Christopher Preble reviewed the implications of the debt deal for military spending:

Assuming that is true, the maximum amount of defense cuts possible here is $850 billion. That is a cut of roughly 15 percent compared to planned spending based on the president’s February 2011 budget submission — not including the wars. It is roughly on par with the cuts proposed by the Bowles-Simpson Commission. The total savings are much lower, roughly half, if you compare the cuts to what we actually spend now, rather than the increases we were planning on in past planning documents.

And remember, that $850 billion is a maximum; it may not materialize. It will be lower, if, as hawks hope, the cuts fall on the non-defense elements of the security category. It will be lower if the Joint Committee finds other accounts to cut, avoiding the triggers.

Still, that possible amount is enough to make hawks apoplectic. We are sure to hear more complaints about “gutting or “hollowing out” the force. But let’s keep some facts about military spending in mind:

The Pentagon’s budget has more than doubled over the past decade, and current projections call for the Pentagon to receive more than $6 trillion from U.S. taxpayers through 2021. If its budget got cut by 15 percent, that would return us to roughly 2007 levels [bold mine-DL]. That hardly seems like “gutting“. After such cuts, we would still account for more than 40 percent of global military spending, and our margin of military superiority over any combination of rivals would remain unrivaled.

For all the talk of decline and retrenchment, the real debate over military spending at present is whether the U.S. should settle for the massive amounts it spent in the year of the Iraq “surge” or whether it should spend far more.

David Steinberg criticizes the futility and harmful effects of a new round of Burma sanctions:

If US sanctions against the military government in Burma, the goal of which were regime change, haven’t worked for a decade and a half, by what logic would one suppose that additional sanctions would have a more positive effect? Yet well-meaning human rights and other organizations have recently proposed that further sanctions be instituted, and that a UN Commission of Inquiry into human rights violations be convened.

This proposal is especially quixotic as the EU has just modestly modified its less stringent sanctions policy in light of potential progress in that country, and none of the Asian states adheres to any sanctions regimen. Rather than being a step forward, then, this proposal undercuts both US policy and the potential for positive change in Burma.

Imposing sanctions on pariah states is the one policy response that seems to garner the broadest support across both parties, and it is a fairly easy thing to support. It makes little difference whether the sanctions have their desired effect. Since most sanctions are aimed at trying to change regime behavior or even topple the regime, they rarely have the desired effect. Instead of showing the bankruptcy of the sanctions option, this just invites a new round of sanctions. It doesn’t matter if sanctions actually discourage positive developments inside the targeted country, because the more entrenched a regime becomes the easier it becomes to justify the continuation of the sanctions. The harm sanctions do to the civilian population and the domestic political opposition is likewise irrelevant, and this can be blamed on the recalcitrance of the regime rather than the clumsy, short-sighted policy of outside governments. As the domestic opposition withers under the pressure of the sanctions, their impotence becomes an excuse for greater external pressure on the grounds that there is insufficient internal resistance. Sanctions are a favorite for using against pariah regimes with which the U.S. has no strong business connections, and this ensures easy passage and guarantees that there will be minimal political risk for those supporting the sanctions.

Steinberg concludes:

It’s simply self-defeating to advocate policies that effectively undercut the possibility of these reforms continuing, something which would be in the interests of both the United States and the people of that sorry land.

That’s true, but the habit of linking sanctions with disapproval is still far too ingrained to be resisted in this case. If sanctions are supposed to express disapproval, lifting some or refusing to impose new sanctions seems to imply approval and an endorsement of the current government. No politician wants to be accused of endorsing Burma’s junta, and there are more than enough politicians eager to posture and show off their concern for human rights by backing sanctions policies that are not going to do a thing to change regime behavior and very likely will make the plight of the population worse.

Daniel Trombly finds a major flaw in Richard Haass’ argument for his “restoration” doctrine:

Indeed, the growing drumbeat for programs of internal renewal, to be led by major, national efforts, recall some of the most spectacularly failed elements of modern foreign policy. When people utter noxious phrases such as “nation building here at home,” they commit a double error. First, they confuse nation building for capacity building. Nation building is not just about investing in education or social spending, but using it to forge a coherent national identity. It is also about the use of violence and force, which is why nation building is so often associated with conflict and post-conflict situations.

