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Chairman Meehan, Ranking Member Speier, Chairman McCaul, Ranking Member Keating, and distinguished members of the subcommittees, thank you for inviting me to testify about the Iranian government’s alleged plans to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the United States on American soil. This event comes at a critical time in U.S.-Iranian relations, and it is imperative that the United States not overreact but respond rationally and effectively. In this testimony, I will discuss how the United States can best respond to Iran in order to protect and defend our national security and our interests in the Middle East and across the globe in this age of terrorism, tyrants, and weapons of mass destruction.

First, I would begin by congratulating our agents at the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration. This case is a victory for law enforcement and a testament to the hard work done every day by the men and women at these two agencies to keep our country safe from terrorists with a global reach.

As you all know, in recent years, Iran has repeatedly worked against the interests of the United States and the international community. In addition to this most recent plot—Iran’s boldest but also most poorly executed effort to harm the United States and its allies—Iran is a known sponsor of terrorism and has pursued an illicit nuclear program in defiance of the international community. For example, just last spring, the Treasury Department announced it had uncovered evidence that Iran was funneling money and recruits to Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Additionally, Iran’s decision to enrich uranium to 20 percent—far more than the 3.5 percent necessary to produce nuclear energy—as well as its decision to store this fuel in an underground bunker suggests that its nuclear program is not designed solely for peaceful purposes. In short, the planned assassination of the Saudi ambassador is merely the latest example of hostile behavior by Iran.

The question now facing the United States is how best to respond. Over the past two weeks, it has been gratifying to hear warnings from both sides of the aisle about the perils of reckless military action. Political leaders from Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, have urged restraint.

In the past, unthinking military action by the United States has strengthened Iran’s hand. Iran is perhaps the clearest winner from our mindless, needless, senseless invasion and occupation of Iraq. The war allowed Iran to capitalize on the overwhelming anti-American sentiment generated throughout the Arab and Muslim world by our invasion of Iraq under false pretenses.

Moreover, because Iran owns one of the strongest militaries in the Middle East, any conflict with Iran would likely be drawn out and costly in both blood and treasure, even greater than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On the surface, the Iranian plot to conduct a terrorist attack on American soil may give the illusion of a strengthened, emboldened Iran. In reality, the opposite is true. Iran has been tremendously weakened over the past two years by the Obama administration’s successful efforts to muster international support for increased sanctions against the country. The Iranian government is divided, widely viewed as illegitimate by its people, and isolated internationally. Moreover, Iran’s economy is in shambles and its nuclear program has stalled, partly as a result of the sanctions.

The clumsy and, frankly, bizarre plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador is a symptom of Iran’s desperation. It shows a country resorting to asymmetrical methods because it has been weakened economically and militarily and divided politically.

While the United States should not take any options off the table in responding to Iranian aggression, a military strike would likely be counterproductive. Iran is plagued by internal unrest, and an American attack would no doubt unify the country.

Instead, the United States should further focus its energy on the initiatives that have successfully defrayed Iranian power and influence over the past two years:

• Assembling a unified international coalition that condemns Iranian bad behavior, imposes sanctions, and isolates the country internationally
• And as Adm. Mullen recently noted, reaching out to engage the Iranian government in order to deny Iran’s leaders their most effective method of uniting their people: the specter of an “evil America.”

A weakened Iran

Sanctions

Numerous nations and multinational entities have imposed sanctions against Iran including the United Nations, the European Union, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Japan, Switzerland, India, Israel, and the United States. The sanctions had significant adverse effects on the Iranian nuclear program as well as the Iranian economy. More specifically, the sanctions have resulted in many oil companies withdrawing from Iran as well as a decline in oil production and reduced access to technologies needed to improve their efficiency. Additionally, many international companies have been reluctant to do business with Iran for fear of losing access to larger Western markets.

Last June the U.N. Security Council adopted its toughest set of sanctions yet, and the United States, European Union, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Norway followed up with sanctions of their own. The goal is to restrict Iran’s access to the global financial system, especially major banks. There are provisions in the resolution that prohibit any financial services—meaning banking, insurance, re-insurance—to Iran if there is reason to believe that those services could assist Iran’s nuclear missile firms. The implementation of the financial provisions contained within the Security Council resolution has been very powerful—more so than people expected. The sanctions have had particularly tangible effects on Iran’s oil industry and associated sectors.

Economic turmoil

Iran’s economy has stagnated in recent months—partly because of the country’s growing isolation from the world economy, partly as a result of dipping oil prices, and partly because of the government’s statist policies that limit private enterprise. The Islamic Republic is beset by high levels of inflation (17.3 percent) and unemployment (13.5 percent) and low levels of foreign investment.

Iran cut energy and food subsidies in 2010, which resulted in a fourfold rise in the price of petrol and reduced subsidies for bread. Subsidy cuts threaten strikes and civil unrest (in 2007 protestors set dozens of fuel stations on fire after the system for fuel rationing was implemented). Frustration over a lack of economic opportunities—especially jobs for young people—is widespread among the population.

Domestic political unrest and the 2009 election

The Iranian ruling elite is widely viewed as corrupt by the populace—a dangerous situation given the Arab Spring protests that have deposed dictators across the Middle East.

The 2009 presidential election ignited popular frustrations about government corruption and led to the Iranian Green Movement. The official election results had President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad winning with a large majority, but opposition candidates challenged that result as fraudulent. Street protests erupted as voter skepticism rose in response to Ahmadinejad’s declared victory. Supporters of opposition candidate Mir Hussein Moussavi took to the street in protest over the election results, and other countries around the world including the United States and Canada voiced concern over claims of voter irregularities and human-rights abuses as the government put down the protests. The Ahmadinejad government was able to stay in power only by violently cracking down on its own people.

Intragovernment tensions

The Iranian political elite is divided by internal strife between President Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. For months the ruling theocracy has been clashing with Ahmadinejad and his allies for attempting to challenge the near-absolute authority of the cleric-ruled system that has controlled Iran since the 1979 revolution. Khamenei and his supporters are expected to continue their attempts to push the president further into the political margins by undermining his attempts to reach out to the United States and have begun assembling a caretaker cabinet in case Ahmadinejad resigns or has to be removed. This internal power struggle dilutes Iran’s influence internationally and calls into question the long-term survivability of the regime.

The Arab Awakening

The Arab uprisings threaten Iran’s strongest ally, Syria, and its leader, Bashar al-Assad. Syria is Tehran’s only ally and its partner in backing and strengthening the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas. If Assad loses control over Syria, new forms of less-fundamentalist Muslim political expression may emerge in the greater Middle East, making the Iranian model less attractive. In Syria, the political balance between the minority Alawi Shia regime in Damascus and the Sunni majority has shifted irreversibly to Iran’s disadvantage. Additionally, if Assad is toppled, Syria is likely to be ruled by a Sunni-dominated regime that will not be friendly with Iran.

Iran’s nuclear program

Iran enriches its uranium to 20 percent purity, far more than is necessary for nuclear-energy production, and stores this fuel in an underground bunker. These facts suggest that Iran’s nuclear ambitions are not purely peaceful in nature.

Last spring, a U.N. report found that the international sanctions pushed through in 2010 by the Obama administration were significantly hindering the progress of Iran’s nuclear program. An article last week in the Washington Post echoed these findings, noting that even in the wake of the Stuxnet virus, Iran’s nuclear program continues to be stymied by equipment shortages.

The U.S. response

Let me be clear: I do not believe that the United States should do nothing and simply wait for Iran to implode. An attempted terrorist attack on U.S. soil, no matter how clumsy, cannot be tolerated, and the United States should respond strongly and effectively. In responding, however, the United States should keep in mind what has made its efforts to contain Iran so effective over the past two years: international consensus.

The Obama administration should use the Iranian plot to convince our allies to recommit themselves to enforcing the current sanctions on Iran. This plot provides evidence of continued hostile Iranian behavior, evidence that should be used to bolster the international coalition against Iran.

Moreover, the United States should strengthen its own sanctions regime and press for stronger international sanctions that can garner the support of our allies in this coalition. The sanctions on Iran draw legitimacy from the fact that they have been approved by the United Nations and even involve some of Iran’s former allies, such as Russia and China. Maintaining the support of this robust coalition should be one of the primary goals of the U.S. response.

Simultaneously, the United States should continue its efforts to engage with the Iranian government. As Adm. Michael Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted last month, “even in the darkest days of the Cold War, we had links to the Soviet Union. We are not talking to Iran, so we don’t understand each other.” Talking to Iran promotes stability in the U.S.-Iranian relationship and, to the greatest extent possible, denies the Iranian government the ability to use the specter of “evil America” as a means of unifying the Iranian people.

Following the Iranian assassination plot against the Saudi ambassador, President Barack Obama vowed for the “toughest sanctions” yet against the Islamic Republic. Thus far, the administration has frozen the U.S. assets of Iran’s Mahan Air and barred U.S. firms from doing business with the airline. In a statement released by the treasury, Mahan Air is accused of closely coordinating with Iran’s Quds Force, which allegedly was behind the planned assassination. This is a wise and measured response by the administration, and the United States should continue to press for sanctions on companies that aid Iran’s nuclear or military ambitions.

The administration is also said to be “actively” considering sanctioning Iran’s Bank Markazi, or central bank, limiting Iran’s ability to sell its crude oil and thereby isolating it from the world economic system. The success of this endeavor will depend on garnering the support of other countries, a challenging but not impossible task given the potential that such restrictive sanctions on the central bank could harm ordinary Iranians and negatively affect the oil market. I applaud the overwhelming support in the Senate for this measure, with 90 senators calling for sanctions on the central bank this past August, including Sens. Feinstein and Mark Kirk (R-IL) in recent days.

Iranian aggression toward the United States cannot be tolerated. But it is important that the U.S. response to the Iranian plot furthers our long-term goals: deterring Iranian aggression and protecting U.S. national security. Doing so will require us to work multilaterally with our allies. Military action would be counterproductive.

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Lawrence J. Korb is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.

SOURCE: AP/Harry Hamburg

Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson and co-chair of a study on the effects in the military of repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," left, Dr. Clifford Stanley, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, center, and Army Gen. Carter Ham, also co-chair of the study, appear at a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing on the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" on Capitol Hill in Washington, on March 3, 2010. The study was released today.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund welcomes the findings from the Pentagon’s comprehensive study on how to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which was released today.

Since its implementation in 1993 this unjust and unwise policy has undermined military readiness and forced gay and lesbian service members to live a lie to serve their country in the armed forces. Decades of government and private studies, including several conducted by the Center for American Progress, have concluded that the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” can be accomplished swiftly and without detriment to military readiness or cohesion. The Pentagon’s study confirms those results.

The study demonstrates definitively that our women and men in uniform are ready, willing, and able to adapt to the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Pentagon officials today summarized the results of the survey, which was sent to 400,000 service members:

• Seventy percent of service members said they would be able to “work together to get the job done” with a gay service member in their immediate units.
• Sixty-nine percent said they worked in a unit with a co-worker that they believed to be gay or lesbian.
• Ninety-two percent stated that their unit’s “ability to work together” with a gay person was either “very good,” “good,” or “neither good nor poor.” This includes 89 percent of those in Army combat arms units and 84 percent of those in Marine combat arms units.

The study found that a minority of service members maintain some concern about the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” But it also determined that strong leadership and guidance from the top of the chain of command will mitigate these issues.

Further, the experiences of our allies in repealing similar bans suggest that such concerns are often overstated. Pre-repeal surveys in the United Kingdom and Canada indicated that a substantial number of service members would not serve, work, or live with openly gay and lesbian troops. Yet in both countries repeal was a nonevent. And service members from both countries have worked productively alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan over the past decade.

