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(Gen. Lauris Norstad - leaving the picnic early)

As my colleague Jason Sigger over at C&L pointed out this morning, it's been hard getting other NATO allies to commit their fair share of troop strength during the current Afghan crisis. Sad to report, it's always been that way.
In fact, it's had wide ranging political ramifications for quite some time. As evidenced by this Meet The Press interview from January 1963, then NATO Commander General Lauris Norstad was asked why it was difficult to some NATO allies (in that case France) to commit to a security force in the region of Europe.

Marquis Childs: “General Norstad, during your six years as Supreme Commander of NATO, one of the important duties was to try and persuade the French, and in the last four years President DeGaulle, to integrate his forces with NATO. But progressively the direction has been the other way, toward not . . toward against integration. What is your explanation for this?

Norstad: “Mister Childs you’re laying a tremendous responsibility on my shoulders, I’m not so sure I deserve all of this. But, to answer your question, I think General DeGaulle has made it extremely clear throughout the years, and perhaps particularly in his press conference earlier . . last week that he feels very strongly that France must have some independent strength. He is increasing the strength of France including the military strength, but he is not putting it within the Alliance. I may deplore this, as a matter of face I have deplored this, but I think we should recognize first that he is increasing strength. I hope that circumstances, and these are political considerations and not military considerations as you appreciate – I hope that circumstances will permit him to commit these forces to the Alliance in the future.”

Granted, Norstad was a big believer in nuclear weapons as a viable and active option. Something that staggers the imagination today. But even at the height of the Cold War, it was difficult to get support from a unified NATO without walking through a political minefield in order to do it. It was widely thought the fallout between Norstad and DeGaulle quickly aided in his premature resignation from his NATO command

It begs the question just why there still is a NATO, since it really was the byproduct of the Cold War and could be considered something of a historic curio. But I will leave that up to my colleagues to discuss at length and with better information at their disposal.

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September 30, 2009 News Corp

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(A new word entered our lexicon of shame: "Ethnic Cleansing")

Seems there's no such thing as an Average April day in history, unless its one draped in conflict and upheaval. April 22, 1994 - a ten minute capsule via The CBS World News Roundup. The stepped up violence in Bosnia, former President Nixon on his deathbed, ousters of Prime Ministers in Japan amid corruption charges and the full horror of genocide in Rwanda only starting to be realized. Just a normal day in April.

(Some people still don't know what happened, or even where Rwanda is)

January 26, 2009 CNN

The UN says Zimbabwe's government is hiding the full scale of its cholera epidemic. Original video from the UK's Sky News.

Nicole Belle sent me a link today about a report by Physicians for Human Rights on the horror story Zimbabwe has become:

PHR found that the Mugabe government has withheld food aid, seed, and fertilizer to rural provinces in order to starve political opponents; that the regime nationalized and then withheld routine support for municipal water and sewer systems from cities that elected political opponents; that the health care infrastructure and the economy itself is nearing utter collapse; corruption is the rule not the exception; and that the regime brutally silences critics to cover its crimes, profound corruption and incompetence (see report here).

“While we were there,” Frank Donaghue, CEO of Physicians for Human Rights told Religion Dispatches, “human rights activists were imprisoned and tortured.”

“People think that the most compelling problem is cholera,” he said (and indeed, the cholera outbreak has been widely reported). But, adds Donaghue, it is also a symptom of more profound underlying problems. “The issue is the collapse of the government, the economy, and the health system” he said. “Human waste is running down the streets. Kids are playing in it. The sewage system is in such bad repair that you get sewage in tap water.”

 and added:

This could so easily be a big foreign policy headache for Obama, too easily reminiscent of the Clinton policy in Rwanda -- with Hillary Clinton at State...

And it wouldn't hurt progressives to get out ahead on this

Nicole's correct. But what to do? I just don't see the US being able to act alone or cobble together another Coalition of the Willing without the UN's blessing. Mugabe is as nutz as the neocons would like us to think Ahmadinejad is and has the military's backing - sanctions and political pressure likely won't do a thing. Zimbabwe has only 30,000 of an army and an almost non-existent airforce so intervention by force would be a "cakewalk"...in the primary (invasion) phase...

But then there's the many short and long term drawbacks of yet another invasion and occupation to consider. South Africa's support and basing agreements would be essential. There would certainly be an insurgency of some kind. Accusations of colonialism and imperialist invasions would echo and probably rightly so. The US and others are still not set up for nation-building. The UK already has military contingency plans in place but has said clearly it won't go it alone for these very reasons.