This is right, and it is something that gets completely lost in foreign policy debates. I suspect that one reason for this is that skeptics and opponents of nation/state-building often frame their criticism of this kind of policy in terms of opposition to domestic government activism and social engineering. These skeptics intentionally minimize the differences between nation-building overseas and domestic government activism to rally opposition to the former. This confuses the two, which creates the misleading impression that nation-building is something that is potentially desirable if it is done in the right place (i.e., here in the U.S.). While education and social spending may be part of a nation-building project, Trombly is right to emphasize the coercive nature of nation-building. What matters much more for “successful” nation-building is the suppression of rival sources of loyalty and authority inside the nation-state and the crushing of opposition to the nation-state. Nation-building is usually unsuccessful in other countries because the U.S. has neither the resources, the patience, nor the competence to carry out such a policy in lands that Americans understood superficially at best. This use of coercion is not what Haass or any other “nation-building at home” advocates propose, which is why they need to describe their agenda using very different terms.

The inattention to a country’s political landscape and local political culture is a common feature of both advocates of nation-building and
“nation-building at home.” Trombly continues:

The second, and more practically important error in that phrase, is that nation building attempts so often fail because those prescribing and administering the treatment have insufficient understanding of local politics. We have seen the failure of aspiring nation builders and the associated commentators to grasp the complexities and contradictions of the politics of Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and now Libya.

A basic assumption of the “nation-building at home” view is that the U.S. could better attend to its domestic problems if only it weren’t devoting so many resources and so much attention overseas. This neglects the problem that the solutions to all domestic problems are contested, and there is no consensus on how to cope with the country’s decaying infrastructure, shrinking industrial capacity, and unreformed entitlements. Those would seem to be Haass’ priorities in his “restoration” doctrine, as he writes:

Reducing discretionary domestic spending would constitute one piece of any fiscal plan. But cuts need to be smart: domestic spending is desirable when it is an investment in the U.S.’s human and physical future and competitiveness. This includes targeted spending on public education, including at the community-college and university levels; modernizing transportation and energy infrastructures; and increasing energy efficiency while decreasing dependence on Middle East oil. Spending cuts should focus on entitlements and defense. Further deficit reductions can be achieved by reducing so-called tax expenditures such as health care plans and mortgage deductions.

Haass’ proposals on how the U.S. should bring its fiscal house into order are all reasonable enough, but they are also bound to be wildly unpopular with large constituencies in both parties. The first thing that needs to be understood is that the erosion of the “the fiscal foundations of American power” is itself a product of the “complexities and contradictions” of domestic American politics, and calls for restoring those foundations that do not account for the many varied interest groups that have contributed to the erosion are bound to go nowhere.

It’s being said that Younes was back at the Brega front when he was recalled to Benghazi yesterday for questioning, on suspicion, apparently, of betraying the rebels by maintaining links to Qaddafi. Younes was then apparently shot, along with a pair of his officers, and his body was burned; the corpses were dumped in the streets. The head of the Transitional National Council first said he had been assassinated by pro Qadaffi loyalists, but a rebel minister, Ali Tarhouni, later said that another rebel leader had confessed that his men, who had been sent to bring Younes to Benghazi, had killed him.

With someone like Younes—a man of no allegiances, or too many —anything was possible. For now, the question of identity that has hung over the anti-Qaddafi enterprise since its beginning has deepened considerably. Who are the rebels? ~John Lee Anderson

The question of identity is one that skeptics of the Libyan intervention have used to good effect (“how can we support a group we don’t know very well?”), but it is strange that the question keeps coming up. It’s not as if there is that much uncertainty about “who” they are any longer. They are mostly Libyans drawn from the ranks of traditional opponents of Gaddafi’s regime: Amazigh in the Nafusa mountains, merchants in Misrata, and tribes from Cyrenaica. They represent those parts of Libya that have been neglected or severely mistreated by the regime. Their numbers have been supplemented by defectors and opportunists, including Younes, and there are also former and current Libyan Islamic Fighting Group members and other Islamists fighting alongside them. According to one rebel minister, it was a band of Islamist fighters who were responsible for Younes’ death. Bruce Crumley explained:

Though Tarhouni used elusive wording in making the allegation, he suggested Younes had been killed by extremists within the rebel-allied Obaida Ibn Jarrah Brigade. The thesis is those militants hated Younes for having served Gaddafi so faithfully—including as the interior minister who implemented Gaddafi’s ruthless repression of Libyan Islamists he considered a threat.

