Democracy as Foreign Policy

I just finished writing a chapter on a foreign policy model that reviews the American experience in Afghanistan that attempts to extract lessons learned and apply them to policies designed to address the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). International interventions were undertaken by the United States (US) President Bush in both Afghanistan and Iraq with the goal in implementing democracy in both countries according to the theories of Natan Sharansky’s influential volume, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. I disagree with Sharansky, but I’m not exactly sure why I disagree with him, so this purpose of this quick essay is to think through why I disagree with his thesis and see what comes out on the other side.

The first item for examination is the traditional fact-value distinction. Sharansky is firmly on the “value” side with the argument that democracy must be implemented to increase freedom and decrease tyranny and terror. Anybody who disagrees with him must be against freedom and for tyranny and terror, right? But the problem I have is with the workability and effectiveness of democracy in foreign policy. Does it really work as well as Sharansky said it would? Did holding elections in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Arab spring countries improve them? I would argue that it hasn’t, but that’s not where the critique ends. I’m not sure that Sharansky’s argument was designed to improve foreign policy as much as it was to improve the career prospects of Sharansky. This isn’t meant to be overly critical because there are many people making arguments and trying to get ahead, but at some point there has to be a clear distinction made between the attractiveness of an argument and its workability, and this line is actually getting less well defined in our media age.

One way this analytic tension manifests itself is as a debate between “curiosity” and “problem solving,” with the idealists putting forth lots of idea and realists questioning wither they could ever work. However, America’s constitution is based on the failures of the too-democratic Articles of Confederation, and it was the Federalists who organized the country and increased centralization to create a more workable and effective government organization. It can be argued that the modern media age has upset this traditional balance between centralization and democracy, implemented a more extreme democracy, and returned to the nation to an unworkable political system. However, as Tocqueville points out, democracy in America can be so all encompassing and pervasive that it is impossible to understand any alternative to democracy. It is this mindset that helps to explain why democracy is seldom questioned and when it is, why the reaction can be so emotional and negative.

Returning to Afghanistan and Iraq, elections were held in both places and resulted in Karzai and Maliki respectively. How did they do? Karzai ruled over years of epic corruption with Kabul Bank, Dawood Hospital, and the Afghan Air Force that was used to run drugs are only the beginning of the long and sordid tale. After over 10 years of American intervention effort, Afghanistan is fourth in corruption behind Somalia, North Korea, and Sudan, which is rare company. Iraq’s leader Nouri al Malaki, a close friend of George Bush’s, used Iraq’s army to attack Sunnis rather than share power with them, which helped to create ISIS. Clearly just having elections is insufficient for establishing effective and long-lasting governance in countries, but it remains to be seen how to implement security, governance, and development policies that leave a country in a stable and sustainable state.

The current policy of merely holding elections puts policy makers in an interesting double bind however because, once chosen, policy makers are no longer able to leverage them because they have been “selected” by the people. The people who usually have little experience with democracy conversely see their leaders as selected by Americans more than elected by them and believe that they are implementing American policy. The larger problem is that an overreliance on or premature implementation of elections leaves American policy makers unable to hold a nation’s leaders accountable. That is, if they are excessively corrupt, then they cannot be removed, which is a problem. Reviewing the argument up until now, I find myself arguing for Americans taking a more active hand in running countries in which we are heavily involved. In some ways this makes sense: that is, if America is funding the government, and if American military personnel are dying to protect that government, then shouldn’t the American government have some say about how that government is run? In other words, if we’re effectively in charge, shouldn’t we act like we’re in charge? While this may not square with American politics, it certainly squares with politics in many parts of the world in which the US has security interests. This is doubtless a controversial conclusion, but it’s worth considering as the US continues to confront international security challenges in the 21st century.

