Mike Derham, writing as a PPI fellow, has an op-ed today on Honduras for RealClearWorld.  Check it out the gist:

Chávez is happy to exploit the crisis only to advance his brand of Latin socialism. Had Zelaya not gravitated toward Chávez’s Bolivarian “revolution,” Chavez would have paid Honduras no mind. Though present circumstances allow Chávez to protest that he’s supporting the democratically-elected president, he’s not. Chavez is supporting autocracy: to extend his presidency, Zelaya would have to take a page from Chávez’s undemocratic playbook and illegally leverage his way into another term.

This turn of events has given some American commentators reason to back Micheletti’s government, calculating that any enemy of Chávez is worth supporting in the name of freedom.

While opposing the likes of Chavez and his allies is attractive on the surface, in this situation, it is the wrong move. If Zelaya returns to Honduras to peaceably serve the remaining six months of his term, it will be a victory for democracy and the rule of law.

President Obama and his foreign policy team have been measured and firm in their support for the democratic process. Critics suggest that his administration is weak because it postponed a decision until Monday on whether to continue aid to Honduras. But by giving Hondurans an opportunity to resolve the issue peaceably, without outside pressure, the Micheletti government declared that it is willing to enter into dialogue with Zelaya.

President Obama has emphasized that the United States’ post-Cold War policy towards Latin America would support institutions and legal processes, not individuals and political ideologies. As he said in his remarks earlier this week, both Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. have recognized the need to “stand with democracy,” even if democracy means that regional leaders aren’t American allies.

I’m trying to write a paper on military spending, so posting has been light.  Gross apologies.

I’m pouring over numbers in various Defense and Defense-related budgets.

Fact of the day:

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ budget is $112 billion in 2010.

Today, there are 23.1 million military retirees.

That’s $4900 per head, per year… which actually doesn’t seem that expensive.

I’m wary of posting about when other people highlight stuff that has just appeared on AOM, but - eh - what’s the big deal?  And these are two cool shout-outs…

First, my good friend and loyal AOM reader Mike Derham wrote analysis on the Honduran coup for me, which was picked up by the RealClearWorld blog.  They assembled a bunch of smart folks’ thinking on Honduras and posted a round up… so you can click on over and read everything about Honduras you could ever want.

Second, a few weeks ago, I reflected on a day-trip down to Quantico, the “Crossroads of the United States Marine Corps.”  It was just republished by the Quantico Sentry, their newspaper.  Oooohraah.

I channeled my inner Terry McAuliffe yesterday when I dogged on Tom Ricks for being a huge stinking defeatist.  He still might be one, but at least he’s allowed some nuance - nay, optimism - on his site.  Give this full note - from a “smart Marine” (an adjective that most jarheads take pride in rejecting, I’ll have you know) in Fallujah - a spin.  Here’s the bottom line:

Despite recent reporting, the area is stable, while still not completely safe.  The attacks mentioned in the article are not part of a mounting trend, but are normal and to be expected from time to time in this environment.  If we want Iraq to return to normal it will necessarily mean making itself more vulnerable to these kinds of attacks.

But we have taken it as far as Americans can.  In my opinion, anything we do now may do more harm than good in delaying the inevitable and reinforcing their, at times, crippling malaise. The only enduring role for Americans is to provide the safety net to prevent complete collapse, chaos, and civil war; three things that I do not believe will happen in any event.”

I agree with the general premise that we’ve done just about everything we can. In a sense, Ricks is very, very correct when he calls the surge a failure - tactically, it did decrease daily violence by several orders of magnitude; strategically, Iraqi politicians did not reconcile, as that decreased violence was designed to facilitate.  American civilian and military forces will continue to have limited capacities to force differing sects to cooperate, never mind reverse decades - if not centuries - of ingrained corruption and cronyism amongst Iraq’s bureaucracies.

However, just because we may have driven this jalopy as far as we can doesn’t mean we’re packing up and going home tomorrow.  There is a chance - and frankly, I’m not sure how great of one - we will backslide into the aforementioned collapse, chaos, and civil war.  Our “safety net” roll, as the author calls it, means that we’ll be there through the end of the SOFA next year.

If this isn’t sitting on a knife’s edge, then I don’t know what is.