The vehicle to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is the fiscal year 2011 National Defense Authorization Act, which has already passed the House. It now awaits action by the Senate. We urge Senate leaders on both sides of the aisle to make sure the NDAA is expeditiously debated and voted on during the current lame duck session with the existing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal language intact. It should then be sent to President Barack Obama for his signature.

An overwhelming majority of Americans support allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military and this study confirms that there is no credible military or national security reason to maintain this outdated, discriminatory, and unpopular policy. We therefore recommend that the Senate move quickly to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” before the end of the current session.

Winnie Stachelberg is the Senior Vice President for External Affairs and Lawrence J. Korb is a Senior Fellow at American Progress.

More from CAP on "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell":

• The Ball Is in the Senate’s Court on "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" by Lawrence J. Korb and Laura Conley
• Implementing the Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the U.S. Armed Forces by Lawrence J. Korb, Sean Duggan, and Laura Conley
  
• Ask the Expert: Lawrence J. Korb on Repealing "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell"
• Issue Pulse: Repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
• Myth vs. Fact: Repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”
• Poll: Americans Support Repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”
• "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" by the Numbers

SOURCE: AP/Matt York

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that he "would welcome a report done by the Joint Chiefs of Staff ... that would study the 'Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell' policy, that would consider the impact of its repeal on our armed services, and that would offer their best military advice on the right course of action."

Download this memo (pdf)

See also: Finish the Job: The Senate Must Vote to Repeal "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" in 2010 by Jeff Krehely and Crosby Burns

President Obama announced in this year’s State of the Union address that he was going to work with Congress to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the law that prohibits openly gay men and women from serving in the military. The issue has been vigorously debated in Congress and the media since January. This public conversation has allowed elected officials to put their DADT repeal position on the record. Several U.S. senators have specifically said that their position hinges on what military leaders and the troops think about the issue.

The Pentagon will release findings from its nearly year-long study of DADT repeal on or before December 1, 2010. This means that the current Congress would still have time after the study comes out to hold a vote on DADT repeal that is informed by the Pentagon’s work.

Early reports suggest that most troops and their families are either supportive of allowing gay men and women to serve openly or simply have no opinion on the matter, and that military leaders can implement open service without any disruption to military readiness or effectiveness.

Senators who have said they are waiting to hear from the troops and military leaders before deciding on DADT repeal should be held to task once the report comes out. These lawmakers include:

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA):

It would be premature to act on a repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law at this time. The Pentagon is still in the midst of its study of the matter, and its report is due in December. For some time now, I have been seeking the opinions and recommendations of service chiefs, commanders in the field, and, most importantly, our junior soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines. I believe we have a responsibility to the men and women of our armed forces to be thorough in our consideration of this issue and take their opinions seriously. I am keeping an open mind, but I do not support moving ahead until I am able to finish my review, the Pentagon completes its study, and we can be assured that a new policy can be implemented without jeopardizing the mission of our military.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC):

I do not support the idea of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” before our military members and commanders complete their review.

Well, it’s my belief that, if the policy—you don’t have buy-in by the military, that’s a disservice to the people in the military. They should be included in this. I’m open-minded to what the military may suggest. But I can tell you, I’m not going to make policy based on a campaign rally. … if this policy about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” changes, it should be done based not on politics, but on reason.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH):

I don’t support repealing it until the joint service chiefs have told us they think it’s good for the military. This is about war fighting and I listen to the joint service chiefs on that.

Mark Kirk (Republican senator-elect from Illinois):

I think we should wait for the Joint Chiefs of Staff to report as they are scheduled in December; this was actually the recommendation of Defense Secretary [Robert] Gates and the President.

Joe Manchin (Democratic senator-elect from West Virginia):

The governor doesn’t believe the rules should be changed until the battlefield commanders can certify it doesn’t hurt unit cohesion.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ):

I would welcome a report done by the Joint Chiefs of Staff—based solely on military readiness, effectiveness, and needs, and not on politics—that would study the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, that would consider the impact of its repeal on our armed services, and that would offer their best military advice on the right course of action.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of completing the comprehensive review prior to taking any legislative action.

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR):

Let’s let the military professionals work through their process. I’d hate to kind of short-circuit that with congressional action, so I’d rather let [the Pentagon review] occur before we start making policy here on “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.”

Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME):

Moreover, as I have previously stated, given that the law implementing the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy has been in place for nearly 17 years, I agree that it is overdue for a thorough review. The question is, whether we should be voting on this issue before we have the benefit of the comprehensive review that President Obama’s Secretary of Defense ordered in March, to secure the input of our men and women in uniform during this time of war—as the Joint Chiefs of Staff from all of the services have requested prior to any vote. We should all have the opportunity to review that report which is to be completed on December 1, as we reevaluate this policy and the implementation of any new changes.

Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH):

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is a controversial issue that needs to be debated on the Senate floor but I believe it would be logical to wait for the Department of Defense to issue its report on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” At this point there is no reason to rush to judgment for political expediency until we hear from our military leaders as to whether they think it is a good idea to change this policy. I will carefully study this determination when it is completed.

Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA):

I continue to believe that the survey of the members of our military, mandated by the Department of Defense in February, should be completed and assessed before the Congress moves forward on any legislative changes to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Download this memo (pdf)

Jeff Krehely is the Director of the LGBT Research and Communications Project and Crosby Burns is Special Assistant for LGBT Progress at American Progress.

See also:

• Finish the Job: The Senate Must Vote to Repeal "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" in 2010 by Jeff Krehely and Crosby Burns

SOURCE: AP/Harry Hamburg

Former Staff Sgt. Eric Alva, who was forced out because of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," speaks as Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-PA) listens at a rally on Capitol Hill. A growing body of research, expert opinion, and the experiences of U.S. allies show that gay men and women can serve openly without jeopardizing military readiness or effectiveness.  

Download this memo (pdf)

See also: Holding Lawmakers Accountable: Senators Waiting to Hear from the Military on "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" Will Soon Have Their Wish by Jeff Krehely and Crosby Burns

Our nation is actively engaged in combat around the globe, and our military needs every man and woman with the willingness and ability to serve. But the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law bans openly gay men and women from serving in the United States military. It undermines unit cohesion and military readiness by forcing gay soldiers to live a lie. It is a failed policy that Congress should repeal immediately.

Congress is closer than ever to repealing DADT. Actions in the United States Senate during the next several weeks will determine whether this policy is repealed in 2010 or if it remains on the nation’s books for years to come.

The landscape of DADT repeal

President Obama pledged during his State of the Union address in January to work with Congress to end DADT. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen both testified before Congress shortly after the president’s pledge, saying that they believe the DADT policy is outdated and unfair. They soon announced a plan to survey the military and their families on their opinions about open service, and to study how to implement repeal of the policy in a way that ensures a smooth transition to such a policy. The Pentagon will complete their findings from this research on or before December 1, 2010. Key military leaders, including the service chiefs, Chairman Mullen, and Secretary Gates will discuss and vet the report before it is publicly released.

Early reports from the Pentagon’s survey suggest that most troops and their spouses either support open service or simply have no opinion on the matter. And most people expect that the Pentagon will announce that the armed forces can implement open service following modest changes to existing military rules and regulations. Yet the military will not be able to implement this new policy until Congress repeals the existing DADT law or the federal courts strike it down.

The Senate Armed Services Committee and the House of Representatives passed identical measures in May that provide a path to repealing DADT by linking its repeal to the successful completion of the ongoing Pentagon study. This measure is included in the 2011 National Defense Authorization Act. But the motion to proceed on this bill failed in the Senate in late September due to a Republican-led filibuster. This has pushed the bill into the post-election legislative session, which starts in mid-November.

Yet the NDAA may never come before the Senate for a vote due to the short legislative calendar and competition with other issues that need the Senate’s attention before the end of the year—when the 111th Congress comes to a close. This could delay legislative repeal until 2013 at the earliest given that many DADT repeal supporters will not return to Congress next year.

A federal district judge issued a sweeping ruling this fall declaring that DADT is unconstitutional and undermines military readiness, which for a very short time meant that openly gay men and women could serve in the U.S. military. Yet the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on November 1 that DADT must remain in place pending the Department of Justice’s appeal of the decision. Some legal experts think the case will make it to the United States Supreme Court, but that could take a couple of years with no guarantee that the ruling would favor open service. Another problem for the Pentagon is that the legality of the policy might change several times as the case winds its way to the Supreme Court.

The best option is for the Senate to begin debate on the NDAA as soon as the chamber begins its post-election session and to expeditiously pass the bill with the DADT repeal language intact. We strongly encourage them to do so.

Current DADT repeal language

The DADT repeal language in the Senate version of the NDAA—which is identical to the language passed by the House in May—calls for the careful implementation of open service for gay men and women. The language respects and incorporates the Pentagon’s current review process, and acknowledges that implementing DADT repeal is best left in the hands of the Pentagon.

Here’s how repeal will happen if Congress passes the current DADT language:

• The Pentagon will complete its ongoing study of how to implement DADT.
• President Obama will then transmit a written certification to the House and Senate Armed Services Committees saying that he, Secretary Gates, and Chairman Mullen have considered the recommendations contained in the Pentagon report and the plan to implement repeal, and that moving forward with open service will not jeopardize or hamper the military’s readiness or effectiveness.
• Congress has 60 days to review the certification and policy recommendations contained in the Pentagon report.
• The Pentagon, after those 60 days are up, finally begins to develop and implement the regulations that will allow gay men and women to serve openly.

The amendment to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” shows great deference to the troops and military commanders. This careful approach ensures a smooth transition that respects our armed forces without sacrificing the necessary expediency of implementing repeal.

Senate vote

A majority of senators supported repealing DADT at the time of the failed motion to proceed vote earlier this fall. The number of supporters should increase as more information about the Pentagon study is made public, because several senators have stated that their decision on the matter is based largely on what the Pentagon study recommends.

Even if the Senate begins work on the NDAA when Congress returns in mid-November, senators will still be debating the bill on December 1 when the Pentagon releases its report. Practically speaking, this means that all senators will have the opportunity to review the Pentagon study, assess the evidence, and then decide if the DADT repeal language should stay in the NDAA. But to get to that point, they must vote in mid-November to allow the NDAA to come up for consideration before the full Senate.

Conclusion

DADT is a discriminatory policy that needs to be repealed as soon as possible. A growing body of research, expert opinion, and the experiences of U.S. allies— including Israel and Great Britain—show that gay men and women can serve openly without jeopardizing military readiness or effectiveness. If the Senate fails to move the NDAA forward, the DADT policy will likely remain on the books for years to come.

The time to act is now.

Download this memo (pdf)

Jeff Krehely is the Director of the LGBT Research and Communications Project and Crosby Burns is Special Assistant for LGBT Progress at American Progress.

See also:

• Holding Lawmakers Accountable: Senators Waiting to Hear from the Military on "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" Will Soon Have Their Wish by Jeff Krehely and Crosby Burns

 

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Our military needs to make personnel decisions based on the mission, not irrelevant factors like sexual orientation. Tell Congress today that delay is not an option. Congress must act now to repeal "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell."

For more information, see:

• CAP Action Urges Congress to Repeal "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" This Week

 

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(transcript, mov, YouTube)

To submit a video, see:

• Citizen Global: Repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

 

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Sen. Charles Robb (D-VA), former governor of Virginia, conceded at a CAP Action event last Tuesday that “there will be difficulties” in repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”—the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military—and some armed service members will be unable to change. But he said “the cost of not doing anything” is far worse to our security, economy, and civil rights, and we must join those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender instead of asking them to “carry the fight by themselves.” Sen. Robb spoke as a panelist at the event, which was on implementing a repeal of the ban.

Sen. Robb was joined on the panel by Admiral John Hutson, former judge advocate general for the U.S. Navy and dean and president of the Franklin Pierce Law Center; and Louis Caldera, Senior Fellow at CAP Action and a former secretary of the Army. The panelists discussed the limited and manageable changes the military would need to make to smoothly and quickly repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”  CAP Action Senior Fellow Lawrence J. Korb served as moderator, and CAP’s new report on implementing the ban, which Korb co-authored, was released at the event.

