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 He has been replaced by the recent head of the Congress, Roberto Micheletti, a political opponent despite nominally being member of the same party.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.

The following is the latest in our series from fellows in the Truman National Security Project.  Mike Foote writes:

The Department of Justice has made prosecuting terrorists its top priority, but those prosecutions generally focus on domestic support systems for terrorist groups. There have been many successes, including a recent 20 year sentence for Ohio resident Christopher Paul, who provided training and other support to al Qaeda since the early 1990’s. There have been some setbacks too. Some prosecutions required new trials after hung juries and others had to settle for a less than optimal result.  This is inevitable in the criminal justice system.

But last week a new kind of criminal terrorism case succeeded. Iraqi insurgent Wesam al Delaema pled guilty in a U.S. federal court to conspiracy to commit murder of U.S. nationals by targeting American soldiers in Fallujah from 2003 through 2005. This conviction is the first of its kind – the first time a foreign insurgent (al Delaema is an Iraqi-born Dutch citizen) was convicted in a U.S. court for acts against American soldiers entirely outside of the United States.  His guilty plea shows the great potential of federal prosecution as a counterinsurgency tool.

More officials realize al Qaeda and other Islamic extremist groups represent a global insurgency, and our fight against those groups should be a counterinsurgency rather than the now disfavored “global war on terror.” But the role of federal prosecutions has not been adjusted to reflect that fact. Put simply, the United States must prosecute more enablers of the global insurgency.

There needs to be more prosecutions against people like Afghan narco-trafficker and Taliban supporter Khan Mohammed, who once told undercover agents that drugs can be just as effective against Americans as guns. It is well known that drug trafficking by Mohammed and other Afghans have fueled the Taliban’s resurgence.

The United States can also aid other governments by extraditing and prosecuting their insurgents who violate demobilization and cease-fire agreements, as it did recently with terrorist drug traffickers from Colombia.

Just as important in these instances is the fact that insurgents are treated like mere criminals rather than soldiers who die in a noble battle. Read the rest of this entry »

The following is the latest in our series from fellows in the Truman National Security Project.  Jordan Tama writes:

President Obama announced today that he intends to gradually withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq between now and August 2010, reducing the number of troops in the country from 142,000 to 35-50,000. That residual force will have three missions: training and advising Iraqi security forces, protecting American civilian personnel, and conducting counterterrorism operations against Al Qaeda and other militants. Under Obama’s plan, all remaining troops will leave Iraq by the end of 2011—in accord with an existing U.S.-Iraq agreement.

Some Democrats are criticizing the plan for leaving too many troops in Iraq for too long. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi commented: “I don’t know what the justification is for 50,000. I would think a third of that, maybe 20,000 [would be sufficient].” Leading Senate Democrats also said they didn’t think such a sizable force needed to remain in Iraq after the summer of 2010.

But Obama’s plan gets it exactly right. After the tremendous progress we have made in Iraq over the past two years, it would be foolhardy to pull out nearly all of our troops precipitously and put that progress at risk. Iraqi security forces remain a work in progress, and need our support—both for training and to assist them in difficult combat missions. Without sufficient U.S. troops to provide that support during the next three years, a security vacuum could emerge that enables sectarian violence to become widespread once again.

As the military begins its withdrawal, Democrats should also acknowledge the remarkable success of the counterinsurgency strategy pursued by the U.S. since the beginning of 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

This is the latest in our series by fellows in the Truman National Security Project.  Harley Feldbaum writes:

Late last week, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen gave a talk at Princeton calling for a “whole of government” approach to national security and expressing concern about a “militarization of foreign policy.” Most startling was that Mullen pointed out the typically unstated issue of when this approach would be implemented: “in my opinion… we are a good decade away from creating a capability in our other departments.” Bottom line: it will be years before State, USAID and other civilian agencies are re-staffed and organized to conduct soft power missions.

Since DoD will remain the principle soft power player for the near future, let’s take a look at four DoD soft power missions, in this case in the health field:

First, I give two DoD health missions a “C”, for both their benefit to U.S. strategic interests and impact on improving global health. The last two years have seen increasing deployments of the hospital ships USS Comfort and USS Mercy on humanitarian missions to Latin America and West Africa. Touted as voyages of healing that win heart and minds, these ships provide randomly selected populations a brief 72 hours of access to first-rate medical care, but with no plan for return visits or follow-up care.   By NGO standards, these missions are expensive joke with little long-term impact on health; what’s more, their public diplomacy impact likely pales in comparison to Cuban health diplomacy efforts that place doctors in poor neighborhoods for years at a time.

