Small Straws In A Stiff Wind

There are weeks when the Geek has regretted his lifelong interest in matters of war, diplomacy, and the shadow lands of covert/clandestine affairs.  The past month of so has been one of those periods.  It is not that the world has suddenly been infected by a fulminating virus of peace and love.  Quite the contrary.  Rather the intellectual languor has been promoted by the combination of events having unfolded in a drearily predictable factor and the lack of imagination exhibited by the Deep Thinkers and Bold Actors on all sides of all the many conflicts, armed and otherwise.

A useful example of both predictability and the lack of imagination is presented by the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki.  The energetic dismantlement of the New Mexican borne cleric is both welcome and long overdue.  The fact that he was accompanied on his trip to paradise by the one time resident of North Carolina, Samir Khan, rendered the event all the more pleasurable.

Anyone with even the most cursory knowledge of the UAV campaign in the FATA and the building of a base convenient to Yemen from which Agency operated Predators might make their lethal flights well understood that Awlaki's days were numbered, and that the number was small.  The violent death of the genius of Internet (and personal) radicalization became as certain as sunrise when he was placed on the "kill or capture" list last year.  Despite the inevitable wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth by the ACLU and other advocates of human rights above the dictates of real life, and regardless of the equally certain condemnations of "extrajudicial execution" already resounding around the world, the Obama administration by it's listing of the imam let it be known that the governing considerations were those of war--a war in which Awlaki had voluntarily enlisted and waged with ever growing success.

With the failure a few months ago to capture Awlaki by a force of Yemeni personnel backed by USSOCOM assets, the only option was killing, and the only practical tool was provided by a Predator launched Hellfire.  The only time limits were imposed by the requirements for constructing an operational base and gaining from both Yemeni and national technical means sufficient actionable intelligence.  When fractured open source reports out of Yemen a couple of weeks ago indicated a diminishing of drone traffic over the area of Yemen in which Awlaki's tribe holds sway with a ramping up over territory to the country's north, it became evident that the endgame for the preacher was underway.

The removal of Awlaki and Khan from the board is good.  But, it is drearily predictable that it is not much more than that.  The strike in no way lessens the nature or effectiveness of the threat posed by al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP).  Had the reported inclusion of AQAP's chief bombmaker in the body count not been later retracted, the Hellfire would have well and truly hurt the group.  As it is, the most that can be said is the killing has had a marginal beneficial impact by reducing AQAP's capacity to use Internet radicalization with the same effect in the future that it has in the past.

Neither the killings nor the knee trembling on the part of human and civil rights lawyers and groups will change the nature of the ongoing war between advocates of violent political Islam and the civilized states and people of the world.  The bad guys will keep on being bad actors.  The administration and any future one as well will use whatever means are necessary within the broad limits of proportionality to defend the country and its allies against attacks of whatsoever nature.

If there is any alteration in the future, it will be in the direction of placing increased reliance upon UAVs and other means of long range, low signature, low cost of commitment war fighting.  The use of special forces teams and UAVs has been both tested and proven in the harsh laboratory of the FATA as well as the one next door in Pakistan.  Both capabilities can be of great assistance in countering the potential threats resident in AQAP, al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM.)  Both may be required urgently against the latter threat if AQIM demonstrates greater capability as the result of having tapped into the arms stream flowing from the looted arsenals of Libya.

A greater use of UAVs will provoke an enormous consternation on the part of the usual suspects--the NGOs involved with human and legal rights as well as the apologists for countries which wish ill to the US but cannot match the American technological capacities.  There will be more and more political strange bedfellows both domestic and international as the US leans more heavily upon the impersonal, remotely controlled deliverers of death from above.  There will be demands beyond count for new conventions to bar such devices as Predator.  There will be calls for a moratorium on the use of these infernal machines until the law can catch up with the new technologies.

The only reply to those who believe the Predator and its tribe are inhuman and inhumane is,"Phooey!"  It is far better for a single Awlaki to die downrange than to see real war with its effects, unpredictable in detail but certain to include hundreds if not thousands of dead--most of whom will be civilians.

The Predators will continue to fly over Libya even long after NATO's warplanes have packed up and gone home.  They will be overhead to observe not only the intended targets of weapons being smuggled or saboteurs preparing but also the probable agony of protracted internal war as the joy of liberation turns into the pain of political disagreements of a very fundamental nature.

Libya (and its neighbors, Tunisia and Egypt) is also drearily predictable.  Much of the reason for this observation is found in a remark made by a Salifist Tunisian, 23 years old and holder of a degree in engineering who, when interviewed, opined, "We Salifists are the majority.  Democracy is rule of the majority.  Why should we allow the minority (secular oriented Tunisians as well as their non-Salifist fellow countrymen) dictate how we should live?"

By this question as well as similar content expressions by legions of Egyptians, Libyans, Tunisians, and their supporters in the West, the young man demonstrated just why the "Arab Spring" will turn into a Winter, a most harsh and bitter Winter.  The promoters of democracy show they well understand democracy in and of itself but fail to see the necessary corollary: Democracy is the tyranny of the majority.

Unless properly constrained within the firm dikes of a representational republic and held in check by dams formed by both division of powers and an independent judicial system, democracy is tyranny pure and simple in which the rights of the minorities are either non-existent or tenuous at best.  In the rush to embrace democracy without the time necessary to build the essential dikes and dams, no citizen is secure, no rights and liberties are permanent, nothing is safe from the fads and fantasies of public opinion and the winds generated by demagogues.

Libya, unlike Egypt or Tunisia, but quite like Yemen and Afghanistan or other Islamic states, has the additional burden of tribalism.  This is not to say tribalism is bad.  It isn't.  Tribal identity is predominant in several states to the point that they are not real, integrated nation-states but rather collections of tribes sharing a flag.

The attempt to force tribal based societies and polities to pretend they are Western nation-states is doomed to fail.  Don't believe?  Take a look at Somalia.  It is not a failed state because it never was a real state.  Rather it was an artifact created by Western diplomats who used the only model making sense to them--the nation-state.  The same is true of Afghanistan.  Much of the inherent instability there results from ignoring the tribal nature of the human terrain in order to pretend we can make it into a Western style state.

When looking at Libya or Yemen or, to a lesser extent, Syria, the same dynamic is present--tribes forced to act as if their members owed a higher loyalty to the state.  The example of Iraq is instructive here.  As long as we outsiders insist on democracy and the nation-state as the touchstone of legitimacy, we are helping to doom the targets to a long, harsh Winter.

Even if tribalism of the usual sort is absent as it is in Egypt and Tunisia, there is a functional equivalent at work. That is the existence of differing interpretations of Islam and thus the relation of the faith to the state.  The ground truth is Islam carries the seeds of its own failure as a foundation of state.  This actuality has been shown in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  People may think they want to live in a Shariah based system until they are actually in one.  The proponents of austere Islam have and will find that their vision of life is totally unattractive to most people.  Then, they must (as do the austere Islamists of Iran) rely upon naked force to oppress their way to continued power.

Put together, the two forms of tribalism, traditional and religious, along with unchecked democracy point to a long, bitter Winter of pronounced discontents.  This, in turn, implies a high possibility of protracted or episodic internal war in all its manifold and evil forms.  Such is the result of ill-advised exercises in "nation-building" or regime change or support of the "peoples' will.

Coming full circle, the several downsides of either intervention or unthinking support are circumvented completely by using Predators or even special forces units.  These approaches to defending against hostile intents and acts minimize the probability of unintended consequences.  Predators do not engage in "nation-building," neither do they change regimes.  They kill people in serious need of being killed.

To this end, the killing of Awlaki is one important small straw in the very stiff winds of the coming Arab Winter.

The Next Ten Years

The US (and a hell of a lot of other countries) is approaching the zero point marking the official start of "The Global War On Terrorism (GWOT.)"  To err on the side of accuracy, the US had already been in a war against advocates of violent political Islam for eight years when the hijacked passenger aircraft were turned into cruise missiles.

Osama bin Laden had dispatched his declaration of war against the US six years earlier, but few here paid any attention.  Two years before that, violent political Islamists only semi-associated with al-Qaeda had tried to take down the World Trade Center with a VBIED.  The Clinton administration in the lawyerly way which typified that brand treated this informal, undeclared act of war by a non-state actor to be a criminal offense rather than an act of overt aggression.  The later al-Qaeda sponsored attacks on the USS Cole, the Khobar Towershousing complex in Saudi Arabia, and the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania did merit a military response of a limited and highly irrelevant sort.  The dispatch of Tomahawk missiles rather than FBI teams must have bothered the peace loving Clintonites--and was equally ineffective.

The 9/11 strikes could not be termed other than an act of war even if the aggressor was a non-state actor.  It was Afghanistan's misfortune to be the state on whose territory and under whose protection the attack was planned and launched.  It was even more unfortunate that the head of the Taliban government (if that term is truly apposite), Mullah Omar, valued Islamic hospitality over the territorial integrity of his country or the lives of his fellow Afghans.

Nearly ten years later there is little doubt but the original al-Qaeda is all but dead.  At the least this particular band of violent political Islamists has been organizationally weakened to the point it presents no direct threat to the US or other "infidel" states.  The same cannot be said of Taliban, particularly as it appears that the US and its allies are seeking a political accommodation with the group and are supported in this by at least some critical segments of the Kabul regime.