The report focuses particularly on the experiences of the United Kingdom, Canada, and Israel in lifting their bans on open service—and all of these countries managed the transition with little difficulty. Based on this review, the report recommends eight relatively minor administrative, bureaucratic, and legal changes that must be made to the U.S. military’s internal regulations for an easy transition: training, legal issues arising from repeal, housing and common-use facilities, benefits, conduct, discipline and promotion, retroactive compensation and reinstatement, and health concerns.

The report closely examines the three countries because of their cultural and military similarities to the United States. Those three nations dropped their ban on gays serving openly in the military around the same time the United States decided not to, and when they did, “all of the apocalyptic scenarios…did not come true,” Korb explained.

Some worry about the repeal’s effects on unit cohesion. But repeal actually puts the military in the position “to enhance unit cohesion” because it’s detrimental to cohesion and readiness to have “second-class citizens,” Hutson said. “The foot dragging will stop” when people realize how it will positively affect cohesion.

Repealing the ban is “a big yawn,” Hutson continued, because our country and military “are so ready for this” and all it takes is a little “maturity and courage.” All of our major allies have repealed the ban, and the countries that haven’t include Russia, Belarus, and North Korea. “In whose company should we be?” he asked.

Caldera said that to implement any change in our military requires “strong leadership” on the part of civilian and army command leaders to set “the right tone at the top.” If repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is going to work, the army “leadership has to embrace it, stand behind it” and explain why it’s both right and necessary—so it’s not simply an order from the commander-in-chief. This is exactly what Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did back in February when he testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Caldera.

Korb added that the marines are often the most resistant service to change and could therefore be the most resistant to an overturn of the ban. But Sen. Robb pointed out that this “fundamental disagreement” that is “part of the somewhat macho culture” in the marines can change. The next generation does not “have these hangups,” he explained, and after all, the marines are “good at following orders.” With the right leadership, they can change and see it in action and wonder why they so aggressively opposed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” he added.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” also hurts military recruitment because of the tremendous diversity young people are exposed to and learning to value. With “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in place, the military risks looking unrepresentative of the rest of our society. Caldera explained “reality has changed” and the military’s position on "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" risks coming across as being an "intolerant employer."

On top of that, “you probably end up saving money…because if you push someone out,” you need to recruit and train more, Korb argued. “About 4,000 people a year get out because they’re tired of living a lie.”

The U.S. military is supposed to “defend human rights and the rule of law,” Hutson said. It’s inexcusable to allow the armed services to be exempt from such rights because it’s only a human right if it’s applied to all humans, he added.

Just as Barry Goldwater said in the 1990s, “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.”

For more on this event please see its event page. 

More from CAP on "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell":

• Implementing the Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the U.S. Armed Forces by Lawrence J. Korb, Sean Duggan, and Laura Conley
• Ask the Expert: Repealing "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell"
• Myth vs. Fact: Repealing "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell"

Letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Ending "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" (pdf)

• Nearly 14,000 gay and lesbian service men and women have been discharged from military service since 1993.
• More than 33,000 gay and lesbian service men and women have been discharged from military service since 1980.

• A survey of 545 service members who served in Afghanistan and Iraq found that 73 percent are comfortable in the presence of gay men and lesbians. Of the approximately 20 percent who said that they were uncomfortable, only 5 percent are “very uncomfortable,” while 15 percent are “somewhat uncomfortable.”
• This policy may have cost the U.S. government more than $1.3 billion since 1980.
• According to research at the University of California, Santa Barabara, “No reputable or peer-reviewed study has ever shown that allowing service by openly gay personnel will compromise military effectiveness.”
• Twenty-four countries allow gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military. None of these have reported “any determent to cohesion, readiness, recruiting, morale, retention or any other measure of effectiveness or quality,” according to the Palm Center, and “in the more than three decades since an overseas force first allowed gay men and lesbians to serve openly, no study has ever documented any detriment to cohesion, readiness, recruiting, morale, retention or any other measure of effectiveness or quality in foreign armed services.”
• Even the British, whose military structure and deployment patterns are most similar to ours—and who fiercely resisted allowing gays to serve in the military—were forced to do so by the European Court of Human Rights, and have now seamlessly integrated them.

• During the First Persian Gulf War, enforcement of the ban on gays in the U.S. military was “suspended without problems.” Moreover, “there were no reports of angry departures.”
• The CIA, State Department, FBI, and Secret Service all allow gay men and women to serve openly without any hamper on effectiveness or quality.
• The GAO found in 2005 that discharging and replacing each service member cost the federal government approximately $10,000.
• Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara found that the GAO’s methodology did not include several important factors and that the actual number was closer to $37,000 per service member.

Download this fact sheet (pdf)

Letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Ending "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" (pdf)

For more information and citations, please see our report “Ending ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

SOURCE: AP/Navy

A pending amendment from Senate Armed Services Chairman Levin (D-MI) and Ranking Member McCain (R-AZ) will delete authorization for the purchase of an additional seven F-22 fighter planes in the Fiscal Year 2010 defense authorization bill. The F-22 was conceived over two decades ago to battle waves of Soviet fighter planes during the height of the Cold War, but it is now a plane without a clear mission. Indeed, the F-22 has never been deployed to either Iraq or Afghanistan.

The U.S. military now has 187 F-22s after four additional planes were added during debate on the Fiscal Year 2009 supplemental appropriations bill. This is the exact number recommended by Presidents Bush and Obama and Defense Secretaries Rumsfeld and Gates.

Congress is now poised to authorize the purchase of additional F-22s against Air Force leadership’s clear wishes. Here’s why the United States does not need any more F-22s:

Increasing F-22 production does not enhance our national defense

• Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, 2008: “The reality is we are fighting two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the F-22 has not performed a single mission in either theater.
• The F-22 jets were designed for dogfights against Soviet-era fighter planes—a threat that no longer exists.
• The F-35 is a newer, cheaper, and more capable aircraft for the types of missions we are currently facing and will face in the future.
• The United States already has 187 F-22s on hand or on order—a number more than adequate to deal with any likely contingency.

The Defense Department wants to end production of the F-22 at 187 planes

• President Obama, Secretary Gates, Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen, Air Force Chief of Staff Schwartz, and Air Force Secretary Donley all recommend halting production of the F-22 at 187 planes.
• Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called in April 2009 for Congress to end production of the F-22 with “a blueprint for reorienting U.S. military purchases that calls for more to be spent on immediate battlefield needs and threats while eliminating programs designed in the Cold War-era and those exceeding budget estimates.”
• Defense Secretary Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mullen said, “The Department of Defense has determined that 187 aircraft are sufficient, especially considering the future roles of Unmanned Aerial Systems and the significant number of fifth generation stealth F-35s coming on-line in our combat portfolio.”
• Air Force Secretary Donley and Air Force Chief of Staff Schwartz recommend that, “the Air Force not pursue F-22 production beyond 187 aircraft” after having “reviewed this issues from multiple perspectives” including “emerging joint warfighting requirements; complementary F-22 and F-35 roles in the future security environment; potential advantages of continuing a warm F-22 insurance line as a protection against possible delays/failures in the F-35 program; potential impact to the Services and international partners if resources were realigned from the F-35 to the F-22 and overall tactical aircraft force structure.”

The argument that F-22 production will create jobs is largely a false claim

• There are currently 24,000 workers directly employed in producing the F-22 for Lockheed Martin. This number will be reduced to 11,000 by the end of 2011 when the economy is expected to be on more stable ground. These losses will be dramatically offset by jobs created by the increase in F-35 production.
• The F-35 program, also administered by Lockheed Martin, currently employs 38,000 people. According to Secretary Gates, more than doubling F-35 production in FY2010 will mean adding 44,000 American jobs in 2010, which will bring the total F-35 workforce to 82,000.

The F-22’s opportunity cost is too high

• According to Secretary Gates, “If the Air Force is forced to buy additional F-22s beyond what has been requested, it will come at the expense of other Air Force and Department of Defense priorities—and require deferring capabilities in areas we believe are much more critical for our nation’s defense.”
• Veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not lining up to support continued production of the F-22, especially since the F-22 has never flown in either war. According to Iraq war veteran and Chairman of VoteVets.org Jon Soltz, “The funding for these F-22s is wasteful and takes money away from equipment we do need, plain and simple…The question for lawmakers is this—do you value contractors more, or our troops more?  Because that’s what they’re voting on.”

The F-22 is expensive to maintain and its stealth capacity is flawed

• There’s a problem with the F-22’s “skin,” the critical coating that absorbs radar rays. It’s vulnerable to rain.
• The “plane’s million-dollar radar-absorbing canopy has also caused problems, with a stuck hatch imprisoning a pilot for hours in 2006 and engineers unable to extend the canopy’s lifespan beyond about 18 months of flying time.”
• A new Pentagon study shows the F-22 needs 30 hours of maintenance for every hour it flies, bringing hourly flying cost to $40,000. 

For more information on the F-22, see the Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities Action’s Sensible Defense campaign.

“There is no right time to right a wrong—there is always time to right a wrong,” said Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) at a Center for American Progress Action Fund event Monday afternoon. At the event, Rep. Tauscher took part in a panel that outlined the failure of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell policy,” which requires U.S. soldiers to mask their sexual orientation for fear of persecution or discharge. She also spoke of the introduction of her bill, the Military Readiness Enhancement Act, which seeks to overturn the military’s current policy.

Joining Rep. Tauscher on the panel were CAPAF Senior Fellow Lawrence J. Korb and Dr. Nathaniel Frank, senior research fellow at the University of California Santa Barbara’s Palm Center, adjunct professor at New York University, and author of Unfriendly Fire.

Tauscher responded to criticism surrounding the timing of the bill, a move she says “will break down the final barrier for service in the military.” Many have suggested that choosing to fight a battle for equal rights in the military in a time of economic instability is irresponsible. But she reminded the panel that the bill is important because it “would allow those currently fighting in the battlefield [in Iraq and Afghanistan] to no longer do so with one arm tied behind their backs.”

Korb provided a historical context for the current law, noting that the military had always had a heavy hand in crafting the legislation. “Although military reports concluded that gays were not a security threat,” Korb asserted, “the government covered them up. This policy was created behind closed doors.” As early as the end of World War II, the government commissioned studies that time after time concluded the same thing—that homosexual soldiers, serving openly, did not present a risk to the military.

But this information did not reach the public or affect military policy, and the panel noted that the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy has operated to the detriment to the armed forces. Through the enforcement of the policy, the U.S. military has lost significant resources. By letting go otherwise qualified soldiers, the military has lost over $363 million in invested training since 1993, Rep. Tauscher noted. And she added that the military has also lost over 12,000 qualified soldiers due to the policy.

In sum, “don’t ask, don’t tell” has been a monumental failure—fiscally and culturally—for both the military and the greater American public. “The issue is not whether homosexuality is incompatible with military [policy],” noted Frank, “the issue is knowledge—knowing about these people in the military, and whether America can confront homosexuality head on.” He stressed that the rejection of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy requires a cultural shift—the redefinition of the quintessential American solider.

Frank said that the discourse surrounding “don’t ask, don’t tell” has been rooted primarily in fear. “This was about fear. This was about misunderstandings,” he said when speaking about the current law. He added that the law has actually broken down unit cohesion, undermined trust, and deeply embarrassed soldiers—the opposite of what it initially aimed to do.

In response, the panel offered working solutions that could reinforce the changes brought by the potential passage of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act. For instance, the creation of an independent working group of former military officials—which Tauscher recommended—could help ease the transition of the military into the new policy.