Today, the US military says syonara to Iraq’s cities and towns, pulling back to their relatively isolated FOBs (”Forward Operating Bases”), which sit removed from the average Iraqi’s daily life.  Why is this a big deal?  It represents a return to a pre-surge military posture.  “The surge” was many things, but more than a blanket increase in the number of American troops, it was a change in mentality - one that morphed from the US military protecting its own ass to protecting Iraqis’.  Read Tom Ricks “The Gamble” and you’ll see why.  In a nutshell, the military went from hiding far away from Iraq’s cities, villages, and towns, to living - quite literally - among them.  This positioning built confidence with Iraqis, leading them to cooperate with the Americans, viewing them as a mechanism to decreaing violence, not an obstacle.

Today reverses that posture.

Interesting that Tom Ricks is a huge stinking pessimist about our prospects for success:

My worry is that I don’t see the political situation as being much different than it has in the past. Nothing much has changed from the previous rush to failures. As readers of this blog have seen me say before: the surge succeeded tactically but failed strategically. That is, as planned, it created a breathing space in which a political breakthrough might occur. But Iraqi leaders, for whatever reason, didn’t take advantage of that space, and no breakthrough occurred. All the basic issues that faced Iraq before the surge are still hanging out there: How to share oil revenue? What is the power relationship between Shia, Sunni and Kurd? Who holds power inside the Shiite community? What is the role of Iran, the biggest winner in this war so far? And will Iraq have a strong central government or be a loose confederation? And what happens when all the refugees outside the country and those displaced inside it, who I think are majority Sunni, try to go back to their old houses, now largely occupied by Shiites and protected by Shiite militias?

A secondary issue is how Iraqi forces will behave once they are operating without American forces watching them. There are a lot of “Little Saddams” in Iraq. That didn’t used to be our problem-but now these guys have been trained, equipped and empowered by us.

I hope I am wrong, and that Iraq really is embarking on a new course this week. But I don’t think so. So I think the real question now is: How fast will the unraveling occur?

Yours truly is more optimistic, but very cautiously so.  I appreciate the lack of political accommodation, and agree that without it, tensions will continue to simmer in throughout the political factions.

But one of the aspects that Ricks fails to account for is how the Iranian election has effected Tehran’s ability to maintain influence on the ground in Iraq.  Is Iran’s attention so focused on internal politics now that the phone line to its Iraq-sponsored militias has been figuratively cut?

The following is a guest-post from Michael Derham, a fellow of the Truman National Security Project:

While most of us were recovering from the after-effects of “the World’s #1 Michael Jackson Tribute band” Sunday morning, in sunny Tegucigalpa the Honduran military stepped in and told President Manuel Zelaya to beat it. He has been replaced by the recent head of the Congress, Roberto Micheletti, a political opponent despite nominally being member of the same party. Like so many Latin American coups, while the details of the event were funny (Zelaya was sent packing to Costa Rica in his pajamas), the greater implications are not so humorous.

Zelaya was elected three years ago on a center-right ticket but in his time in the office swung him to the left, aligning himself with Hugo Chávez. But while those who previously supported Zelaya might not be thrilled with the direction he’s taken politically, it’s his questionable move to go for a second term — disallowed under the Honduran constitution–that caused the military to move against him. The coup occurred the morning of a planned non-binding referendum ordered by Zelaya against the wishes of the Honduran Congress.

Zelaya called the referendum on whether to re-draw the constitution to give him another four years. While Zelaya has been downplaying the nature of the referendum - after the coup he was describing it to BBC as a poll “like Gallup would conduct” - his opponents saw that he would use any expression of public support for another term as leverage to compel Congress to call a binding referendum this fall. The Supreme Court issued an order for his arrest, which lead the army to act.

Once Zelaya was whisked off to gilded exile in Costa Rica, the Organization of American States closed ranks to condemn the coup and called for Zelaya to serve out his term, still recognizing him as legitimate president. This is opposed to the rash actions of others in the region, notably Hugo Chávez. Chávez is giving truth to the phrase “only fools rush in.” He is supposed to have sped to ally Nicaragua last night to meet with Zelaya to lend his support. In the early hours after the coup, Chávez was on his nationally televised TV show “Aló Presidente” saying he was going to invade Honduras.

