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Nine non-military ways to show the Assad regime what the US government thinks of their phony excuses

Natalie Gonnella
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Despite the fact that nearly 1500 civilians have been killed in Syria and another 10,500 have fled, the Obama administration has remained conspicuously silent about the ongoing atrocities committed by the Assad government.

But while the White House continues to avoid the issue, at times even playing to the regime's propaganda, a growing number of foreign policy experts are urging immediate action.

One of those people is Richard Grenell, the longest serving US spokesman to the UN, who in in an op-ed last week in The Huffington Post outlined nine non-military actions that the US can immediately undertake to both isolate Assad and show support to those behind the opposition movement.

As the security crackdown in Syria continues, here's a look at Grenell's suggestions:

1. Order US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford home immediately, and shut down the Embassy.
2. Publicly call upon Assad to resign and ask other countries to do the same
3. Call upon the Europeans and others to pull their Ambassadors from Damascus too.
4. Restrict the movement of the Syrian Ambassador to Washington and the Syrian Ambassador to the UN to a small radius around their offices.
5. Ask European capitals to restrict the movement of Syrian Ambassadors in their countries too.
6. Force the UN resolution on Syria to a vote and dare the Russians to veto it.
7. Move USAid employees into southern Turkey to care for the Syrian refugees arriving daily.
8. Schedule an Al Jazeera TV interview with President Obama to explain our actions and why Assad must go. 
9. Demand the IAEA inspect Al Kibar and offer an immediate UN resolution authorizing it.

Grenell's original op-ed is available to read here.

Freshman Senator Marco Rubio outlines nine "key steps" for US policy in Libya

Natalie Gonnella

Amid the prolonged spending debate and the introduction of the GOP's 2012 budget proposal, Senator Marco Rubio this week again called on the Obama Administration to reevaluate it's current policy with regard to the Middle East and the ongoing conflict in Libya.

In a letter to Secretary Hillary Clinton on Thursday (following a recent phone call with the Secretary), the freshmen Senator outlined nine immediate measures he feels the US should adopt as NATO airstrikes continue, stressing the point that "actively helping the Libyan people achieve the inevitable end of the Gadhafi regime is in America’s interests and would ensure the Arab world knows the U.S. is laboring for their freedom."

With the US taking a step back from the situation and European allied now leading coaltion efforts, here's a look at Senator Rubio's suggestions for US policy in Libya:

1. The U.S. should derecognize the Gadhafi regime.

2. Follow the arrival of the American envoy in Benghazi with the establishment of a “provisional” Embassy to assess opposition needs and to negotiate the terms of formal recognition, contingent upon assurances that a new Libyan Government will:

• Be representative of the Libyan people and take demonstrable measures to protect the basic human rights of the Libyan people.
• Reject terrorism, cooperate with international counterterrorism and nonproliferation efforts, and abstain from destabilizing neighboring countries.

3. Upon U.S. recognition, the U.S. should encourage other nations to recognize the Transitional Council.

4. Commit the influence of the U.S. Government to mobilize international support for a post-Gadhafi government that ensures basic rights, provides basic services (including security) and provides for representative government.

5. Upon recognition, provide at least partial access by the Transitional Council to frozen Libyan assets.

6. Shut down broadcasting by Libyan state television and radio, if necessary by direct jamming and if possible by getting international satellite providers to cooperate.

7. Enable opposition fighters to communicate independently of Libyan state telephone network.

8. Provide non-lethal military supplies to opposition, including medical supplies, information and communications technology. Consider providing body armor, trucks, armored Humvees.

9. Initiate discussions with the Transitional Council to mobilize international support both to remove Gadhafi and to prepare for a post-Gadhafi Libya – including international peacekeepers, and begin to obtain commitments for non-US forces to provide that support if needed.

In addition to his phone call and written correspondence with Secretary Clinton, Senator Rubio this week also met with Ambassador Ali Suleiman Aulajli, the former Libyan ambassador to the U.S. who resigned his post in support of the Libyan people.

The full letter can be viewed here.

"Reform first, pay later": House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Ileana Ros-Lehtinen outlines four key lessons from past attempts at United Nations reform as she prepares to introduce a revised version of legislation focused on reshaping the organization

Natalie Gonnella

Since taking the reins of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in January, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has been very vocal about the current failures of the United Nations and the need for serious and sweeping reforms to both the organization as a whole, as well as US involvement.