Ultimately, the law seeks to codify what has already happened. More Americans than ever support gays openly serving in the military—and many of these supporters are returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan. “At the end of the day,” Frank concluded, “this is really about law and rhetoric catching up with something that has always been there.”
 

For more on this event, please visit the events page.

“It isn’t just about honoring the past. It’s about protecting our future,” Texas Representative Chet Edwards said at a Center for American Progress Action Fund event on Thursday. Edwards, the chairman of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee, spoke about the historic provisions the 110th Congress has made toward veterans benefits. He was introduced by CAPAF Senior Vice President of National Security and International Policy Rudy deLeon.

Edwards led the campaign to pass the largest increases in veterans health care funding and benefits in the history of the United States. Edwards explained that America has a moral obligation to ensure that the needs of veterans are a top priority, saying that veterans earned their benefits “when they put on our nation’s uniform.”

According to Edwards, health care and education assistance for veterans is not only about honoring the past, “it’s about protecting our future.” Edwards said that it will be difficult for America to maintain a volunteer army of the best and brightest soldiers if the nation doesn’t demonstrate its appreciation for the service of veterans. “It’s a disgrace in our nation,” he added, “that over 100,000 veterans will go to sleep homeless tonight.”

“This may come as a surprise to some of you who may assume that Republicans make veterans a higher priority than Democrats,” Edwards said as he compared the actions of the previous Congress to the 110th Congress. He described how former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert fired the Republican chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Chris Smith, because he decided to “stand up and put loyalty to veterans above his loyalty to partisanship.”

The Texas representative credits much of the progress that Congress has made on veterans affairs issues to the leadership of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, saying that she, “has kept her commitments to veterans.”

Edwards discussed specific provisions that the 110th Congress has passed to benefit veterans, including increased veterans health care research, the introduction of a new GI bill of rights, and doubled funding for mental health services. In regard to mental health care, he said that American culture deems mental health needs as a sign of weakness, but “we have to keep doing everything we can do to change the culture.”

In a heartrending story about an injured soldier who fought for his life in order to fulfill a promise he made to his daughter, Edwards emphasized that veterans make tremendous sacrifices and thus deserve the best care that the nation can give because, “it is right, and it is the smart thing to do.”

More about the event

SOURCE: AP

Read the full testimony (pdf)

Violence in Iraq is at its lowest levels since 2004. By almost every measure, ethno- sectarian violence in the country has declined from the horrific levels of a year ago. Shiite militias, such as Muqtada Al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army, have been weakened because Sunni insurgents began cooperating with us against Al Qaeda in Iraq, or AQI, as a result of the U.S. midterm elections in 2006 and the horrible practices of AQI. AQI, which was only supported by some Iraqis because of their fear of an indefinite American occupation, has lost that support and is no longer able to operate in many parts of the country. And the American general in charge of training the Iraqi Security Forces has stated that the Iraqi army and police will be able to assume full responsibility for internal security as early as April 2009.

But while the reduction in violence has produced tenuous security gains in Iraq, it has not yet resulted in a sustainable political equilibrium that is able to lock in what progress has been made. Rather than creating breathing room for the Iraqi government to undertake meaningful political reconciliation between Iraq’s competing ethnic and sectarian groups—the objective of the surge—the continued large-scale American troop presence has allowed the Iraqi government to stall on making the tough choices that a timetable for an American withdrawal would force them to confront.

While there has been apparent progress on some uncontroversial legislation, the Iraqi government has yet to set a date for much-needed provincial elections originally scheduled for October, pass an oil-sharing law, meaningfully implement de-Baathification reform and the amnesty law, and finalize the legal status of the disputed city of Kirkuk.

Nowhere is this failure to govern responsibly more apparent than in the implementation of the budget by the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. While Iraq’s ability to generate revenue continues to grow, its capability and willingness to effectively and efficiently execute its budget is virtually non-existent. As I will note below, Iraqi budgets have been passed but only a fraction of Iraq’s revenue has been spent. After more than five years of having the American taxpayer bear the full cost of Iraq’s reconstruction and stabilization, it is time for the Iraqi government to take budgetary responsibility, especially since the Bush administration is forced to borrow money from abroad to pay these bills.

As Mr. Christoff noted, Iraq’s revenues and its budget surplus are large and growing. Transferring more of Iraq’s financial burden to the Iraqis is not only a fiscal necessity for the United States; it is also a way for the Maliki government to gain the trust of the Iraqi people. By assuming a greater role in Iraq’s reconstruction, providing essential services, and creating much-needed jobs, the government can provide an impetus for political reconciliation. Former Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani put it well when he recently said, “the budget is where social rights meet social obligations.” The United States must begin transferring financial responsibilities to the Iraqi government immediately in order to give the Maliki government the incentive to take responsibility for the well-being of ordinary Iraqi people.

But in doing so the United States must exercise strict oversight, offer guidance, share best practices, and provide honest criticism of shortcomings as the Iraqis take on more budgetary responsibility. Financial mismanagement, a lack of bureaucratic infrastructure, and widespread corruption all have the potential to derail initiatives to improve the lives of the Iraqi people. Similarly, transferring budgetary authority for security programs such as the “Sons of Iraq”—scheduled for October 1 of this year—to the Iraqi government without ensuring that the Maliki government does not carry out its policy of eliminating these Sunni militias could undermine recent security progress.

Read the full testimony (pdf)

SOURCE: AP

The Center for a New American Security issued an Iraq policy paper earlier this spring that has an identity crisis. “Shaping the Iraq Inheritance” poses as an exit strategy, but ultimately advocates a course of action that looks a lot like what the Bush administration and its conservative supporters have endorsed in Iraq.

The “conditional engagement” strategy, at its core, tries to carve out a “moderate middle” dependent on simplistic renderings of competing policy proposals on the left and the right. But it is important not to get distracted by the framing mechanism of the four options CNAS presents on Iraq: unconditional engagement, conditional engagement, conditional disengagement, and unconditional disengagement. CNAS’ core arguments suffer from four major internal inconsistencies and disconnections from key realities in Iraq and the Middle East.

First, conditional engagement does not differ from the Bush administration’s current approach because it fails to clearly define—in precise terms—when the Iraq mission would be accomplished, and when U.S. troops could depart. In a telling chart on page 42, the report stakes out a position that places the strategy in the same space as the current Bush administration policy—a “conditions based” drawdown of troops where the conditions are never really defined beyond vague terms like “accommodation” and “sustainable security.” It furthermore ignores administration officials’ efforts to leverage public and congressional opposition to the war as a way to pressure Iraqi politicians to make compromises.

Second, conditional engagement assumes that the carrots of continued military, economic, and political support are more appetizing than they are. It overestimates how much leverage the United States has in Iraq and underestimates broader Iraqi opposition to a continued U.S. military presence. Iraqi leaders—even those close to the United States, such as Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki—are increasingly asserting their independence and sovereignty, and will likely continue to do so as the dates for Iraq’s provincial and national elections approach.

Third, conditional engagement doesn’t describe how it would be implemented to achieve its stated ends, however vague those ends are. It is, in effect, a one-shot strategy dependent upon the Iraqi government not calling our bluff to disengage. It is unclear how continued American engagement will cause or somehow help Iraqi leaders resolve their differences. The strategy simply assumes that Iraqi leaders, especially those in the Green Zone, desire continued U.S. support and will be impelled to act by the hint that U.S. forces might leave in the absence of political accommodation. This is a highly questionable causative relationship upon which to make an entire strategy dependent.

Fourth, the report is wedded to a narrow, bilateral, U.S.-Iraq prism at the expense of a broader regional view. Just two underdeveloped pages in a 50-plus page paper are devoted to regional diplomacy. Conditional engagement is disconnected from its environment, and offers no rationale for how its proposed strategy builds into a larger framework for sustainable security in the Gulf. Rather than craft an Iraq policy toward a regional strategy, CNAS crafts a regional strategy around its preferred Iraq policy. Conditional engagement puts the Iraqi cart before the regional horse, making the formulation of a coherent strategy for the broader region more difficult.

Ultimately, there is an illogic at the center of the conditional engagement argument—it implies that bad things might happen if U.S troops leave (genocide, terrorist safe havens, and regional war), so we should stay. But if Iraq’s leaders don’t move forward on accommodation, then we should leave anyway, despite those risks to U.S. national security. The report tries to have it both ways—it tries to say that U.S. troops cannot leave Iraq because of the risks of genocide, regional war, and terrorist safe havens, but if Iraqis don’t pass some laws, then maybe we should leave after all.

Chairman Biden, Ranking Member Lugar, it is an honor to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today to speak about the growing role of the American military in development assistance activities. In recent years, this issue has sparked considerable interest in the humanitarian, development, and defense communities in the United States, as well as among our partner nations around the world.

I believe that there is an important role for our military to play as a provider of development assistance that is closely linked to clear and specific national security objectives. This can, and should, be done in a way that acknowledges humanitarian space, supports U.S. foreign policy objectives, and most importantly, improves the lives of beneficiaries.

My testimony today is drawn, in part, from a recent Center for American Progress report I have written entitled, “Humanity as a Weapon of War,” which I have submitted for the record. It is further informed by a year I spent as a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow and Special Assistant at the U.S. Agency for International Development from January 2007 to January 2008. During my stint at USAID, I travelled to the headquarters of four U.S. military Regional Combatant Commands and spent nearly a month observing civil-military projects in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya performed by the U.S. Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa.

This will proceed in four parts. First, I will provide some background information on the scope and nature of the military’s involvement in development assistance. Second, I will offer analysis of this activity. Third, I submit a series of policy recommendations. Finally, I will conclude with some observations regarding the importance of development assistance to U.S. national security and the need for it to be supported.

Background

The increasing involvement of the U.S. armed forces in addressing the basic human needs of civilians abroad represents one of the most profound changes in U.S. strategic thought and practice in at least a generation. The Pentagon is recognizing that conventional “kinetic” military operations, which utilize armed force through direct action to kill or capture the enemy, have limited utility in countering the threats posed by militant extremism. Therefore, they are searching for—and finding—“nonkinetic” options other than the use of force to tackle the nonviolent components of pressing security problems, both in and out of warzones.

This may seem like an appropriate approach to America’s new security challenges in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but it is not without controversy. The increasing involvement of the U.S. military in civilian assistance activities has launched a contentious debate about the role of the military in global development, and the relevance of global development to American national security. Nongovernmental organizations argue that the “militarization” of development assistance threatens to undermine the moral imperatives of poverty reduction, the neutral provision of emergency relief, and the security of civilian aid workers in the field. Nonmilitary government agencies, most prominently the U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development, have demonstrated a complex ambivalence about the subject. Even as their bureaucracies have changed to accommodate the military’s growing role providing assistance, some rank-and-file staff at USAID have argued that the military’s programs do not constitute “real development” work, while a vocal minority of foreign service officers in the State Department have protested their deployment to promote political reconciliation in active warzones as hazardous assignments inappropriate for professional diplomats.

Although the Pentagon is not of one mind on this issue, many Defense Department officials argue that these criticisms from NGOs and other parts of the government are overblown, and that these nonkinetic operations have the dual benefit of helping people in need while serving American interests. This is something that both the military, other government agencies, and the NGO community should welcome.

The Pentagon has called on the State Department and the USAID to undertake more activities in direct support of American national security objectives, even as these agencies counter that their ability is constrained by years of chronic underfunding

The role of the U.S. military in development work

The growing debate about the role of the military in development efforts points to two central questions: Should the United States view aiding civilians abroad as a critical element of its security? If so, what is the best way for the United States to perform development missions in support of its national security objectives?

The physical threats to the United States in the 21st century are of such complexity that they defy solution by force of arms alone. Neither the struggle to overcome drought triggered by climate change nor the defeat of predatory ideologies can be won by waging conventional wars. Addressing the basic needs of individuals in developing countries, and helping their governments be more responsive and effective, are critical strategic capabilities necessary for the United States to protect itself and its allies around the globe.

