Paul Pillar

In an essay in these spaces titled "The Crisis of Realism," Jonathan Levine makes an appeal for more, and new, realist theorizing. He won't get an argument on that from me—as someone who first developed his academic chops as an international relations theorist and still places himself in the realist camp. But Levine presents his piece as an indictment of realists as somehow being behind the times. The thread of his argument, which includes a discursion about nuclear weapons, is a bit hard to follow, but his main point seems to be that realists are stuck in a rigidly state-centric way of looking at the world that takes insufficient account of nonstate actors. His principal foil is Kenneth Waltz, who, Levine says in an overstatement, “dismissed nonstate actors as irrelevant.”

One knows something is amiss in what Levine is saying when he weaves into an indictment of realism a negative reference to the Iraq War as “what we got” from the supposed theoretical deficiency he is indicting. And Levine is not just knocking realists for not trying hard enough to stop that war; he is saying that the war flowed directly from the “Westphalian state-to-state conflict model” that he associates with realists. But the disastrous neoconservative project that was the Iraq War was one of the most unrealist foreign policy endeavors the United States has undertaken. Some of the leading realist scholars in the nation—including Waltz—were among those who explicitly opposed the war in an open letter. The Bush administration's contrived association of a state with a terrorist group was a tactic in a sales campaign that had nothing whatever to do with any realist emphasis on states as units of analysis for understanding international relations.

Realism is far more than just a habit of looking at states and not at other things. And it is not a matter of “dismissing nonstate actors as irrelevant.” The open letter against the Iraq War stated that “Al Qaeda poses a greater threat to the U.S. than does Iraq” and added—correctly—that “War with Iraq will jeopardize the campaign against al Qaeda by diverting resources and attention from that campaign and by increasing anti-Americanism around the globe.”

Good realists do make clear distinctions between states, and state interests, and nonstate actors and phenomena. Levine fails to make this distinction when he discusses the nuclear strategy of Mutual Assured Destruction in the same paragraph with suicide terrorists and says that the former was an “early casualty” of the latter. Strategic doctrine of a state involves an entirely different set of questions from motivations of individuals, be they terrorists or anyone else. Even within nonstate groups, those who send suicide terrorists are rarely suicidal themselves.

Another of Levine's errors is a widely shared one: the tendency to overstate how much in the world of the current era is new and different from previous eras. The sense of newness is a function more of our own policy analytical vocabulary and appetite for novelty than of how the world has changed. 9/11 unquestionably opened many political and public eyes about terrorism but did not mark a sea change in terrorism itself (or in the understanding of it among those who had been studying it). The end of the Cold War changed the polarity of the global system but did not involve nearly as many other changes as are implied by our collective habit of dividing time into Cold War and post-Cold War eras. During the Cold War there was much useful writing and thinking about challenges arising from the nonstate side of things, such as in a book written in the 1970s by Graham Allison and Peter Szanton, to point to only one example.

Theory and policy analysis written in the realist tradition during the Cold War had a complexity far different from the simplistic caricature that Levine presents. Realist thinkers went in different directions, for example, regarding Waltz's view about the effects of nuclear proliferation. Although Levine describes MAD as a “sacral totem” of the Cold War, very complex bodies of doctrine were developed about nuclear strategy, too, with highly refined theory involving flexible response, escalation, counterforce strategies and the like. And during the Cold War there even was a counterpart of sorts to those realist scholars opposing the Iraq War, in the form of realist opposition to the Vietnam War (with one of the leading realist scholars of the day, Hans Morgenthau, being one of the most prominent and outspoken opponents of the war from the very beginning).

Levine longs for some new realist breakthrough equivalent to the democratic peace theory of liberal scholarship. In an oft-quoted comment, the political scientist Jack Levy described the democratic peace concept as “the closet thing we have to an empirical law in the study of international relations.” Note that he said “closet thing” to a law—not a law itself. Levine himself correctly describes why our expectations should be limited when he comments that because of the “vagaries of human behavior” international relations “is not physics” and “there are no laws.” So why should we expect some big new theoretical breakthrough?