During a hearing earlier in March, the Congressman Ros-Lehtinen commented that as a country:

We must demand that funding for the UN budget and UN entities move from an assessed to a voluntary basis...That way, Americans, not UN bureaucrats or other member countries, will determine how much taxpayer dollars are spent on the U.N., and where they go...We should pay for U.N. programs and activities that advance our interests and our values...If other countries want different things to be funded, they can pay for it.

As the US participates in UN backed strikes against President Gadhafi's regime, the Chairwoman this week reiterated her frustration with the widespread failures of the UN, articulating once again the need for bold, widespread changes:

One striking example [of failure] is the UN Human Rights Council, which is set to soon pass several more anti-Israel resolutions, on top of 33 such measures passed by the Council in the past five years. Israel is the only country on the Council’s permanent agenda, while abuses by rogue regimes like Cuba, China, and Syria are ignored. Libya’s Qaddafi regime was actually a member of the Council until recently, and other serial human rights abusers still sit on the body. From shams like the Human Rights Council, to corruption scandals, to mismanagement, and more, it is clear that the UN is broken.

In addition to discussing her views on current failings of the organization, in her statement the Congresswoman further outlined four important lessons from past attempts at reform she sees as key components in shaping future strategy. Here's a look at what she had to say:

Lesson One: Money talks . The biggest problem with the UN is that those who call the shots don’t have to pay the bills. Most UN member nations pay next to nothing in assessed contributions, work together to drive the UN’s agenda, and pass the costs on to big contributors like the United States. The U.S. government goes along and pays all assessed contributions — 22 percent of the UN regular budget — plus billions more every year. The UN bureaucracy and other member countries know that we will pay in full no matter what, so they have zero incentive to reform. Almost every successful U.S. effort to reform the UN has been based on withholding our contributions unless and until reforms are implemented. In the 1980s, Congress withheld funding until the UN changed how budgets are voted on. That effort showed some success, until we stopped conditioning funding on reform. Then, the UN returned to business as usual...In the 1990s, when UN regular and peacekeeping budgets were skyrocketing, Congress enacted the Helms-Biden agreement. We withheld our dues and conditioned repayment on key reforms. When the UN saw we meant business, members agreed to change, which saved U.S. taxpayers money. Smart withholding worked. Funding for the UN budget and UN entities must also move from an assessed to a voluntary basis. That way, Americans, not UN bureaucrats or other countries, will determine how much taxpayer dollars are spent on the UN, and where they go. We should only pay for UN programs and activities that advance our interests and our values. If other countries want different things to be funded, they can pay for it themselves. 

Lesson Two: U.S. leadership matters. Leadership is what our allies expect from us, and what our enemies fear. We should not be afraid to stand up for our values and interests, even if that means standing alone — though we should reach out for other responsible nations to join us. Indecisiveness undermines our credibility with allies, and weakens our ability to advance our goals at the UN. 

Lesson Three: Don’t settle for cosmetic changes. In 2006, the U.N. finally abolished the discredited UN Commission on Human Rights, which was once chaired by Qaddafi’s Libya. Instead of replacing the Commission with a credible and effective body, the UN created a Human Rights Council that is as bad as its predecessor. The Council’s rare resolutions criticizing real human rights abuses are usually too little and too late. Why did it take the massacre of hundreds of people in the streets for the UN to throw Libya off the Council? Why was Qaddafi’s regime permitted to join the Council to begin with in 2010? Why are other human rights abusers — including China, Cuba, Russia, and Saudi Arabia — still on the Council? The Obama administration has tried to reform the Council from within, but has failed. We should finally leave the Council and explore credible, alternative forums to advance human rights. 

Lesson Four: Don’t compare apples and oranges. Some of the UN’s defenders like to point to good UN activities to justify the bad ones. However, we’re not here to play “Let’s Make a Deal.” Each UN program must be justified on its own merits, and funded voluntarily. UNICEF aid to starving children cannot excuse UNRWA having members of Hamas on its payroll. 
To incorporate these lessons learned, I will soon introduce a revised version of UN reform legislation which I first introduced in 2007. Its fundamental principle will be “reform first, pay later.

The Congresswoman's full statement can be viewed here. 

In response to current developments in the Middle East, Elliott Abrams details six key points for US policymakers to consider

Natalie Gonnella

The House Committee on Foreign Affairs, led by chairman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, hosted the first of a two part hearing examining "Recent Developments in Egypt and Lebanon: Implications for U.S. Policy and Allies in the Broader Middle East." 

In the initial session, committee members heard testimony from The Honorable Elliott Abrams (Council on Foreign Relations), The Honorable Lorne Craner (International Republican Institute) and Dr. Robert Satloff (The Washington Institute for Near East Policy).