Helping civilians abroad to improve their lives strengthens American security in three important ways. First, it supports long-term stability by improving the economic prospects of developing countries, decreasing the likelihood of violent conflict fueled by economic hardship or extremist ideologies that can spread in such an environment. Second, it strengthens America’s moral leadership in the world by increasing its reputation as a benevolent power, improving our ability to persuade other nations to support our foreign policy objectives. Finally, it serves immediate security objectives by channeling assistance to groups of people abroad that may harbor threats to the United States—diversifying the approaches available to combat the enemies of the country and its interests.

Each of these assistance missions—promoting stability, serving morality, and enhancing security—is crucially important to the United States in this changing global environment. The strategic purpose of assistance is increasingly clear, yet the method of providing it matters as well.

Assistance that is offered by civilians as a means of fighting poverty is viewed differently than is aid provided by uniformed military units fighting against global terrorist networks. To those on the receiving end, traditional development assistance provided by civilian agencies is a manifestation of our collective interests, and of an American commitment to improve the lives of others. Assistance to civilians delivered by the U.S. military, however, may be seen as undertaken in pursuit of America’s national interests. The civilian-led method is largely in pursuit of a development objective, while the military-led method seeks a security aim. Though both of these methods serves at least one of the three principal missions of promoting stability, serving morality, and enhancing security, the delivery of assistance must be pursued in a way that supports all three missions rather than privileging one over the other, even inadvertently.

Despite its traditional task of fighting and winning wars, the military has an important role to play as a development actor. Its focus on countering threats to the United States makes it well-suited to performing development activities linked directly to security objectives, both in combat zones and in more permissive environments. Yet the security mission of development cannot be separated from efforts to fight poverty, with ancillary benefits for promoting stability and strengthening America’s moral leadership in the world.

The military’s involvement in activities to improve the lives of civilians around the world has grown dramatically over the last five years. It is attributable not to an increase in humanitarian need, substantial as it may be, but to recognition that such need poses a threat to American interests. This is true in combat zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, in less hostile environments such as the Gulf of Guinea—where political instability threatens the free flow of oil shipments—and on Mindanao in the Philippines, where a long-active Islamic separatist movement challenged the authority of the central government and supported Al Qaeda.

Analysis

For a detailed examination of the changes to military doctrine, organization, operations, and funding that have resulted from this increase in development assistance, I would refer you to CAP’s report, “Humanity as a Weapon of War.” It is sufficient here to note that the changes have been substantial and that, in many cases, they have proceeded without significant public debate and analytical rigor to assess their efficacy, evaluate their costs, and understand their broader implications.

It is important to ask two critical questions regarding military humanitarian assistance. First, is the threat analysis leading to this increased involvement correct? Second, if it is correct, what should be the relative balance of the involvement between military and civilian organizations in the development sphere?

The threat analysis underlying increased military humanitarian assistance has great merit. One of the principal lessons from 9/11, as supported by the 2002 National Security Strategy, is that the social ills endemic to weak and fragile states can pose substantial threats to the United States. Many of these problems, from poor governance to conflict over basic resources, are not amenable to solution through the force of arms alone. Therefore, “nonkinetic” means must be used to address them, and often chief amongst these are various forms of development assistance.

The United States has an interest in two types of development assistance: fundamental and instrumental. Fundamental development assistance aims to improve the lives of beneficiaries as an end in and of itself, with potentially collateral strategic benefits to the United States. Agricultural assistance, for example, to farmers in Malawi is an effort at poverty reduction to improve the livelihoods of beneficiaries. Though the United States has no vital national interests at stake in Malawi, effort to bolster sustainable development there has the additional benefit of promoting national and regional stability by improving economic conditions for the populace. Instrumental development assistance, on the other hand, sees aid to beneficiaries as a means to an end, where the actual goal is a security objective that is abetted through humanitarian action. Well drilling operations by U.S. military units in northeastern Kenya may provide fresh water to remote communities, but the primary rationale for these activities is likely not the humanitarian need of the largely ethnic Somali population there. Rather, with chaos inside neighboring Somalia threatening the stability of the region and enabling the rise of extremism, using U.S. military assets to perform a humanitarian mission shows the face of American compassion to a skeptical population while also giving the military an eye on activity in the area.

The distinction between fundamental and instrumental assistance is particularly important to understand when considering the security environment in which the activities take place. Broadly speaking, we may consider two types: permissive and nonpermissive environments. Permissive environments are those where there is not a current armed conflict and where the host government has given permission for U.S. humanitarian and development work. Nonpermissive environments are those where there is an active armed conflict and/or where the host government cannot or will not give permission for U.S. humanitarian activities. Considering the relative strengths inherent in military and civilian organizations, the chart below gives a rough approximation for determining when and how they should be involved in development assistance activities.

Understanding how fundamental and instrumental development approaches should be balanced with one another, and what the relative roles of the military and civilian agencies should be in achieving them, is of critical importance. It is helpful to consider four broad criteria to make this assessment: determination of strategic objectives, comparative advantage of the provider, indicators of success, and normative considerations.

Strategic determination. The principal difference between fundamental and instrumental assistance is the extent to which improving the lives of beneficiaries through development activity is an end in itself or a means to an end. Furthermore, this distinction presumes that the ultimate objectives of instrumental assistance can be clearly defined.

Civilian development agencies, like USAID, have very different sources of strategic guidance than does the military. The National Security Strategy, as noted earlier, envisions a broad role for development assistance to strengthen failing states. Beyond that, however, there are few other documents or processes to help prioritize development objectives relative to other foreign policy priorities. The so-called “F” process was intended to do this, but falls short.

The military, however, has various levels of strategic guidance that personnel can use at headquarters and in the field to determine instrumental development objectives. The National Military Strategy, as well as Theaters Security Cooperation plans developed by each Regional Combatant Command, can be very useful in this regard.

Broadly speaking, instrumental development activities should only be undertaken if they can be linked to clear strategic objectives in support of U.S. national security interests. Otherwise, U.S. development activities should be fundamental in nature.

Comparative advantage. Civilian agencies and military units have different strengths to bring to development activities. USAID and its implementing partners have substantial experience to bring to bear on development projects. They often combine this with extensive local knowledge of the area where projects are performed, which is gleaned from a persistent presence in country. In the U.S. context, USAID has substantial legal authorities to engage in a wide variety of development activities, and can do so with relatively little expense compared to comparable activities performed by military assets (such as well drilling, humanitarian logistics, etc.). Finally, civilian development officials have a “humanitarian mindset” in which the first question they ask when addressing a development problem is “what is the humanitarian need?”

Though many observers often focus on the attributes such as logistical lift, money, personnel, and organization as the most important comparative advantages held by the military, I argue that a “security mindset” is the most important unique advantage that it has. Whereas civilian development experts look at a situation and ask “what is the need?” military actors often ask the question “what is the threat?” It is this perspective that makes the military a plausible, if not preferable, purveyor of instrumental humanitarian assistance. Furthermore, the military has a unique comparative advantage in providing security for itself and other U.S. agencies in hostile environments. Thus, military units may be the only actors that can provide humanitarian or development assistance in situations of armed conflict.

Indicators of success. Civilian development agencies are accustomed to applying measures of effectives to their projects. Some activities, such as providing emergency shelter or fighting acute malnutrition, are amenable to quantitative measures and therefore easier to identify as successes. Others, such as promoting democracy or mainstreaming gender considerations, are harder to quantify and rely on qualitative data for assessment. In both instances, however, fundamental development programs have a first-order task with regard to the assessment of their programs, where the only important metric is whether or not the lives of the beneficiaries have improved as a result of the projects completed.

Instrumental development activities have a second-order problem. That is, it is not enough to demonstrate that an instrumental development project has improved the lives of the intended beneficiaries to show that is has been successful. In addition, it must also be clear that improving the lives of the beneficiaries has advanced the strategic objectives for which the instrumental activity was planned and performed. It is easier to demonstrate the success of instrumental development projects in nonpermissive environments than it is in permissive ones. Assuming that a main objective of development activities in nonpermissive environments is to create stability and decrease violence—like providing basic jobs for disaffected Shia youth in Baghdad’s Sadr City in 2004—a key indicator of success would be the extent to which violent conflict is abated in the wake of development activities.

In permissive environments where there is no armed conflict, measuring the success of instrumental activities is harder. It is hard to know, for example, if the vaccination of local livestock in Manda Bay, Kenya, by U.S. military units actually advances U.S. national interests. Without such proof, it is difficult to justify this sort of instrumental development activity, or to know which development projects should be performed to support American security objectives. This is probably the most challenging aspect of the military’s involvement in instrumental development activities, and one for which Congress should demand accountability.

As of this date, there is no publicly available evidence that the military has a rigorous methodology for assessing the strategic effectiveness of their instrumental development activities. Nor is there is a clear rationale for military involvement in fundamental development activities in permissive environments. To the extent that it is engaged in instrumental activities in both permissive and nonpermissive environments, it must develop methodologies to measure their effectiveness. This ensures both accountability for taxpayer dollars and, as important, the efficacy of the activities themselves.

Normative considerations. Ethical considerations regarding what constitutes an appropriate development actor are not merely matters of philosophical debate. They have real consequences on the ground, ranging from which local and international partners can be engaged in performing projects to the level of acceptance one can expect from the local community and the host nation.

Though some development and humanitarian NGOs have restrictions on the funding they will receive from national governments, civilian governmental agencies such as USAID, USDA, and others are generally seen as legitimate development actors who can be cooperated with in the field. On the other had, there is widespread concern about the military serving as a development actor in nonemergency cases, in both permissive and nonpermissive environments. As a matter of principle, many NGOs reject the instrumental considerations on which they perceive military humanitarian assistance to be based. Focused on the well-being of the beneficiaries, they argue that humanitarian assistance performed for strategic motives ceases to be humanitarian by definition. In addition to these philosophical concerns, many NGOs also fear that the military’s involvement in the development sphere constricts humanitarian space and endangers civilian aid workers that may be perceived to be aiding and abetting military objectives.

Notwithstanding the significant reservations of the NGO community and other observers, I believe that the United States has an interest in the successful conduct of both fundamental and instrumental development assistance. As such, I also believe that the military can be an important development actor, particularly with regard to instrumental assistance. This requires a number steps to ensure that such activities are successful, that they account for the concerns of implementing partners, that they are acceptable to host nations and local beneficiaries, and that they are accountable to Congress and the American people.

Recommendations

The U.S. government in general, and the U.S. military in particular, have rediscovered the imperative of development assistance as a means of advancing U.S. security interests in a post-9/11 world. Yet the manner in which these initiatives have been pursued lacks the coherence necessary for them to be most effective. To execute a successful policy of sustainable security in which military humanitarian assistance plays a central role, six elements must be in place:

• A national consensus on development assistance
• Adoption of a National Development Strategy
• Cabinet-level development agency
• Support for both fundamental and instrumental assistance programs
• Dispersal of development personnel in critical positions in government and in the military
• Coherent and effective methodology for measuring the success of strategic humanitarian missions

National Development Consensus

To sustain support for the level of development activities essential for America’s interests, there must be a broad consensus among the American people regarding the importance of international development for America’s security as well as its values. Just as the vast majority of Americans broadly accepts the value of defense spending in protecting America—even though they may have differences on specific policies and programs—so must there also be a general agreement on the value of development assistance. While certain aspects of the defense and foreign policy elite accept this proposition, it is not widely shared in military or congressional circles, nor is it accepted by most Americans.

Building this consensus will require a concerted effort by a variety of advocates to educate both policymakers and the American public. Some of this is already happening. Defense Secretary Gates has made several speeches on this subject, as have other senior military leaders, among them the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Michael Mullen. USAID senior leaders have given speeches on particular aspects of civil-military cooperation in the development arena, such as regarding AFRICOM.

