Over the course of the past week, the Swedish government, which currently holds the EU’s soon-to-be-extinguished rotating presidency, suggested that the European Union’s foreign ministries declare Jerusalem a divided city and the future capital of a Palestinian state.  The draft statement also implied that the EU would recognize a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood.

The Israelis reacted harshly, and lobbied the Europeans to water down the statement to say “If there is to be a genuine peace, a way must be found (through negotiations) to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of two states.”

Even the more mild declaration hasn’t exactly received much enthusiasm either from the Israeli side, while garnering divided support between the Arab League and Palestinian Authority.

Skeptics say that Sweden’s attempt at forging European unity was a cynical attempt to leave a legacy from its last crack at the EU presidency (with the advent of Herman Von Rompuy’s more permanent ascent to that post) to either show symbolic solidarity with Palestine or to forge a joint European position on an important issue.

And though the Palestinians are of course content to receive international backing, let’s be honest: This effort at joint European diplomacy looks like amateur hour and risks further destabilizing an already fragile process.

A few months ago, I had lunch with a friend involve in European social democratic circles.  He said (and I’m paraphrasing), “Europe can’t do anything on the diplomatic front with Israel/Palestine, but if America can broker a deal, we are ready and anxious to pay for the whole thing: security, development, trade… you name it.”

My friend was right - Europe hasn’t invested much diplomatic capital in the Middle East peace process.   Issuing public and controversial statements of questionable utility could only upset - and in the worst case, undo - the hard, delicate, behind-the-scenes work of the American administration.

We’d love for Europe to pay; but for now, we’d also love for them to shut-up.

I just wrote this memo on personnel spending and the military.  Here’s the gist:

It’s not surprising that weapons systems draw all the attention when defense spending reform comes up. They translate into jobs that defense contractors spread cunningly across the nation’s states and congressional districts. But the “guns versus butter” debates between liberals and conservatives miss a key point. It’s not just weapons that drive defense spending through the roof — it’s the people, too.

According to its official budget, the Defense Department will spend $533.8 billion in 2010 in the following categories:

• Personnel: $136 billion
• Operations & Maintenance: $185.7 billion
• Weapons Procurement: $107.4 billion
• Research & Development for Weapons and Technology: $78.6 billion
• Other: $26.1 billion

The personnel figure, however, doesn’t come close to capturing what America is really spending on defense personnel. According to PPI’s calculations, the real price tag is much bigger: $301.1 billion each year, 121 percent higher than the Pentagon’s figure. In other words, if you want major savings in defense spending, cutting weapons systems and the ever-elusive “waste, fraud and abuse” won’t take you far enough.

Lorelei Kelly at the New Strategic Security Initiative issues a thoughtful challenge to progressives over at the HuffPo:

If progressives really want to help forward the policy discussion, they should develop a set of alternatives premised on enduring commitment and solidarity with the Afghan people (local grants through the National Solidarity Program is a good example), and not pose them as a tradeoff for troop levels. Heck, even the commanding general in Afghanistan says this conflict has no military solution. Take that and run with it. But doing so means exercising forbearance when talking about the military presence. Uniforms are going to be part of the picture for a while. What the alliance is actually doing on the ground will determine the outcome. Tactics are already changing. But prioritizing civilians will mean that soldiers bear more of the risk.

We need to come to terms with that.

Any success must also include a significant shift in resources and coordination to make sure Afghans actually receive support to own their future. This kind of partnered consultation can start despite Karzai in office. The Afghan people know who isn’t corrupt. We need to go national and local at the same time because promising upstarts exist at both levels. The goal is a process — and so will be tough to measure, which is why a commitment is important. All sorts of policies here at home provide illustrations. From building the national highway system to public education, broadly distributed achievement through time take time. The laser-focused message the Afghan people need to hear is “we’re on this path with you.” We need to commit.

…

The president will put forward his decision soon. It will involve a troop increase. If progressives stay in full opposition mode, they will exist on the margin of the debate right when we need them setting the agenda. Exit to the sidelines will also undercut future efforts to advocate a new strategy for US security. We are moving from a time when we could contain threats to one where we must minimize them. This can only happen through sustained engagement.

The progressive community would do well to think twice about Lorelei’s words before blindly opposing a troop increase.  Code Pink has recognized it and moderated their position. After all, America’s military is in Afghanistan to protect the Afghan population and promote peace.  Those are progressive values.

Though Iranian negotiators accepted a nuclear deal this week in Vienna, even the most naive optimists should contain their excitement until the mullahs back in Tehran approve of it, and then the thing is actually executed.

Here are the logistics:

Iran is running low on uranium-derived fuel used in medical facilities (for MRIs, among other things).  The country has enough uranium, but it’s not in the right form for medical uses and will run out before Tehran can enrich enough.  Therefore, Iran had to look to the international community.

The U.S., France, and Russia proposed that Iran export the bulk of its uranium stock to Russia for enriching to the required medium-grade level (ie, lower than weapons-grade).  Russia then sends it on to France, who fashions it into fuel-plates.

On paper, the deal is a win-win:  Iran gets its fuel but gives up most of its uranium.  It will be almost another twelve months before it rebuilds its uranium stock to be able to attempt enriching it to weapons-grade (highly enriched).  Or, as Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund says,

If Iran ships the uranium out of the country, we’ve lengthened the fuse.”

Note that big “if”.  There is the distinct possibility that Tehran is playing for time by negotiating this draft plan to decrease tensions in the short term by stringing along the U.S., France, and Russia.  It’s always good to remember that actions speak louder than words.

However, Russia’s involvement in this process is critical - the Kremlin had appear divided on whether to support sanctions against Iran.  Now that Moscow has partial ownership of this deal, non-compliance by Tehran should anger Medvedev and Putin, who might be more disposed towards pressure.

