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A Declaration on Drone Warfare

May 7, 2012 by dcortright

I was asked recently to offer ideas and recommendations for a statement on drone weapons.  Here is what I came up with. I welcome feedback for refining these ideas:

  • The policy of targeted killing and drone warfare is contrary to ethical principles, a violation of international law, and a counterproductive strategy for preventing terrorism and violent extremism.
  • The UN Charter permits the use of military force (including drones) only if authorized by the Security Council or if a state is acting in self-defense after suffering an armed attack. Neither of these conditions has been met to justify U.S drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia.

Recommendations:

  • The United States should demilitarize its counter-terrorism strategy and apply conflict prevention and law enforcement approaches rather than military policies. Washington should cooperate with other governments to implement the nonmilitary approaches specified in the UN Counter-Terrorism Strategy: ameliorating conditions conducive to violent extremism, strengthening the rule of law, and upholding human rights.
  • To prevent terrorism, the United States should end its policies of military occupation and armed intervention in other countries, refrain from providing military aid to autocratic and repressive regimes, and support the rights of the Palestinian people and other oppressed populations. The United States should end all CIA paramilitary and targeted killing operations.
  • The United States should support the convening of an international conference under the auspices of the United Nations to develop binding legal standards for the use of drone systems. Any military use of these systems must be strictly in compliance with the principles of international law, as specified in the UN Charter, the laws of armed conflict, and international humanitarian law and human rights law.

Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

The U.S. Afghan (In)Security Pact

April 25, 2012 by dcortright

The security agreement signed in Kabul this week is being touted as a step toward stability and peace but it will likely bring neither. By allowing the U.S. to maintain military bases and forces in Afghanistan beyond 2014 it will prolong the war.

Under current U.S. military strategy, which will be ratified at the forthcoming NATO summit in Chicago, most NATO forces will disengage by 2014, but thousands of U.S. troops will remain at military bases in Afghanistan. This will be ‘counterinsurgency light,’ essentially the same policy as before but with fewer troops: military operations to kill and arrest insurgents, and support for the armed forces of the corrupt Kabul regime. This formula has not worked over the past decade and has little chance of succeeding in the next.

The U.S. strategy has no effective plan for ending what General Petraeus has called an ‘industrial strength insurgency.’  If U.S./NATO forces could not subdue the Taliban with 140,000 troops, how will they succeed with far fewer soldiers? When I was in Kabul last October security specialists said the insurgency is stronger than ever (with an estimated 20,000 armed fighters) and that the Taliban control vast swaths of the country.

U.S. officials have described the security pact as a sign of the American commitment to support the Afghan people. We certainly should not abandon the Afghan people, but keeping thousands of troops there is not the way to help. We can demonstrate our solidarity with Afghanistan through other, more effective ways: pursuing a comprehensive peace negotiation process in the country and the region, continuing to fund successful social development programs, and supporting the rights of women and other under-represented populations.

Posted in Afghanistan/Pakistan, Counterterrorism | 1 Comment »

Democracy in Burma…and Poland

April 12, 2012 by dcortright

The remarkable political evolution of Burma in recent weeks has interesting parallels with events in Poland in 1989.

Aung San Suu Kyi is now free, and has been elected to parliament along with members of her party, the National League for Democracy. The NLD scored a stunning victory in the April 1 by-elections, winning 43 of the 45 contested seats in the national parliament and regional assemblies. Party candidates polled well even at military bases and in districts near the capital with large populations of civil servants. Some members of the democracy movement had cautioned against joining elections in which so few seats would be openly contested. Suu Kyi took a leap of faith in deciding to participate, and so far her decision has paid off. The NLD has gained significant national prestige and influence.

This calls to mind Solidarity’s unexpected ascent to power in Poland in 1989. When the beleaguered communist regime finally yielded to Solidarity’s demand for free elections in June of that year, they restricted the number of contested seats to just one third of the parliament. Some activists wanted to reject the deal, but Solidarity wisely decided to take advantage of the narrow opening, hoping to widen the movement’s clout and political legitimacy. Solidarity won 160 of the 161 parliamentary seats that were openly contested, defeating even top communist officials in their home districts. The regime unexpectedly capitulated and Solidarity took responsibility for governing.