With remarks focused on democracy, human rights and stability in the Middle East, in response to current developments, Abrams outlined six key points which policymakers should consider as they assess US strategy in the region:

1. The uprisings we have seen in Tunisia and Egypt are exciting proof that the thirst for freedom is indeed universal. The Middle East has lagged behind the rest of the world in moving toward democracy...President Bush was right when he adopted a Freedom Agenda for the Middle East. 
2. American policy in the region should accordingly favor democracies and countries that are moving toward reform.  That means one building block for us should be our alliance with Israel, the region’s only established democracy...Favoring democracies and those on the road to reform mean we should also value and enhance our relations with countries such as Jordan and Morocco, where reform efforts are under way....Democracy promotion cannot be a policy applied to American allies while America’s enemies are forgotten...We should be relentless in denouncing the massive human rights violations in Syria and Iran: the abuse of political prisoners, the lack of freedom of thought, assembly, speech, and press, and the phony elections.  The sooner the tide of democracy reaches those shores the better off and safer we in the United States will be.  
3. The events in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Algeria, and several other Middle Eastern states should persuade us once and for all that the linkage argument—that every problem in the region is really tied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—is false.  None of those events had anything to with Israel and the Palestinians. 
4. US strategy in the region should use our assistance programs, economic and military, to help those building democratic systems and respecting human rights. Too often there’s a disconnect; we make speeches about human rights but we wink at violations.  This is not to say we should insult friendly rulers, or break alliances, but we should be much clearer about our values and our hopes—about which side we are on in the struggle for change and reform.
5. Despite the drama in Tunisia and Egypt events in Lebanon compel our attention.
6. Are we doing all we can?: How is democracy promotion faring? Look at the way we are training our foreign service officers, for example, to meet the challenges we see before us in the Middle East.

Abrams full testimony can be viewed here.

Dan Coats: If we're going to save America, we need growth, which means we need to cut spending and reform entitlements...and we can't wait until 2012

No one can accuse Dan Coats of running for the Senate to put a new political feather in his cap. In November, Senator Coats re-claimed the seat from which he retired in 1998 when he thought he had hung up his political cleats for good. Motivated by what he saw as a Washington-generated crisis of historic proportions, he decided to get back in the game to do his part to rescue America's future from fiscal ruin.

ConservativeHome's Ryan Streeter recently put four questions to Senator Coats about why he ran again, what he thinks about our chief domestic and foreign policy, and what's different about his second tour of duty so far. Some main points from the interview (read it in its entirety below):

• He was driven to run again by a gut-level concern for the future of his country. "I watched as families and businesses were making sacrifices, cutting their own budgets, living with less. It seemed as though everyone except the federal government was doing that. I honestly was worried that America would become a second-tier country...We simply cannot be the first generation to turn over a country to our children and grandchildren that is in worse shape than when we started out."
  
• A growth agenda demands getting spending under control, including entitlements. "We need pro-growth policies, and to start, we have to cut spending and reduce the deficit. In that regard, we need to look at every area of government, and ask them to take a haircut – larger than what they think they need...We simply need to restructure our entitlement programs and make them solvent."
• We can't wait around for 2012. "We have got to make tough decisions right now, in this Congress...We simply cannot be the first generation to turn over a country to our children and grandchildren that is in worse shape than when we started out."
• Expanding middle class entitlements, as in the health care law, is exactly the wrong approach to address our problems. "We should not be throwing the middle class a life raft. We need to go upstream and change the economic environment. Taking the right approach to growth and prosperity is where government can and should be spending its time right now."
• Coats is still the compassionate conservative that he was before the term was coined. "It is clear there are limits to what the government can do, and it is probably good that there are. The role of volunteer and community groups and faith-based organizations have always played a fundamental role in promoting and protecting the common good in our communities."

RS: You have just been re-elected to the Senate seat you held from 1990-1998. It's certainly not a normal thing for a former Senator to "come out of retirement," as it were. Why did you do it?

Senator Coats: I was first elected to the House in 1980. I came to Washington when Reagan did, and one of our first major votes was whether to increase the debt ceiling. It was the first time in 200 years the country had to decide to do this, and it was astounding to everyone that the ceiling at the time exceeded $1 trillion. It just seemed historic and immense. Now we are debating a debt ceiling that is in excess of $14 trillion.

During those years, we saw the Reagan agenda implemented: a commitment to limited government, fiscal responsibility, and a focus on growth. It was a privilege to participate in that exciting decade. What we were trying to do was to remain steadfastly constitutional and to focus intensely on improving the fiscal health of the country.