Unlike Chávez and others calling for hasty action, the Obama administration has walked a fine line. Reports indicate that as the crisis was culminating, US officials were working behind the scenes to resolve the situation in a peaceful, constitutional manner. The Obama administration has rightly supported the OAS, and has called the coup for what it is. Smartly, Secretary of State Clinton has emphasized that economic aid will continue to one of the poorest countries in the hemisphere, while the Honduran military, which has a strong relationship with (’dependence on’ might be a better phrase) the US will likely be frozen out of additional aid. But Secretary Clinton has held off on moving to cut aid to give Honduran actors the opportunity to work towards a peaceful solution of the crisis.

While one can question the wisdom of Zelaya’s policies or his motivation for seeking a second term, the solution imposed by the military is worse than the problem. While during the Cold War such a coup might get the quiet backing from international supporters, today the Micheletti government is finding itself isolated internationally - even from neighbors El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, which have cut off trade relations with Honduras.  Alone, and with Zelaya to speak at the UN today , the Micheletti government will likely be forced to back down.  A likely outcome would be a compromise, where Zelaya is allowed to return and serve out his term, with the understanding that his attempts to seek a second term are at an end. That could come as soon as Thursday, when Zelaya has planned to return to Honduras, in the company of the Secretary General of the OAS.

Derham is a writer living in New York City.  He specializes in Latin America, finance, and economics.  The views expressed here are his own.

NYU Russian politics professor Josh Tucker and I have a piece up on RealClearWorld this morning in advance of Obama’s trip to Russia on July 6.  Here’s the gist:

[T]he U.S. and Russia have mutual security and economic interests that should be advanced immediately. While the advancement of democracy and human rights in Russia should remain an American priority, this objective will require time and patience. In short, it’s this balancing of near-term cooperation and nudges toward longer-term liberalization that constitutes the essential compromise of American policy shifts toward Russia.

Seen in this light, the July meeting comes at an opportune moment: Weakened by the lower price of oil and in need of international capital, Russia may be more open to cooperation. Furthermore, President Medvedev himself is cause for guarded optimism-though he is hardly a Western liberal, he tilts more in that direction than KGB alum and current Prime Minister Putin.

President Obama should jump at the opportunity to foster cooperation with Russia-and lay the groundwork for greater freedom within it. Here’s how, in three steps:

Recognize that the U.S. and Russia have shared interests, and that those interests are increasingly urgent. Think for a moment about America’s most vital national security priorities: halting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear arms; combating Islamist terrorism; monitoring the ambitions of a rising China. These are Russia’s priorities, too, and the Obama administration should seek closer ties with Moscow on all of these crucial fronts.

But to achieve these aims, Mr. Obama needs to build trust by accommodating Russian concerns in other areas. Though the United States should never place relations with Russia ahead of its own interests, in practice, this would mean adopting a “go slow” approach to NATO expansion and missile defense in Central Europe, exploring ways to integrate Russia into the latter.

Declare an end - finally - to the Cold War. While the United States and Russia have deep and serious differences on a range of issues, the countries are no longer global rivals.

Nuclear weapons are an obvious starting point. In Prague this past April, President Obama laid out a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. Since the U.S. would never disarm unilaterally, it needs Russian cooperation. While negotiations of the size of arsenals will come later, a good confidence-building measure is to take our nuclear weapons off “hair trigger alert,” a Cold War holdover.

In a similar spirit, President Obama can show America’s goodwill by revoking the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, designed to encourage free emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union. While laudable and necessary in its day, the measure is a constant irritation in Russian-American relations.

Don’t give up on Russian democracy. The watchword of the Moscow meetings should be cooperation, not confrontation. It’s a time for gradually building ties, not for righteous lectures to a proud nation whose own people often seem quite ambivalent about the merits of democracy.

Nonetheless, the U.S. should take measured but firm positions-coupled with deliberate, cool-headed rhetoric-that support gradual development of democratic institutions in Russia. Across Russia, brave individuals are calling for greater accountability and transparency in government. They deserve an American advocate. You never quite know what opportunities may arise, but the U.S. should be watchful to encourage greater openness and respect for human rights within Russia.