Security World Tour

With Michael Flynn having just retired from the Army, going on the talk shows, and criticizing Barack Obama, the policy community is worried that a person fresh from wearing the uniform is speaking out. However, as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), Flynn is well informed about the threats facing the United States and the American world order. America, as the world center, tends to focus inwards with an inordinate preoccupation with domestic politics. However, there is a whole world of international politics out there that normally escapes the attention of many Americans. The question then becomes, how to organize a systematic study of the wide world of international politics?

Following Flynn’s lead, I choose to organize it around the key security threats to America. First is the Islamic State, which goes by three names: (1) the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or ash-Sham (ISIS); (2) Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL); or (3) the loose Arabic acronym for ISIL, al-Dawla al-Islamiya al-Iraq al-Sham, Daesh. Already the language lawyers say that ISIS and ISIL are “offensive” because it implies that the organization is Islamic when most Muslims find it abhorrent, but other analysts make a pretty convincing argument that ISIS/L is very Islamic. However, the Daesh phenomenon is not geographically limited to only Iraq and Syria but extends its relationships throughout the Middle East through its funding relationships, which include Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Also, there is a relationship between Daesh and Al Qaeda that leads to additional systemic complexity and geographic relationships that extend across North Africa.

The second major security threat concerns the newly aggressive Russia. Now there may be some who are a little bit not “up to speed” on the current situations and who make think that while the old Soviet Union was a problem, but the new Russia is not. However, that is not the case. First, there is an undeclared war going on in the Ukraine with Russian “little green men” separatists fighting against a western leaning Ukraine government. Second, this is not the only example of such a war with previous examples including the Crimea, Georgia, and Chechnya. Third, unbeknownst to most Americans, there is a significant information operations campaign being waged within Russia against the US and NATO. On Twitter, just search on #nato and #hato for minutes of fun, and then search Youtube for “RT,” which stands for “Russia Today,” and you can find some first-rate propaganda that explores whether WWIII has already begun.

The third major security threat concerns America’s strategic economic partner China, or more accurately the People’s Republic of China (PRC), what some have called an “existential threat,” meaning it threatens the very existence of the United States. There are multiple intriguing aspects to the PRC including security threats in the Pacific, ongoing trade imbalances with the United States, cyberwarfare, and development practices throughout the world, including Africa. All of these relationships are fraught with tension, so China will continue to be a source of security concern for the foreseeable future.

Finally, there is the southern border with Mexico, which is a source of Democrat votes, cheap Republican labor, drugs, and ongoing security issues. Recently a US helicopter was shot down near the border, which probably caused no end of consternation on the part of the Obama administration. Why this is a cause of consternation is a matter to be considered at another time. However, these four international actors – Daesh, Russia, China, and Mexico – provide a starting point for an ongoing series of international analyses.

AL Productions

I received my recent issue of Vanity Fair (VF), and accompanying it was an additional, smaller magazine filled exclusively with Ralph Lauren (RL) advertising. Now I confess to a certain weakness for all things RL and wish my closet was filled with more of his... products. However, as an inveterate observer of all things RL, I noticed that Andrew Lauren, RL's son, is prominently featured, something I hadn't noticed before. So this got me to thinking, "What films has he produced?" I mean, I wrote a book but does that make me an author? And perhaps more importantly, "Are his films any good?" So I fired up IMDB and saw that Andrew's company, AL Productions, has created three films: (1) G (2002); (2) The Squid and the Whale (S&W, 2005); and (3) The Spectacular Now (TSN, 2013). But then I wondered, are these movies any good? As it turns out, S&W received a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and TSN also received a 93%, which is in my humble opinion is more than a little impressive. I look forward to watching TSN at some point and will write a review when I do. I also need to finagle a trip to New York to review the Polo Bar. I know, the world of RL is a weakness.