Anne Applebaum theorizes in the Washington Post that NATO is essentially useless:

There is almost no sense anywhere that the war in Afghanistan is an international operation, or that the stakes and goals are international, or that the soldiers on the ground represent anything other than their own national flags and national armed forces. …

The fact is that the idea of “the West” has been fading for a long time on both sides of the Atlantic, as countless “whither-the-Alliance” seminars have been ritually observing for the past decade. But the consequences are now with us: NATO, though fighting its first war since its foundation, inspires nobody. The members of NATO feel no allegiance to the alliance, or to one another.

Questions surrounding NATO’s relevance have swirled since any semblance of progress had stalled in Afghanistan.  The alliance’s inability to keep members focused and actively engaged in the hard- and soft- power components of the mission is due to a variety of factors, not the least of which is the Bush administration’s neglectful resourcing of the conflict in favor of Operation Iraqi Freedom (a non-NATO mission, it should be noted).  And this is something of a tragedy, given NATO’s invocation of Article V (stating an attack on one member is an attack on all members) in the wake of September 11, 2001.

However, it is also true that NATO was not conceived to conduct an Afghan-type mission, particularly one lasting nine years.  NATO was born, of course, as a security pact to face down the Soviet Union–a known quantity whose strength drew from its traditional military capabilities.  The potential threat coming from Afghanistan’s hinterland is a far cry from the Cuban missile crisis.

While Applebaum bemoans the “countless ‘whither-the-Alliance’ seminars”, I’d suggest that such discussions are necessary, if ill-timed.  Instead, NATO’s Secretary General, ex-Norwegian Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, should squeeze out every possible commitment NATO countries are willing to devote to the Afghan mission in the short term, reminding them that attacks in the United Kingdom and Spain highlight the necessity to take the Obama administration’s refocused efforts there seriously.

When the Afghanistan mission is wrapped up in several years, NATO must sit down and decide when it is appropriate to fight, and what sort of resources its members are willing to commit.

Is the Army using a shell game to give a false impression of its recruiting success?

That’s a dangerous accusation, but a critical issue.  In light of President Obama promise on the campaign trail to increase the end-strength of the military by 92,000 troops (65,000 for the Army alone), the Army’s numbers should accurately reflect how they’re doing.

Last week, the Pentagon issued a press release stating the Army had not only met, but actually exceeded its recruiting goals for FY2009.  Then Army Maj. Gen. Donald Campbell thumped his chest in the Washington Post soon thereafter, crediting the Army’s number of recruiters on the ground as a critical component of its success.

Unfortunately, the Army is using some creative accounting to trumpet its success.  To meet its goals, the Army simply lowered them–by ten thousand less new recruits in 2009 (vs. 2008), and ten thousand fewer re-enlistments.  Or, as Fred Kaplan notes in Slate:

[T]he Army this year lowered not only the recruitment goal but the retention goal too, from 65,000 in 2008 to 55,000 in 2009. And it actually held on to fewer soldiers than it did in either of the last two years (68,000 in 2009, compared with 72,000 in 2008 and 69,000 in 2007).

So here is the situation. The secretary of defense ordered, and Congress authorized, an expansion in the size of the Army. But the Army reduced the recruitment goal—and reduced the retention goal. The size of the Army is in fact shrinking. It may look as if it’s growing—the Pentagon report gives the impression it’s growing—but it’s growing only in comparison with the officially set goals.

For Army “recruitniks” (a term usually applied to my friends’ insatiable desire to follow Charlie Weis’ efforts to cajole 18 year old kids to play college football at Notre Dame), this dichotomy comes as little surprise.  In an excellent expose in September, the National Journal makes two key points about the Army’s recruits:

Never before has the Army had so many soldiers with so much experience; never before have so many soldiers been so exhausted.

The article concludes,

Today’s Army may be equal to the U.S. population in its demographic representation, but it is also separate.

And it is getting more so all the time. That reduces the chance that declining public support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cause Army morale to collapse, as it did in Vietnam. Still, it raises a different danger. “I don’t think they’re going to get burned out,” said retired Col. Patrick Lang, a Vietnam veteran. “But they’re going to get harder and harder, and more detached from the values of civilian society.”

Unless the military puts out an honest assessement of where it’s recruiting is, none of these problems will be fixed any time soon.

Since Vietnam, the Army has never had so much combat experience. Since Vietnam, the Army has never been this exhausted.

That’s the basic conclusion of a fascinating article in the current edition of the National Journal that analyzes the Army’s attempts to grow while maintaining its all-volunteer status.  During Vietnam, 18-year old kids were drafted and cycled through training and a tour of duty in under two years.  They quickly returned to civilian life.  Today the Army relies on seasoned professionals whose continuing association with the military is of their own choosing.  Given the necessity to grow our armed forces during two major military deployments, Army recruits are now lower in educational quality, but after at least four to eight years of service which more-often-than-not includes several deployments through combat zones, our military lifers are becoming the most experienced but exhausted force in the country’s history.

In a way, for many whose parents served and have grown up around military facilities, the Army has become the family business as children and grandchildren take up the mantle of their seniors.  An uncomfortable side effect is the increase civilian-military divide.  Think about it:  do you know anyone who has deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan?

Today’s Army may be equal to the U.S. population in its demographic representation, but it is also separate.

And it is getting more so all the time. That reduces the chance that declining public support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cause Army morale to collapse, as it did in Vietnam. Still, it raises a different danger. “I don’t think they’re going to get burned out,” said retired Col. Patrick Lang, a Vietnam veteran. “But they’re going to get harder and harder, and more detached from the values of civilian society.”