Changing public perceptions of development’s importance to our national security is a task that requires presidential leadership. When the commander-in-chief makes an argument that helping others to be secure directly contributes to our own security, the nation will listen. Indeed, it was precisely this argument that helped President Truman push the Marshall Plan through Congress, and President Kennedy to push the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which created USAID. Raising this issue in the next State of the Union Address or making a presidential foreign policy speech would help introduce the concept of sustainable security to the American people and spark interest in the non-military instruments we need to strengthen this approach.

Presidential leadership must be followed by assertive public engagement on the part of civilian development agencies. No one can tell the story of America’s global commitment to sustainable development and its contributions to our security better than the people who do the work every day. Yet their ability to do so is restricted by Section 501 of the U.S. Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (Smith-Mundt Act), which functionally restricts the ability of USAID to use public dollars to tell its story inside the United States. This legislation should be amended or repealed so that USAID, just like the Department of Defense, can tell the American people about the value of its work and continue to build public support for it.

National Development Strategy

If development assistance is to be a central component of U.S. national security policy, then it must be guided by an overarching strategy linking it to other instruments of national power, and must be applicable to all U.S. government agencies involved in development assistance, including the military. This will provide a framework for setting priorities in development assistance, delineating responsibilities among agencies, linking assistance to other instruments of statecraft, and allocating resources appropriately.

A National Development Strategy should outline how the country’s assets for development assistance will support the requirements outlined in the National Security Strategy, which is periodically produced by the White House. Modeled after the National Military Strategy, which provides broad guidance for the employment of the armed forces in support of national security objectives, the NDS should include the following elements:

• Overview of the global environment in which assistance takes place
• Explicit rationale for the role of development assistance in support of American foreign and national security policy
• Principles for effective fundamental and instrumental development assistance
• List of major development goals for the U.S. government
• Blueprint for an optimal development assistance bureaucracy, including responsibilities of relevant government agencies

As important as the final content of a NDS would be for U.S. foreign policy, the process of drafting it would yield useful benefits as well. The diversity of government agencies involved in delivering some aspect of development assistance means that a broad conversation including all of them would be required to draft a comprehensive strategy. Such a process would be invaluable for identifying and resolving tensions in < >U.S. development assistance.

The drafting of the NDS should also be led by the country’s leading development agency, USAID, but ultimately issued by the White House in order to have the authority necessary to coordinate actions across government agencies.

Cabinet-level development agency

To ensure that development assistance is appropriately accounted for in our foreign policy, the United States should create a cabinet level development agency. This would strengthen the likelihood that we will have a strong and consistent advocate for the resources, policies and personnel to support development activities that are vital for our national interests. Furthermore, it would be a more rational structuring of our government relative to those of our allies. Though the United States is the largest single donor of Official Development Assistance, we have no cabinet level agency to disperse those funds according to a clear development strategy.

Support for fundamental and instrumental development

If the United States hopes to promote its interests in combating extremism and promoting stability through the use of development assistance, then it must take steps to protect, promote coordinate and both the instrumental development projects which the military performs and the fundamental development programs managed by its civilian agencies.

The first step is for the government to make clear to its own agencies, to other governments, and to partner organizations that both the fundamental and instrumental assistance activities in non-combat environments are important to America’s interests. In large measure, this can be accomplished through the drafting and promulgation of a National Development Strategy that explicitly embraces a role for the military and for civilian agencies in providing development assistance.

Secondly, the division of labor between the military and civilian organizations should not simply be based on the duration of the project, but also on the principle of exception. Unless there is an explicit and near-term security objective that is the primary focus of a development project in a non-combat environment, then such an activity should generally be performed by civilian officials rather than military personnel. This will decrease the extent to which all U.S. development assistance—both fundamental and instrumental—could be skeptically viewed by beneficiaries and host nation governments. Furthermore, it is vital that the military’s objectives in performing development projects be both explicit and transparent to all parties involved.

Finally, budgets must be protected in such a way that the fundamental development missions performed by civilian agencies are not harmed in the budget process relative to Defense Department budgeting and legal authorities for instrumental assistance. Joint select appropriations committees from the foreign affairs and armed services committees of both houses of Congress could have concurrent jurisdiction over development funding, to ensure that both fundamental and instrumental missions are adequately resourced and overseen.

Dispersal of development expertise

Development programs performed by U.S. civilian and military personnel must be coordinated at all levels of government—in the field, at regional headquarters and embassies, and in Washington. One of the negative consequences of decreased funding for USAID over most of the last twenty years has been the dramatic downsizing of its cadre of experienced development professionals capable of being deployed all over the world. Not only has this limited the number of people available to develop and direct purely civilian development projects. It has also constrained the availability of development experts for details to the military and to important interagency assignments like service on the National Security Council staff.

As a result, many military development activities in the field (especially those outside of PRTs in Iraq and Afghanistan) have not had the benefit of direct and real-time support from civilian development experts on the ground. Further, the relative absence or under-representation of development experts at important policy and command centers has decreased the extent to which appropriate development concerns have been taken into account on important strategic issues.

There have been movements to rectify this. USAID is now sending Senior Development Advisors to each of the regional combatant command headquarters and more junior advisors to PRTs in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to CJTF-HOA on an ad hoc basis. Yet much more could be done. In Washington, there should be a senior director for development assistance at the National Security Council responsible for coordinating non-emergency development assistance worldwide.

In addition, USAID should send liaison officers to relevant bureaus in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Departments of State, Treasury, Agriculture, Commerce, Justice and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. In the field, USAID development officers should be assigned on a rotating basis to every deployable combat brigade in the U.S. Army and combat battalion in the U.S. Marine Corps to accompany them to the field and to instruct and train personnel in development tasks during their routine training cycles.

Methodology for Measuring Success

Of all the challenges involved in military humanitarian assistance, measuring success is perhaps the most difficult as well as the most vital. Determining whether or not a given assistance activity achieved a tactical or strategic objective, rather than merely being correlated with its occurrence, can be a very tall order.

Nevertheless, it is essential to have a methodology to link conclusively development outputs with tactical or strategic outcomes. Otherwise it is not possible to determine with much analytical rigor which humanitarian activities that military forces or their civilian counterparts should undertake to support certain security objectives. Furthermore, demonstrating the utility of specific development activities for security interests may prove necessary for continued congressional funding support for those programs as they proliferate in scope and scale.

Despite its importance, there is no publicly available evidence that the Pentagon has a successful methodology for measuring the causal success of its strategic humanitarian activities. It is essential that it create one in partnership with its civilian development counterparts, and that the results be made public in the interests of transparency.

Conclusion

The depravations of grinding poverty, environmental degradation, and poor governance are not entirely new dilemmas to the international community. Neither are the challenges posed by hostile nations and violent groups. Yet in an increasingly interconnected world, the depth of human suffering in far away lands can metastasize into concrete threats to the security of American citizens here at home. This 21st-century reality requires a new approach to American foreign policy, accompanied by the will to update outmoded processes and institutions to meet the challenge.

It is no longer enough for America to solely destroy its enemies to keep our country safe. We must also care for our friends, whether they be powerful states or impoverished people. This perspective, which is increasingly shared by defense and development professionals alike, is the rationale driving the military’s increasing involvement in providing assistance to local populations around the world. It is not an activity that should be rejected out of hand or accepted uncritically. Rather, we must work to ensure that military-humanitarian and development assistance is appropriately linked to broader U.S. foreign policy objectives, that it works in concert with other development priorities of the United States and our national partners, that it respects the concerns of the NGO community, and that it tangibly improves the lives of the beneficiaries it serves. This is a substantial challenge, but one that we must meet to serve our values, promote our interests, and support our friends around the world.

Thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before you today.

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“Because of the policies George Bush has pursued and John McCain would continue, the entire Middle East is more dangerous. The United States and our allies, including Israel, are less secure,” said Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) at a Center for American Progress Action Fund event on Tuesday.

McCain “does not have a plan” for Iraq, said Biden. The senator instead offered progressive alternatives to the foreign policy ideas that Sen. McCain (R-AZ) spoke about last week. McCain’s plan is “the same as President Bush’s plan: Stay, Stay in Iraq until the very last of Iranian influence is eliminated. Stay in Iraq until the last member of Al Qaeda is killed. Stay in Iraq indefinitely.”

Sen. John McCain said last week that he has soaring hopes of accomplishing the plans that have been set forth in regards to Iraq, and that he hopes to see the war ended by 2013. Sen. McCain and President Bush both also have insinuated that it would be a large mistake to leave before Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated. Unfortunately, they have yet to lay out the specific steps that they would undertake to bring about their desired objectives.

Biden challenged their plan, saying that it is imperative to bring home our troops without leaving chaos behind in Iraq. “We are spending $3 billion a week on this war, while losing 30 to 40 U.S. soldiers and personnel a month.”

“John continues to cling to the failed strategy of this administration, which is that it is possible to have a Shia-dominated central government, strong enough that it in fact controls the whole country, and has the support and confidence of the Kurds and the Sunnis. I wish that were true but I don’t believe in the lifetime of anyone in this room that will happen,” said Biden.

Biden argued that the costs of our involvement in Iraq have outweighed the benefits and have ironically strengthened the greatest challenge to U.S. interests in the region: Iran. But “the idea that we can wipe out every vestige of Iran’s influence in Iraq is a fantasy,” Biden said. “Even with 160,000 American troops in Iraq, Prime Minister Maliki, our ally in Baghdad, greets Iran’s leader with kisses—Iran is a major regional power and it shares a long border—and a long history—with Iraq. Right now, Iran loves the status quo, with 140,000 Americans troops bogged down and bleeding, caught in a cross fire of intra-Shi’a rivalry and Sunni-Shi’a civil war.”

Biden explained that by “drawing down, we can take away Iran’s ability to wage a proxy war against our troops and force Tehran to concentrate on avoiding turmoil inside Iraq’s borders and instability beyond them.”

“We are no closer to the President’s stated goal of an Iraq that can defend itself, govern it and sustain itself in peace,” Biden said, and “we can’t keep treading without exhausting ourselves and doing great and permanent damage to our vital interest around the world.”

For more on this event, please visit the events page

With little more than a year left in the Bush presidency, the United States risks slipping into what can best be described as strategic drift in Iraq. The United States cannot continue to muddle through in Iraq hoping that things will somehow get better. Drifting along has severe consequences for America’s security.

Strategic drift moves us further away from the goal of a unified and stable Iraq. President Bush claims that the current strategy is having some success, but toward what end? The president argued that the surge would give the political breathing space needed to achieve a unified, peaceful Iraq. But this success, which Bush claims comes from a reduction of casualties in certain areas of Iraq, has been accompanied by massive sectarian cleansing. The surge has not achieved progress; it has impeded progress toward the stated strategic objective of national reconciliation.

The other argument offered for an enduring and open-ended commitment of U.S. troops to Iraq is based on the possible negative consequences of withdrawing U.S. troops. The case rests on the false premise that any other option would fuel terrorism, regional conflict, and humanitarian disaster. But strategic drift forestalls the actual hard work needed to avoid these potential dangers and actually does little or nothing to prevent them. It promotes fear over reason and inertia over strategic clarity, keeping America paralyzed on a dangerous course.

Strategic drift weakens our security. Strategic drift poses the greatest threat to American national security. An open-ended commitment of U.S. troops in Iraq is weakening America’s security in four key ways:

• It undermines the fight against global terrorists.
• It continues to weaken U.S. military readiness.
• It risks getting U.S. troops caught in the crossfire of Iraq’s civil wars.
• It spends billions more on a strategy whose tactics do not add up to a realistic endgame.

Bush allies are abetting strategic drift. Bush’s allies have an incentive to let fear drive our foreign policy. While some have offered muted criticisms of the strategy or sought to divert attention to other challenges, conservatives believe that they fare well politically when they play to fear rather than reason.