CIA Reorganization

On March 7th, the NYTimes features an article on Director John Brennan's reorganization of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Langley, Virginia. There are those who argue both sides of the reorganization, with those from the Agency who remember and like it the way it was arguing that the changes are intended to create a "legacy" for those currently in charge. However, there are a couple of cross currents that inform and argue for the change. First, the threats currently faced by the Agency are much different than those that agued for its creation in 1947 at the outset of the Cold War. America's primary competition at that time was the Soviet Union -- what is present-day Russia -- which was primarily a regular or symmetric conflict in which one superpower was in a state of conflict with a second. The primary threats now are irregular or asymmetric in which a "regular" state finds itself in conflict with a less organized -- that is, "irregular" -- organizations, movements, or populations with an emphasis on radial Islam. It is instructive to review Steve Coll's description of the 1979 US embassy burning in Islamabad, Pakistan in Ghost Wars. To the point, US leadership was doubtless so focused on the familiar née comfortable foreign policy analytic posture of the Cold War that this attack, which occurred mere days after the Iran embassy takeover, caught them by surprise. Martin van Crevald's Transformation of War (1990) helps to provide insight into this dynamic, but institutionally the US Federal Government is still searching for the best ways to understand and address these more demographic and less state-based challenges.

Second, since 9/11 when radical Islam made its presence known on American shores, the Agency has been focused on targeting individuals. This targeting process was popularized by the character Maya in the movie Zero Dark Thirty, and is examined in much more detail by the HBO documentary Manhunt. However the premise is pretty simple: find people such as Al Qaeda's key leaders and take them off the battlefield. However, taking insurgents off the battlefield can cause unintended consequences as pointed out by Stanley McCrystal's Insurgent Math, which asks how you can have 100 insurgents, take away 10, and end up with 110? The answer is that the civilian casualties associated with such insurgent removal operations can radicalize populations. Once you realize this, then the question becomes, how can you understand, account for, and minimize these unintended consequences.

Third, when thinking about unintended consequences, the natural way to proceed is thinking about ways to understand complex social systems. That is, human societies are made up of lots of interconnected components and features that operate on both short and long timescales. With regard to Insurgent Math, removing insurgents from the battlefield may make sense from a short-term perspective, but if it creates problems in the long term, then have you done more harm than good. Also, the multiple interconnected system features can be considered from the perspective of counterinsurgency theory, which considers governance, development, and local populations in addition to the usual security concerns of the military. The Defense Intelligence Agency's Michael Flynn and his co-authors wrote in Fixing Intel that analysis had been too concentrated on details and that insufficient detail had been given to the intelligence supporting military operations. Flynn specifically said that intelligence had become too functional -- that is, focused on narrow technical areas. He recommended that, in contrast, intelligence analysis should become more regional -- that is, focused on all the relevant factors with a specific area of interest or operations.

The Agency has historically been organized around a significant cleavage between the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) that performs analysis and Directorate of Operations (DO) that does the things we all see on movies. During the targeting operations since 9/11, these two activities have grown closer together. It seems to me that if the proposed reorganization is correctly executed (and that's a big if), then the changes proposed for the Agency could help improve both analysis as well as operations.  

On American Sniper and Policy

I haven’t seen American Sniper (AS) yet, but that is due not to lack of interest but of time. That said, I can’t help but notice the controversy the film has generated. Rather go down the path of identifying critics and calling them out, I thought it would be more productive and instructive instead to step back and think about what’s driving this stilted and heated “conversation” between the fans of AS and its critics.