In 1998, I honored a term limit pledge after my years in both the House and Senate, and I never, ever anticipated coming back.

But after 2008, I sat watching the liberal agenda unfold so quickly with such massive spending and government overreach that I couldn’t help thinking, “Everything I had worked for during my time in Congress– limited spending, supporting and promoting the private sector, keeping America strong worldwide both fiscally and in terms of security – was being thrown overboard. I watched with alarm as deficit spending and debt surpassed anyone’s imagination. All I could think was, “How could we become out of control so rapidly and to this extent?”

Meanwhile, during a time of recession, I watched as families and businesses were making sacrifices, cutting their own budgets, living with less. It seemed as though everyone except the federal government was doing that.

I honestly was worried that America would become a second-tier country.

So when the opportunity came along to run for this seat, I decided I had little choice.  I realized that life had been good to me, but I just couldn’t sit back and enjoy the fruits of my labor. I couldn’t think of letting my children and grandchildren deal with the consequences of what had become an out-of-control government. I concluded America was in trouble and we needed to work hard to make it the kind of country that it has been for so long and that all of us aspire for it to be.

Like so many people, I wanted to get off the couch and join the rallies. I wanted to be involved.

And so I decided my best contribution would be to get back in the arena and promote an agenda of limited, constitutional government, fiscal responsibility, personal freedom, and strong national security.

I decided I wasn’t going to let age or anything else influence my decision to run. It was simply the right thing to do. 

Five must-read foreign policy articles: Peter Feaver on how China is free-rising on American security policy, Obama's middle east tactics are foundering, and more

Peter Feaver is a Professor of political science and public policy at Duke University. He co-moderates the shadow government blog at foreignpolicy.com.

I agree with the view offered by my wingman, Will Inboden, after an election where foreign policy barely registered on the public zeitgeist, we are about to enter a season when our political leaders will have to make very consequential foreign policy decisions.  Moreover, foreign policy always figures more prominently in a presidential election than in a midterm, and so those who are vying for the honor of challenging President Obama in 2012 will have to offer a more systematic and coherent vision for how to respond to the challenges and opportunities America faces in the world than was on offer this year.

I, too, hope that they will mosey over to Shadow Government and join the conversation. Our contributors share some important common values, but disagree on tactics and, occasionally, on strategy and objectives.  However, even when I disagree with an argument advanced by my colleagues, I usually learn something.  Here are five of my favorites:

• Sometimes bickering allies can pose as thorny a challenge as obstreperous adversaries. Michael Singh explains how this is so in a very compelling analysis of the dispute between Israel and Turkey.  Dov Zakheim was more optimistic in June but I fear Turkey may be drifting away and if the trend continues, the long-term consequences for U.S. strategy in the broader Middle East are profound.

• America’s strategic interest in the advancement of freedom outlasts President Bush and it is high time that we forged a sustainable post-Bush “freedom agenda.”  So says Will Inboden, and he is absolutely correct. He goes one step further: he identifies bona fide opportunities for progress.  

• China has been free-riding on U.S. security policy in northeast Asia and we cannot let this continue indefinitely.  This advice was timely when Will Tobey offered it several months ago, but it looks especially prophetic given Chinese regional adventurism in the intervening period. Policymakers have understandably focused on Chinese international economic policy, which has produced the most friction in the relationship this year.  But with the North Korean power transfer still very much up for grabs, it is worth remembering that we have a longstanding and profound national security concern at stake, too.

• President Obama’s vision for Middle East peace keeps foundering on bad tactics.  So argues Dov Zakheim.  To borrow a campaign metaphor, the car is stuck in the ditch and the Obama Administration keeps gunning the wheels and digging itself a deeper rut.  It is in the U.S. interest to offer a compelling, bipartisan vision of long-term peace in the region.  Political leaders should commit energy and resources in pursuit of that vision.  But pursuing it will require deft diplomacy and perhaps another reset button. 

• We are still waiting for an international response commensurate with the international economic crisis. That is my conclusion, after rereading an exceptionally thoughtful series of posts by Phil Zelikow, a once and perhaps future Shadow Gov contributor.  In six pithy posts, here, here, here, here, here, and here, he sketches an action plan that is remarkably timely, even thought it was written 18 months ago.

Of course, success in foreign policy depends on American power which in turn depends on the strength of the American domestic economy.  In any Administration, it is commonplace for the foreign policy team to worry about mistakes the domestic policy team is making and vice-versa. So doubtless, there will be much for the Shadow Government folks to learn from ConservativeHome.