The best bet, to my mind, would be a UN-mandated relief effort, protected by a UN-mandated force - which would have to include African troops. That's likely inadequate to the problem, but it's what's feasible in both short and long terms and a bit of help is better than no help at all.

The situation is certainly dire enough that PHR is asking for UN intervention.

Control of Zimbabwe's shattered health system should be handed over to the United Nations, an independent doctors group has demanded.

As the official death toll from the country's cholera epidemic yesterday topped 2,000, Physicians for Human Rights said government corruption was killing innocent people. The international doctors' group also called for President Robert Mugabe to be investigated by the International Criminal Court at the launch of a report titled Health in Ruins – A Man-made Disaster in Zimbabwe.

Is Zimbabwe a justified cause for a UN-approved coalition empowered under the Responsibility to Protect principles as ratified at the 2001 ICISS summit and recognized under UN Security Council Resolution 1674 (2006)?  This resolution technically commits Security Council members to intervene in situations like this (if they are deemed to qualify as "genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity").

At that point, the first problem becomes one of getting such a resolution passed. China, which is heavily invested in Zimbabwe and thus the Mugabe government, might well veto any such move and some of Zimbabwe's neighbours including SA wouldn't be too happy at the prospect of refugees streaming across their borders. The second problem, of course, would be affording such a military-supported relief effort in the midst of an economic crisis. The third, stopping Zimbabwe turning into another quagmire.

Until recently, I thought that negotiations between the government and its main rival might provide a solution, but now it's obvious they won't. I'm not entirely opposed to the notion of using force for humanitarian interventions but I am very opposed to the notion that a new Zimbabwe effort would also open the door to more of the same after Iraq slammed it closed good and hard. The neo-whatevers, who have always loved war more than the humanitarian reasons they advance for those wars, would just love that. Since I'm no longer certain as to what to think, so this post is by way of asking for thoughts and debate.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

December 29, 2008 C-SPAN
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made a statement about the humanitarian situation in Gaza following Israeli military attacks against Hamas targets. Then other officials provided statistics and details of the scope of the crisis and responded to questions from members of the press. Senior United Nations officials reported from the field by video link. See more CSPANJunkie Videos here.

Via my Newshoggers colleague Anderson comes this:

By a vote of 180 in favour to 1 against (United States) and no abstentions, the Committee also approved a resolution on the right to food, by which the Assembly would “consider it intolerable” that more than 6 million children still died every year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday, and that the number of undernourished people had grown to about 923 million worldwide, at the same time that the planet could produce enough food to feed 12 billion people, or twice the world’s present population. (See Annex III.)

The Bush administration, speaking for the U.S.A., therefore must consider it tolerable that 6 million children die every day - children who could be fed if we weren't wasting billions on stealth fighters, littoral combat boondoggles and non-effective defense against non-existant ballistic missiles from Iran.

Just so you get that, here it is again:

In favour: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Chad, Chile, China, Colombia, Comoros, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte d’Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Micronesia (Federated States of), Monaco, Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Republic of Korea, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Tajikistan, Thailand, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United Republic of Tanzania, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe.

Against: United States.

Merry Christmas to the World from Dubya and his chums - who are currently geeing up the notion that an increase in defense spending (say, to 4% of GDP) would be a great economic stimulus package! Actually, it wouldn't - defense spending "drains resources from the productive economy" and costs more jobs in other sectors than it creates.

How much better an economic stimulus - both for America and the world - it would be to mobilize American might for good instead of destruction, Dubya and his fellow travellers remain silent upon.

December 22, 2008 BBC World
The fate of British forces in Iraq was hanging in the balance on Monday after parliament delayed a crucial vote to give the troops a legal basis to remain after a UN mandate expires in 10 days' time.

The US military is building a new barracks for an expected 20,000 additional troops in Afghanistan. Various luminaries are calling for new strategies there, ones that recognise the military reality that force alone cannot "win" in Afghanistan and the geopolitical reality that no efforts at all can "win" if Pakistan is opposed to them. Turkey is mediating between Pakistan and Afghanistan in an attempt to acheive reconcilliation between the two sometime-rivals and the incoming Obama administration plans a new aid and training program to attempt to reverse the inexorable decline of what used to be an Afghan success story.