What both of these stories have in common is their genesis in nonviolence. Nonviolent movements inspire public participation and dialogue and are far more likely than armed struggle to generate successful democratic transitions.

The drama in Burma is still in its early days, but already we have seen surprising progress. Let’s hope more will come in the months ahead as the democracy movement navigates the torturous path of persuading the military to go back to the barracks.

Posted in Nonviolence, Peace History | Leave a Comment »

A History Lesson for Iran Hawks

March 27, 2012 by dcortright

Calls for military strikes against Iran are based on the assumption that Israel’s bombing of a nuclear reactor near Baghdad in 1981 ‘worked’ to end Iraq’s nuclear program. Here is the actual story.

Soon after Israel bombed the Osirak reactor the Baghdad government accelerated its nuclear production program. Saddam Hussein intensified Iraq’s efforts to manufacture weapons-grade uranium and to build the means for assembling and delivering nuclear weapons. His government invested billions of dollars to develop a secret, self-sufficient nuclear program out of the sight of International Atomic Energy Agency  (IAEA) inspectors.

After Iraq’s forces were driven out of Kuwait in early 1991 IAEA inspectors arrived in the country and were shocked to discover a highly developed program that by some estimates was only a year or so from successfully achieving nuclear weapons capability. Over the following years UN inspectors systematically identified and dismantled all elements of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. No nuclear weapons capability was found when the US invaded in 2003.

In 2006 the eminent security scholar Richard K. Betts wrote “The Osirak Fallacy” in The National Interest. It’s an important article that should be required reading in Washington. Among its conclusions:

  •  The attack on Osirak increased Saddam Hussein’s determination to build nuclear weapons. There is no evidence that the destruction of the reactor even delayed Iraq’s nuclear program.
  • The destruction of the Osirak facility was unnecessary because there were no reprocessing facilities at the site.
  • The Israeli attack on Osirak did not preempt a near-term nuclear threat. According to most estimates, at the time Iraq was a decade away from producing a nuclear weapon.

The lesson: Attacking Iran’s nuclear program could worsen the danger we seek to avoid.

Posted in Iraq and Iran, Nuclear Disarmament, Peace History | 1 Comment »

End the War, Start the Peace

March 13, 2012 by dcortright

The madness of a futile military mission is reflected in the madness of a deranged soldier slaughtering innocent civilians near Kandahar. In the wake of this incident and the recent burning of the Qur’an at Bagram air base, any hope of winning hearts and minds is gone.

Pressure is building for a more rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops. This is necessary and appropriate, but greater attention must be paid to the peace process. President Obama said we need to withdraw responsibly. Precisely, but what does that mean?

Here are some options:

  • Suspend combat operations and urge insurgents to join in a general ceasefire, as a necessary confidence building measure to facilitate negotiations.
  • Announce a timetable for U.S. military withdrawal linked to progress in political negotiations.
  • Prioritize support for negotiations to achieve a political settlement and power-sharing agreement within Afghanistan.
  • Turn over authority for managing the political transition to the United Nations and support a third party peacebuilding mission and peacekeeping force.
  • Encourage dialogue and peacebuilding efforts within Afghan civil society, and ensure that women have a seat at the table in political discussions about the country’s future.
  • Sustain funding for social development programs that have expanded educational opportunity, access to health care and community economic development for the Afghan people, especially women and children.

Posted in Afghanistan/Pakistan, Women's Rights | Leave a Comment »

SANE is Back

March 7, 2012 by dcortright

I was delighted in early February to see that Representative Ed Markey has introduced a new bill in Congress, the SANE (Smarter Approach to Nuclear Expenditures) Act. Markey’s bill calls for significant reductions in nuclear weapons, for a savings of about $100 billion over the next 10 years. Markey remains, as he has been for more than 30 years, the most significant leader and articulate voice in Congress for nuclear arms reduction. I’m glad to see he is still at it.