Neither can there be any optimism about success having been achieved against any of the many groups espousing and practicing violent political Islam which have come into existence since 9/11.  Some of these have consciously adopted the al-Qaeda brand name or claimed affiliation with the legendary name of the initial group and its leader.  Two of these, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), constitute very real threats to the nations of the West as well as regional states.

As between the two al-Qaeda franchises, the first, AQAP, is the larger menace.  Located in the rapidly disintegrating state of Yemen, AQAP has not only established a strong presence (effectively becoming the government of at least one province), it has brokered relations with two African entities, al-Shabaab in the fictional country of Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.  Because of its successes to date and apparent prospects for doing even more in the months and years to come, AQAP has become the  new focus of the Americans as they pursue the GWOT.

The US is currently planning to ramp up its use of armed UAVs with the goal of replicating the success in targeted assassinations enjoyed in the FATA of Pakistan.  The use of the highly lethal unmanned platforms over the past two years in particular has been largely responsible for the emasculation of al-Qaeda and the progressive reduction of Taliban's ability to conduct hard target operations.  The Obama administration believes the Predators and Reapers can work the same grim magic in Yemen against the AQAP.

The ongoing political crisis in Yemen with its prospect of internal war gives a new urgency to the challenge of defeating AQAP before its creative bomb makers can score a success or before the American born and educated immam, Anwar al-Awlaki, can smooth talk another incomplete personality into undertaking a one man martyrdom operation.  Should an Awlaki guided suicide bomber or a well concealed package bomb penetrate US security with a resultant high body count, it would be difficult or impossible to avoid sending the troops one more time to a land filled with inhospitable terrain and flatly hostile people.

Awlaki is a mediagenic fellow.  AQAP's online publication Inspire is equally attractive to the Western media. The past bombing attempts by AQAP have been noteworthy in both the imagination behind them--and their failure.  Overall AQAP has attracted a very great deal of attention and generated a significant amount of apprehension without having actually done anything significant outside of Yemen.

In short, AQAP is far more shadow than substance.  AQAP is, in the deathless words of Chairman Mao,  "a paper tiger."

The fear that AQAP will slide easily into power in Yemen as the state energetically disassembles is overstated.  There are a couple of reasons for this push back against the conventional wisdom.

The first is the tribal nature of Yemen's population.  AQAP is primarily supported by one tribe, the one from which Awlaki springs.  Other tribes are not thrilled by taking orders from either AQAP or its tribal sponsor.  They will fight to preserve their autonomy and the privileges which go with it.

The second reason is the Salifist austerity of the AQAP is not compatible with the views of most Yemenis.  In those cities where AQAP has been able to establish dominance in recent months, the locals have bridled rapidly when confronted with the severe limitations the Salifists place upon life and its few pleasures.  This is in keeping with prior experiences in both Iraq and Afghanistan where the austere advocates of violent political Islam outwore their welcome with surprising speed.  Salifists from Kabul to Somalia have proven themselves to be their own worse enemies.

The combination of popular rejection and tribal hostilities automatically limits the probability or even the possibility of AQAP exercising an increasing sway in the ruins of Yemen.  Their natural support base is too deficient to provide for long term, unchallenged authority.  They would not even find the same percentage of initial support as Taliban had in its first year or two in power.  (And, never forget, Taliban never had a firm hold on the non-Pushtu population of Afghanistan.)

There is an important caveat to this.  Should the US kill too many civilians, the base of support for AQAP will grow rapidly.  This is not to say Yemenis will embrace either Salifist religious ideology or necessarily support AQAP's agenda of violent political Islam.  They will simply seek to resist the Americans who are killing their kinsmen.

Reports out of the FATA are contradictory, but the many which point at increased animosity directed at the US as a result of the Predators killing non-combatants should not be discounted.  Neither should they be diminished.  The Afghans have demonstrated great antipathy over the killing of civilians by US and allied forces.  The same animosity is not shown regarding the deaths of civilians caused by Taliban bombs and bombers.  In both the FATA and Afghanistan, the locals expect their Muslim civilians to be killed by Muslim combatants.  It is OK.  A fact of life.  But, they do not cotton up to being killed by infidels.

When the infidel Predators cause collateral fatalities in Yemen, the first result will be the engendering of hostility to the US and those Yemenis who support or are seen as supporting the US.  The winner would be AQAP.

The US is facing the prospect of a self-fulfilling prophecy in Yemen.  In the attempt to stamp out a menace which does not yet exist, we are in danger of creating a genuine menace which cannot be stamped out.

We did this once before.  In Vietnam.  The bombing campaign directed against infiltration into South Vietnam by North Vietnam which did not exist prior to the commencement of the bombing resulted in the North starting up infiltration of supplies and trained manpower which could never be stopped.

Arguably, we are doing much the same today in the FATA although the prospect may very well be overstated.  But even in an overstated form, any bolstering of the Taliban or Haqqani network is not in our better interests. So far, the balance between positive and negative effects in the FATA has been on the plus side of the ledger. However, that is not a proof of concept which should be used to justify the employment of UAVs in Yemen.

Right now, the least-worst option is using the Predators in a watch and wait role only.  The situation in Yemen is to tenuous to run the risk of tilting affairs in favor of AQAP.  Watch, wait, and try to work sub rosa to help the Yemeni themselves contain and finally eliminate the adherents of violent political Islam.  Odds are the locals can do the job--unless we 'help' them in a lethal way.

If You Like Pakistan, You'll Love The "Arab Summer"

Now that all the hyperbolic prattling about the wave of democracy rushing tsunami like over the sands of Arabia is fading away, perhaps overpowered by the sounds of exploding NATO delivered ordnance in Libya, it is possible to take a less biased look at the most likely course of events for the long hot Arab "summer" which is looming like the smoke of an Arizona wildfire.  While the details of the forthcoming "summer" are obscure, the broad outlines are coming more clear by the day.

It is not inaccurate to posit Pakistan as the paradigm soon to apply to the countries of North Africa and the Mideast which were convulsed to a greater or lesser extent by the pseudo-revolutions of recent months.  This means that there will be a contest for political supremacy pitting the interests of a microscopic economic and political elite against the rising expectations of the marginalized majority egged on by increasingly extremest members of the Muslim clerical establishment.  It means the ultimate arbiter of authority will be the armed forces of those states which already possess a large, well organized, well equipped military.  Finally, there will be an overlay of regional and tribal loyalties which can serve as effective king-makers.

In the North African states, most notably Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt, the trappings and forms of democracy will be followed.  This process will not apply to Libya unless and until Gaddafi is removed--and the date for this event is impossible to predict beyond saying there is no reason for optimism.  Democratic processes are less important in Mideast centers of protest: Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen.  But even in these states there will be eventual genuflections before this prime totem of Western affections.

Despite the observance of democratic forms, the substance of representative democracy will be conspicuous by its absence.  There is a simple reason for this prediction.  Democracy per se is irrelevant to the majority of those who sought the overthrow the established regimes while the exercise of actual democracy is not in the interests of the major contestants for power: the elite and the adherents of political Islam.  Insofar as either contestant favors the appearance of democratic processes, it is only to ensure that some middle ground movement comes to power in order to assure that the inevitable failure to bring prosperity to the many will be blamed on the scapegoat so as to allow the real contest to be waged and won.

Western governments and elites would be best advised to discount any and all blather about democracy in action completely.  At best elections and the other accoutrement of vox populi is a charade.  At worst it will be a mechanism for hijacking power.  Elections, after all, sanctified not only the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933 but assured the creation of the statist theocracy in Iran in 1979.  To look at the paradigm of Pakistan, elections matter not, for regardless of what party or individuals win at the polls, the army still runs the show.

The army will run the show as well in Egypt or Tunisia or anywhere else that sees the old regime involuntarily retired.  As in Pakistan--and Turkey before--the army is the final custodian of nationhood.  It is the ultimate guarantor of internal tranquility as it is the defender of the state's borders.  Whether openly or from the shadows of the barracks, the army will do the same in the forthcoming governments of North Africa and the Mideast.  No government will be allowed to act in a way which is not approved in advance by the armed forces.  At the same time, the armed forces will have both the will and ability to direct the government to undertake specified actions or policies.

The limitations which can be imposed by the military are understood by even the most ardent supporter of political Islam.  The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt has implicitly acknowledged this in various fora.  This recognition along with the strategic consideration of assuring Islam and Islamists are not tarred with the brush of economic policy failure is behind the MG's entering into coalition agreements with a secular party.

Taking a longer term view, the primacy of the armed forces will be countered by the adherents of political Islam through a program of education and indoctrination.  This path has been blazed by the Pakistanis for the past thirty years with the result that the percentage of adherents of political Islam including that of the violent sort is higher among armed forces personnel, including company and field grade officers, than among the population as a whole.  Given both the Pakistani paradigm and the power of current social and economic pressures abroad in the several "Arab Spring" countries, there is no reason to believe that the lengthy time period need be followed.