Progressives are at risk of enabling strategic drift. Leading foreign policy voices and security institutes—some of the same ones who were wrong about going to war in Iraq in the first place and wrong about how to deal with the war’s first four years—have helped build a case that aids and abets the country’s slide toward strategic drift.

Progressives are frustrated because the president and his allies in Congress have obstructed their oversight of the administration’s Iraq policy. But they now risk drifting themselves into offering only a vague and muddled vision. Progressives must provide a clear alternative to counter the Bush policy of strategic drift—one that takes back control of America’s security interests.

A clear alternative: Focus on key U.S. national security interests. Progressives should start with a firm statement that America will undertake a strategic phased redeployment of its troops in a defined period of time. America’s interests, not Iraqi’s divided political leaders, will determine America’s timetable for redeployment.

This new approach should put key U.S. interests at the forefront—preserving Iraq’s unity as a functioning state that is not threatening to or threatened by its neighbors and does not have terrorist safe havens. Three steps are necessary to safeguard key U.S. interests in Iraq:

• Suspend training and arming forces in a deadly civil war. To guard against the threat of an even larger civil war, the United States should suspend efforts to train, arm, and support Iraqi forces—the tribal forces and citizens groups, as well as the Iraqi police and army units that do not demonstrate allegiance to Iraq’s national government. Continuing these efforts in the absence of some degree of national accommodation risks an even deadlier conflict.

• Broker a political settlement to Iraq’s conflict. As it redeploys troops, the United States should call for an inclusive emergency constitutional convention under the auspices of the United Nations to broker a national compact among Iraq’s competing factions. The goal of this constitutional convention would be to resolve the narrow set of core issues that prevent a stable Iraq from forming: delineating the lines of authority between the federal, regional, provincial, and local governments; striking an agreement on oil development; and settling differences over revenue sharing.

• Buffer Iraq’s neighbors from the effects of the conflict. As it redeploys, the United States should work with countries in the region on how to address the growing refugee crisis and how to contain Iraq’s conflict within its borders.

Action in Iraq. Progressive leaders do not need to wait until January 2009 to prevent strategic drift. They can start now by

1. Limiting the 2008 supplemental funding request
2. Continuing to emphasize measures to restore U.S. military readiness
3. Continuing to advocate a diplomatic surge to stabilize the Middle East
4. Working to update the United Nations mandate that expires at the end of the year to develop an integrated U.N. framework for brokering a political settlement among Iraq’s leaders and organizing international support for Iraq
5. Enforcing the Leahy amendment barring aid to known human rights abusers
6. Enacting laws that restrict and hold private military contractors accountable for crimes and abuses
7. Addressing the growing Iraqi refugee crisis

America’s Current Debate on Iraq

The United States’ current Iraq debate has three key dynamics: a lame duck president looking to hand Iraq off to his successor, a conservative movement promoting fear over reason for perceived political gain, and a progressive movement frustrated by a lack of change in Iraq policy and vague positions about what to do.

1. President Bush: Running out the Clock

At the end of 2006, President Bush had a real opportunity to fundamentally change the Iraq strategy. In the wake of the conservatives’ defeat in the 2006 midterm elections, the bipartisan Iraq Study Group offered a credible alternative based on the same pillars of the Iraq redeployment strategy presented by progressives—intensified diplomatic efforts combined with a phased drawdown of U.S. troops. President Bush ignored this alternative and doubled down on a risky surge. Just as they did in 2005 and 2006, Iraq war proponents now claim progress without offering strong evidence that the Bush administration’s Iraq policy is resolving the core issues of Iraq’s conflicts.

Too much of the Iraq debate during the past month has focused on whether additional U.S. troops and a different set of military tactics have stabilized certain parts of Iraq. This ignores the fundamental goal of President Bush’s surge—to give Iraq’s leaders the breathing space they need to make the fundamental political compromises necessary to stabilize the country. On this core objective, the surge has been a strategic failure. In fact, some of the military tactics, such as supporting forces linked to Sunni tribes, may very well be undermining national unity and setting back efforts to create cohesive Iraqi institutions.

While the administration has touted these partnerships as a form of “bottom up reconciliation,” it has not presented a plan for how to connect short-term gains made in some Sunni tribal areas with the national-level political process. The tactics being implemented on the ground do not support the stated goals of Bush’s Iraq strategy. The result is strategic drift in America’s Iraq policy—one that leaves fundamental questions in Iraq unresolved while continuing to undermine U.S. military readiness and drain precious resources away from other key fronts like Afghanistan.

2. Bush’s Conservative Allies: Replay 2002 and 2004

Conservatives have aligned themselves with the Bush Iraq strategy, just as they have done for the past four years. Some conservatives have offered muted criticisms of the Bush administration’s implementation and handling of the Iraq war, but they rarely question the main Bush strategy. At times some have sought to divert attention from Iraq to other challenges such as Iran and the fight against global terror groups—hinting at expanded military conflict. Conservative drumbeats on Iran—as well as the “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” earlier this month—demonstrate that some conservatives believe they will fare well politically if they play the fear card and paint their opponents as weak on security.

3. Progressives: Lacking Clarity

After driving the Iraq debate for the past two years, progressives risk slipping away from offering the clear strategic choice on Iraq. In 2005, progressives moved beyond criticisms of the Bush Iraq policy and offered a policy alternative centered on a phased strategic redeployment of U.S. troops combined with intensified diplomatic efforts to resolve Iraq’s internal conflicts and stabilize the Middle East.

Although the 110th Congress has exercised more oversight on Iraq policy than its conservative-led predecessor, President Bush and his conservative allies have obstructed the real change that most Americans want on Iraq. Progressives introduced measures aimed at holding the Bush administration accountable for delivering the stated goals of its Iraq policy. They mandated benchmarks aimed at measuring progress in Iraq and introduced measures that sought to restore military readiness by giving U.S. troops the rest they deserve.

Most conservatives fought these measures tooth and nail—they even opposed the effort to restore U.S. military readiness. Conservatives’ obstinate refusal to change the Iraq strategy exemplified by their use of Senate rules that make it difficult to pass anything without 60 votes, and some tactical security improvements in certain areas of Iraq led conservatives to conclude that they should remain closely tied to Bush’s strategy.

Progressives have drifted away from clear calls for redeployment and toward academic proposals and vague positions about what to do.

Last month’s Senate vote on a resolution suggesting a “soft partition” model of Iraq is yet another sign of muddle and drift. The “soft partition” plan envisions a decentralized Iraq built on three autonomous regions. It has been rejected by a majority of Iraqi leaders, opposed by a strong majority of the Iraqi people, and strongly criticized by powers neighboring Iraq because it is both impractical and academic and cannot be implemented without the support of Iraq’s leaders.

Other progressives have slipped toward advocating proposals that focus on tactical measures such as training Iraq’s security forces or addressing the spillover effects of Iraq’s internal conflicts on the region. None of these proposals cut to the heart of the national security threats posed by strategic drift—that the open-ended commitment of U.S. troops to Iraq is making Americans less safe and not resolving Iraq’s internal conflicts.

Pledging to continue training Iraq’s security forces without questioning whether our actions amount to essentially arming up different sides in Iraq’s internal conflicts risks further inflaming an already unstable Middle East. Talking vaguely about a political solution or accommodation among Iraq’s leaders without fully committing to a new strategy that helps Iraq’s leaders resolve their power-sharing disputes imperils tactical gains made in 2007.

The Dangers of Strategic Drift

Strategic drift in Iraq threatens U.S. security by undermining the fight against global terrorists, weakening U.S. military readiness, risking U.S. troops getting caught in the crossfire, and escalating financial costs.

Undermining the Fight Against Global Terrorists

With the bulk of America’s ground forces tied down in Iraq for the foreseeable future, the United States has less and less capability to respond to other contingencies around the world. Moreover, the war in Afghanistan—the central front in the war on terror—continues to suffer from a lack of focus of resources and attention, both of which have been committed to Iraq. Losing the war in Afghanistan would represent a major blow in the efforts to defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban and it would also undermine the credibility of the NATO alliance.

Weakening U.S. Military Readiness

The U.S. military—particularly the Army—is stretched to the breaking point. The drawdown in forces that President Bush recently announced would begin next spring is based not on conditions on the ground, but on the reality that the Army cannot continue to sustain such deployments.

Despite lowering its standards, the Army has been forced to offer an enlistment bonus of up to $45,000 to entice recruits, and the Army is losing captains and majors at a rate not seen since Vietnam. Meanwhile, the Marine Corps is floating proposals to redeploy from Iraq to take over the critical fight in Afghanistan—leaving the Army the burden of fighting an unpopular war under unprecedented strain. The National Guard has been forced to become an operational reserve, leaving the homeland vulnerable.

Strategic drift further weakens our military—both now and in the future—as unqualified people are taken into the military and future leaders leave the services.

Risking U.S. Troops Getting Caught in the Crossfire

As long as our troops remain in Iraq, there remains the potential for them to be caught in the crossfire of a more violent civil war or cross-border incursions. Iraq’s sectarian conflict could reignite at any time. American troops should not be put in such situations simply due to the inability of their leaders to formulate appropriate policies. Unfortunately, strategic drift makes such scenarios more likely. So long as U.S. troops remain in Iraq, some violent element will target them. Even with a reduced presence, Americans will continue to be killed in Iraq for an undefined strategic purpose. Our political leadership owes it to our men and women in uniform to clearly define the goals and purposes of their sacrifices, not drift along with ill-defined policies.

Escalating Financial Costs

The longer American troops stay in Iraq, the more it will cost American taxpayers. Money spent in Iraq is money that cannot be spent on other national security priorities, much less domestic ones. Including President Bush’s fiscal year 2008 supplemental funding requests, the war will cost nearly $610 billion—an average of over $100 billion a year and $100 billion more than Vietnam in real dollars. Continuing the war for another four fiscal years with 60,000 troops will cost close to $190 billion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the Iraq war, along with Afghanistan, could end up costing well over $2.4 trillion.

Abetting the Slide Into Strategic Drift in Iraq

Several leading foreign policy thinkers and security institutes—some of the same ones who were wrong about going to war in Iraq in the first place and wrong about how to deal with the war’s first four years—have helped build the case that aided the country’s slide into strategic drift. Instead of offering plans that clarify the current drift, they have perpetuated it by triangulating against supposedly “irresponsible” withdrawal plans. Just as conservatives in Congress have done, they have failed to question the flawed premises at the heart of the administration’s Iraq strategy.

Some progressive candidates have defaulted to policies of strategic drift because of legitimate fears about what might happen in Iraq, focused on three main concerns: terrorist sanctuaries, regional war, and humanitarian catastrophe. Yet ironically, strategic drift forestalls the actual hard work needed to avoid these potential dangers and does little or nothing to prevent them. Keeping tens of thousands of U.S. troops in Iraq until the end of the next presidential term not only serves to prolong these problems but also creates new ones.

The arguments for maintaining a large and enduring U.S. troop presence center on fear of what might happen, which is keeping America paralyzed on a dangerous more-of-the-same course. Just as more Americans and their elected officials should have questioned the faulty arguments and intelligence that led the United States into Iraq, they must now challenge the premises that would keep America trapped in Iraq’s quagmire.

Conservative False Premise Number 1: Maintaining an enduring U.S. troop presence in Iraq will make Americans safer from terrorists.

A vicious struggle for power among competing Iraqi militias and factions is the central security challenge in Iraq. Foreign terrorist groups represent only a small portion of the challenge. Iraq is a Shi’a majority country, and the Shi’a and Kurdish leadership strongly opposes the foreign fighters. In addition, Sunni tribal forces, acting well in advance of the surge of U.S. troops, formed local alliances to counter the foreign terrorist threat.

