program and Iran’s sponsorship of terrorist activities in the region. The United States and Israel have unique and different military capabilities, which impacts planning assumptions on both sides. But on the Iran question, Israeli officials we spoke to viewed President Obama and his administration as serious, engaged in appropriate planning, and holding critical capabilities. The United States and Israel should continue their close cooperation on Iran, safeguarding against any surprises.

3. Send a clear signal of political and economic support to the Palestinian Authority. Beyond the continued security assistance and cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, the United States has an interest in its economic and political viability. The Palestinian Authority is facing major budget shortfalls and severe economic crisis.

At a time of great uncertainty and turmoil in the Middle East, the Palestinian Authority could represent an important example of governing—but only if it is capable and legitimate in the eyes of its people. Among Palestinians, the most likely alternative leadership to the Palestinian Authority is Hamas, an Islamist political and terrorist organization that currently rules the Gaza Strip. U.S. support to the Palestinian Authority is essential to advance the U.S. goal of a negotiated two-state solution for Palestinians and Israelis as central to a comprehensive Middle East peace.

• The Obama administration should continue to make the case to the U.S. Congress for U.S. support to the Palestinian Authority. For nearly two decades the United States has provided assistance to the Palestinian Authority in programs supporting security, rule of law, democracy and good governance, education, health, and private enterprise. The Obama administration, like previous administrations, has exercised waivers on congressional restrictions providing funds to the Palestinian Authority.
• Continued U.S. support to the Palestinian Authority sends an important signal to the international community and countries in the region that the best way to support the Palestinian people and institution building in the Palestinian territories is through support to the Palestinian Authority.
• In addition to expressing support for the Palestinian Authority, President Obama should make it clear that the United States discourages and opposes moves by the Palestinian Authority at the United Nations, which ultimately undermine the prospects for a sustainable peace and harm the U.S. relationship with the Palestinian Authority.

4. Explore ways for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to take confidence-building steps that help to restore the trust lost during the past decade. An immediate restart of direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians does not appear likely—many leaders on both sides said an immediate resumption of direct talks is not at the top of their agendas; some Palestinian and Israeli leaders suggested that immediately returning to direct talks could even potentially be harmful at this stage given the lack of trust and confidence.

Secretary of State John Kerry should instead embark on an active process of listening to both Israelis and Palestinians, quietly encouraging both sides to take steps that build trust and public support for the eventual restart of negotiations in the coming year.

• The United States needs to acknowledge the need for some sort of political horizon to give Palestinians hope and avoid further uncoordinated actions in the United Nations. The window of opportunity for the two-state solution continues to close.
• Israel remains concerned about possible additional Palestinian Authority moves at the United Nations and attempts to isolate Israel internationally. The United States should continue to back Israel and block these efforts, but it should also make clear to Israel’s leaders that continued settlement construction will likely have the impact of creating incentives for actions that are aimed at further isolating Israel from the international community at a time of turmoil in the region.
• The Palestinian Authority seeks an infusion of regular financial support to deal with its fiscal crisis, some carefully coordinated prisoner releases, and a quiet halt to Israeli settlement expansion, even if only a partial, unannounced one.

5. Examine possible regional diplomatic initiatives that could enhance the regional security measures outlined in the first recommendation above. Several Gulf Cooperation Council countries such as Saudi Arabia now share common threat perceptions with Israel regarding Iran and the upheavals throughout the Middle East. The United States should explore preliminary efforts to restart the multilateral security talks of the 1990s. It should also examine the possibilities of reintroducing the Arab Peace Initiative and linking it to the multilateral Israel Peace Initiative and other proposals Israelis have developed on regional diplomatic and security cooperation frameworks.

Conclusion

As stated by multiple U.S. presidents and military leaders, finding a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is in the national security interests of the United States. As Secretary Kerry stated during his Senate confirmation hearing, “So much of what we aspire to achieve and what we need to do globally, what we need to do in the Maghreb and South Asia, South Central Asia, throughout the Gulf, all of this is tied to what can or doesn’t happen with respect to Israel-Palestine.” For Israel, in the words of one Israeli leader, “the conflict shadows [our] relationships” with the Arab world, preventing Israel’s integration into the region, acting as a driver of unrest, and offering a useful tool for anti-Israel propagandists. For the Palestinians, the occupation that began in 1967 creates daily hardships and prevents them from realizing a decent life.

Ten years after the invasion of Iraq, the American people are understandably wary of the costs of continued costs of engagement in the Middle East. The transitions now occurring in the region will continue to challenge policymakers in ways we can’t anticipate. But one thing that has not changed, and on which both Israelis and Palestinians continue to agree, is that the leadership of the United States remains essential to achieving a lasting solution to their conflict.