The armed forces of Egypt and Tunisia are well aware of the limits which the West will apply to the foreign and military policies of their states.  They also understand the tools available to the West and the effectiveness of these tools.  There will be no false bravado operating as there has been with Pakistan.  The states of the "Arab Spring" have learned from Pakistan's mistakes as they have from Islamabad's successes.

The backlash against the super-wealthy currently underway in Egypt will slow and halt.  The fact is the country, all the "Arab Spring" countries, need these hated rich folk.  Even if it is true that one hundred percent of the wealthy became so as the result of the old regime's corruption, the wealth and skills of the rich business types are needed greatly for the country as a whole.  The narrow elite will be constricted and placed on the defensive, but it will not be erased.  As it will continue to exist, so also will it continue to seek and retain power.

The economically marginal will remain so regardless of the government and its promises.  This reality will be exploited by the most extreme elements within the political Islamists.  Practically, the results will be a co-option to the "left" which will be expressed primarily in foreign policy.  Terror attacks against the "Zionist entity" will increase as will strident diplomatic and propaganda support for the deligitimatization campaign.  Anti-Americanism will also ramp up markedly.  The armed forces will try to keep the level of attacks below the threshold triggering a robust Israeli response but will fail ultimately.

The evermore vituperative attacks on the US provided these are not matched with terrorist operations, will motivate the American people and its representatives to disengage from the region pleading financial exigencies.  This disengagement will exclude Israel.  The result will be the worst of all possible worlds for the US--diminished influence with the governments of the "Arab Summer" while making the commitment to Israel more and more of the "blank check" variety.

With the high probability of Yemen becoming a collapsed state, the US will become more and more involved with the assorted tribes on the ground as a mechanism of self-defense.  The US will wage an undeclared war with AQAP using civilian personnel and civilian controlled weapons systems.  As a "deniable" set of operations run by CIA, the US will be able to act in a more discrete, small footprint way enlisting tribal assistance, using paramilitary officers and UAVs with a sufficiently low public profile not to excite public or congressional opprobrium.  In fact, as the experience in Pakistan has shown, the opposite will be the case--widespread approval in both public and congress.

If the Libyan Affray ends in stalemate or a collapsed state or should the Algerian monolith once more show its underlying cracks, the US would rightly apprehend the use of the new opportunities by AQIM.  The only viable American response would be similar to that emerging in Yemen--think of it as FATA 3.0.  With a civilian agency in the lead and assets from JSOC available on an "as-needed" basis, the US would have the capacity to inhibit the rise of violent political Islam--or at least its ability to operate abroad.

The experiences of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have taught all but the most terminally obtuse American policy and decision makers all the critical lessons regarding "nation-building."  We have learned for the umpteeth time that nations cannot be built by foreign intervention.  This means that the US has only two choices when confronted by violent political Islam: ignore it and hope it goes away or target it with the most lethal and finely focused tools (both human and technological) that are available.

The inherent dilemmas posed by the uprisings of the "Arab Spring" should have shown American decision and policy makers that there is no one-size-fits-all approach possible.  The internal dynamics of each uprising as well as the regional and global contextual differences means that each event must be examined as a one-off proposition.  The realities of the game of nations also has demonstrated once again that national ideals, values, and norms must support well defined national interest.  To state categorically that national interest is predicated on ideals, norms, and values may make for good sound bites but provides a poor basis for effective policy.

On the upside, we can be thankful for our years of frustrating experience with Pakistan.  All that we have come to know and dislike about Pakistani politics and international relations has prepared us for the overriding realities which will exist for years to come as a consequence of a few fun filled and exciting weeks last spring.  The folks in Foggy Bottom and at the EOB should be pulling out the archives detailing the last twenty-five or so years of our dealings with Islamabad.  The contents will be hard to read, embarrassing even, but when the day is done, one can look up and say with genuine feeling, "Good training.  Damn good training."

The Devil Lives In The Endgame

"It ain't over till it's over" and "It ain't over until the fat lady sings" may be cliches but both have the advantage of expressing self-evident truths.  Nowhere are these truths more obvious than in states experiencing violent political unrest or that plus the add-on of foreign military intervention.  Currently there are three places (one hesitates to call all three states) where the US is involved in endgames--or, at least, what the administration hopes constitutes such.

Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen are all in what it is hoped by decision makers throughout the West but particularly inside the Beltway to be entering the last chapter of their narratives of violent political unrest.  There is no doubt but the people of the US and its allied states are war weary.  It is increasingly difficult to muster and maintain support for any further involvement in the messy internal affairs of majority Muslim areas.  Not even the dire warnings regarding the AQAP will stimulate any feelings of alarm in We the People.  Libya has stalemate and lack of purpose written all over it.  Afghanistan is a write off in the minds of many--all the more so since the killing of Osama bin Laden.

The Afghanistan conflict is the only one in which any significant number of Americans is involved.  This means it is the only one where we can take decisive action.  The action most desired by many in both public and congress is an accelerated withdrawal.  The arguments in favor of this are powerful.  We have accomplished the main goal of our invasion--the death of bin Laden and the virtual destruction of al-Qaeda.  The Afghan government remains inefficient, ineffective, corrupt, and a frightful waste of American money.

The Karzai regime wants to hinder our most effective operational concepts whether night raids or the use of tactical air power.  At the same time he is resistant, to say the least, to our requirements that he clean up his house, work harder in the old governance reform thing, concentrate more on developing the Afghan National Force to the level where it can assume security duties on its own.  On top of that, he and all those around him appear to be complete ingrates considering the billions of dollars and nearly two thousand lives we have expended in large measure to support the existence of his government free of extremist control.

From the American perspective it seems the Vietnam Syndrome is back in play.  Congress using the deficit and federal budget constraints as justification will proceed to write-off the American lives and demand a firm timetable for total American withdrawal.  It, and, in essence, We the People, will declare our losses in fisc and lives to have been a poor idea and move to cut our losses, ignore the remaining and threatening loose ends left hanging in both Afghanistan and Pakistan and turn our collective eyes inward once again.

Regardless of what Secretary of Defense Gates said the other day in Singapore, this will introduce yet one more era of neo-isolationism.  There are more than a few within us who have surrendered Great Power status to the Chinese.  Representative Walter Jones (R-NC) whose district includes Camp Lejune is a potent opponent of the war in Afghanistan as he was that in Iraq.  The NYT points out that Jones is no longer a "pariah" in the party or unpopular in the district which he has represented since 1994.  This means the Republican neo-isolationist wing is more potent than ever.

The combination of liberal Democrat and deficit hawk Republicans will have the juice necessary to assure that not only will the administration be supported in an accelerated draw down in Afghanistan but that our overall foreign policy will become far less ambitious.  It may even carry the water necessary to assure significant, even enervating, cuts in the defense budget.

The net effect of any drastic, rapid cut out from Afghanistan means in real world terms that the US has lost the political will to oppose violent political Islam.  To put it more cruelly but no less accurately, we will concede victory to the enemy who will, unsurprisingly, seek even greater success against us and the rest of the civilized world.

There is an alternative to a simple pull out disguised as something rather less humiliating.  That alternative would be a combination of open negotiations with Taliban and continued military operations against that group and the ISI proxy, the Haqqani network.  As we learned in Korea and again in Vietnam, the requirement for even limited success is the demonstration of continued political will in a both talk diplomacy and its violent twin, war.  The will and ability to continue fighting--fighting well and hard--even as the endless palaver over very little continues in a seemingly pointless fashion constitutes the demonstration of continued political will which finally convinces the adversary to settle for the best terms we are willing to grant.  There is no doubt that the Karzai government will join in negotiations.  All that is needed is to bring the semi-secret limited contacts into the open while keeping our shooters at it in country.

Unfortunately, the probability of the current administration choosing this twin track route is as remote as the president admitting that he was out to lunch with his Libya "policy."  Libya is, to paraphrase Omar Bradley, the wrong use of air power against the wrong enemy in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Had the US and others been serious about removing Gaddafi, troops would have been landed before the smoke and dust of the first air defense suppression missile strikes had blown clear in the desert wind.  A quick removal of Gaddafi followed by an immediate withdrawal of foreign forces and the introduction of an international peacekeeping force from, perhaps, the Arab League, would have seen the job done in a timely and clean way.  But, the leaders of France, the UK, and the US took counsel of their worst fears based on the inappropriate model of W. Bush in Iraq.

The leaving of Gaddafi is simply the start of the endgame in Libya.  Where the endgame in Afghanistan will be some sort of coalition government which includes Taliban, the players in Libya are not so clear.  There is a strange assemblage of tribal figures, regionalists, secularists, and political Islamists involved in the so-called transitional government.  Their joint agenda beyond the removal of Gaddafi is the to-be-determined department.  The same applies to the role to be played in the future by those Libyans who were genuine adherents of Gaddafi's theory of government.  The foreign supporters of the rebels including the US have to put a major push on the transitional government to put a post-Gaddafi plan on paper at least.

Even if there is a post-regime change plan, this is no assurance that it will be put into effect.  The Western patrons had best realize this.  The Libya which comes into existence after Gaddafi may well not be a showplace of Western norms and values any more than will be the case in Afghanistan.  The post-Gaddafi Libya will be an economic basket case filled with people with scores to settle.  It will not be pretty.  And, it will have the correct climate to encourage the emergence of adherents of violent political Islam.  We will not be fond of that.  But, it may not be preventable.  Get a grip on it.