There is a lot of rich realist theory on, and in, the books that is still very applicable to problems of the present even if it was originally constructed during the Cold War. One just has to get the books off the shelf and read them.

Just when it seemed we could move beyond the anniversary-related armchair refighting of the Iraq War, we get from Jackson Diehl of the Washington Post editorial staff another mis-aimed salvo from a proponent of that war. Diehl's more immediate subject is the current Syrian civil war, into which a U.S. armed intervention has been a favorite cause of the Post's editorial page for many months. Diehl's declared objectives in his signed column are to absolve himself and other Iraq War proponents from any credibility gap when they advocate U.S. immersion in yet another Middle Eastern war, and to warn of how any Iraq War syndrome might unwisely dissuade the United States from conducting worthwhile military interventions—such as in Syria. If the Iraq War is to be used to make such a case on an issue of current importance, then we had better wallow a little longer in issues involving the old war.

Diehl begins his comparison to Iraq with the thundering understatement that the situation there “hasn't turned out, so far, as we war supporters hoped.” (“So far”? That has to be one of the choicest examples of hope springing eternal.) He then addresses his topic from a humanitarian angle, giving us some figures to try to make a case that “the larger humanitarian price of Syria has been far greater” than that of war in Iraq. His methodology of comparing current rates of casualties in Syria with averages for the entire period of the U.S. presence in Iraq is deeply flawed by the fact that the period of intense, high-casualty civil warfare in Iraq, which was comparable to what we have seen in Syria over the past couple of years, was only one portion of the longer period of U.S. occupation. A more fundamental flaw is that he gives us no reason to believe that adding more flames to an existing fire through military intervention would lead the humanitarian problem in Syria to lessen rather than worsen. Nor does he make any moral, as well as policy, distinction made between a war that one starts oneself and one that is already under way.

The next topic in the column is al-Qaeda, with Diehl repeating the flypaper theory of counterterrorism by saying that “in Iraq, the United States faced down al-Qaeda and eventually dealt it a decisive defeat.” The fallacy with this theory is that it assumes there is a fixed number of terrorists, with the task simply being one of attracting them to where we can kill them. In fact, by its invasion and occupation of Iraq, the United States generated far more terrorists, including those of the al-Qaeda ilk, than it killed. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq until after the U.S. invasion and the ensuing civil war created it. Moreover, the entire war was a propaganda bonanza for Osama bin Laden, lending credibility in many eyes to his accusations about the United States being out to kill Muslims, occupy their lands, and plunder their resources. The war unquestionably gave a major boost to jihadist terrorism.

Diehl asserts that “the Iraq war prompted low-level meddling by Iran, Syria and other neighbors but otherwise left the surrounding region unscathed, thanks to the U.S. presence.” Actually, the “low-level meddling” by Iran amid the U.S.-triggered disorder brought Iran the payoff of now being the dominant foreign influence in Iraq. And far from leaving the surrounding region unscathed, the U.S.-unleashed turmoil in Iraq stimulated a wider regional sectarian conflict, with the civil war in Syria being itself the bloodiest current manifestation of that conflict.

Of course, advocates of entering the Syrian war have to deal with public resistance to anything like the long and costly Iraqi expedition. So Diehl assures us that he is only talking about “limited use of U.S. airpower and collaboration with forces on the ground,” which, he says, “could have quickly put an end to the Assad regime 18 months ago, preventing 60,000 deaths and rise of al-Qaeda.” He offers no explanation of how, given all the ingredients (especially the sectarian hatred) of the current civil war, dispatching the Assad regime would have had anything like the salutary effects he postulates, or would have those effects if the regime collapsed this week. What, for example, happens to the Alawites if the regime goes, and what happens to all the desire for vengeance on the Sunni side when that happens?

Note especially the remarkable parallel (which Diehl himself does not highlight) between what is being promised (or hoped for) here and what was promised and hoped for with the invasion of Iraq: that toppling the incumbent regime would be quick and cheap and could be done without any messy, resource-devouring turmoil to follow. The column has other remarkable echoes of the selling of the Iraq War. There is even a line about how if we don't intervene in Syria, al-Qaeda will gain control over chemical and biological weapons.