Rudy deLeon is Senior Vice President of the National Security and International Policy team at the Center for American Progress. Brian Katulis is a Senior Fellow at the Center. Matthew Duss is a Policy Analyst at the Center.

Below are the prepared remarks of Rudy deLeon, Senior Vice President of National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress, for the 13th Annual Herzliya Conference in Herzliya, Israel, Wednesday, March 13, 2013.

Panel: “Iran and the Red Line: Time for the Sword or Time for Diplomacy?”

Let me thank the conference chair, Major Gen. Danny Rothschild, and conference director Tommy Steiner for the invitation to the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. My colleagues Brian Katulis, Matt Duss, and I appreciate the chance to participate in this conference.

As Israel prepares to receive President Obama, America is strong, dedicated to protecting the security of the United States, and united and prepared to stand with Israel, the region, and the international community in response to the Iranian nuclear provocation.

The United States and Israel are strong partners who share common moral values and faith, and possess unrivaled levels of military support.

The nature of Israeli democracy in the region is unique. Israelis and Americans have many of the same political debates. We have the same values and beliefs, and share a commitment to democracy and cultural ties that serve as a common bond between our two countries.

Compared to where we were five years ago, the Obama administration today has put America in a much stronger position to deal with Iran’s nuclear program. The United States no longer has tens of thousands of ground troops in Iraq. And though substantial work remains to be done, American forces have made serious gains against the Al Qaeda network, including the successful mission to hunt down and eliminate Osama bin Laden.

NATO is transitioning the military mission in Afghanistan to the Afghan people in 2014, and the civil transition—as planned in Tokyo—is being implemented, step by step. Even with this progress, our troops remain on the frontlines, and we are grateful for their service, their skill, and the commitment of their families to our nation.

The combination of rigorous intelligence collection, integrated in partnership with our allies, highly redundant networks, and the expanded use of unmanned aerial vehicles, often referred to as drones, challenge our enemies in the most inventive and sophisticated ways.

Our long-range combat aircraft, with multiple types of payloads, can deliver a precision strike from forward-deployed bases around the world, or air refueled, from the United States.

The crew of the USS John Stennis, often working with the navies of Britain and France, regularly transit and guarantee international passage through the Strait of Hormuz. The sailors on our ships work in some of the world’s most dangerous environments, putting in long hours in the brutal heat, but they are a daily reminder of America’s commitment and strength in the region.

In the cyber sphere, the U.S. commander of Cyber Command testified this week that their mission is not only a defensive one, but that they are actively working to disrupt those who would use cyber methods as a threat, or a tool of terror.

These capabilities, created by multiple American administrations, with the support of Congress, will continue to secure and provide for the “common defense” wherever risks and threats may arise.

Finally, America is strong because it has capable and dedicated military men and women, like the U.S. security coordinator and his team in Jerusalem, working through the U.S. State Department to build security partnerships between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

But as strong as America is, the United States will be even stronger when it resolves its short- and long-term budget issues.

In the near term the United States will need to move beyond the six-month cycle of continuing appropriations and sequestration that impact defense, the economic recovery, and the needs of the next generation of Americans, particularly the education they need to compete in today’s global economy.

As former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned, “We are putting our national security at risk by lurching from budget crisis to budget crisis.” Nothing could be more sobering than the USS Harry Truman sitting at home port in Norfolk, Virginia, as the crew waits for budget issues in Washington to be resolved.

To all parties, make no mistake: American forces forward deployed are ready for any contingency, and the crew of the USS Harry Truman is standing by and ready to join the Stennis if need be.

In the longer term, the country needs a budget plan. We have been here before, and have always managed to find bipartisan compromise. There is the history of Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill, or George H.W. Bush working with Dick Gephardt, and Bill Clinton and Bob Dole finding common ground even as they prepared to run against each other for president. The old debates of guns versus butter have been replaced by a new tension between tax cuts and spending, with efforts to find common ground facing new political obstacles.

The strength of the American economy is the foundation of U.S. national security. That’s why the continuing economic recovery and a path forward on the budget are so important to our collective security interests. One lesson from the last 10 years is that you can’t send ground troops into combat, dramatically cut taxes, and not have a major impact on the budget.

Next point: Now that both the United States and Israel have had their elections, this is the moment to re-emphasize our common voice and our enduring security relationship. The upcoming visit to Israel by President Obama and his meetings with Israeli government leaders—the prime minister, military and defense leaders, students, Israeli citizens, and with Palestinians—offer our leaders on both sides this opportunity to show the strength of the U.S.-Israeli alliance.

There are new faces on both sides. Ehud Barak and Leon Panetta had a very strong relationship and were in continuous contact. The United States now has a new leader at the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and soon there will be a new minister of defense in Israel. They will continue the same close cooperation and partnership between the United States and Israel on all security issues.

