U.S. Intelligence failed to warn about ISIS

The emergence of ISIS, a brutal terrorist group, has forced the U.S. to gear up for a new phase in the war on terror. 

It has led the formation of a new coalition to combat ISIS (also called ISIL or the Islamic State). The struggle against this powerful group may take years, well after President Obama leaves office.

Fatigued by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans have been reluctant to send troops to the Middle East.  Instead, the U.S. deploys aerial attacks, hoping to destroy ISIS together with action by local ground troops.

Though the U.S. has inflicted damage on ISIS, the forces on the ground have been poorly equipped and, at the outset, were unable to hold off the terrorists as they advanced to the outskirts of Baghdad.

The international coalition has been assembled in hopes of turning the tide and ultimately to wipe out a terrorist group that threatens countries far removed from the Middle East.

After struggling to come up with a plan to counter the terrorists, Obama says the U.S. will use increased force and the new coalition to eliminate ISIS.

The sudden appearance of ISIS and the protracted effort to come up with a response to it raise questions going beyond the efforts to organize an effective response.

One question is how U.S. intelligence apparently completely missed the rapid growth of a terrorist organization having sound finances, modern arms, and a large fighting force including American and British citizens.

The massive American intelligence complex was unable to warn Obama and military leaders about the new threat in the Middle East. Such a warning might have given them the time to snuff it out earlier.   

This was not a few terrorists in a cave. This was a big, new organization that was missed or ignored.

The failure to spot ISIS was not the first such mistake.  Intelligence officials, possibly influenced by Bush era political leaders, thought American troops would have flowers spread at their feet when they entered Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein.

They failed to understand that Saddam and his Sunni minority had dominated the majority Shia population in Iraq.  The new American sponsored government controlled by the Shia retaliated and excluded the Sunnis, rather than creating a broad government that could promote national unity.

That left the Sunnis as ripe recruitment targets for ISIS.  Only when this fact became evident did the U.S. take steps to induce the Iraqi government to deal more fairly with Sunnis, a process not yet completed.

In short, the American intelligence miscalculation at the time of the Iraq invasion contributed to the situation allowing ISIS to gain support.

The need for a new effort to deal over a period of years with the ISIS threat comes as a surprise.  Apparently, the end of American involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq was considered by some to be the end of “the war on terror.”

Even without a clear military victory, the end of a ground war fought by American troops meant that the ongoing struggle would be managed by using intelligence services to help countries in danger to protect themselves.  But war did not end, and intelligence did not produce good information.

Terrorism is likely to be a continuing threat to nations.  New terrorist groups should face an international community prepared to deal with it, not an American president forced to develop a new response and recruit a coalition of volunteers.

The United Nations was created to try to prevent countries from going to war against one another.  It was expected to deal with threats involving countries, so-called “state actors.”

Terrorists were not considered to be a major international problem.  They are “non-state actors” and have replaced, though not completely, wars between countries as the biggest threat to peace.

ISIS, the terrorist organization that is a “non-state actor,” wants to end up being a new country carved out of Iraq and Syria.

The U.N. could be updated to make it the main forum for states to spotlight terrorists, whose success presumably is not in the interest of any country.  At least, the U.N. might reveal if any countries were backing the terrorists.

By using the U.N. to identify terrorist threats, the U.S. and others could find it easier to form coalitions willing to fight terrorism.

Al Qaeda and ISIS should have taught the world to be better prepared for dealing with terrorism.  The U.S. and other countries must accept that the war on terror may never end and remain ready to defend against it.

Is the U.S. Senate Broken?

This year could bring a major change in the U.S. Senate.  Some pundits predict the Republicans will gain a majority, giving them control over both houses of Congress.

After Labor Day, campaigns have begun to heat up.  In Maine, incumbent GOP Sen. Susan Collins, considered one of the few Senate moderates, faces Democrat Shenna Bellows, a long shot but credible candidate now gaining by convincing members of her own party to support her.

As a backdrop to the elections, some conservatives and liberals want the Constitution amended to repair what they see as problems with the Senate itself.  Of course, they disagree about changes that ought to be made.

The Senate was at the center of the constitutional compromise at the outset of the U.S.

Members of the House of Representatives, elected by the people, would be distributed by state.  But if Congress were based only on population, three states would have had enough votes to overrule the other ten.  The small states insisted that each state, no matter its population, would be assigned two seats in the Senate. 

Senators would not be elected by the people.  State legislatures would choose senators in hopes of electing elite leaders who could keep a lid on popular enthusiasms.

But people grew increasingly unhappy with Senate elections by state legislatures.  Some senators gained their seats through corruption and payoffs. 

Senators were often wealthy men, who protected the interests of the privileged few.  Finally, in 1913, the Constitution was amended to provide for popular election of senators.

