Chapter Three: State Failure, State-building and Democratic Change

Abstract

The damage that has been done to the transatlantic alliance will not be repaired through grand architectural redesigns or radical new agendas. Instead, the transatlantic partners need to restore their consensus and cooperation on key security challenges with a limited agenda that reflects the essential conservatism of the transatlantic partnership during the Cold War and the 1990s. There will inevitably be big challenges, such as the rise of China, where transatlantic disparities in strategic means and commitments preclude any common alliance undertaking. Yet such limits are nothing new. The absence of a common transatlantic commitment to counter-insurgency in Iraq may cause resentments, but so too did the lack of a common commitment to counter-insurgency in Vietnam.

This paper suggests ten propositions for future transatlantic consensus that is to say, ten security challenges for which the allies should be able to agree on common approaches. These run the gamut from an effective strategy to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear-weapons capability to transatlantic leadership for international cooperation against global warming. If pursued with seriousness and a reasonable degree of transatlantic unity, these propositions could constitute the foundations of an effective partnership. They are, in the authors view, the basis for a consensus on the most pressing security challenges of the twenty-first century.

The time is right for this kind of serious re-dedication to alliance purposes. There has already been some effort to repair the damage; moreover, new leaders are in place in or coming to the countries that were major protagonists of the transatlantic crisis: Germany, France, Britain and, in 2009, the United States. It is possible that these four new leaders will be better able to put the disputes of the recent past behind them. This extended essay is a guide to the possibilities, and also the limits, of a new start.

Notes

1. The introduction to this chapter is adapted from Dana H. Allin, ‘The Atlantic Crisis of Confidence’, International Affairs, vol. 80, no. 4, July 2004, pp. 649–63.

2. Interview with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Today, NBC, 19 February 1998. This was not just an American sentiment. Then-leader of the German Green Party Joschka Fischer argued in strikingly similar terms that the US role was crucial in bringing peace to Bosnia.

3. 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States of America; Council of the European Union, ‘A Secure Europe in a Better World: European Security Strategy’, Brussels, 12 December 2003, available at http://ue.eu.int/uedocs/cmsUpload/78367.pdf.

4. Robert Chase, Emily Hill and Paul Kennedy (eds), Pivotal States: A New Framework for U.S. Policy in the Developing World (New York: W.W. Norton, 2000).

5. Philip Gordon, Dana Allin and Phillip C. Saunders, ‘Iraq's Impact on the Future of U.S. Foreign and Defense Policy, Session 2: The United States, Europe, and Asia’, Council on Foreign Relations, New York, 6 October 2006, transcript of discussion at http://www.cfr.org/publication/11673/iraqs_impact_on_the_future_of_us_foreign_and_defense_policy.html?breadcrumb=%2Fmedia%2Ftranscripts%3Fpage%3D6.

6. Toby Dodge, ‘The Causes of US Failure in Iraq’, Survival, no. 49, no. 1, Spring 2007, p. 101.

7. Peter Beinart, ‘War Torn’, The New Republic, 30 October 2006, p. 6.

8. Peter W. Galbraith and Reuel Marc Gerecht, ‘Should Iraq Be Partitioned?’, The New Republic Online, 4 November 2006. See also Jacob Weisberg, ‘The War That Dare Not Speak Its Name’, Financial Times, 28 September 2006, p. 19 for a brief discussion of Gelb's and Galbraith's proposals.

9. Dodge, ‘The Causes of US Failure in Iraq’.

10. Fareed Zakaria, ‘Rethinking Iraq: The Way Forward’, Newsweek, 6 November 2006, p. 26.

11. Ibid. A similar plan was put forward by Daniel Byman some 18 months earlier: see Byman's ‘Five Bad Options for Iraq’, Survival, vol. 47, no. 1, Spring 2005, pp. 7–32.

12. Steven N. Simon, After the Surge: The Case for U.S. Military Disengagement from Iraq, Council Special Report No. 23 (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, February 2007), p. 11.

13. James F. Dobbins et al., America's Role in Nation-Building: From Germany to Iraq (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2003), pp. 167–221.