Additionally, as Gen. Jim Mattis retires from the Marine Corps and his tenure as head of U.S. Central Command, I want to acknowledge his more than 35 years in uniform. To our partners abroad, there has been no better friend, and to our adversaries, there has been no sterner foe than Gen. Mattis. We salute his faithful service in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Marine Corps Combat School at Quantico, Joint Forces Command, and U.S. Central Command.

Following Gen. Mattis is Gen. Lloyd Austin, who will continue the key American presence in the region by accepting the commanding job at U.S. Central Command on March 22. Gen. Austin will play the same constructive and engaged role.

Secretary of State John Kerry has been on the job for almost two months now and is already making his impact felt in this region.

Last year President Obama requested $3.1 billion in military assistance for Israel—the most in history. My prediction is that, even with tough budgets at home, U.S. assistance to Israel will continue to be robust.

The president has directed close coordination, strategically and operationally, between our government and our Israeli partners, including on political, military, and intelligence issues.

The president’s trip to Israel affords leaders on both sides of the alliance the chance to continue to build the global coalition that is so critical to countering the Iranian nuclear provocation.

In order to continue the multinational support and maintain the legitimacy needed to do what is necessary to confront Iran, our allies and supporters must preserve this essential unity. Since international sanctions have been implemented, oil exports from Iran have dropped by 1 million barrels a day, and the free fall in the value of the rial is causing widespread inflation in Iran.

Sanctions have slowed the nuclear program in Iran and damaged their economy, but Tehran could quickly end all doubts by opening the doors to all its facilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency. There will be many pressures going forward. The IAEA has a very important role to play, and we should expect the continuing negotiations to be highly frustrating.

Iran continues to press its influence in the region. Yet as reported in the media, Iran’s
expulsion of a senior Al Qaeda official appears to signal a rift over Syria, and it appears that Tehran is no longer offering a safe haven to terrorists within its borders. The regime faces serious obstacles both internationally and domestically. Syria is Iran’s Achilles heel, and the potential fall of Bashar al-Assad threatens to further weaken Iran’s regional influence. Domestically, economic conditions continue to deteriorate, cronyism and corruption continue, and the foreign investment climate in Iran is poor.

Each of the international allies committed to sanctions on Iran brings different capabilities. Holding this coalition together requires constant work, and we should be mindful that sanctions hurt not just Iran but the economies of our partners as well. This will require diligent, determined diplomacy to hold the coalition together, but President Obama, the administration, and the U.S. Congress remain committed to prevention.

Russia and China have long stated their opposition to an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Adding their voice to the coalition would send a strong new signal to Tehran that their behavior is not that of a responsible stakeholder, and that it is time to come clean to the international community. While China and Russia’s contribution is encouraged, the United States and its allies remain committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Today the United States is leading a successful three-year global effort to isolate Iran diplomatically and implement a broad range of strict economic sanctions targeted at undermining its nuclear program. While the Obama administration’s outreach to Iran did not achieve immediate results, demonstrations of American good faith have forged greater international unity around the problem, and served as an important force multiplier for efforts to pressure the regime. And make no mistake: It is precisely because America is strong that we are not afraid to talk to our enemies.

Now, as talks with the P5+1 have resumed, we are still waiting for a satisfactory Iranian response.

The U.S. ambassador to the talks, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, is savvy, tough minded, and formidable as she sits down to implement the directives of President Obama and Secretary Kerry. She knows that the effort to demonstrate the seriousness of the military option must be matched by efforts to demonstrate the seriousness of diplomacy. There are no illusions about the difficulty of these challenges.

The global coalition President Obama has built during his administration reflects the hard work of many.

As Vice President Joe Biden said just one week ago, “Presidents do not bluff.” And the president of the United States, who is coming to Israel next week, is not bluffing.

To Tehran, let’s be clear: President Obama’s policy is prevention.

We are united. We are committed. And together we are formidable.

See also:

• Maintaining the Delicate Balancing Act in the Israel-Egypt Security Relationship by Brian Katulis
• Achieving a Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Matthew Duss

SOURCE: AP/Muhammed Muheisen

Then-U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), left, walks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, right, as he leaves following a meeting at Abbas' headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, July 23, 2008.

This column is part of a series based on seven days of meetings in Jerusalem, Ramallah, and Tel Aviv, Israel, with top officials and experts from the Israeli government, Palestinian Authority, and other international organizations.

As President Barack Obama prepares to make his first visit to Israel as president, one of his main goals will be to reaffirm the U.S.-Israeli relationship. He is also expected to underline once again the importance of achieving a durable two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which remains a core national security interest of the United States.

Conversations over the past week with a number of officials and analysts in Israel and the West Bank, however, indicate a very tough environment for peacemaking. Israeli and Palestinian officials alike do not appear to have a return to direct talks high on their agenda. In Israel, fiscal concerns, including the need for budget cuts, will preoccupy the government in the immediate term, as will the contentious issue of public subsidies for Israel’s ultra-Orthodox communities. Furthermore, the likely makeup of the new Israeli government—led by one party, Likud-Beitenu, which has not formally endorsed the creation of a Palestinian state, and including another, Habayit Hayehudi, which is directly opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state—does not bode well.