Maintaining a large U.S. troop presence in Iraq is counterproductive to combating global terror groups. The longer American troops remain in Iraq, the stronger the Al Qaeda narrative of America as an occupier of Muslim nations will grow. Al Qaeda in Iraq is on the run from its former tribal and insurgent allies, and the greatest terrorist danger emanating from Iraq is the propaganda victory that a protracted American presence gives to Al Qaeda central.

Moreover, Iraq’s overwhelming consumption of national security resources drains those same resources from fighting Al Qaeda central in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Securely ensconced in the mountainous tribal border regions, Al Qaeda has plotted several terrorist attacks against U.S. allies and military installations in Europe with impunity. As the recent attack against former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto shows, Pakistani militants are growing increasingly bold. The United States will not have the resources to adequately focus on its true enemy—Al Qaeda central—until it ends its strategic drift in Iraq.

Conservative False Premise 2: Maintaining an enduring U.S. troop presence in Iraq will prevent regional conflict.

The presence of U.S. forces largely positioned in the center of the country has not deterred recent Turkish threats to invade northern Iraq—it has been diplomacy that has forestalled a full-blown invasion.

Direct military intervention by most of Iraq’s neighbors is highly unlikely. Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Syria lack the conventional military strength and have numerous internal security challenges—including the presence of many Iraqi refugees in the case of Syria and Jordan—that make the case for direct military involvement weak. America can deter threats from Turkey and Iran by keeping forces in the region and developing a regional security approach that resolves cross-border tensions through intensified diplomacy.

Strategic drift actually increases the odds of regional conflicts. Developments in Iraq affect its neighbors’ interests, and these neighbors are pursuing their interests by military or other non-diplomatic means, even with the presence of more than 150,000 American troops. Turkey, for example, is threatening to pursue its interests in Iraqi Kurdistan militarily, while Iran continues to meddle with its paramilitary forces. In effect, the large American troop presence in Iraq has provided an incentive for neighboring states to pursue increasingly aggressive Iraq policies.

An enduring, long-term presence of tens of thousands of American troops in the absence of diplomatic activity is worse than the current situation: It does nothing to decrease the probability of regional conflict while leaving a vulnerable American force caught in the middle. Without a targeted diplomatic offensive combined with the redeployment of U.S. troops, there is little the United States can do to prevent regional conflict emanating from Iraq.

Conservative False Premise 3: Maintaining an enduring U.S. troop presence in Iraq is the only way to prevent humanitarian disasters and genocide.

Strategic drift has not prevented the current humanitarian disaster from taking place. Indeed, widespread sectarian violence has already taken place with the near-constant presence of over 130,000 American troops. Since the beginning of the surge, the number of Iraqis displaced inside the country has more than doubled—2 million are estimated to be displaced. According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 2 million Iraqis have fled the country, and tens of thousands take flight every day, often to squalid camps in Syria and Jordan.

The best way to prevent an even greater humanitarian disaster is to take the one step necessary to resolve Iraq’s conflict—declare that U.S. troops will redeploy by a date certain and use the departure as leverage to advance a political settlement between Iraq’s warring factions.

A Clear Alternative: Focusing on Key Interests as U.S. Troops Redeploy

Progressives should continue to advocate for a phased redeployment. The required strategic shift must start with a firm statement that America will redeploy its troops in a defined period of time. The United States must complete the military mission in Iraq at a time of its choosing, and not when Iraq’s divided leaders decide to take responsibility for their country’s affairs.

Progressives must understand that President Bush is seeking to hand off Iraq to his successor and that his conservative allies are unlikely to support the redeployment necessary to make Americans safer. With that in mind, progressives need to offer clarity about the choice they offer on Iraq. 

Progressives should provide a clear alternative to counter the Bush policy of strategic drift. This new approach should put key U.S. interests at the forefront—preserving Iraq’s unity as a functioning state that does not have terrorist havens and is not threatened by or threatening to its neighbors. It should also take steps to resolve Iraq’s internal struggles for power by working with the United Nations and other international actors to organize an emergency constitutional convention.

1. Preventing a Deadlier Civil War

The United States must work closely with the United Nations, other global powers, and neighboring countries to address inconsistencies between the competing processes of top-down national reconciliation and the new so-called “bottom up reconciliation” initiatives undertaken in recent months by the Bush administration.

For the first four years of the U.S. presence in Iraq, the Bush administration focused its efforts in Iraq on working to bring Iraq’s different factions together in a national political process. This process included extensive negotiations to bring Iraq’s Sunni community into the national government and achieve consensus on key power-sharing questions, as well as spending billions of dollars to create a unified Iraqi national security force.

President Bush presented the surge as an attempt to jumpstart the deadlocked national reconciliation and advance Iraq’s political transition. When this did not achieve results, the Bush administration shifted tactics, focusing on boosting the power of local groups that have questionable allegiance to the national government. This tactical shift risks making Iraq’s civil war deadlier by offering support to armed groups that question the legitimacy of Iraq’s central government.

Saddam Hussein’s ousting and subsequent Iraqi political developments have drastically altered the relationship between Iraq’s central, provincial, and local governments. The United States is currently facilitating further devolution by empowering Iraqi tribes and other sub-provincial armed groups to take matters of security into their own hands.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration does not seem to have linked the tactically driven devolution of power from a central government to tribal and other groups to a broader conception of a decentralized Iraq. Recognizing the phenomenon of decentralization would allow the United States to formulate policies based on the different conditions in different corners of the country.

The two main obstacles to overcome in integrating irregular Iraqi groups into a decentralized Iraqi polity are governance and security. At the core, the unresolved questions related to money and guns must be answered in order to link “bottom up” efforts to a national-level political solution.

To guard against the threat of an even larger civil war, the United States should suspend these efforts to train, arm, and support Iraqi forces—the tribal forces and citizens groups, as well as the Iraqi police and army units that do not demonstrate allegiance to Iraq’s national government. Continuing these efforts in the absence of some degree of national accommodation risks an even deadlier conflict.

2. Brokering a Political Settlement to Iraq’s Conflict

As it redeploys troops, the United States should call for an inclusive emergency constitutional convention under the auspices of the United Nations to broker a national compact among Iraq’s competing factions. The goal of this constitutional convention would be to resolve the narrow set of core issues that prevent a stable Iraq from forming; delineating the lines of authority between the federal, regional, provincial, and local governments; striking an agreement on oil development; and settling differences over revenue sharing.

The United States should support increasing the role of the United Nations in brokering a political settlement among Iraq’s leaders. The United Nations has played an important role behind the scenes at pivotal moments in Iraq’s political transition, and it has also helped organize international support for Iraq through the International Compact for Iraq. As it redeploys its forces, the United States should work more closely with the United Nations to develop the international support for helping Iraq’s leaders settle their differences.

3. Buffering Iraq’s Neighbors from the Effects of the Conflict

All of Iraq’s neighbors have concrete interests, and will pursue them by military means in the absence of political and diplomatic progress. The goal of U.S. political and diplomatic efforts with Iraq’s neighbors is to ensure they pursue their interests in ways that are productive to stability in Iraq and the region. The absence of such efforts ensures that they will pursue their interests in harmful ways. In the long run, the U.S. military alone cannot reshape the complex political dynamics. Nevertheless, the United States and other global powers can play an important role in mediating these conflicts and tensions.

The United States must recognize the fragmented nature of the neighbors’ interests in Iraq and tailor its diplomacy to address the different conflicts that drive the neighbors’ involvement. Therefore, while an overall regional contact group is necessary, it will be more useful to break up American diplomatic efforts into area-specific working groups.

For instance, the problem of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party, or PKK, would involve the United States, the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Iraqi government, and Turkey—and possibly Iran and Syria, who both have discontented Kurdish populations. A working group on Iraqi refugees would include Syria, Jordan, the United States, and the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees. Dividing up American diplomatic efforts can make the seemingly overwhelming multiple challenges of Iraq and its neighbors more manageable.

The United States needs to determine what its interests in the broader Middle East are and how best to attain them. The Bush administration and current proposals allow the United States to drift from crisis to crisis without any broad vision of how all the pieces fit and work together. The United States needs to fundamentally reconsider its policy in Iraq and the region; it cannot afford another presidential term of drift.

Action Items

Progressive leaders do not need to wait until January 2009 to prevent strategic drift. They can start now with the following actions:

1. Limit the 2008 Supplemental Funding Request

Last week, President Bush requested an additional $46 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other national security programs. This new request brings the cost of these wars to $196.4 billion in fiscal year 2008 alone. Progressives on Capitol Hill should seek to limit this funding by continuing to provide close oversight on the money requested.

During the past four years, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction has found that billions have been lost to waste, fraud, and abuse, and a number of independent organizations have cited major problems of corruption in Iraq. Congress should carefully examine the request submitted by the Bush administration for additional funding and trim off the unnecessary expenditures.

One option would be to set a goal to pare back the funding request by half. Two-thirds of Americans support reducing this funding request, including 43 percent who favor sharply reducing it. A key area to cut is excess spending on new weapons procurement such as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator or new EA-18G electronic warfare aircraft. These weapons systems should go through the normal budget process, not an emergency wartime supplemental. The time has come for progressive leaders to re-engage on the Iraq debate by refusing to grant the Bush administration another blank check.

A second limit Congress might pursue is traunching the funding for shorter periods of time—requiring the Bush administration to achieve tangible progress toward resolving Iraq’s internal conflicts and redeploying U.S. troops.

2. Continue Stressing Military Readiness

Congress was unable to gain support from conservatives on measures to enhance troop readiness earlier this year, but progressives should not give up on these efforts to support the troops. As the recent announcement that more National Guard units will be called up for duty in Iraq illustrates, the Army continues to be stretched thin by the war. A Webb-Hagel style amendment governing National Guard and Reserve deployments as well as active-duty forces should be considered.

3. Continue Advocating for a Diplomatic Surge

The main problem with strategic drift is its failure to conceptually integrate Iraq into the broader problems of the region. Congress can force the administration to make an attempt at this by mandating and providing funds for a diplomatic surge in the region. It should also support an expanded role for the United Nations in brokering a political settlement among Iraq’s factions and addressing the growing refugee crisis in the region.

4. Support an Expanded Role for the United Nations

As U.S. troops redeploy from Iraq, the United States should take steps to increase the role and involvement of the United Nations in mediating conflicts between Iraqi factions and organizing international support for Iraq. The United Nations has already played a key role at pivotal moments in Iraq’s political transition, and it was instrumental in organizing the International Compact for Iraq. To help Iraq’s leaders settle their differences, the United States must take steps to disengage from Iraq’s internal politics and get others to mediate. The current U.N. mandate authorizing the presence of U.S.-led coalition forces expires at the end of 2007, and the United States should use this pivotal moment to lead an international dialogue to reorganize and boost support for Iraq.

5. Enforce the Leahy Amendment

Congress should begin efforts to hold U.S. assistance to the Iraqi security forces to the same standard it holds other American security assistance by enforcing the Leahy amendment, which calls for stopping aid to known human rights abusers. An effort along these lines could also identify Iraq units and commanders complicit in atrocities and put them on notice that their misdeeds will not go unpunished.

6. Restrict and Hold Private Military Contractors Accountable

Last month’s incident in which private military contractor Blackwater was involved in killing 17 Iraqis in Baghdad highlights serious problems with how these organizations operate. The Iraqi government has taken steps to restrict their work in Iraq. And Congress should enact legislation that limits the type of work private contractors do, getting them off the battlefield and back into support roles. 

7.  Address the Growing Iraqi Refugee Crisis

The United States has a moral obligation to help Iraqis displaced by the conflict, particularly those who risked their lives working with the U.S. military and diplomatic personnel. The United States should increase its financial assistance to help neighboring countries meet the needs of Iraqi refugees and increase the number of Iraqis allowed in the United States from 7,000 a year to 100,000 a year.