Whether this specific charge is true or not, it has hardly been a secret that there were Islamists among the Libyan rebels. If war supporters acknowledged this, they have usually insisted that this was no problem at all. It has also been no secret that there have been divisions among rebel leaders. The TNC’s lack of effective control over rebels elsewhere in the country has been obvious for weeks, if not months, and the disorder and disorganization of the rebels have been on display since the fighting began. To ask who the rebels are at this point is to pretend that all of this comes as a new, disturbing revelation. This is how Jackson Diehl could write the following line without any trace of sarcasm (via Scoblete):

Until last Thursday, Libya was beginning to look like the relative good news in the troubled summer that has followed the Arab Spring.

Diehl continued:

Two senior members of the TNC touring Washington last week talked cheerily about their plans to stabilize the country after Gaddafi’s departure and quickly install a liberal democracy. “Libya is actually the easy case,” one veteran Washington democracy expert enthused to me after hearing them speak.

It is amazing that anyone could say that. Of all the political transitions in the region, Libya’s will be one of the most fraught and difficult. One can only hope that people in positions of authority don’t believe what this “democracy expert” is saying. It sounds just like the blithe indifference that accompanied claims that Iraq was a natural candidate for democratization, and it will likely have similarly unfortunate consequences.

In what could hardly have been music to NATO’s ears, the 50 government and think-tank experts also concluded that while “change” will come to Libya in the form of Qaddafi’s departure from power, it could take as long as two to three years for that to happen. (NATO’s last public estimate several weeks ago was that Qaddafi would be out before October.)

The CFR’s Danin says the prospects for a drawn-out war to oust Qaddafi, coupled with the lack of standing institutions that a new government like the TNC will be able to count on, means the international community is engaged in Libya for some time to come.

“All the problems we’re seeing now are further reminder that even when Qaddafi goes, we won’t be able to just pick up and leave,” he says. “To some extent, the international community has committed to nation-building in Libya [bold mine-DL].”

And while the approach President Obama has taken means the US is less engaged than the British and French, Danin says the US will still be on the hook once Qaddafi goes.

“No one should have the illusion that we [the US] aren’t in this,” he say. “We are.” ~The Christian Science Monitor

The L.A. Timesreport reminds us that “the international community” has done no such thing:

Most of the world’s governments still recognize Kadafi as Libya’s legitimate ruler, and he still has an extensive diplomatic corps looking after his interests.

The international consensus in support of the Libyan intervention has been exaggerated from the beginning, and the obligations of the “international community” in Libya are those of U.S. and allied governments. If a majority of the “international community” agrees on anything, it is that there should be a cease-fire and a negotiated settlement in Libya. There is no interest in indefinitely policing a Libyan civil war.

Once the intervening governments made clear that they intended to overthrow Gaddafi, the war exceeded the mandate provided by the U.N. At that point, Libya became the responsibility of the U.S. and its allies, but this is a responsibility the intervening governments don’t want and apparently won’t assume. It would be most unwise for a U.S.-European force to occupy Libya, but there is no incentive for governments that were openly opposed to regime change to take up the burden of post-war security and reconstruction. The intervening governments have been expecting someone else to take over for them when the war ends, which is why there has been essentially no planning for post-war stabilization, but no other institution or group of governments is moving to fill the vacuum. Libya is a ward that no one wants.

As far as most governments around the world are concerned, the states that have obligations to rebuild Libya after the war are the ones fighting the war against Gaddafi. Those states have already stated publicly that this isn’t going to happen, and their electorates would be very unhappy with acquiring yet another country as a ward. Antipathy towards “nation-building” in the U.S. is strong, and it will be even stronger where Libya is concerned. Americans wanted the U.S. to stay out of Libya, and their support for the minimal U.S. role in the war has been anemic at best. The official administration line has been that the U.S. role was minor, the U.S. was not engaged in hostilities, and regime change was not the goal. It doesn’t matter that all of this was untrue. It will be impossible for the administration to come back to the public and Congress and say that the U.S. must help secure Libya after the toppling of Gaddafi as a result of the war the U.S. just fought. Danin is right that “we” are stuck with the aftermath in Libya, but “we” (i.e., the public and Congress) never consented to this and won’t accept it.

