News reports out of Mexico grow grimmer each month.

Four decapitated bodies were found on Aug. 22, hanging from a bridge in Cuernavaca as a warning from one drug gang to another — adding to the grisly toll of more than 28,000 killed by drug-trafficking violence in Mexico since 2006.

Last month, a car bomb exploded in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico — just across the border from El Paso, Texas —killing three people. One was a doctor, who had rushed to the scene to treat a wounded police officer. But the La Linea street gang, working for the Juarez cartel, had allegedly dressed a wounded man as a police officer to lure federal police and first responders. When the police arrived, someone activated a car bomb by mobile phone.

This was the drug cartels’ first known car bombing, potentially marking a new and dangerous chapter in Mexico’s drug wars. Yet, these already are highly sophisticated, transnational criminal organizations that fund, train and equip thousands of “troops” to control the production, transportation and distribution of drugs throughout Mexico and the United States.

These criminal networks also export drugs and violence across Mexico’s southern border into Central America. “In remote, lawless regions of Guatemala,” a recent article in The Washington Post said, “the Mexican organized crime syndicate known as the Zetas is setting up training camps and recruiting elite ex-soldiers to serve as assassins, arming them with weapons diverted from the country’s military arsenals.” The description sounds like it could be about Yemen, Somalia or Afghanistan — not a country in Central America.

To help Mexico combat its dangerous gangs, President George W. Bush and Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon agreed, in 2007, to a three-year, $1.6-billion security cooperation program known as the Mérida Initiative. It was Washington’s biggest security agreement with Mexico, and created a framework through which both the U.S. and Mexican governments could show their commitment — through dollars and actions — to defeat the cartel threat.

Now, however, nearing the end of this commitment, it seems the U.S. security cooperation lacks the seriousness this challenge demands. Only nine percent of all funds appropriated under the Mérida Initiative had actually been spent as of March, according to the Government Accountability Office. Furthermore, the GAO noted that the State Department, responsible for coordinating the Mérida strategy, lacks “certain key elements that would facilitate accountability and management.” In plain English, that means we — and Congress — have no way of knowing exactly what is working and what isn’t.

With this embarrassing GAO report, intensified partisan shouting from some border-state politicians and little appetite for spending in Washington, it might seem like a poor time to advocate funding another long-term security agreement with Mexico. But that’s exactly what is required.

Though the Obama administration has outlined a more than $300 million extension of some Mérida Initiative activities for 2011, much of its plan remains vague. The administration wants to continue some counternarcotics work and add some new components, including high-tech border security technology and pilot programs to combat some of the social causes of violence in Mexico’s deadliest cities.

While this is a good bridge — and the start of a post-Mérida strategy — both countries are running out of time to get this right. In 2012, Mexico will elect a new president, and the biggest U.S. ally in the war against the cartels — Calderon — will be gone.

There will also be an election on this side of the border. Proposing more money for Mexican foreign aid in the middle of the 2012 presidential campaign is not likely to be a popular position for either party. That’s why 2011 is a critical time to set up a new, five-year U.S.-Mexico security framework.

Just as the Mérida initiative spanned the presidencies of Bush and Barack Obama, this new five-year commitment would outlast Calderon’s administration and bring us to the end of either a second Obama administration — or his successor’s first administration. It could clarify the direction of the U.S.-Mexico bilateral security relationship — ensuring that gains made during Mérida aren’t squandered.

But, this can’t be a “Mérida 2.0.” We must learn the lessons of Mérida — confronting both its successes and failures — and adjust accordingly.

There were positive outcomes. For one, we know that it is possible to make gains. Though relatively little money was spent, the GAO reported that the diplomatic and security cooperation aspects functioned well, with tangible increases in cooperation between U.S. law enforcement agencies and their Mexican counterparts. New programs to interrupt cross-border drug, cash and weapons smuggling are up and running, and violent crime has decreased in many U.S. border areas. These successes from Mérida should not be ignored.

But the hard lessons from Mérida must also be learned. Congress and the administration must now realize that congressional appropriations alone aren’t enough. With a security challenge of this size, appropriations must be matched with a coordinated strategy and clear metrics to judge performance.

Yes, Mérida had strategic goals, but, as the GAO report notes, the State Department never translated these into a strategy or measurable benchmarks for success.