Given the composition of this new Israeli government, a number of analysts and observers I spoke with in Israel voiced strong concerns that a “surge” in settlement building is coming. According to Aluf Benn, the editor of Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, “The third Netanyahu government has one clear goal: enlarging the settlements and achieving the vision of ‘a million Jews living in Judea and Samaria.’” Others dismissed these concerns, saying that it remains unclear how the new Israeli government will proceed on the Palestinian front.

In the West Bank the Palestinian Authority has seen its standing and credibility steadily deteriorate among its people, resulting from the perception that in the almost 20 years since it was created under the Oslo Accord, it has not been able to deliver on the goal of ending the Israeli occupation and creating a viable state.

Asked about the benefits of the Palestinians’ U.N. strategy last year—which succeeded, against U.S. and Israeli opposition, in upgrading Palestine’s U.N. status to “non-member observer state”—one Palestinian official was blunt: “What benefit?” While announced with much fanfare, the upgrade did nothing to improve the daily lives of Palestinians. From the Palestinian perspective, the U.N. strategy was aimed at keeping alive the possibility of a two-state solution in the face of continued settlement building and stalemate in the negotiations, but the costs of going down that route have been considerable. In response to the U.N. bid, Israel withheld tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority, announced plans for new settlements in a particularly sensitive area in the West Bank, and increased the number of military incursions into Palestinian-administered areas, all of which served to further weaken and embarrass the Palestinian Authority.

While the Obama administration and its partners in the Quartet on the Middle East—the group made up of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States, and Russia, established in 2002—have stressed the importance of returning to direct talks over the past few years, some analysts I spoke with suggested that this may not be a good option at the moment. Given the level of frustration among Palestinians at their own government’s failure to deliver, it’s possible that the Palestinian Authority could not survive another round of failed negotiations.

“We are the ones who will benefit the most from a peace agreement,” said Mohammad Shtayyeh, a close adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. “We are not avoiding negotiations, but we need a meaningful process.”

“I want President Obama to regenerate hope for the Palestinian people,” Shtayyeh continued. “Abu Mazen [Abbas] is prepared to make his mission as successful as it needs to be.”

In the absence of a formal re-launch of talks, there are a number of key issues of concern to the Palestinians that the United States can address quietly with Israel in order to bolster the Palestinian Authority’s credibility. One issue is that of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons, which has enormous resonance in Palestinian society. The release of a thousand prisoners in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011, who had been held since 2006 by Hamas—the Palestinian terrorist organization and political party—in Gaza, significantly boosted Hamas’s political standing at the expense of the Palestinian Authority.

Another issue is a cessation of settlement construction. This does not have to be publicly announced, but the United States should make clear to Israel that the constant encroachment of settlements—clearly visible out of the office windows of the Palestinian leaders with whom I met—on Palestinian communities discredits moderate Palestinian voices, empowers extremists, and threatens to solidify a one-state reality between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. President Obama should also remind Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that such a cessation is a pre-existing Israeli commitment under the 2003 road map.

For their part, leaders of the Palestinian Authority, particularly President Mahmoud Abbas, should use every opportunity to make clear to the Israeli public their commitment to a two-state solution. Abbas’ speech at the 2012 U.N. General Assembly, which was perceived by Israelis as highly inflammatory, was not helpful in this regard. While polls show that the Israeli public is still solidly in favor of a two-state solution, the memory of the Second Intifada—the 2000–2005 Palestinian uprising in which numerous terror attacks were carried out inside Israel—makes Israelis extremely cautious about ending their military presence in the West Bank. More assurances from Palestinian leaders that they have a partner for peace could help change that.

It’s very important, however, that the Palestinian Authority not be supported simply with the aim of prolonging an unsustainable status quo. With this in mind, the United States should work with the parties to establish clear terms of reference for the eventual return to negotiations toward the end of occupation and conflict, based on the general parameters set out by three U.S. administrations since President Bill Clinton was in office.

One item on which Israelis and Palestinians continue to agree is that the two sides simply cannot make progress toward a resolution without the active and engaged leadership of the United States. A two-state solution is not only in the interests of Palestinians and Israelis, but is also in the interest of the United States. President Obama should remind us all of this when he visits Israel next week.

Matthew Duss is a Policy Analyst and Director of Middle East Progress at the Center for American Progress.

See also:

• Maintaining the Delicate Balancing Act in the Israel-Egypt Security Relationship by Brian Katulis
• Remarks at the 13th Annual Herzliya Conference in Herzliya, Israel by Rudy deLeon