14. Allin and Simon, ‘Military Force Will Not Defeat Islamist Revivalism’, Financial Times, 10 October 2006, p. 11.

15. The Iranians have been arming Shia militias and, it has even been suggested, Sunni insurgents, with the clear intention of making America's difficulties as pronounced as possible. US–Iranian antagonism is a fact of life that will continue to be played out in Iraq. But the Iranians have cross-cutting interests in a stable and friendly Iraqi government; this interest that they share with the United States will become more evident as an American departure comes closer. Indeed, on the occasion of the first US–Iranian talks, Iran's deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, told the Financial Times that, although Iran does want US troops to leave, ‘immediate withdrawal could lead to chaos, civil war. No one is asking for immediate withdrawal of foreign forces from Iraq.’ Gareth Smyth, ‘Iran Offers to Help US Find Iraq Exit’, Financial Times, 9 May 2007, p. 10.

16. See Tony Blair, ‘PM's World Affairs Speech to the Lord Mayor's Banquet’, 13 November 2006, http://www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page10409.asp.

17. The Iraq Study Group Report, http://bakerinstitute.org/Pubs/iraqstudygroup_findings.pdf, pp. 34–6.

18. The administration's attitude was illustrated by President Bush's endorsement of 14 reservations by the Israeli government to the initial roadmap, and his later interpretation of two key final-status issues, borders and refugees, which acknowledged ‘new realities on the ground’, in a letter to Ariel Sharon, George W. Bush, ‘Letter From President Bush to Prime Minister Sharon’, 14 April 2004, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040414-3.html.

19. Which previous schemes, such as the Tenet plan, had included.

20. Yezid Sayigh, ‘Inducing a Failed State in Palestine’, Survival, vol. 49, no. 3, Autumn 2007, pp. 14–15.

21. On 15 July 2007, President Bush pledged $190 million in direct aid to the Fatah government to be transferred by the end of September, and announced an international conference for that autumn to review progress on building Palestinian institutions. The conference would be presided over by Condoleezza Rice and would include Israel, the Palestinian Authority and regional Arab states.

22. Doug Suisman, Steven Simon, Glenn Robinson, C. Ross Anthony and Michael Schoenbaum, The Arc: A Formal Structure for a Palestinian State (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2007), available at http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG327-1/.

23. Seth G. Jones, ‘Averting Failure in Afghanistan’, Survival, vol. 48, no. 1, Spring 2006, p. 115.

24. James Dobbins' team at the RAND Corporation has argued that such operations require a ratio of 20 security personnel (both military and police included) to 1,000 people.

25. Barnett R. Rubin, ‘Saving Afghanistan’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 86, no. 1, January–February 2007, p. 58.

26. Ibid., p. 71.

27. Jones, ‘Pakistan's Dangerous Game’, Survival, vol. 49, no. 1, Spring 2007, pp. 15–32.

28. Ian Bremmer, The J Curve: A New Way to Understand Why Nations Rise and Fall (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006), p. 41.

29. Ibid., pp. 31–2.

30. Dobbins, ‘America's Role in Nation-building: From Germany to Iraq’, Survival, vol. 45, no. 4, Winter 2003–04, pp. 87–110.

31. Leo Tindemans et al., Unfinished Peace: Report of the International Commission on the Balkans (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1996). Dana Allin was a co-author of this report.

32. Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution: The Fall of Srebrenica, A/54/549 (New York: United Nations, 1999), paragraphs 497–502, available at http://www.un.org/News/ossg/srebrenica.pdf.

33. Dobbins, ‘The UN's Role in Nation-building: From the Belgian Congo to Iraq’, Survival, vol. 46, no. 4, Winter 2004–05, pp. 81–102.

34. Ibid., p. 98.

35. Beinart, ‘Blue Crush’, The New Republic, 11 December 2006, p. 6.

36. See http://europa.eu.int/council/off/conclu/dec99/dec99_en.htm#security.

37. Bastian Giegerich and William Wallace, ‘Not Such a Soft Power’, Survival, vol. 46, no. 2, Summer 2004, pp. 163–82.

38. See Tony Blair, ‘Doctrine of the International Community’, speech delivered to the Economic Club, Chicago, 24 April 1999, http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page1297.asp; and ‘Address at the Labour Party Conference’, 2 October 2001, http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/tblair10-02-01.htm.

39. Morton Abramowitz, ‘After Iraq, Shrinking Horizons’, The Washington Post, 31 July 2003, p. A19.

40. Dobbins, ‘America's Role in Nation- building: From Germany to Iraq’, p. 109.

41. Shibley Telhami, ‘America in Arab Eyes’, Survival, vol. 49, no. 1, Spring 2007, p. 114.