Diehl says, “The problem here is not that advocates of the Iraq invasion have failed to learn its lessons.” If his column is any indication, that is very much a problem.

A common current piece of advice to U.S. intelligence agencies, coming from many places including reportedly from official advisory panels, is that those agencies ought to de-emphasize whacking terrorists and redirect some of that effort to traditional functions of collecting and analyzing intelligence, lest the United States be blind-sided by something in China or the Middle East or elsewhere. Just about everyone who comments on what U.S. intelligence agencies ought to be doing seems to be saying something along that line; we don't need to turn to any official panels with privileged access to hear that. The message has an appealing, back-to-basics ring to it, as well as having the appeal of sounding forward-looking. And the message is substantively sound; intelligence agencies ought indeed to focus on the core missions of collecting and analyzing information about the world outside the United States.

Sound though this particular message is, it is another illustration of publicly expressed conventional wisdom about intelligence that exists as a sort of parallel universe, separate from what the intelligence agencies are actually doing—of which, given the classified nature of that activity, the public commentators know little. Without access to the real thing, purveyors of conventional wisdom feed on each other's output until the conventional wisdom gets treated as if it were hard fact. When the conventional wisdom says something about how the intelligence community has been devoting too much attention to one topic and ought to shift attention to something else, this is really much more a reflection of where the public commentary itself has been devoting attention. The same is true of what counts as a “surprise”; this often has less to do with what intelligence agencies were or were not telling their official customers behind closed doors than with what the public had or had not been conditioned to expect, based on public statements and discussion.

Amid pronouncements coming from the parallel universe, several realities about the actual world of intelligence ought to be noted.

One is that disproportionate public attention to certain subjects or activities does not reflect the actual allocation within the agencies of resources and priorities. What is controversial or receives much public attention does necessarily seize the attention of senior managers who have to deal with Congress. But that is not true of the large majority of the work force, most of which has always been focused on the core missions of collecting and analyzing intelligence, or directly supporting those who do.

Another reality is that the swing of the pendulum of attention from one topic to another in the actual world of intelligence is not nearly as exaggerated as swings in the parallel universe. This gives rise to myths, such as that during the Cold War the intelligence community devoted nearly all of its attention to matters involving the Soviet Union.

Yet another reality is that the intelligence community devotes much effort on its own to keeping its priorities well-grounded and up-to-date, applying the dual criteria of what is of long-term importance to the country and what the policy-makers of the day most want to hear about. Here the mistaken myth is that it takes kicks in the pants from outsiders such as advisory panels to make priorities up to date.

It is true—and here is where the two otherwise parallel universes intersect—that some of what the intelligence agencies do in reallocating resources is in response to shifting public demands. The agencies certainly expanded work on terrorism greatly after 9/11. This was not because the nature of the terrorist threat had suddenly changed (it didn't) or because before 9/11 the intelligence community did not understand that threat (it did). It was because with the sudden and enormous change in the public mood and public concerns, intelligence managers had to show Congress and others on the outside that they were beefing up work in this area.

What does not get nearly as much public attention in such circumstances is what trade-offs are involved in any such reallocation. With resources always limited, responding to public demands on one thing may increase the chance of genuine surprise in the future on something else—something that inhabitants of the parallel universe probably are paying scant attention to today.

President Obama's visit to Israel has shaped up the way the White House probably hoped and expected it to, which is to say without surprises or major hiccups and with pre-programmed messages coming through strongly. There have been three such messages in particular. One is that despite previous frictions, relations between the president and his friend Bibi are peachy. Conveying the image of peachiness has required the president to exude in tandem with the prime minister what has been Netanyahu's number one preferred message, which is that Iran is a horrible threat. Thanks to persistent questioning by reporters at a joint press conference, however, Netanyahu did seem to accept the idea that an Iranian nuclear weapon isn't something that anyone is going to see for at least the next year.