Everything that is true for Libya applies to Yemen--on steroids.  This will be true to an even greater degree if Saleh escapes from Saudi Arabia and heads back to San'a.  The probability of Yemen becoming a collapsed state is better than fifty-fifty even if Saleh stays in Saudi.  It goes to near certainty if he returns.  And, there is absolutely nothing the US can or will do directly about this.  The most likely "winner" in Yemen will be AQAP which will bode ill not only for Saudi Arabia but the civilized world as well.

The situations in Libya and Yemen make what we do in Afghanistan all the more important.  All eyes, particularly those of the adherents of violent political Islam, will be on what we do and don't do.  Should we go the accelerated withdrawal route, the Mighty Men of the One True Faith will be emboldened greatly.  But, should we demonstrate inexhaustible political will in the dual track of talk while shooting, they will be inhibited in their ambitions.

The choice will be soon in and near the Oval.  Given the political imperatives at work it is likely that the wrong decision will be made.  In that event we can save a little bit of money while cowering in our Homeland Security guaranteed bunker at the mercy at the next martyrdom seeker with a bomb or even no more than a gun show acquired semi-automatic weapon.

It's the world of the future, welcome to it.

Sudden Silence Over R2P

The slow agony of Yemen's collapse was both easy to predict and difficult to watch.  At the level of the individual, the failure of Yemen is a tragedy.  On the macro level, however, it is a type study in what can happen when no outside force sees anything to be gained by seeking an intervention.

The "international community" is highly selective in its invocation of the Responsibility to Protect convention signed a few years back in a fit of remorse on the part of some states over what happened in Rwanda and in a spasm of me-tooism on the part of governments which desired to be seen as "progressive," "liberal," and "humanitarian" such as China and Russia.

At the time many Western states were in an orgy of self-congratulations over the intervention in Bosnia, an intervention which would serve unfortunately as a prototype for the concept that air power could effectively end atrocious behavior on the part of obnoxious governments.  Why this meme took flight is hard to fathom considering that the real impact of air delivered death and destruction had impact only after Serbian civilians died under NATO bombs and missiles.

The presumed efficacy of air delivered "shock-and-awe" stood behind the Sarkozy/Cameron driven UN resolution allowing the imposition of a civilian protection program and no fly zone in Libya.  To date the efforts of the operating agent for this R2P based Security Council authorized program, NATO, has been nowhere near as successful as the Bosnian conflict progenitor.  Perhaps this is due to the low cost of Libyan civilian lives.

Libya may or may not be the graveyard for the Gaddafi family enterprise.  That question is still open regardless of the highly optimistic statements of UK Defense Minister Fox or the NATO Secretary General.  Rather more certain is the proposition that Libya is the tombstone of R2P.

The corpse of this well-intended creation of the lofty thinking and tender hearted of the global community may have its grave marker in Libya but its place of burial is Yemen.  Yemen is every bit as worthy for the application of R2P as was Libya.  Arguably, had the Libyan situation been a bit slower to develop and Yemen a tad more rapid to fall apart, the NATO jets would be hitting targets in and around Sana'a rather than Tripoli.

But, perhaps not.  Libya is close to Europe.  There are a number of European interests in play there ranging from the economic to the fear of being overrun by hordes of refugees.  Yemen has neither.  It is small, faraway, lacking exportable resources, and generally without any direct importance to either France or the UK.

Even without the Libyan anchor hanging around the necks of Western leaders, there is no real sense that any national or strategic interest is at stake should Yemen collapse.  Without this impetus, moral imperatives of R2P so vocally engaged a few weeks ago in the Libyan context are now seemingly absent.  Not even the US can work itself into a flurry of concern beyond the pro forma despite the fact that it has some very real national and strategic interests potentially in play with the collapse of Yemen.

This is at it should be.  Even the existence of national and strategic interests--such as the high likelihood that AQAP will find an even finer home than that which currently exists or the potential for the pirates of Somalia to be joined by colleagues from Yemen to the further detriment of maritime commerce--does not override the governing reality that peace imposition in Yemen would be an even greater "mission-impossible" than doing such in either Somalia or the FATA.

Even the Saudis, the people with the most cows in the regional herd, have limited their efforts to a combination of cash and palaver.  Whether jointly or individually, these two traditional pillars of Saudi influence have done nothing definite to solve the rapid decay in Yemen.  At the same time, the House of Saud knows perfectly well that were it to dispatch a powerful enough ground combat force, the result would not be peace for Yemen but a horrid combination of forever war there and increased domestic instability back in the Kingdom.

The Saudis are not going to risk their internal security by sending troops to Yemen.  The Kingdom would be reluctant to lower its internal security capacities in the face of Shiite based threats not only in their Eastern Province but in Bahrain.  Experience has shown even the few fire eaters extant in the Kingdom that the barren mountains of Yemen can swallow whole armies without a trace.  Well, that is an exaggeration, but the reality remains that the army would be cut up without victory as a payoff.

As any, well, at least most, observers have noted over the months and years, Yemen is a place without any real reason to exist as a state.  The Yemeni are people with tribes but without a genuine and compelling national identity--provided you leave aside a very small number of educated members of the elite and Saleh's inner circle.  Beyond that, it is a geographical expression currently being torn not only by the out-with-Saleh movement and its tribal adherents but also by two insurgencies, one offensive and the other, in the south, defensive in nature.

This combination means that there simply ain't no way to impose peace let alone a national identity, a national and representative government, or to build a nation-state in Yemen.  The attempt would be very, very prolonged, equally lethal, and ultimately crowned by abject failure.  In this respect, as in so many others, Yemen is Somalia--on steroids.  Even humanitarian relief operations of the Somalia sort would most likely end as did the ill-fated effort there in the early Nineties.

The abject failures of good intentions in Somalia and the less than breathtaking success in Libya to date ought to serve as clear warnings to the high minded and lofty thinking folks who want somebody to rush in and do something, anything, to stop the killing and relieve the misery of the locals.  As the neocon ninny crew should have realized from the outcomes to date in both Iraq and Afghanistan, there are very real limits to both doing good and using military force to protect and project the doing of good.

All hands need to get a grip on a foundation truth: Limits of intervention regardless of the precise nature of the intervention are imposed by the intended recipients of the intended good.  The locals have to work out their own destiny, their own future, their own systems of society, polity, and economy in their own way and at their own pace--even if this means much suffering, and much spilling of blood.  There is no shortcut to this process as we in the West ought to know from our own history.

It may be hard to stand by and watch as people slaughter one another.  It is most difficult to do so today without the aesthetic distance and emotional detachment afforded in former days by slower and less comprehensive communications, but it is the only path to final peace and stability.

The most difficult and problematic task of any government is to recognize when neglect is in fact the most benign policy.  It is even more difficult and problematic for the monstrous legion of NGOs dedicated to doing good to accept a hands-off approach.  It is most difficult and problematic of all for the UN and its inferior agencies to realize the limits of the "international community" and keep out of the local morass.

There are times and places where the least-worst thing to do is let the internal violence of a place and a people drown in its own blood.  Yemen is such a place.  Now is such a time.  Get a grip on it.

Rubes Versus City Slickers

A few years ago the US military started hiring cultural anthropologists and embedding them in combat units in Afghanistan.  The idea was a better appreciation of cultural mores would make for more sensitive and effective use of combat power--that we could avoid the negative consequences of door kicking and mosque invading which had produced a wave of backlash in much of Iraq.  This notion was a good one and did have some real benefits for US effectiveness.

But, it was too limited.

In Afghanistan as in Iraq before as well as in Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, even Turkey and Syria today, there is a much larger problem involving the anthropology of culture.  It is a dynamic with which we Americans are--or should be--quite familiar.  In our own history this particular dynamic was in large part responsible for such events as Prohibition.  It is also responsible to some degree for the more recent "culture wars" which have been so much a feature of our politics.

The phenomenon is the divide which separates folks who live in urban environments and those who dwell in remote, often rugged, always sparsely populated, and usually relatively impoverished areas.  In Afghanistan or Pakistan, it is the gulf separating the hill people from the urbanites.  In Libya, it is the distinction between the ethnics of the western mountains and the coast dwellers.  Elsewhere, it is the age old tension between subsistence and marginal farmers on the one hand and those who have migrated to the cities for the opportunities which are believed to exist there and only there.

Throughout the developing world, in all continents, in countries as far removed in geography, culture, and governmental styles as China and Mexico, Russia and Indonesia, the same dynamic is at work.  Often, the work is destructive of social and, more importantly, political harmony.

There is a set of characteristics by which the hill people, the subsistence peasants, the "exiles" of remote and rugged regions define themselves in opposition to those of their fellow citizens who live in the cities.  We Americans have seen the same definitions of self and opponent in our own recent past.  There is nothing different with the far away folks in Afghanistan and the host of other countries where the destructive tension scars the social, cultural, and political landscape.