Then there’s “medical civil-assistance programs” (or MEDCAPS), essentially temporary medical clinics used recently in Iraq and Afghanistan to win support of local populations, gather intelligence, and reward communities for cooperation with the U.S..  Like the hospital ship missions, MEDCAPS offer little in terms of sustainable health improvement. Worse, however, is their potentially counter-productive strategic impact. Major Jay Baker describes MEDCAPS as “tailgate medicine” that detracts from Iraqi health systems and undermines the American strategic objective of building Iraqi government legitimacy.

Can DoD “do” soft power right in the health arena?  Yes. Read the rest of this entry »

After taking a holiday break, AOM is reinvigorating our series of postings from Truman National Security Project fellows.  Katherine Southwick writes:

Struggling to sneak a photo of a vine-shrouded statue before throngs of other tourists trekked by, it was hard to agree with our tour guide’s assertion that 4,000 visitors a day to the Angkor Wat temple complex was a good thing.

But he was correct that the lure of the UNESCO World Heritage Site created jobs and income, and that “foreigners become aware of Cambodia when they visit the temples, not just our ancient past, but our recent history, too.” Indeed, while the temples’ grand scale and intricate carvings can transport you back to the twelfth century, occasional bullet holes in the sandstone structures are jarring reminders of the horrors of the twentieth. The brutal Khmer Rouge regime had used nearby areas as killing fields in the late 1970s and controlled the region even after its downfall.

That’s why it’s worth noting that America was not the only country that marked a major milestone this January. On January 6, 40,000 people attended a stadium ceremony in the capital of Phnom Penh to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the Vietnamese-led overthrow of the Khmer Rouge. Taking power in 1975, within less than four years, the Khmer Rouge oversaw approximately 1.5 million deaths, around 20 percent of the country’s population. Under its radical communist policies, the Khmer Rouge concentrated nearly the entire population in collective farms, splitting up families and targeting religious groups and social elites. People died as a result of forced labor, starvation, torture, and execution.

Coming to terms with ancient and recent history are two separate endeavors. Read the rest of this entry »

The following is the latest in our series of posts from fellows of the Truman National Security Project.  Peter Henne writes:

Amidst the many surprises that emerged in this historic Presidential contest—Bill Ayers, suspended campaigns, Sarah Palin…—there was one potential surprise conspicuous by its absence. Osama bin Ladin and the al Qaeda (AQ) network, whose attacks and rhetoric have framed US foreign policy debates since 2001, remained silent, and the only public communiqué to date was a brief release by an AQ affiliate, the Islamic State in Iraq (ISI).

For those of us rejoicing in the victory of President-elect Obama, in an election in which only nine per cent of voters identified terrorism as a primary concern, it is easy to forget the decisive role terrorism once seemed destined to play in America’s fortunes.  Beginning with the 9/11 attacks, fears over terrorism suffused the early years of the new millennium, culminating in the purported terrorist threat to the 2004 elections. Yet, we heard nothing from AQ during the 2008 campaign season, and the economy dominated voters’ attention. Does this mean that the threat of terrorism has dissipated?

The answer is, most likely, “no.” The communiqué released by the AQ affiliate was, as Frank Gardner of the BBC put it, “mild.” The spokesman for the ISI calls on “Western countries” to be impartial; in return, the group will not interfere with the supply of oil. Yet, other groups’ releases were more emphatic in their call for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, while online responses to the ISI communiqué indicated the usual level of anti-US hatred.  Furthermore, a London-based Arabic-language newspaper reported that in recent weeks sources have claimed bin Ladin is planning an attack that is “bigger than 9/11.”