Now, people on both ends of the political spectrum have become unhappy and have proposed new amendments.

A leading conservative commentator advocates returning to the election of U.S. senators by state legislatures.  He believes that today most states oppose the Affordable Care Act, while an unrepresentative Senate Democratic majority supports it.

Despite the political swing toward conservatives, they have been frustrated by their inability thus far to control the Senate.

House districts are often engineered to produce GOP majorities, even though the Republicans get a minority of all state votes when all House elections are combined.  Running statewide, Democratic Senate candidates win, because they don’t have to worry about district lines.  That could explain the difference between the two houses on the ACA.

Some conservatives are wary of too much democracy, a view in line with the thinking of the people who took part in the original constitutional negotiations.  Some of the country’s founders thought the president and the Senate would serve as checks on the popularly elected House. 

Today’s advocates of state legislative elections of senators also lament the relative weakness of state governments compared with the federal government.  The change to direct elections stripped states of some Washington influence, which its repeal could restore.

What about the liberals?  While the conservatives think the Senate is too liberal, the liberals think it is too conservative.

They surely don’t want an end to direct elections.  They argue the appointed Senate assured slave states of enough voting power to block abolition no matter what the House wanted.

Since direct elections were introduced, liberals have remained concerned the Senate can still block essential legislation authorizing the federal government to deal with current problems. 

Of course, the Senate could be less of a problem for either party if the filibuster were eliminated.  By requiring 60 votes to pass a bill, instead of the simple majority dictated by the Constitution, a minority can block all legislation.  But senators cannot even agree to end the filibuster, possible by simply amending Senate rules.

Minority control is an even bigger problem.  With two votes for each state, senators representing a minority of the U.S. population can control the Senate. 

Right now, senators from 21 states with a total population less than California’s can block any legislation. 

Senators from California, with the largest population, represent 66 times as many people as those from Wyoming, the state with the smallest population.

The liberal solution would be to have Senate seats allocated by population, though each state would be assured of at least one seat.  California, which usually votes Democratic, with 12 percent of the total population, would gain from its current two percent of the Senate seats. 

To adopt the reforms that either side advocates would require amending the Constitution, and that’s not likely to happen.  It takes two-thirds of the Congress and three-quarters of the states to amend it.

 
Of course, the elections this year won’t lead to such changes.  We are likely to end up with more partisanship, divided government and continued stalemate.

“Regime change” is a failure

One of the biggest American exports these days is democracy, but it’s a product that isn’t doing very well.

Almost as soon as opposition to a dictatorship appears, the U.S. supports “regime change,” supposedly helping rebels to replace the despot with democracy.  

The list of failures of this effort is depressingly long.  It includes Russia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and Pakistan.

Americans seem to think it self-evident that a representative democracy – a republic – is the best form of government for any nation.  When people throw off authoritarian rule, we believe they should do the most natural thing and adopt a republican form of government.

But democracy is difficult.  You need only look at the current Washington conflicts over what the U.S. Constitution means in its practical application to matters ranging from the Affordable Care Act to voting rights to see how even a mature republic still struggles.

A look at countries where democracy has failed to take root after the overthrow of a dictatorship teaches some lessons.

Russia has no democratic history.  But, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and others countries took it for granted that it would install democratic institutions.

While Russia may have adopted the appearance of popular control of the government, it has become clear that the Russian people prefer an authoritarian rule allowing them some limited freedoms.  A majority likes President Putin, largely because he is a throwback to paternalistic control under the czars.

Afghanistan sheltered Al Qaeda terrorists, which justified American military action to root them out.  But the U.S. has engaged in its longest war ever to stamp out opposition and install democracy, so far without success.

The problem in this case is that Afghanistan has never really been a country.  A collection of regions dominated by warlords, it, too, has no democratic traditions or even a truly national identity.  The net result of 13 years of war may be no improvement over the U.S. staying for only 13 months and with more limited goals.

The only surviving justification for the American war on Iraq is that we toppled Saddam Hussein, a ruthless dictator.  But he was no threat to the U.S., because it turned out he wasn’t lying when he said he had no weapons of mass destruction.

Democracy has not been a success there, thanks to a government that has sought to crush or exclude those who backed Saddam, rather than adopting an inclusive system.  The new regime has provoked a violent and even more ruthless reaction by those it mistreated.

In Libya and Syria, the U.S. led the efforts to dump dictators.  But what was the expectation from the replacement regimes?

In Libya, President Gaddafi had already disposed of nuclear weapons and sought more cooperation with the West.  His replacement is a failed country that has no functioning government and warlord justice.