At the risk of some over simplification, the people who live far from the seductive attractions and entrancing visions of wealth existing in the cities see themselves as more moral, more honest, more honorable, more truly human than their opposites in the city.  The rubes understand themselves to be the last vestige of honor, honesty, integrity, and religious morality.  They also see themselves as being under constant, unremitting attack by the corrupt, immoral, irreligious forces of urban life.

The rubes see the cities as vast moral swamps.  They understand the goal of urbanites to be that of attracting and perverting the sons--and more particularly, the daughters--of rural purity.  The rubes fear the appeal of the cities, the seductions of wealth, bright lights, loud music, open sexuality.

For their part, the urban dwellers, whether a century or more ago in the US or today throughout the developing world, view the rubes with disdain.  The hill people, the peasants, are all seen as rude, uneducated, unsophisticated, backward looking, fear ridden, clingers of the past, chained by religious superstition.  The rubes are dismissed as the last of a deservedly dying breed.

The two groups stare at each other through prisms of distortion--or the crosshairs of a telescopic sight.  Each distrusts the other.  Each views the other as irredeemable.  The city slickers are convinced that the rubes are hopelessly outdated, ignorant, superstitious, hung up on irrelevant concepts such as personal honor.  For their part, the rubes are certain that all city slickers are pervasively corrupt, purveyors of moral degradation, apostles of apostasy, and generally as exploitative, manipulative people given to enriching themselves at the expense of their moral betters.

As a general rule, over time the rubes are willing to strike a bargain with the city slickers.  The basis of the tacit agreement is simple: You city types just leave us alone and in return we will do the same for you.

Rarely do the rubes seek to replace the city slickers as the source of collective government.  Rarely do the rubes seek to impose their social and cultural mores on the urban population by either politics or force of arms.  To this extent the American experience of Prohibition or the more recent political activities of conservative, predominantly rural origin Christians constitute exceptions to the general experience.

In a similar way the emergence of violent political Islam is also an exception to the historical norm of "you leave us alone and we will leave you alone."  The primary appeal of violent political Islam has been to threatened rubes.  The threat may be as direct as an attempt by the urban based central government to extend its sway over the remote regions or it may be the more indirect but pernicious one of inducing the young of Rubeland to emigrate to the cities.

The hill dwelling tribesmen of Afghanistan or Pakistan's FATA are not necessarily more violent by inherent nature than others of their nationality.  Rather, they see and have seen themselves as under threat from the dishonorable, corrupt, irreligious people of Kabul or Islamabad.

The situation was not different in the US a couple of centuries ago.  The Scotch-Irish who moved to the rugged and remote frontier of the eastern mountains did so not because they were inherently of a greater man-against-nature mentality than Americans who lived in the flatlands of the coastal regions.  Nor did they and their descendants remain in the far distant hollows because they were inherently antisocial.  Neither did their more recent exemplars violently resist the incursions of mine owners, state governments, or federal "revenoors" due to some inbuilt streak of cussedness.  No.  They wanted to be left alone.

To the well intentioned outsiders of urban America, the hill dwellers of Appalachia may have appeared to be hopelessly backward, trapped in endless generations of poverty and deprivation, "clinging to their guns and Bibles" (to use the formulation of a noted and successful presidential candidate) due to personal fear of progress and change.  And, to some small extent, the impressions--at least those of poverty and deprivation--might have been true.  But, far more important was the self-belief of moral purity, the upholding of time honored traditions and values.

The folks of Appalachia were quite willing to accept some of the benefits offered by larger American society such as electricity, better medical care, economic opportunity, better housing, better nutrition.  But they were not willing to take the benefits if these were offset by participating in systems both tangible and otherwise which were antithetical to basic beliefs and values.  It took American social engineers generations to find the right approach, the proper mix, the best way to include the hill people without destroying with unacceptable rapidity the values and norms which had long sustained these people.

This is also the challenge in Afghanistan, the FATA, and other parts of Pakistan.  It is the same in the other countries currently facing collapse and failure.  Put simply, the trick is that of extending the good things of modern life to the rubes without pulling the rug of tradition, traditional values, norms, and mechanisms from under their feet.  Change is acceptable as long as it is neither too fast nor too shattering in extent.

It is the rock of time upon which the grand ship of nation building must flounder.  This is the case in Afghanistan.  This is the case in Pakistan.  Insisting on a rapid and complete penetration of the land and life of the rubes by the city slickers and their foreign supporters can only promote resistance--violent resistance.  The insistence upon extending the "corrupt" and "irreligious" systems of the city into the mountain heartlands of the rubes can only result in a more ardent embrace of those ideas--in particular the religious--which make armed opposition legitimate.

The most basic war being waged in the vast arc of countries from Afghanistan to Tunisia is not between Islam and infidel.  Nor is it between the adherents of violent political Islam and those of a more secular persuasion.  It is not even a conflict between modernity and the warm certainty of the past.  Rather it is the war between the traditionally oriented "exiles" of the hills and the city slickers.

In this war of culture, the city slicker (which includes the US government)is  its own worst enemy.  A prime characteristic of the city slicker is impatience.  For the city slicker, particularly the American, the cliche, "Time is money," constitutes an imperative.  But, to the rube, time is eternal.  Time is something the rube possesses in great quantities.

The key to success in an insurgency is contained in a simple historical reality.  The side which can afford time and accept casualties will win over the side which must save both time and lives.

What this confluence means is both easy to understand and bitter to accept.  From Afghanistan to Tunisia and at all points in between, the city slickers of the West are doomed to lose.  For the insurgent rubes, powered by the force of both the past and the ideology of religion, a line from an old Rolling Stones song applies, "Time is on my side."

Maybe If We Pretend Hard Enough---

Political scientists call it, "let us define our dependent variables," but little kids are more honest.  Politicians call it "nation-building," but little kids are more honest.  The UN calls it "responsibility to protect," but little kids are more honest.

Little kids call it, "Let's pretend."

And here we are today playing let's pretend under all the upscale rubrics mentioned.  We are playing it in the Ivory Coast.  We are playing it in Yemen.  We are playing it in Libya.

In each case our opponent in this great game is called a "strongman," or a "dictator," or, more politely, an "authoritarian ruler."  In each case the venue of this great game is called a "state," or a "nation," or a "country."  In each case we maintain with the straightest of faces that our goal is to "support the people," or "to promote the rights of the citizens," or, most simply, to gain "democracy," or, even simpler and hazier, to seek "reform."

All the terms, all the fine sounding words, all the lofty thoughts behind the words constitute a lie.  Perhaps not an intentional lie, but an untruth nonetheless.  Tergiversation by volitional ignorance covers the situation.

Each of the venues mentioned as well as others such as Sudan or Somalia are not by any realistic understanding "nations," let alone "nation-states."  All are geographical expressions inhabited by assorted tribal peoples of differing, even antipodal, customs, values, norms, and, most important, senses of identification.  Each of the "dictators" is actually nothing more than the accepted leader of one tribe.  None are national leaders for none has a unified nation to lead.

In the Ivory Coast the ousted former president is actually the leader by tacit acceptance if not more active support of the Southern, non-Muslim tribal confederation while the new guy is the tacitly accepted leader of the Northern, Muslim tribal groupings.  In Yemen, the embattled Saleh emerged from the base of support of one tribe and maintained his power by playing off the other tribes against each other.  And, in Libya, Brother Leader is likewise a tribal chieftain whose rivals are from another, far larger tribal assembly located in the far east of the country.

Tribal leaders are not and never will be national politicians as the term is understood in the West.  Nor are the agglutinations of tribes under their authority "nations" as the word is applied in the West.  The absence of national identity means that by definition there can be no nation-state, no truly national polity controlling the instruments of government.

Tribal leaders including the die hard "dictators" of Yemen, Libya, and the Ivory Coast are motivated by deep and powerful considerations such as personal and group honor which have been moribund for many, many generations in the US and the rest of the West.  The tribal leader incarnates in himself not only his personal honor, his personal power, but that of his family, clan, and tribe.  This is at a far cry from the motivators of contemporary Western politicos.  It is even at some distance from the motivators of more typical dictators of the ideological sort, for these may have an inflated sense of self but rarely believe the entire honor, potency, and status of a social group is embodied in their person.

When Gaddafi cried, "I am history!  I am the revolution!  I am Libya!," he was not simply exhibiting what in the West would be considered a psychopathology but stating a ground truth that would have been (and was) understood by tribal leaders around the world.  Gbagbo in his upmarket bunker understood.  So also did Saleh as the vipers on whose heads he danced squirmed and twisted.  Karzai all the way off in Afghanistan understood, despite his status as an "elected" leader.  So also did Maliki in Iraq, again regardless of the special cachet of a Western approved "election."

Tribal leaders, all of whom have "death before dishonor" in an invisible tattoo inscribed across their chests, do not think like Western politicians.  Their calculus of political rationality is completely different.  It would require the resurrection of an American politician such as Andrew Jackson to have an effective translator.  Andy Jackson, like the majority of domestic politicos of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries was a tribal leader in transition.  While focused on developing a nation, these men were emerging from sectional identities equivalent to those of a tribe.