But all may be missing an important point - the war in Afghanistan should be over, and the mandate for a US and allied presence there has lost its rationale. Doug Saunders, writing in Canada's Globe and Mail on Friday, noted that the Western presence in Afghanistan is authorised under Chapter VII of the UN Charter:

Article 51 of Chapter VII guarantees “the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations” – in this case, the al-Qaeda attacks against the U.S. and other countries launched from within the former Taliban administration in Afghanistan. As the UN and the ISAF members have repeatedly asserted, preventing a future Sept. 11 is the raison d'être of the Afghan war. Everything else, no matter how noble, is time-filler.

But there's no longer an Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan.

Earlier this year, I visited several regions of Afghanistan and asked military leaders in regions held by British, Canadian and U.S. forces how many al-Qaeda fighters they were seeing within the country's borders. In all cases, the answer was “none.”

...Afghanistan-based writer Anand Gopal is probably the most well-connected observer of the insurgent groups. He has come to the same conclusion as my Globe and Mail colleague Graeme Smith, who has conducted video interviews with dozens of Taliban fighters and found no sign of al-Qaeda sympathies.

“The Afghan rebellion remains mostly a homegrown affair,” Mr. Gopal wrote last month. “Foreign fighters – especially al-Qaeda – have little ideological influence on most of the insurgency, and most Afghans keep their distance from such outsiders. Al-Qaeda's vision of global jihad doesn't resonate in the rugged highlands and windswept deserts of southern Afghanistan.”

Our soldiers are authorized to oust the Taliban, but only insofar as those “Taliban” are the ones who are going to allow al-Qaeda to operate again.

And, as several analysts have pointed out, the presence of Western forces in Afghanistan, along with the karzai government's rampant corruption and inefficiency, are what now drives Taliban militancy in Afghanistan. Western forces have become more a part of the problem than a solution. Saunders concludes:

Al-Qaeda is gone, and not likely to return. To the extent that it is still around, it's because we're attracting it.

If both those statements are true, then no matter how ugly it looks, the war's over.

It could perhaps be argued that there's a new mission in Afghanistan, one just as important in its own way as the original one. But that would miss an important point - there is no longer any rationale for the current UN mandate for the occupation of Afghanistan. We've already seen too many times the negative consequences of "mission creep", not least of which is the undermining of international law and of UN mandates themselves, if they can be stretched like taffy to cover eventualities they were never intended to. If there's a new mission, it needs a new authorisation and a clearly defined set of objectives. If there isn't, then it's time to bring everyone home.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

    The International Atomic Energy Agency's head, Mohammed el-Baradei, has warned that the Agency faces an increasingly uphill struggle in its essential non-proliferation role due to a measly budget.

Opening the IAEA's annual assembly, Mohamed ElBaradei called for urgent steps to increase funding of the U.N. watchdog, modernise equipment and enhance its legal authority to verify the nature of nuclear programmes in suspect countries.

"We have really reached a turning point. Years of zero (real) growth budgets have left us with a failing infrastructure and a troubling dependence on voluntary support which invariably has conditions attached," he said.

"This is not just about money. We do not work in a political vacuum. Political commitment to the goals of the agency needs to be renewed at the highest level," ElBaradei told the IAEA's General Conference at its Vienna headquarters.

"It would be a tragedy of epic proportions if we fail to act (for lack of resources) until after a nuclear conflagration, accident or terrorist attack that could have been prevented."

The IAEA's budget, which at present stands at only 340 million euros ($490 million), must stretch to cover investigations of places like Iran, Syria (and soon maybe Israel -it's on the Agency's agenda finally), inspections in dozens of countries, testing, education programs and safeguard monitoring. El Baradei says that the Agency's work is presently "seriously compromised" by the lack of money.

Yet this might be OK with some nations, who apparently want the Agency hamstrung because they are consistently late in sending their contributions. Last July, the Agency warned that if some member nations didn't pay up quickly, it would be broke by September. In 2006, the Bush administration still owed the IAEA over a third of it's contribution, over $14 million. Enough money always does eventually come in to keep it operating, but there are suspicions that the money comes with strings attached, forwarding those nation's agendas in return.

Everyone says the IAEA is essential, but no-one wants to put their money where their mouth is. Maybe Obama should. It would be a good contrast to Republican zeal for bypassing arms control agreements and waving sabers at every opportunity.