These ambivalent messages indicate an opportunity and warning for the Obama Administration’s counterterrorism policy.  Barring their acquisition of a nuclear weapon, AQ and its affiliates are not likely to seriously threaten the US national interest, although terrorist attacks on US and foreign interests can undermine democratic progress and weaken US resolve for internationalist missions. The greatest threat from these transnational networks lies instead in their mobilization of anti-US opinion; if the United States is viewed unfavorably in other countries it will be difficult to increase soft power through outreach and aid missions, as well as gain the support of foreign leaders.  While al Qaeda communiqués may just be rhetoric, but even rhetoric can fix a negative view of US actions and intentions in the minds of Muslim publics (even if they simultaneously reject the devastating violence perpetrated by AQ affiliates).

The election of Barack Obama—greeted by cheering crowds from Washington, DC to Kenya to Indonesia—has presented a United States to the world distinct from the Bush Administration’s America; a United States that remains the symbol and champion of freedom and opportunity for all. Moreover, as Obama made clear in his campaign and victory speech, it is a United States that will take seriously the commitment to a liberal internationalist order first advanced by FDR and made tangible by Harry Truman. The threat of terrorism may not be the defining threat to the United States in the 21^stcentury, but it reflects our greatest challenges: violent anti-US ideologies, economic and political deprivation, the proliferation of destructive technologies and global uncertainty over the benefits of US unipolarity. Such challenges require a counterterrorism policy that is intelligent, measured and focused on increasing and using US soft power, a task the Obama Administration is certainly qualified to handle.

Peter Henne is a doctoral candidate at Georgetown University.  The views expressed here are his own.

This post is the latest in our series from fellows in the Truman National Security Project.  Jonathan Shafter writes:

Even in times of peace and prosperity, difficult choices must be made balancing the needs of today’s military against investing in the systems and technologies to meet the challenges of tomorrow.
And these are certainly not times of peace and prosperity.

The progressive national security agenda calls for broadening (without weakening) the traditional military-centric view of national security to focus on the root causes of insecurities such as global poverty and human rights abuses.  While in the long run preventative medicine is likely a more cost effective strategy than emergency symptom treatment, it will require significant up-front investment if efforts in these areas are to have any real impact.

This occurs at a time when America is in a highly strained fiscal position.  Our national debt ballooned under the Bush Administration and the crisis of underfunded entitlement programs still lies ahead.  Meanwhile, the rest of the world is increasingly concerned with permanently financing perpetual American deficits in a dollar-centric universe.

The likely magnitude of our economic downturn will create many compelling priorities for spending alongside national security. Economic stimulus, cleaning up the financial markets crisis, and rebuilding social safety nets will all compete for a finite fiscal pie. As progressives we recognize the urgency in dealing with many of these critical needs.

The economic downturn will also constrict tax revenues not only at the federal level but at the state and local levels where less flexibility exists to borrow funds (as at the federal level) – instead, states have to  balance current budgets.  It is likely that state and local taxes may rise, and core government services will be cut to close these gaps against a backdrop of rising unemployment and failing industries.

Over the past eight years a broad network of progressives laid the conceptual groundwork for a powerful national security agenda. We did so, however, largely during a period of global economic prosperity.

President-elect Obama will unfortunately assume office in the midst of what could well be our most serious economic downturn in post-war history.  As a result, we face the difficult challenge of figuring out how we will pay for our agenda.  As the governing party in hard times we must consider:

• Which elements of our agenda are absolute priorities and where will we accept compromises?
• How can we build domestic grassroots support for initiatives such as international development and poverty reduction abroad when Americans will be facing such tough times at home?
• How will we convince our fellow Democrats that the long term benefits of dealing with the root causes of insecurity are worth compromises in such core party priorities as social welfare?
• How much political capital will we spend defending free trade through a likely period of increased protectionist pressures?
• Which parts of the current national security system will we reform to do more with less?

Advocates for a strong, progressive national security agenda should pause to celebrate the victory of Barack Obama.  With his Presidency comes the opportunity to make our policy vision a reality.  But in some ways this is also the end of our innocence.  The reality of governing through hard economic times means that compromises are inevitable and some of what we want must be a dream deferred.  The reality of governing with a Democratic President and Congress means that many of the fights which lie ahead will be with our most cherished friends.  In prioritizing elements of the progressive national security agenda we will face new and powerful strains even within our own ranks.  So pause and celebrate – but not for too long – because the real work is just beginning.

Jonathan Shafter is a partner at a financial services focused investment fund.  The views expressed here are his own.