Other countries throughout the West had their own transitional figures,  men part way between the tribal, regional past and the nation-state future.  History demonstrates that the process of congealing a true national identity is one of equal parts time and blood.  War as well as the passage of decades of shared experience and defining mythology is needed to overcome the inertia of the tribal/regional past.  The West has had the time--and more to the point--the spilled blood necessary to forge national identities and politics, to become full fledged nations and nation-states.

Libya and the Ivory Coast had any organic centripetal movement put in stasis by periods of colonization.  And Yemen never emerged from a tribal, feudal dynamic.  (Neither did Afghanistan despite the existence of a monarchy other than brief periods when under external threat.)  The attempt by the well intended statesmen of the West and the diplomats and the bureaucrats of the UN to create actual functioning nation-states from the tribal cloth of the Ivory Coast or Yemen or Libya will be unsuccessful.

It is not a matter of money.  Consider that the EU and France have offered 840 million bucks to the Ivory Coast; that is not mere chump change.  Neither is the vast quantity of American and other peoples' money spent on civilian development and governance programs in Afghanistan.  The sands of Libya will ultimately soak up as much international aid as the wealth of its oil fields produced to date.  None will matter.

Money does not create a state.  Neither do good intentions.  Nor do military interventions.  American and other governments had best realize that in none of these cases as well as others yet to occur will the end product be other than confederations of tribes riven with animosities old and new.  No matter what is done by outsiders, the Ivory Coast, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, or even Iraq will not become genuine nation-states in the near- or mid-term future.

In a very real sense the less that is done by the outsiders under any of the noble terms referenced above, the better the results for the locals.  The less done for the suffering locals, the faster they will have to weld together their own nation by their own blood and sweat.  They will have to do what all of us in the West have done--bring about a national identity and a national polity by passion and suffering over time.

There is no faster way to do it.  And, history shows, no better method.  It seems to be written in our DNA, to suffer is to progress.

Obama Pivots Again--This Time It's Yemen

The always statesmanlike and deliberative Obama administration has once more demonstrated its uncanny ability to appear totally adrift at the policy level.  The instant case is Yemen.  For weeks the White House, Foggy Bottom, and the Pentagon have been singing the same song: We support our key ally in the global war on radical extremism, the President of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh.  Of course, every lyric of support has been followed by an obbligato chorus, We deplore violence and call upon all sides to show restraint and a commitment to dialogue.

As the bullets have shot downrange and the bodies piled higher on the square near the university in Sana, the lyrics and chorus have remained unchanged.  Even as the US aircraft bombed and strafed the forces of Brother Leader in Libya, the song stayed the same.  The conventional wisdom became simply that the US had no choice but to stick with Saleh given the threat presented by al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP.)  Additional arguments were adduced in support of the basic contention.  Among these was the ability of the ever-wily Saleh to dance on the heads of vipers as his decades of survival in Yemeni politics have shown.

Saleh the survivor joined with Saleh the partner.  We seemed to be welded to the guy come what may.  There didn't seem to be any alternative.  We had to hang together else Yemen would join with Somalia as one more failed state in the grasp of a group espousing violent political Islam.

Well a funny thing happened on the way to our eternal relationship with Saleh.  As the NYT reported, the Obama administration did what it has been so good at of late--changing its mind.  Quietly, without taking the American public into its confidence, the Deep Thinkers of the current administration shifted its message to Saleh.  The new word is: "Time for you to saddle up and get out of town, pardner."

The policy seems to have been a low visibility version of what the Obama folks did in Egypt.  "We are with you all the way, Hosni" on Monday.  On Tuesday it was all about, "We are with the people of Egypt and we always have been."

The gales of derisive laughter which met the new Obama position within the ranks of the Egyptian demonstrators may be the reason the approach in Yemen has been low key.  This way when the belated change from pro-status quo to pro-opposition did not buy any good will from the men and women who had done the heavy lifting, faced the gun fire of snipers, and bled for what they believed in would not be so embarrassing.

The Obama administration's support for the Saleh status quo defies rational understanding.  The most cogent explanation is the Deep Thinkers became overly fixated on a lesser problem--Saleh's lack of general legitimacy--and overlooked the larger, catastrophic one--Yemen is a collapsing state. Period.  (This dynamic, obsessive focus on a lesser problem which prevented appreciating a larger, fatal one, was at work in the crash two years ago of Air France flight 447.)

The obsession with AQAP has resulted in tunnel vision regarding the totality of Yemen.  While the Western looking youthful demonstrators in Sana have captured the photos and imagination of the West, these individuals, many of them quite secular, are not representative of Yemen taken as a whole.  Nothing, no one set of individuals, no one group, no single ideology, religious or secular, certainly no leader can be taken to represent Yemen as a whole.

Why? You ask.

There is no such political entity as Yemen.  Get a grip on it.  You cannot take Yemen as a whole because there is no such critter.  At best Yemen is a geographical expression in which several different polities, societies, ideologies coexist in an environment of friction and animus.

It was the inherent divisions which typify Yemen which allowed Saleh to hang on to power for so long.  He understood and exploited the differences, the rivalries, the animosities between tribes and within tribes, between and within regions, between and within religious groups well enough to stay in power, dancing, as he once said, on the heads of vipers.

When the predominantly young, very often Western looking and leaning youth of the Yemeni Khat Revolution came hot on the heels of the paradigmatic Jasmine and Lotus revolts, it introduced not simply a new snake of a different color to the nest of vipers on which Saleh danced, but also perturbed the delicate balance between the older, larger rivals with results which constituted a cascading failure for the status quo.  The longer and less successful the suppression campaign became, the more the ancient opponents of Saleh saw prospects for change.

Old and trusted comrades, members of the status quo in good standing, suddenly had a great desire to embrace the goals of the young men and women serving as targets for Saleh's snipers.  Tribes whose leadership had battened fat and rich from the troughs controlled by Saleh felt the warm winds of freedom and without warning had a yearning to breath longer and deeper of the heady new atmosphere.

The vipers no longer were bunching together in a fine dance floor for Saleh's nimble feet.  They parted company, each looking for advantage.  Each showed a very real willingness to exploit the fruits of change growing from the blood of the kids of the Khat Revolution.  Saleh may have been both willing and able to keep on dancing--but there were no longer any snakes upon whose heads he might.

Not that the rapid disintegration of the Saleh dance floor really mattered.  All it did was to hasten the day when the basic reality of Yemen's non-existence had to be recognized by the US and others.  Right now, today there are at least four Yemens within a common border.

There is Houthi-land in the north.  This Shia derived sect has been waging defensive insurgency for several years now with the long range goal of reconstituting the historic Houthi monarchy in at least some of its former range.

There is AQAP-stan in the southeast.  In that part of Yemen AQAP has come into the open.  It operates as the de facto government.  Its' fighters control at least some of the towns and all of the interurban roads.  It collects taxes, administers "justice," and generally behaves as a government.  To say that AQAP has ambitions not limited to the hot and sandy wastes of the southeast is to belabor the obvious.

In the southwest is to be found the remnants of the old Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen (PDRY) which existed as a soviet style independent sovereignty for decades only to be more or less forcibly folded into greater Yemen while Bill Clinton warmed the Oval.  The aging one time commissars of the PDRY may have wrinkled with the passage of years, but they have not lost the dreams of youth--as their armed insurgency has demonstrated repeatedly in recent years.

This leaves "Yemen."  In the center of the map, this "Yemen" is the fighting ground of several tribes each of which seeks to be first among equals.  This "Yemen" bests represents the cynical but accurate description once applied by an Egyptian observer to Arab states generally--"An assemblage of tribes under a common flag."

The profound centripetal forces afflicting Yemen assure its collapse.  Saleh himself recognized this as he manifested a while back when he eschewed reelection ambitions.  All the events of recent weeks have done is to accelerate the process.  The support or non-support of Saleh by the Obama administration is utterly irrelevant.

The policy pivot will not gain the US any particular influence over whatever government emerges in the post-Saleh days.  Even if the belated embrace of the protesters' cause did gain influence for the US, it wouldn't matter.  That is because no successor government will be any more able to overcome the powerful impetus to disintegration so deeply embedded in the political, social, and cultural matrices of the place and the people.

Yemen as it exists on paper is an artifact.  It is the creation of outsiders along with a miniscule number of Yemenis, most of whom were in closer touch with the West than the tribal majority at home.  Like Sudan or Somalia or Iraq or Libya, Yemen is not an organic creation, a product of strictly local manufacture.  As such, Yemen has been a collapsing state in the making since the day of its creation.

As if the internal frictions and rivalries were not sufficient to make Yemen an ungovernable place and the Yemenis an ungovernable people, there are other considerations of more recent vintage.  Yemen is poor.  Well, it worse than simply poor.  It is a desperately impoverished place in which poverty is exacerbated by exceptional mal-distribution of the riches that do exist.

Worsening the situation is the reality that Yemen's microscopic oil reserves are dipping rapidly to empty.  The oil bucks will stop flowing in the very near future.

Then there is water.  More accurately there is the lack of water.  The combination of normal drought, overuse of subsurface water, and the waste of water in non-productive agriculture (the growing of khat) have combined to present Yemen with the stark possibility of running out of this most essential of materials in the near future.

