Focal Points Blog

Without Iran, a Coalition to Confront the Islamic State Is Doomed to Failure

Iran is the linchpin of security in the Middle East.

By Russ Wellen, September 22, 2014

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry opposes including Iran in the coalition aligned against the Islamic State. (Photo: Ralph Alswang / Flickr)

With the skills it has exhibited for governing (see In Raqqa, ISIL governs with fear and efficiency in the National), one can’t help but wonder if it might be a good idea to just let the Islamic State have its caliphate. Impossible, of course, because of the fear factor. In fact, its brutality is like a self-destruct button that mobilizes states to join forces against it. For example, as Graeme Wood wrote in the New Republic:

… any attack on a Western city would draw an immediate and devastating counterattack on Raqqa, and wouldn’t require the laborious fumigation of hundreds of mountain caves.

Before and After the Berlin Wall Fell, Equal Opportunity for German Women Has Been a Challenge

Like Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel, Marina Grasse was an ordinary person transforming an East-Central European country.

By John Feffer, September 19, 2014

Marina Grasse helped found East-West European Women’s Network. (Photo: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung / Wikimedia)

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com.

Revolutions elevate a new and unexpected group of people to power. In East-Central Europe in 1990, an electrician became the president of Poland, a playwright the president of Czechoslovakia, and a philosopher the president of Bulgaria. After this brief period of the world turned upside down, the professional politicians took over again (or in the case of Vaclav Havel, the playwright morphed into a professional politician). But for a year or two or three, “ordinary” people were suddenly in charge of transforming the country.

Marina Grasse is a biologist who was involved in the independent peace movement in East Germany in the 1980s. I met her in 1990 (when she was Marina Beyer) to talk about the Pankow Peace Circle and how it was adapting to the new circumstances in a democratic East Germany. As the mother of four children, she was also passionately interested in educational reform. In fact, on the evening just before the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, she helped to organize a forum on educational reform in East Berlin. They expected 10-20 people. A couple thousand showed up.
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Our Unjust Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan Have Blinded Us to a Real Threat

Many Americans have reached the point that they can no longer conceive of a legitimate war unless it’s on our own soil.

By Russ Wellen, September 18, 2014

U.S. motives for Iraq were so hidden that we no longer trust our leaders to wage a just war. (Photo: PEO Soldier / Flickr)

A sports or entertainment columnist that we read on a regular basis often becomes a trusted voice to us. When he or she turns to different subjects, especially politics and world affairs, the columnist is in a unique position to reach a readership not interested in those subjects or who may be under the spell of hard-right personalities. In recent years, noted sportswriter Mike Lupica has been writing such columns for the New York Daily News. Recently, whether you agree with him or not, Lupica shares an arresting insight.
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Foreign Policy, Lord Palmerston, and Appendectomies

The U.S. cannot confront climate change, growing economic inequality, and the deterioration of our infrastructure and education system without reducing the $1 trillion it spends annually on defense.

By Conn Hallinan, September 17, 2014

As British foreign secretary and prime minister in the early nineteenth century, Lord Palmerston oversaw a period of great change. (Photo: Hulton Archive)

Thinking about U.S. foreign policy these days brings to mind a line from songwriter/comedian Tom Lehrer: if you are feeling like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis you have good reason.

1)  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is creating a Rapid Reaction Force to challenge Russian “aggression” in Ukraine, and the U.S., the European Union, and Russia are lobbing sanctions at each other that have thrown Europe back into a recession. Russian planes are buzzing U.S. and Canadian warships in the Black Sea.

2)  The U.S. is bombing Iraq and Syria in an effort to halt the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), while at the same time supporting insurgents trying to overthrow the Assad regime in Damascus, the pool from which ISIL was created.

3)  After 13 years of war, Afghanistan is the verge of a civil war over the last presidential election, while the Taliban have stepped up their attacks on the Afghan military and civil authorities.

4)  Libya has essentially dissolved as a country, but not without supplying insurgents in central Africa and Nigeria with greatly enhanced firepower.

5)  The U.S. encouraged the Japanese government to bypass Article 9 of Japan’s peace constitution that restricted deploying its military outside of Japan. Washington also committed the U.S. to support Tokyo in the event of a clash with China over the ownership of a handful of islands in the East China Sea. American, Japanese and Chinese warships and military aircraft have been playing chicken with one another in the East and South China seas.
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People Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Complain About Violations of the INF Treaty

The U.S. recently made the case that Russia is in violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, but it needs to look in the mirror, too.

By Russ Wellen, September 17, 2014

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signing the INF Treaty in 1987. (Photo: National Archives and Records Administration / Wikimedia)

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Union General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in order to halt the arms race in missiles with which the United States and NATO could strike the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union could strike Europe. Recently, the United States had been complaining that Russia was in violation of the treaty. Then in late July the United States went on the record with that accusation and, as Greg Thielmann reports at Arms Control NOW, accused Russia of testing an intermediate-range cruise missile.

The Russia action at issue could conceivably have been a technical violation, such as the use of a ground-launched cruise missile launcher for a sea-launched cruise missile flight-test, or a flight-test range overage, infringing on the 500 km range limit for treaty-permitted systems. The military significance of such actions would be less weighty than a blatant step toward development of a system similar to [those banned in the treaty].