Recognizing the Transitional National Council as the Libyan government was supposed to free up the state’s frozen assets and make them available to the rebels. While this was a questionable move at odds with long-standing U.S. practice, it made sense as a way of propping up the TNC in its fight with Gaddafi. Last week, I noted that the process of unfreezing the assets was very difficult, and there were a number of obstacles to transferring the assets to the rebels. The Los Angeles Timesreports today that there are additional complications:

The sanctions committee, which comprises all 15 members of the Security Council, acts only if there is unanimous agreement.

And even if the council adopts the kind of resolution the rebels want, some countries may not implement it as the rebels would like.

Each country with Libyan assets would need to take legal action to judge who is entitled to receive the money, by passing a law or setting up a commission to sort through competing claims.

If the authorities simply lifted the freeze, “there would be a free-for-all from everyone who thinks they have a claim to the money,” said Victor D. Comras, who was a top sanctions enforcement official at the State Department and the U.N. “There could be 1,000 lawsuits.”

Though authorities in the United States and Europe would probably move carefully to ensure that the money went to the rebels, other countries “may have far different procedures, and they may have different sympathies,” Comras said.

The rebels fear that if Kadafi officials see any legal loopholes, “they will do everything they can to get their hands on assets, to sell them and send the money back to Tripoli,” said Aujali, the rebel envoy.

Another fear is that members of Kadafi’s regime, sensing that his government may not be around long, may try to steal the money for themselves.

U.S. officials, though eager to help the rebels raise cash as soon as possible, are making no promises on how long unfreezing the assets may take because, as one put it, “there’s a lot of moving pieces here.”

Unfreezing Libyan assets here is clearly going to take a lot of time, but time is one thing that NATO governments don’t have. Nikolas Gvosdev explains:

Even if the conflict picks up steam again after Ramadan ends on Aug. 30, the alliance will then have to confront a new deadline: The NATO mission’s mandate will draw to a close on Sept. 27 unless it is explicitly renewed or extended, a decision that would require unanimous consent of all the alliance’s members. Enthusiasm for the operation was never that strong among key NATO states such as Germany and Turkey, and public support for the mission in Britain and France has been eroding. French President Nicolas Sarkozy will want to bring operations to a successful close well in advance of the April 2012 presidential contest, while the government of British Prime Minister David Cameron will want to be in a position to proclaim that the conflict is winding down by the time it must again submit the biannual “bill” for the Libya operation to parliamentary scrutiny.

Some European governments have unfrozen several hundred million dollars in assets, but there is reason to worry that the TNC won’t handle the money effectively once they have it. The Christian Science Monitorreports:

Some experts are cautioning that a young and divided opposition government like the TNC can hardly be expected to know how to effectively and efficiently use the hundreds of millions and potentially billions of dollars falling into its hands.

A panel of experts assembled last week by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington concluded that too much money for the TNC could end up being as big a problem as too little. “The paucity of cash in eastern Libya has helped nurture a culture of volunteerism and broad public engagement,” the group said. “Too much cash at the center will likely lead to centralization and patronage.”

Al Jazeera reports that Abdel Fatah Younes, the top rebel military commander, has been killed:

Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the chief of the NTC, blamed Younes’s killing on gunmen loyal to Gaddafi in a press conference late on Thursday night. He said Younes had been summoned from the front line to appear before a “panel of judges” and was killed on his way there. One of his killers was arrested, Jalil said, but Younes’s body has not been recovered.

Sources close to the NTC told Al Jazeera that Younes was suspected of engaging in unauthorised communication with Gaddafi’s representatives and had possibly even helped supply regime troops with weapons – a dire offence against the rebel cause, but one that could not be immediately proved.

His death, while possibly under investigation, throws open a power vacuum in the rebel hierarchy. Many Libyans fear such void will spawn more violence as others move to fill his role as military commander, while his allies seek retribution.

While there is speculation that Younes’ death might have actually been the result of discord among rebel officers, and there are rumors that Younes was in contact with the regime, it seems more likely that someone loyal to Gaddafi was responsible. Regardless, the effect will still be to undermine rebel military efforts. The story concludes:

Much remains to be learned of Younes’s murder. According to Jalil, he was ambushed en route to a meeting with NTC representatives. Whether they were seeking to discuss military issues or to investigate Younes’s alleged collaboration remains unclear. Also unclear is where Younes’s body has gone – Jalil said it has not been recovered.

