Military Intervention - Works Well With Others

My friend at The Camel's Nose argues that the U.S. should be wary of "buck-passing" in the Middle East, where we take on all the costs of providing public goods like security. I agree with him, but for different reasons.

He says we have no special obligation to countries like Libya and therefore we should conserve our resources by working with others.

For me, whether one has an "obligation" or not isn't so important. Nor is whether everyone lifts their fair share. Rather, it's just a matter of costs and benefits.

Working with others tends to decrease economic, military, and moral costs of intervention, but it does entail some loss of efficiency. At the same time, international cooperation also increases the likelihood of success. In short, costs go down, benefits go up.

But that doesn't mean there's a general rule that intervention requires multilateralism. Some interventions, even with support, just aren't worth it. Other interventions, even without support, are still worth it.

In cases like Libya where there are good arguments for and against intervention, international support - or the lack thereof - can tilt the scales.

Sayyid Qutb and Jihad

Earlier this week, the Washington Post ran an article by Lorenzo Vidino on "Five myths about the Muslim Brotherhood." Here's an unpublished letter to the editor I wrote in response:

In “Five myths about the Muslim Brotherhood” (3/4/11), Lorenzo Vidino contends Sayyid Qutb “opted for violence” and has “inspired jihadists worldwide.” While true, these observations require some context.


After years of torture in Egyptian prison, Qutb published his political and religious treatise Milestones. While he vigorously defends the Islamic obligation of “jihad of the sword,” Qutb also argues a true Islamic society must fulfill that obligation. Importantly, Qutb laments that no such society exists. Thus as a first step, a “vanguard” of true believers must leave unbelieving society in order to study the Qur’an and determine how such a society can be formed.

In short, Qutb believed the times call for religious introspection, not violence. Yet there is no question his argument has been misconstrued by countless violent extremists, cherry picking Qutb’s arguments just as they cherry pick the Qur’an itself.

Some of the blame for this confusion lies with Qutb himself. Not long after he published Milestones, he was implicated in a conspiracy to overthrow the Egyptian regime. While his exact role is not clear, the Egyptian court misinterpreted Milestones just as modern violent extremists do today – twisting Qutb’s arguments as an immediate call for jihad.

Conceptualizing the War on Terror

I just got back from an event at AEI on the release of a new report, "Al Qaeda's Operating Environments: A New Approach to The War on Terror."

With the caveat I haven't read the full report yet, it argues that we must develop a better understanding of how AQ operates in different kinds of physical and human terrains. It conceptualizes three kinds of terrains: the Islamist Quasi State (e.g. Somalia), the Limited Safe Haven (e.g. FATA in Pakistan), and the Distressed Zone (e.g. Iraq). These different categories are divided based on how much freedom AQ has to operate. The ultimate point is that fighting AQ in these different terrains require different strategies.

While I agree it's essential to disaggregate AQ in order to fight them more effectively, I have two critiques. First, the threat of anti-American terror extends beyond AQ. By focusing on AQ, we not only risk missing other threats, but we are also prone to conflating different threats as all AQ. But that doesn't present a problem for the main thrust of the report, and in fact it makes disaggregation of these different terrains all the more important.

Second, I believe the report is missing two other terrain categories. The first, as Michael O'Hanlon pointed out, is an urban terrain like Karachi that offers ripe opportunities for AQ despite government control. The other is enemy terrain (i.e. the US and the EU). Even though the report focuses on foreign policy, I pushed the authors to explain in the Q&A why they leave out enemy terrain as a key operating environment for AQ. They responded that the financing, planning, and training for attacks all occur overseas, and therefore once the threat resides in the homeland, it's too late.

I think this is a mistake for a few reasons. One, we've seen violent extremists use the US and EU as safe havens in the past. Most notably, the Islamic Group's Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman helped plan the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 and was stopped from launching more attacks shortly thereafter. Just because it's easier to fundraise, organize, and train abroad currently, doesn't mean that they can't or won't find ways of doing so here.

Two, even after the financing, planning and training have all taken place, there are still many opportunities to thwart terror attacks in the target country. It's not ideal to having to foil individual plots versus stopping them at their source, but that doesn't mean we should ignore the homeland as an essential operating environment of violent extremists.

Three, AQ clearly wants to turn the US and Europe into a new operating environment on the model of Nidal Hassan. It'd be a mistake to exclude this terrain in our analysis just because it's downstream or because it's the most restrictive for AQ. The framework should include the entire spectrum of environments violent extremists can and do operate in. Otherwise we're allowing a potentially vulnerable blind spot to go unstudied.

Fourth and finally, as we place more pressure on AQ's operating environments abroad (which is the ultimate goal of this report), there will be greater incentive for AQ to seek operational capabilities within the US and EU. In fact, some believe AQ has been forced to give up on large scale attacks due to US pressure, instead opting for smaller, more amateurish attacks in recent years that rely upon citizens and residents of the target countries.