How Putin Could Defeat NATO With Nukes

Unthinkable? Perhaps, but it’s entirely plausible that Vladimir Putin could attack a NATO country with nuclear weapons and emerge victorious.

By Russ Wellen, September 16, 2014

Vladimir Putin. (Photo: Monika Flueckiger / Flickr)

Though untranslated, an article by an anti-Putin Russian scientist has garnered much attention for its views on whether Vladimir Putin might resort to the use of nuclear weapons in a war with NATO. Yes, you heard that right. Andrei Piontkovsky is described at Foreign Policy by Jeffrey Tayler as a “former executive director of the Strategic Studies Center in Moscow and a political commentator for the BBC World Service.” He speculates on a conventional war with NATO, which “would not go well. Given NATO’s superior armed forces and Russia’s comparative economic, scientific, and technological weaknesses, a conventional campaign would, Piontkovsky concludes, end with Russia’s defeat.” What’s the alternative? Putin has “only one option: a nuclear attack.”
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The Islamic State Provides the U.S. With a Chance to Rethink Its Default Position on Airstrikes

Alternatives exist to airstrikes and boots on the ground when dealing with a threat such as the Islamic State.

By Russ Wellen, September 15, 2014

Bombs and missiles tend to strengthen, not weaken, the resolve of those in targeted areas. (Photo: USMC Lance Corporal James J. Vooris / Flickr)

The latest execution by the Islamic State of another non-combatant, aid worker David Haines, is yet another example of how Islamist extremists blur the distinctions between civilians and combatants. Of course it’s tough to condemn them on that count because the United States, especially via drone strikes, has been a trendsetter in that regard. Nevertheless, the sadism implicit in beheading ― whatever happened to the good old days when slicing someone’s neck sufficed? ― threatens to make us all react like New York Post columnist Ralph Peters when interviewed by Fox News:

“You whack those suckers, and you keep whacking them and you scorch the earth and then you plow over and then you scorch it again.”

Ebola Dwarfed as Threat to Africa by Malaria and HIV/AIDS

Every day, 2,000 African children die from diarrhea. Every minute, an African child dies of malaria.

By John Feffer, September 12, 2014

What makes these diseases so tragic is that effective treatments that could bring the mortality rate down to near zero already exist. (Photo: Gates Foundation / Flickr)

Cross-posted from JohnFeffer.com.

In the South Korean movie The Host, the American military pours formaldehyde into the Han River and inadvertently creates a monster. This freak of nature not only goes on a murderous rampage but also is the host of a deadly virus. The movie, inspired by a real-life incident of contamination, is a cautionary tale of the consequences of tampering with the environment.

At first glance, the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa would seem to have nothing to do with such ecological issues. The plague, which has claimed the lives of more than 1,400 people in the countries of Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea, most likely came from an infected fruit bat that bit a toddler in a remote area of eastern Guinea in December 2013. The disease spread quickly from there to urban locations and then across borders. Beginning this summer, it has dominated the headlines. In August, it very nearly overshadowed the summit of African leaders that took place in Washington, DC.
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Fight Against Islamic State More Notable for What It Isn’t Than for What It Is

According to the New York Times, the campaign that the U.S. has initiated against the Islamic State has no immediate precedents.

By Russ Wellen, September 11, 2014

The heavy-handed approach we used to fight Al Qaeda turned out to be a recruiting drive for the Islamic State. (Photo: Flickr)

In the New York Times, Eric Schmitt, Michael Gordon and Helene Cooper report:

The Obama administration is preparing to carry out a campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that may take three years to complete, requiring a sustained effort that could last until after President Obama has left office, according to senior administration officials.

The first phase, an air campaign with nearly 145 airstrikes in the past month, is already underway to protect ethnic and religious minorities and American diplomatic, intelligence and military personnel, and their facilities, as well as to begin rolling back ISIS gains in northern and western Iraq.

The next phase, which would begin sometime after Iraq forms a more inclusive government, scheduled this week, is expected to involve an intensified effort to train, advise or equip the Iraqi military, Kurdish fighters and possibly members of Sunni tribes.

Like Bush With Iraq, President Obama Seeks Coalition to Fight Islamic State

But a state other than the United States might be a better choice to assume operational leadership.

By Russ Wellen, September 10, 2014

A government building in Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital. (Photo: Beshr O / Flickr)

Were they not addicted to barbarism and conquest, I personally would have no objection to letting the Islamic State rule the parts of Syria and Iraq it now occupies. IS could show those countries a thing or two about governing. At Abu Dhabi’s the National, Maryam Karouny reports:

In the cities and towns across north-east Syria, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant has insinuated itself into nearly every aspect of daily life.

The group known for its beheadings, crucifixions and mass executions provides electricity and water, pays salaries, controls traffic, and runs nearly everything from bakeries and banks to schools, courts and mosques.

While its merciless battlefield tactics and its imposition of its austere vision of Islamic law have won the group headlines, residents say much of its power lies in its efficient and often deeply pragmatic ability to govern.

Syria’s eastern province of Raqqa provides the best illustration of their methods. Members hold up the province as an example of life under the Islamic “caliphate” they hope will one day stretch from China to Europe.

In the provincial capital, a dust-blown city that was home to about a quarter of a million people before Syria’s three-year-old war began, the group leaves almost no institution or public service outside of its control.

“Let us be honest, they are doing massive institutional work. It is impressive,” one activist from Raqqa who now lives in a border town in Turkey said.

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