Let me first reflect on the reasons why I named this blog, “on policy, etc.” Policy always concerns the policy problématique: how to interpret events in the past to inform decisions in the present to improve the future. It’s easy to describe, but nothing is harder due to the complexity of the social systems policies are intended to influence, like the Iraq War. The implementation of policy seldom goes according to plan, which results in policy resistance. Complex social systems exhibit behaviors that confound straightforward logic and tend to yield results that are surprising, unexpected, or counterintuitive. For example, US military forces entered Iraq in 2003 expecting to oust Saddam Hussein and set up a workable democracy. Deposing Saddam went mostly according to plan, but the insurgency disrupted the UW policymakers’ plans for an early exit and eventually resulted in the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Chris Kyle spent four tours in the Iraq, and it is important to remember that he was sent there by American politicians to implement US foreign policy, and by all accounts he did his best to do just that. However, I maintain that US policy in Iraq was ill-conceived, which greatly increased the difficulty of Kyle’s mission. One of the great phrases in the military is that a mission plan or policy “briefs well.” In other words, it tells a good, simple, and convincing story, but left implicit is the small problem is that the plan probably won’t work. So people like Kyle then face the intractable difficulties of inflated expectations, simplistic solutions, and unrealistic timelines that inevitably become more limited possibilities, complex considerations, and extended timelines – that is, what results when people try to achieve something hard in the real world. What’s particularly tragic is when people are criticized for taking on these difficult tasks and coming up short despite their best efforts, especially when they are undertaken in the national interest.

AS is compelling because it highlights the emotional toll such extended efforts exact, but there’s another point to be made here: shouldn’t senior policy makers be held accountable for the decision they make, the policies they craft, and the unworkable situations into which they put people like Chris Kyle? If it’s the job of senior decision makers to craft policy, should they be punished for doing it badly? It’s a story as old of time, but such policies, like invading Iraq and setting up a democracy, are too often implemented without sufficient attention given to the complexities, details, and likely consequences of such actions. Policies are too often implemented based on a feel-good, overly optimistic narrative that “briefs well.” It seems that undertaking something as serious as war with its attendant costs in terms of time, treasure, and lives, merits more serious consideration and analysis than is currently the case. Certainly seeing the pain associated with Chris Kyle’s life—both in the US and Iraq—should provide us with the incentive to consider the way policy is crafted as well as holding senior government decision makers to standards of truth, courage, and excellence as high as those demonstrated by Chris Kyle.

The Rhythms of Political Speech

I tell people that I’m a recovering academic, and one of the consequences of that is that my writing has a disturbing tendency to be dense and long, which is acceptable for academic theses but somewhat less so for blogs, social media, political speeches, or other media messages. When communicating with general audiences, shorter and clearer message are both more easily transmitted and comprehended.  Consequently successful politicians tend to adopt similar speaking styles because they are effective. There are a range of written works that inform this topic, but I’m trying to reign in my dense, academic thesis-esque instincts, so I’ll recommend one book, Our Master’s Voices: The language and body language of politics by Max Atkinson (1984). Atkinson articulates the rhythms of political language and inside tricks that makes some politicians different from or better than others.

The first of Atkinson’s rules that stuck in my mind concerns presenting arguments in terms of lists of three. This is am argumentation technique that is common throughout history from the sacred Christian Trinity to the more secular Hegelian dialectic and negative feedback relationship, but presenting information in lists of threes is a natural technique that corresponds to how people naturally think. A list of three is compelling because it makes the list seem sufficiently long that it could be easily elongated if necessary. A list of two, in contrast, seems insufficient like you may have done insufficient research or the point you’re making is insufficiently supported. So persistent are lists of three that people will often add a third item to a list of two to fill it out in the form of the word, “etcetera.” I didn’t pick this up until Atkinson pointed it out, but then I started noticing it occurring frequently.

A second effective argument pattern concerns contrastive pairs that take the form, “either this or that.” The technique implies a decision point, a choice, or a cognitive verge. Contrastive pairs can be superimposed on a policy issue to structure its confusing complexity. This superimposition can be done both for good and for ill.  When done for the former, it can help make complex issues more understandable. When for ill, contrastive pairs can oversimplify the natural complexity associated with a complex policy issue. More pernicious still, contrastive pairs can makes imply a false dichotomy that increases issue stridency by dividing populations into “them” and “us.”