Another White House message was about how, despite general Israeli wariness and distrust of Obama, he really has great sympathy and empathy for the Israeli people. The first half of the president's biggest speech of the visit, delivered in Jerusalem on Thursday, was a tour de force of such empathy and sympathy. The only conceivable reason any Israeli might wince is over how thickly the president's speechwriters were laying it on.

The third message began abruptly about mid-way in that same speech. It concerned the need for Israel to make peace with the Palestinians, and the president's belief that such an agreement is still feasible. That half of the speech was an eloquent explanation of why reaching such a peace agreement is very much in the interests of the Israeli people. But beyond a gentle observation about how citizens sometimes have to push their politicians into action, Obama has said or done nothing else on this trip to help make an Israeli-Palestinian peace a reality. In particular, he has not gone beyond the usual feeble references to “unhelpfulness” in addressing the continuing Israeli colonization program that is making a two-state solution to the conflict less feasible with each passing year. So we can can only hope and wait for some kind of follow-up action.

While hoping and waiting, we might take note of something else the president said in his appearance with Netanyahu, concerning the more immediate situation of Syria. Amid unconfirmed reports of use by the regime of chemical weapons, Obama remarked that any such use would be a “game changer.” This evidently was not just an off-the-cuff comment; he said something similar in the Jerusalem speech. We should ask: exactly why would use of a particular category of weapons in the ongoing Syrian civil war be considered a “game changer”?

One of the real answers is that this is another manifestation of the public fascination with any kind of unconventional weapons. The fascination (and fear) has extended indiscriminately to all parts of the CBRN quartet that also has included biological, radiological and nuclear devices. The fascination repeatedly comes up in discussions of terrorism, in a way that has consistently outpaced what terrorists actually have been doing. And of course it was a centerpiece of the selling of the expedition whose ten-year anniversary we have been observing (or lamenting) this week.

Just as it was ten years ago, chemical weapons routinely get termed a “weapon of mass destruction.” But they are not really that, in the way that nuclear or biological weapons could be. Rather exacting, and not very common, conditions regarding the physical environment and the deployment of opposing forces have to be met for chemicals to inflict what could be considered mass casualties. To be sure, chemical weapons can have very nasty effects, and it was that nastiness relative to their military utility that led to their use being legally banned through international agreement. But conventional means can be used to produce nasty and even hideous effects, too.

That's true of the Syrian civil war. If one wants to indict the Syrian regime for inflicting much physical suffering on its people, one does not have to look for a deployment of chemical weapons. One doesn't even have to look at the current civil war. When Bashar Assad's father was still in charge, for example, the regime carried out a massacre in Hama in 1982 in which the total casualties will never be known with accuracy but have produced estimates of 10,000-40,000 killed. No chemical weapons appear to have been used in that operation, but other tactics with effects just as grisly reportedly were—such as pouring fuel into underground tunnels and then igniting it to incinerate members of the resistance hiding there.

Another reason for some to seize on the possible use by the regime of chemical weapons is to use it as a hook for arguing anew for the United States to get involved more heavily in the Syrian civil war. So once again—as was the case ten years ago—a factual question with a presumed yes-or-no answer about a regime's use or possession of a certain category of weapons gets treated as if the answer dictates a certain policy course, even though it doesn't.

Speaking of that bad experience a decade ago, here's one more way to think about the significance of chemical weapons. Suppose, as a counterfactual, that U.S. troops invading Iraq had come upon large stockpiles of chemical weapons. How would history have been different? The Bush administration, of course, would have been able to say: Yes, Iraqi WMD do exist! And much of the later commentary and criticism about the war would have had to take a different form from what it did. If the Iraqis had used any of those weapons it would have complicated the invasion phase of the operation. But otherwise history would have been the same. There still would have been no alliance between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The invasion still would not have saved Americans from some grave threat. The thousands of casualties and trillions of dollars still would have been needlessly spent. The heavy diplomatic and political damage to the United States still would have been incurred. The war still would have been a big blunder. And the chemical weapons would not have changed any games.