The lack of economic development--caused in large measure by the corrupt diversion of oil revenues to personal pockets rather than generally beneficial projects--combined with unsupportable population growth has assured that the best employment opportunities for Yemenis are to be found outside of Yemen.  More and more Yemeni economic success will be measured in the amount of the remittances sent home by Yemeni working elsewhere.

Considering the totality of the circumstances (as lawyers are wont to say) there are ample reasons for Yemen to collapse.  At the same time there are few, if any, reasons to argue that a mere regime change will benefit either the place or the people.

The policy conclusion is not hard to make.  The US and other countries (such as Saudi Arabia which has the biggest bull in the herd here) can pump money beyond count into Yemen in the hope of purchasing some fair simulacrum of stability.  Or, the US can wait on the sidelines.  Wait for the inevitable, the official collapse of Yemen.

The second course of action implies that the Yemen Question will be dropped on the laps of (1) the Arab League, (2) the Gulf Cooperation Council, (3) the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and, (4) the UN. In the event that one or more of these groups decides that the collective interests of its members requires a nation-building effort in Yemen, the result will be a future very much like the past--an artifact imposed from outside which will be inherently non-stable.

The only direct interest of the US and other Western states in the Yemen Question is that of security against terror threats from AQAP.  This implies that the policy of the US and other similarly situated states must focus narrowly on preventing such acts or punishing the actors and their facilitators after the fact.  The US would bear no responsibility for the political, social, economic, or cultural "rehabilitation" of Yemen and should vigorously reject any such involvement as the result would be a replay of the past few years.

Yemen, like Libya, like Somalia, like Iraq, like Sudan and numerous other "states" demonstrates the futility of building a nation-state.  Only nations can build a state--and then only their own.  For Yemen to become a nation-state it must first become a nation--not a group of tribes with a single flag.  Yemen has a far piece to go before it can be called a nation.  That means it has a long, long way to go before it can claim the status of nation-state.

It is very important for our future as well as that of the Yemeni that the US (and other well-intentioned states) get a grip on a very compelling but equally unpleasant truth: You cannot build a nation or a nation-state from the outside.

Woosh! There Goes Yemen Down The Potty

You know things must be bad when Somali refugees start leaving.  This is happening in Yemen, so there is little hope that the place will escape failed state status.  Of course you can't blame these hyper vigilant survivors of a war without fronts.  They learned up close and personal that he who hesitates is dead.

The Yemeni army is fractured.  Several units have "mutinied" with the result that former comrades-in-arms are now shooting each other.  The army is reflecting the other divisions which have occurred in Yemen subsequent to the quite ill-advised use of highly trained and skilled snipers to kill dozens assembled outside the University of San'a last Friday protesting the thirty-two year old dictatorship of Abdullah Saleh.  As Talleyrand once observed of a particularly stupid bit of political murder committed by his boss, Napoleon, "Sire that was worse than a crime.  It was a blunder."

How much of a blunder Saleh has been discovering the past forty-eight hours.  The chief tribe in this tribal assemblage, his tribe, has called for his ouster.  Several cabinet members--including fellow tribesmen--called it quits over the killings as did ambassador after ambassador.  Now the army has joined in with a senior officer, a commander of the northern district among others and a half-brother who has carried heavy internal security freight among others, leading the parade to opposition.

On the international scene, France continuing its leadership of the free and democratic countries, has become the first state to demand Saleh step down ASAP.  How long will it be before other countries in the West, for example the UK, join the chorus?

According to assorted "experts" the continued collapse of Yemen places the US in the space between a rock and a hard place.  After all, we are reminded, Yemen is a key ally in the fight against Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula.

Sure it is.

When evaluating the role of Saleh and Yemen in any contest with AQAP, it is critical to recall that Saleh took over South Yemen, the former Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen, with the assistance of tribesmen who fought under the banner of violent political Islam.  Subsequently, these same folk have constituted the majority of the high command of the anti-terrorist units and a heavy percentage of the actual security force trigger pullers.  This ground truth along with Yemen's tribal nature may be the reason that Yemen has had a singular lack of success in suppressing AQAP.

It can be argued with some legitimacy that a failed Yemen right across the narrow straight from the long failed Somalia will exacerbate greatly the menace to navigation presented by the Merry Buccaneers Of Puntland.  A large grain of truth resides in that contention, but not a large enough one to make of it a pearl of wisdom.

The Yemeni coastguard rivals the Yemeni counter-terrorist forces for ineffectiveness.  This has not been remedied in the slightest by US aid.

Yemen is, has been and will be, whether or not Saleh stays in power, a source of jihadists and pirates alike.  The reason for that is the nature of the human terrain of Yemen.  The deep tribal nature of the place, the extreme poverty which besets the majority, the appeal of the most austere form of Islam, the cultural imperative of tribal solidarity against any outsider combine to assure Yemen is a fertile breeding place for jihad of all sorts.

Nor is the situation in Yemen going to be altered in any meaningful way by the introduction of democracy or any other form of exported "nation-building" including massive economic assistance.  It is critical, foundational, to remember that Yemen is not a nation in any recognizable sense of the word.  Rather it is a collection of rival tribes collected under a single flag which none recognize as being real.

Senior American decision makers headed by Defense Secretary Gates have warned that fragmentation of existing states will not contribute to stability.  While he made that warning with specific reference to the notion of a Libya partitioned into western and eastern components, his proposition is flatly wrong.  When a state, be it Libya, Yemen, or Somalia, is the artifact of well-intentioned Western diplomats, it is not an authentic affair.  Having never been a reality in the minds of most people living there, fragmentation along tribal or cultural lines is a viable option.

It can be argued on the basis of history, both European and non-Western, that nations and the states they create emerge slowly, painfully, and organically from internal imperatives and external pressures.  Only a nation and concomitant state so created can withstand stresses such as those seen in Libya or Yemen.

This suggests strongly that the collapse of Yemen into its component parts is not a bad idea even if the near-term consequences bear no resemblance to a stroll though paradise.  Only by falling apart will there be any hope of Yemen ever coming together in a stable way.

The best policy for France, the UK, or the US is to stay away.  Even if Saleh becomes a perfect imitation of Gaddafi, which is unlikely given the internal dynamics of Yemen, the West must restrain its impulses to impose peace, craft a settlement calculated to keep Yemen intact under some sort of imitation Western liberal government.

There is a lesson from Afghanistan which may be learned once more in Libya.  Outsiders cannot create a nation-state from a traditional, tribal society for which the entire notion of the nation and the state are literally unthinkable.  As was once said, "Don't try to teach a pig to sing.  It won't work.  It will annoy the pig."

Are They Really That Smart?

Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) has released a special issue of its Inspire online magazine.  This "Extra-Extra!-Read-All-About-It! release is dedicated to a single topic.  The only matter considered is the "failed" parcel bomb plot.

To AQAP's chief propagandist, the one time North Carolina resident turned full time "traitor to America," Samir Khan, the operation was not a failure.  In his typically breezy not to say cocky way, this self-proclaimed "traitor" points out that the job cost AQAP a bit over four thousand dollars but will result in "billions" of bucks in enhanced security costs to the American air cargo industry.  In terms of cost accounting, ole "Sammy" is bang on.

The jihadist publication promised a continuation of low cost, high economic damage attacks.  AQAP avers that it has hit on a new formula for successfully bringing about the collapse of the US and the West, a sort of death by a thousand paper cuts way of waging war.

The special issue also repeated the AQAP claim of responsibility for the crash of a UPS flight in Dubai which killed the two man crew.  This claim has been rejected by the officials in Dubai, but the results of a review of the crash investigation has not yet substantiated the local view that the incident resulted from causes other than a terrorist attack.  However, there has been no evidence of an on-board explosion, so the cause remains an open question.

Leaving aside the matter of the Dubai incident, the Inspire narrative does pose an interesting question for analysts.  There is no arguing against the contention that the parcel bombs have resulted in greater attention being paid to air cargo.  This attention will both cost extra money and introduce additional frictions into a critical component of the international logistics system.  Over the longer term the delays occasioned by enhanced security will bring substantial indirect costs, but not such as to cripple the industry let alone bring the US to its financial knees.

It has been known since the Pliocene epoch of terrorism that every increment in increased security brings both additional direct costs and a slew of frictions both economic and political in its wake.  By responding to terrorist incidents, the target automatically hands the terrorist a small victory.  The inevitable combination of increased costs, increased frictions, increased apprehensions, and decreased belief in the capacity of the target government to provide a satisfactory level of security exacts political and social as well as economic costs.  The current contretemps over "strip or grope" is excellent evidence of the overall consequence of security driven frictions.

Those adherents of violent political Islam who have lived in the US or elsewhere in the West such as Samir Khan and Anwar al-Awlaki would be well aware of the dynamic of terror-enhanced security-increased frictions.  Thus the question for analysts is this: Did AQAP intend and plan the parcel bomb attack in order to inflict economic damage or is the Inspire explanation one of an after-the-fact nature?

To put it more simply: Are the operatives of AQAP as smart as Khan alleges or did the talented propagandist invent his theory to meet the facts, including the irrefutable one of failure?  In support of the second interpretation is a critical fact absent in the glowing tribute to the brilliance of the Deep Thinkers and Master Strategists of AQAP.