While Jalil blamed Gaddafi loyalists for the attack, Tarik Yousef, a professor at Georgetown University who lived in Benghazi, said he discounted the idea that regime gunmen could have killed Younes, given the commander’s constant security.

“I think its a wake up call for the National Transitional Council to deal with the matter of security within the cities under its control,” he told Al Jazeera.

The military structure, he said, is “highly undisciplined and not subject to the typical norms of command and control”.

Younes’s death is “a very unpleasant development at a critical moment,” he said.

Update: David Kenner comments:

The rosy view of the Libyan rebels is endangered by Younis’s death. It may well emerge that he was killed by a pro-Qaddafi hit squad, but even if it does, observers are still left to grapple with why Abdul Jalil was unable or unwilling to answer basic questions about the incident, and how such a significant security lapse could occur in rebel-controlled territory. And if it appears that someone within the rebel ranks killed Younis, Western officials and reporters are going to find themselves asking hard questions about signs of factionalism within the TNC and the murky nature of its military structure. Whatever the case may be, the honeymoon with the rebels is over; bring on the politics.

McCain’s comments (and the controversy they caused ) raise an intriguing question: Has McCain the straight-talking maverick been reborn? ~Chris Cillizza

The answer to the question is no, but it’s not because there ever was a “straight-talking maverick” to be reborn. It isn’t even an intriguing question. The idea that McCain has ever been a maverick is one of the most tiresome and enduring cliches in contemporary politics. McCain has made a career out of using conservatives in his party as a foil and often as a punching bag whenever he has wanted to grandstand and moralize about any issue. He has also made a habit of positioning himself in favor of whatever the fashionable Washington consensus has happened to be. It is no accident that all of McCain’s famous apostasies have aligned him with “centrist” conventional wisdom, and he has cultivated his reputation as a “centrist” to win fawning admiration from the press, which many journalists have been only too happy to provide.

Sometimes this has involved breaking with his party, which is what originally earned him the “maverick” label, and sometimes it has involved lining up with his party’s leadership, but at all times it requires him to denigrate and dismiss conservatives as foolish or reckless or perhaps even evil. This has not been hard duty for McCain. Policy substance has no bearing on this, as McCain will invariably side with the fashionable consensus view whether it makes sense or not. It has only been during election seasons when McCain felt vulnerable to a voter backlash that he has tacked back towards more conservative positions, as he did most egregiously on immigration during his re-election bid last year. In any case, there is nothing brave or independent-minded in denouncing Republican holdouts on raising the debt ceiling. This is the definition of taking the path of least resistance.

Cillizza acknowledges as much near the end:

The less favorable view of McCain’s journey over the last decade is that he has bent to the political winds — embracing the maverick mantle when it served his purposes and walking away from it when it didn’t.

Ron Paul has picked up a valuable local endorsement ahead of the Ames straw poll:

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has fresh bragging rights after picking up what is surely a coveted endorsement on Monday.
Cory Adams – the Republican chairman of Story County in Iowa – endorsed the Texas congressman’s presidential bid at a campaign event in Ames, Iowa.

That’s significant for a few reasons. Ames is the largest city in Story County, home to over 50,000 residents. And it is in this city that a widely-watched showdown between the GOP presidential candidates will play out on August 13. The Ames Straw Poll will test the candidates’ popularity and could be a sign of their electability.

Having the endorsement of such an influential political figure in and around Ames will surely give Paul’s campaign something to boast about as it aims for a strong showing in that contest.

One endorsement from a local party official may not move very many votes, but it certainly indicates that Ron Paul is gaining traction in a state where few would normally expect him to do well.

A recent New York Timesarticle lists Rep. Paul’s advantages:

Mr. Paul, of Texas, has a number of factors going for him. He has a legion of passionate supporters, many of them young, who in the past have flooded other straw polls that he has won.

His effort in Iowa is well financed. His latest online fund-raiser, “Ready, Ames, Fire,” brought in $550,000, added to the $4.5 million he raised in the second quarter.

The money has bought time for radio and television spots, for six paid staff members in the state and to fly in Mr. Paul by private jet (“Operation Top Gun”) for weekly rallies, including two he attended Monday here and in Ames.