In short, this report aims to take a step back and reconceptualize the war on terror in broad terms. Yet it needlessly limits itself to one particular group and three particular terrains that, while obviously presenting the greatest threats, do not constitute the entire universe of violent extremism that endangers our national security.

Update: Here is video of the event. I ask my question at 57:30.

End of Poverty and Islam

In his latest op ed, Nick Kristof gives a good argument why Islam is neither the problem nor the solution for the Middle East's economic woes. The article hinges upon a new book by Timur Kuran that shows how specific Islamic legal institutions hindered economic growth. I haven't read the book yet, so I'll focus on Kristof. While he gets the conclusion right, the framing of his argument is incomplete.

He begins with an obvious observation: the Middle East has fallen behind economically from the West. Many often assume that this difference must be caused from something specific about the Middle East. Somehow, something, at some time, went wrong in the region.

Because Islam is the most salient characteristic of the Middle East, it often gets blamed. Kristof rightly dismisses that argument. If Islam were the problem, it's hard to explain why the Middle East used to flourish economically. Moreover, the economic effects of religion varies over time - not only because the economic and political environment changes, but also because religion itself evolves.

But what gets lost in that debate is that perhaps nothing went wrong in the Middle East, but rather, something went right in the West. As Jeffrey Sachs shows in The End of Poverty, standards of living were relatively similar on a global level only a few hundred years ago. But starting with the agricultural revolution, Europe began to shoot ahead. A small growth percentage advantage per year accumulated over several centuries, transforming a small discrepancy into a yawning schism.

The relevant questions are therefore what did Europe do right? Why has it taken the Middle East so long to follow suit? And perhaps the most difficult: are there other ways of getting things right?

None of this suggests Kristof comes to the wrong conclusions. In fact, I think he's completely right. It's just a matter of framing the argment differently.

Nitpicking Egypt's Constitutional Amendments

A committee appointed by the military council in charge in Egypt recently released several proposed amendments to the constitution. They will be voted on by the people within the next few weeks. For a full review, check out Nathan Brown and Michele Dunne's piece here. For this blog, I'm going to focus on one of the proposed changes: Article 189.

Originally, it was expected that this committee would propose changes to the constitution essential for fair elections, elections would be held for parliament and then president, and finally the newly elected officials would take a more thorough look at how to change the constitution more broadly (or write an entirely new one). The proposed Article 189 changes that plan.

Instead of mandating further constitutional changes after elections, it instead offers a procedure for how and when a new constitution can be written and adopted. Specifically, either the president or a majority in both houses of parliament can vote in favor of a new constitution. If that vote passes, parliament forms a 100 member constituent assembly to draft a new constitution to be voted upon by the people within 6 months.

If this measure passes, notice that it'll be easier to change the constitution in Egypt than it is to pass a law in the United States. This is a problem. Constitutions are supposed to act as the bedrock of politics, stable enough to provide security, flexible enough to ensure relativity. That's why after over two centuries, we've only amended our constitution 27 times. Of those, 10 were added simultaneously with ratification and two cancel each other out. So practically, we've only passed 15 amendments that stuck.

Yet if Article 189 passes, it'll be far too easy to amend the Egyptian constitution, defeating its purpose of providing political stability. Instead, with every shift in of the political winds, the constitution will be at threat. The temptation to seek amendments to gain political advantage will always be lurking behind every legislative debate and electoral challenge.

Now admittedly, it is likely the committee proposed Article 189 with the intention of making constitutional change easy the first time around, expecting the article to be removed in the next round of amendments. Practically, this plan makes sense as a political compromise in a time of immense uncertainty.

But here's the problem. Democracy isn't just about institutions and processes. It's a deeply-engrained understanding that a government serves its people. While not all democracies have constitutions, all democracies understand that a contract between people and government form the foundation of politics. The Egyptian constitution should outline that social contract and give life to its budding democracy. Adding amendments to that fundamental contract with the intention that they should be removed when convenient is not exactly an auspicious start.

It sets a bad precedent. Moreover, it echoes the worst of its antecedents. Mubarak lasted for nearly three decades by creating what political scientists call a liberalizing autocracy. Essentially, he set up all the bells and whistles of democracy - constitutions, elections, parliaments, etc - while squashing any force that truly portended democratic values. Mubarak's democracy was a sham democracy. Mubarak's constitution was a sham constitution. It helped him stay in power, and when it didn't, he changed it to keep him in power. After Mubarak forced through several devastating amendments in 2007, some government websites failed to even bother updating their websites.

That is what the constitution was worth in the old Egypt. In the new Egypt, a constitution must mean so much more. It must not only capture the organic spirit of Tahrir, but also organize that spirit into a workable and stable politics. By proposing Article 189 that is not intended to last, the committee has focused too keenly on the momentarily pragmatic at the expense of an enduring ideal.

I recognize I'm nitpicking here. There are so many things to worry about in Egypt right now. Amendment 189 is far down on that list. But this is the future Egyptian constitution we're talking about here. It should be nitpicked.