The chaos of Syria’s civil war opened the door to the involvement of regional terrorists, providing them a new base of operations.  It proved impossible to know whom among the rebels to back, as the U.S. sought to avoid funneling weapons to terrorists while backing the rebels.

In Egypt, the fall of President Mubarak opened the way to elections, but this democratic exercise produced control by the Muslim Brotherhood, which then promptly tried to squash democracy and roll over anybody who did not support it.

In Pakistan, while there has been the appearance of democracy, the country is obviously run by the military and intelligence services.  Much of the massive military aid supplied to Pakistan can flow through these services to America’s foes.  And the Pakistani military obviously sheltered Osama bin Laden.

Democracy cannot itself be the policy objective, though it may be the right tool to reach political and strategic goals.  But achievable goals must come first.

And the U.S. needs to do more than roll the dice and trust that democracy will inevitably produce positive results.  Is the opposition capable of creating a viable government?  Is it likely to adopt policies compatible with American objectives?

The U.S. should consider the country and its history.  Will the people welcome democracy?  Do they have any experience with democratic rule?  Is authoritarian government, despite being less satisfactory by our standards than democracy, more likely to produce benefits for its people and the U.S.?

The lessons learned so far seem clear.  A supposedly democratic regime is not an end it itself.  If “regime change” will produce chaos, the abrupt imposition of a system with no roots is not the best idea.

Regulators drive electric bills higher

Two new developments show how the restructuring of the electricity industry has gone astray, leaving customers with higher bills.

Restructuring began when the federal government opened the grid – high voltage wires – to buyers and sellers, both independent of the systems’ owners.  Electric transmission became a common carrier, like a bus line, required to carry paying customers.

This change happened because the government finally realized that ownership of power plants did not have to be a monopoly.  By introducing competition among power suppliers, prices should come down.

Competition would also create marketplaces where sellers and buyers could carry out their transactions. 

 

Of course, as with other markets, government might have to adopt and enforce rules to ensure that the power markets operated fairly and nobody would be cheated.  Most markets have developed on their own, but under government regulation.

But this time, it would be different.  The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission decided to prescribe how the market would work and even designate the marketplaces.  Though FERC tried and failed to impose a one-size-fits-all approach nationally, it laid down market rules. 

It started off all right, taking steps to ensure that transmission owners could not use their control of the grid to favor their own power plants.

But, each time a new defect in its rules has appeared, FERC has tried to fix it by making the rules more burdensome and complicated.

It bought into the theories of Prof. William Hogan, a Harvard University economist.  His ideas of how the market would work do not correspond with how it really works, but FERC has not backed off.  His theories have ended up costing customers.

Hogan said that if one part of a market faced higher prices than another, the high-price market ought to buy into a financial deal allowing it to gamble on getting a payoff if the price difference materialized.  With its payment from the deal, it could offset its higher power costs.  FERC approved the gamble.

But utilities and towns are not usually gamblers.  “It’s really a big boys’ game,” said one financial analyst.  Last week, Bloomberg reported that investors, not utilities, made almost $2 billion in the first three months of this year by gambling on the difference between expected and actual prices. 

Of course, they might run the risk of losing their bets.  But a couple of banks were caught rigging bets, and they paid fines.

The risk reduction plan offered nothing to the customers who simply paid the higher price.

Also, last week, a federal appeals court upheld new FERC rules that will end up requiring more major transmission lines.  The rules require customers to pay the costs of connecting renewable power, especially wind generation, to the grid.  That’s a subsidy to investor-backed developers.

In New England and other marketplaces, Hogan’s theories have harmed customers in other ways.

Before restructuring, power was delivered across the region by the New England Power Pool.  It would identify all the available generation and select generators to supply the region based on the cost of fuel each used.  

That meant the lowest cost power was selected first and then generators were added, in order of cost, to cover all power usage.  Each was paid its own cost. 

These days, power is selected based on the price at which sellers offer it to the market.  But all suppliers are paid the same – the price paid to the highest bidder whose power is used.

The theory is that bidders into the market will keep their prices low to be sure to be selected, making the highest price paid to the last supplier less than it otherwise might have been.

Nice idea, but in a market where all the players get to know what all the others are likely to do, prices don’t necessarily come in low.  Even if the theory worked, the last bid price, which all suppliers get, is likely to be higher than the average price if each were paid its own costs.

In short, New England has competition, but that doesn’t assure lower prices for customers.   

Competition, no matter how it works, has become an end in itself and is not guaranteed to produce its desired effect.

Through its government-created markets, FERC has made electricity different from other markets, but its rules have not produced lower rates, the supposed goal of competition.  Most benefit from restructuring has gone to investors.

 
All of this gets a bit complicated, but the simple conclusion is there’s still no proof that customers are better off with a “restructured” electric industry.