The missing fact?

Well, bucko, how about the cause of the operation's failure?  The attack was betrayed to Saudi intelligence by a defector from AQAP.  Actually, the man was a multiple defector.  He had bounced from terror to Saudi "rehabilitation" and then back to AQAP and finally back to the waiting arms of the Saudis.  The unlikely series of bounces hints strongly that the informant had been targeted on AQAQ by the Saudis and he then performed his task with precision.  Since penetration of hostile entities is the first line of defense and the Saudis have more than one dog in the fight with AQAP, the use of an intentional penetration asset seems quite likely.

The fact that the operation, admittedly a very clever and cheap one, was compromised fatally by a Saudi penetration asset must be more than a tad galling to the heavyweights of AQAP.  The fertile imagination of Samir Khan provided a way of retrieving a measure of success from what is otherwise a failure tinted with the humiliation of betrayal from within.

Ole Sammy makes much of the insight and intelligence of his running buddies of AQAP.  That is the reason for the article detailing not only the infernal devices but also the security systems successfully evaded.  Of course, by giving these operational details the article would seem to be undercutting the value of its promises that the campaign would continue as it provides useful grist for the intelligence and security mills of the US and other countries.

Whether AQAP continues with a focus on parcel bombs or uses another approach one thing is sure--AQAP is not going to fade away, organizational bones bleaching in some sunwashed wadi deep in the mountains of Yemen.  A second unpleasant reality will remain as well: AQAP is aware of the greatest vulnerability in the US and most of the West.  That vulnerability is the demands for more security and the inevitable costs of providing such.

We the People--and the government--must carefully consider just how much security is enough.  We must keep in mind that every time the security wrench ratchets tighter, the costs and the frictions go up as well.  There is a crossover point where the negatives of security are such as to accomplish the goals of the terrorists without a single additional terrorist act.

How close are we right now to the crossover point?  That is the question the Inspire braggadocio demands we, all of us, answer.

The Yemeni Dilemma

The rapidly collapsing state of Yemen is on the verge of becoming a serious rival to Pakistan's FATA as a secure base for groups advocating and practicing violent political Islam.  Foreign fighters displaced from Afghanistan and elsewhere by successful security operations are coming to Yemen as a sort of evil twin to the Haj.  Along with genuine foreigners are sizable numbers of denizens of the Arabian Peninsula returning to familiar deserts and barren mountains from their travel-broadens-the-mind sojourns in combat zones ranging from Iraq to Afghanistan and other, even more exotic, climes.

These early birds of passage will be followed by others as the operations in Afghanistan and from the sky over the FATA become ever more lethal and thus discouraging to the Mighty Warriors Of The One True Faith.  Yemen seems destined to become even more of a center of violent political Islam as more and more muscle is added by the returnees.

There is no doubt but Yemen and its Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP) are the most attractive venue for those folk dedicated to the tenets of violent political Islam.  Yemen is an ungoverned and perhaps ungovernable place with a physical and human terrain seemingly ideal for the propagation and growth of AQAP.  The attractiveness of Yemen is in no way lessened by the talents of Anwar al-Awlaki as is hinted at by the flow of wannabe martyrdom seekers from Western Europe, the UK, and the US.  Thanks to the Internet, Yemen is only a click or two away from anywhere on Earth.

The Yemen dilemma is both real and pressing for American decision makers.  Individuals based in its so far very hospitable environment constitute a genuine threat to CONUS as events of the past year have brought home with appropriate drama.  At the same time the government of Yemen has demonstrated a pervasive lack of political will and competence in confronting the AQAP such as to make the government of Pakistan appear to be a frothing-to-fight bunch in comparison.

Yemen's internal problems ranging from exceptional poverty to the ongoing nature of two insurgencies to the ever increasing shortage of water to an unsupportable population growth assure the government lacks the resources and legitimacy necessary to take on AQAP even if it wanted to.  Further exacerbating the weakness, not to say impotence, of the government is the intensely tribal nature of Yemeni society and culture.  Of course, the government in no way helps its cause by exhibiting a level of corruption and nepotism which would make the old Dick Daley machine in Chicago drool with envy.

Since the Yemeni population is characterized by a degree of prickly nationalism which surpasses even that of the Mexicans, the capacity or the desirability of the US to enter the conflict directly is nil at best.  Realistically, any direct, evident American presence in Yemen would be counterproductive.  It is not, as Secretary of Defense Gates noted that the US does not "need" another war but rather that any attempt to wage war in Yemen would be to assure failure.

Even the relatively low footprint usage of Predators and other UAVs is not really safe.  Yemeni tribesmen are aware of the Predators overhead and resent their drone overhead even when no Hellfire missiles are forthcoming.  Perhaps the initial reaction to the arrival of the Predators would not have been so negative had the US not used Tomahawk cruise missiles in an ill-advised and failed attack to take out a high value personality about a year ago.  The attack may not have killed its intended victim but did manage to terminate with the utmost of prejudice a number of civilians including women and children and a well respected high ranking member of the local government.

About the only military activity the US can undertake without unacceptable risks of an unintended, counterproductive outcome is training selected Yemeni personnel and providing logistical, intelligence, and procurement support.  This level of assistance would be "safe" and might have some benefits for the local central government but will not defeat AQAP.  It will not abate nor measurably lessen the threat to the US resident in Yemen.

Even the capture or killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, desirable and emotionally satisfying as such might be, would not alter the state of play in Yemen in favor of the US.  Nor would a more robust Saudi presence in Yemen, even if the House of Sand could be persuaded that such might be in its interests.

The task of making the human terrain of Yemen unsuitable for the continued growth of violent political Islam is one of establishing effective governance in the place for the first time in modern history.  This in turn means assisting the government of Yemen in winning the crucial bones of perceived legitimacy.  Due to the tribal nature of Yemeni society and culture, the legitimacy must be functional as it can never be inherently existential, not until the primary loyalty of the individual Yemeni focuses on the state rather than the tribe.

The "soft" power instruments of the US are both available and appropriate for the task of enhancing the perceived functional legitimacy of the central government.  In considering this the Geek is reminded of the time in the early Seventies when he encountered Mideastern students, including those from Yemen (among whom was the father of Anwar al-Awlaki) who were attending New Mexico State University (NMSU.)  The majority of these men (and they were, unsurprisingly, all male) were taking courses in dry land agriculture, hydrology, and similar real world, severely practical matters.  All intended to go back home and apply the newly acquired knowledge and skills to the very real and pressing problems there.  Mr Awlaki senior was in no way different from the majority.

Forty years ago NMSU and other state schools had rather large programs supported by the State Department and USAID to find, recruit, and educate a new generation of technically competent leaders in most of the states of the Mideast and North Africa.  Schools such as NMSU had much experience in dealing with the sort of problems confronting countries with limited rainfall, extensive dry lands, periodic flooding, and the other disasters which limit agricultural development in places such as Yemen.

For various reasons including a desire by students to do work in areas ranging from political science to urban planning, the basic efforts pioneered with success in the Sixties and early Seventies fell increasingly by the wayside.  The situation in Yemen demands that the State Department, USAID, and relevant universities reinvigorate the old approach with haste.

Agricultural shortfalls coupled with water scarcity, population growth, and the economic displacement of current farmers represent a critical area in Yemen's present capacity for survival as well as its longer term prospects.  A crash program focusing on these considerations with an emphasis on eduction of locals would rebound to the credit of the US and the government of Yemen alike.  Insofar as the current deficiencies are addressed and future talent developed, the perceived functional legitimacy of the Yemeni government will be enhanced.  At the same time the demonization of the US would be lessened--perhaps even ended.

Beyond legitimacy enhancement and life improvement efforts, the US can assist the local government in properly exploiting the inherent provincialism and tribal loyalties of the several tribes against AQAP.  As the number of foreigners entering the tribal homelands increases, there will be more and more frictions with the locals.  Every time and ever place where foreign fighters have embedded themselves with local coreligionists, the consequent frictions have outweighed the ties of Islam.  To a Yemeni even a Saudi is an outsider, a person who may be entitled to hospitality and protection but also a person who can overstay his welcome or abrade the customs of hospitality by his arrogance or indifference.

An awareness of and exploitation of tribal sentiments, norms, and values can serve the coinciding interests of the US and the Yemeni central government.  The US has already shown its awareness of the intense xenophobia which characterizes many of the Yemeni tribals.  All that is needed now is an informed program conducted with and through the San'a regime to exploit these norms and values to the disadvantage of AQAP and even "homeboys" such as Anwar al-Awlaki.  (The least-worst solution to the problem of Anwar is for him to die at the hands of an insulted local tribesman.)

The really nifty thing about Yemen is that it provides an excellent venue to explore not only smaller footprint means of waging military counterinsurgency but ways of engaging soft power tools to promote the perceived legitimacy of the threatened host government.  To do this successfully all hands in Washington and San'a must understand that stability and peace alike rest on the twin pillars of properly employed coercion including lethal force and enhanced popular perceptions of governmental legitimacy.  The fact that Yemen is almost as bad off in the governance area as Somalia not only makes the challenge greater--it will make the success all the more compelling when (and if) it happens.