As the former executive director of SANE, I was thrilled to see renewed reference to the venerable SANE brand. When I was with SANE in the 1980s we worked closely with Markey. I continued to cooperate with him on disarmament initiatives after that—including the Urgent Call, a nuclear abolition appeal launched in 2002 with Jonathan Schell and Randy Forsberg.

When I contacted Markey’s office recently to congratulate him for introducing the SANE Act and making reference to our organization, his staff said the SANE acronym was intentional, to recall the halcyon days of the 1980s when the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign was sweeping across the country like a populist prairie fire and SANE was growing rapidly into a formidable mass membership organization.

In 1982 Markey was the original sponsor of the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Resolution in Congress. Later that year he spoke before a million people in New York’s Central Park for the June 12 rally to freeze and reverse the arms race, the largest peace and disarmament rally ever held in the United States. SANE was actively involved in helping to organize that rally.

In the late 1980s SANE merged with the Freeze Campaign to form a united organization that still exists today as Peace Action. At that time some board members of SANE were reluctant to see the name go. They didn’t want to lose the legacy and history of SANE dating from the late 1950s, reflected in the involvement of such luminaries as Norman Cousins, Steve Allen, Ben Spock, and Coretta Scott King.

Many assumed over the years that SANE was an acronym but that was not the case. We were officially the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy. The name came from Cousins and other early founders and was inspired by Erich Fromm’s influential book of the time, The Sane Society. In 1980s some of us toyed with possible acronyms, like Stop All Nuclear Explosions, or Society Against Nuclear Extermination, but officially the name remained the same, SANE, a single word that powerfully conveyed the broad public outcry against the insanity of the nuclear arms race.

Now there is an official SANE acronym, thanks to Ed Markey. Let’s hope the brand and the ideas behind it gain new traction and support, and that the United States can make real progress toward reducing and eliminating nuclear weapons.

Posted in Nuclear Disarmament, Peace History | 2 Comments »

End the insanity in Afghanistan

February 28, 2012 by dcortright

‘Green on blue’ is what the U.S. military calls it. Afghan troops shooting at their supposed American allies. It’s a horrifying threat to U.S. service members that has been growing in recent years. It has become an even greater menace now in the wake of public outrage over the burning of copies of the Qur’an outside Bagram Air Base last week. Another shooting incident occurred on Saturday when two U.S. military officers were gunned down by an Afghan police employee inside the heavily guarded Ministry of the Interior building in Kabul.

You know your military strategy is in trouble when your allies start turning the guns around. Last week about twenty members of the Afghan parliament read an angry statement condemning the Qur’an burning and declaring ‘jihad against Americans is an obligation.’

The White House and the Pentagon say the mission in Afghanistan remains on track and will continue, but privately they are deeply worried, with good reason. The United States has invested tens of billions of dollars in training, equipping and paying the salaries of large-scale Afghan security forces to carry on the fight. That approach has not worked in the past (the Taliban are stronger than ever and Afghan civilian casualties continue to rise), and it is even less likely to succeed now as political support for U.S. policy declines further among people in Afghanistan and here at home.

The only viable solution is a negotiated political end to the war. The Obama administration has taken tentative steps in that direction, but by continuing to pursue combat military operations it is undermining the trust that is necessary for negotiations.

As a gesture of good faith to jump start the peace process the United States should suspend combat operations. U.S. commanders could declare a temporary halt to house raids, combat patrols and bombing strikes, and offer to make this permanent if the insurgents reciprocate by halting their attacks.

Such an approach would allow U.S. commanders to pull troops back to their bases. This would get them out of the line of fire, from both insurgents and Afghan allies, and pave the way for negotiating a sustainable political solution.

Posted in Afghanistan/Pakistan | Leave a Comment »

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