The third point concerns the reasons why these argument framing techniques should be pursued: so that political communications can be more effective and more memorable. Effective communications should leave your audience whistling a tune. Talks should be memorable. So what do you want that tune to be? What should the listener take away? Note that this perspective puts the focus on the listener rather than what the speaker wants to say. It forces the speaker to consider what the listener can hear.  Experts in a field may have a deep understanding of an issue, but distilling and presenting that information in a way that is effective remains an art. This is especially true for conservatives as their worldview centers on what works over the long-term, which is inherently complex. Liberals, progressives, and Democrats in contrast, subscribe to a worldview that centers on the “advertising ethic” – that is, the truth is that which sells in the short-term, regardless of what works or “reality.”

In order to have a larger impact in the political arena, conservatives need to improve their communications strategies, and some suggestions have been made here. Additional potential suggestions include keeping arguments short and clear and being sufficiently informed and prepared to “drill down” and provide more detailed and supported explanations when required. It also helps if politicians are attractive. For example, before becoming Prime Minister, Margret Thatcher had her teeth fixed. Check out the before and after pictures as they’re quite surprising. I offer these communication tips because, in an attempt to be clear, understandable, and influential, I intend to focus on lists of threes that help the reader understand something memorable about a complex topic. We’ll have to see about becoming more attractive.   

MIT as Political Microcosm

For me, it all starts with MIT, which I treat as a condensed microcosm that reveals a larger set of wider-ranging issues. I went there to study policy and political science – what they call Course 17 – and as MIT is an engineering school, I thought that the department’s take on policy would be from an engineering perspective or at least accommodate an engineering perspective. After all, the mascot of MIT is “the Engineers,” so there are reasons to believe this is the case. However, that has not been my experience. My experience has been that MIT is surprisingly politically correct. Of course, it remains to be defined just what “political correctness” means, and there are several possible definitions. But the way it was implemented at MIT was quietly, pervasively, and powerfully. That is, if you held views that ran counter to accepted wisdom, then that was a problem.

Now you might ask, “What’s an example of accepted wisdom, and what’s wrong with it?” Well, I had a problem with the way democracy was treated as an unquestioned good, which is a view held by Noam Chomsky, which for me is a bright red light indicating “problem.” From an engineer’s perspective generally and an electrical engineer’s specifically, that view is highly problematic because we did not decide whether an answer to a hard electrical engineering problem was correct or not through voting. So how did we tell? Well, there was the matter of mathematical expertise, but even that was somewhat flawed, because how can you tell the transformation from the physical to the mathematical representation is correct? That answer is, “by experiment.” That is, the ultimate arbiter of correctness is a theory’s ability to predict the future as confirmed by experiment. Richard Feynman (MIT ’39) said at Cornell (1964) that there are three parts to science: (1) you guess it – i.e., theory; (2) you compute the consequences of the guess – i.e., experiment; and (3) if the guess doesn’t square with the consequences, then you’re wrong. It is that relationship between theory and experiment that provides the core of science.

Now there is a saying in academia that fields that are truly scientific don’t need to include the term “science” in their names. For example, computer science often amounts more to hacking than science, but computer science provides ample opportunities to determine if the code works starting with compiling and moving on to more sophisticated testing. Political science however is in my experience deeply problematic because too often policies are judged by their intentions and implicit flattery rather than logic, plausibility, or likely results. This is a problem because I expect that the policies that determine and guide our life should be crafted with the same care that engineers create Porsches or iPhones, but this simply is not the case. Moreover, even believing that this should be the case is controversial because it threatens those who have based their careers in making arguments that rest on a more… emotional and self-interested foundation, which has led to many of today’s political problems. Instead, a more cognitive and commons-oriented perspective is required, but because such change is fundamental it will threaten the status quo and prove controversial. Be that as it may, this is the challenge of the 21^st century politics. What we see now under President Obama, the European Union, and other institutions such as NATO, the IMF, the WTO, the UN, and the Federal Reserve are the dying embers of 20^th century social bargains coming under increasing pressure and eventual failure. The studies found here recognize this reality and choose to understand why this is the case in order to postulate policies that will lead to more stable and sustainable results.