Most important, and most obvious, is that oversight is critical. Congress should ask the GAO to produce annual, or even semi-annual, updates to ensure the appropriated money is being spent and having the desired effect. Frequent updates could allow Congress to adjust strategies annually — through appropriations and legislation.

Effective security cooperation means responsibilities for both sides. The Mexican government has the bulk of the work when it comes to fighting the drug runners threatening their country. They look to be taking this seriously.

U.S. policymakers need to match that seriousness: both by following through on past commitments and by laying the groundwork for a successful bilateral relationship with Mexico in the future.

Recent polls showing pessimism about U.S. prospects in Afghanistan seem to suggest that Barack Obama has lost the United States’ support for the war there. However, general exhaustion from years of war and specific support for Obama’s Afghanistan strategy should not be so easily conflated. A careful reading of the polling data on Afghanistan shows that while the public is weary, they haven’t yet given up on the mission or Obama’s redefined strategy…yet.

The U.S. public has significant doubts about Afghanistan. After a decade of war, U.S. citizens just aren’t sure that the investment of time, energy and resources will pay off. When asked to in early June to consider whether the war in Afghanistan was worth fighting (given all of the costs to the U.S. versus the benefits) 44 percent of those polled believed it was worth it, 53 percent did not. In the same ABC News/Washington Post poll, only a slight majority (by 3 points) believed the U.S. was winning the war in Afghanistan. A more recent Newsweek poll found that just 26 percent of Americans believe the U.S. is winning the war and 46 percent think the U.S. is losing — a 20 point margin. With June being the deadliest month ever for foreign forces in Afghanistan, the public has reason to think that the U.S. effort has lost its momentum.

At the moment, there is also little hope among the public for a successful conclusion to the conflict in Afghanistan. When asked if it is even possible to achieve stability in Afghanistan and the region, only 33 percent of those surveyed said yes.

Yet, for all of the pessimism about the war in general, the public isn’t ready to give up on its commander-in-chief. In poll after poll, the United States still approves of Obama’s handling of Afghanistan and gives high marks to his specific policies. In polling done by Third Way and Democracy Corps in February and May, the president gets much higher marks on his handling of Afghanistan than he does for his general approval rating (or even on domestic issues, such as the economy). More recent national polling shows that Obama maintains a five or six-point edge on his Afghanistan approval rating (46-41, 50-44).

Even more telling than generic approval ratings is whether the public supports the president’s strategy in Afghanistan. They do. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll found that 58 percent support the president’s timetable to begin withdrawing some troops in July 2011. And, although the question isn’t asked as frequently, other polls found significant majorities believe in the mission in Afghanistan even as they see U.S. efforts hitting obstacles. Sixty-one percent believe that “eliminating the threat from terrorists operating from Afghanistan is a worthwhile goal for American troops to fight and possibly die for,” and 76 percent believe what happens in Afghanistan matters to their security in the U.S.

This demonstrates that the public is of two minds — they may not believe the war effort is going well, but they do believe in the mission.

Those surveyed also believe in the central principles of Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan — that our main goal is to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and prevent their return to controlling Afghanistan. In Third Way-Democracy Corps polling, an articulation of this strategy and its tangible results in capturing or killing al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan resonated with 61 percent of the public. This includes a majority of independents and 86 percent of self-identified liberals. However, these are the same Americans who believe the U.S. is losing the war and won’t be able to bring it to a successful conclusion. So, how can these totally contradictory opinions about our effort in Afghanistan co-exist?

One answer is that the U.S. public understands the president inherited a mess and is withholding final judgment until Obama has an adequate chance to see his more focused, better-resourced strategy succeed. Third Way polling suggests that the public is willing to listen and trust the president on Afghanistan when he clearly articulates the mission, strategy, and goals.

This willingness to trust the president is not everlasting. Just as the public soured on Bush’s Iraq policy when there seemed to be no improvement and no exit, Obama faces approval ratings on Afghanistan hovering around 50 percent that are likely to drop off quickly unless the public sees tangible results from the president’s strategy. Americans are following the stream of negative news out of Afghanistan, which will tighten the already-slim margins of support the president still receives on his Afghanistan policy. Clearly and consistently reminding the public of the reasons for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and the gains being made in taking the fight to al-Qaeda and the Taliban could go a long way in maintaining support for the president’s strategy. Equally important will be communicating results and letting the public know that there is an endgame in Afghanistan that most could support: bringing U.S. troops home responsibly after neutralizing the terrorist threat.

From the introduction:

The Obama administration’s nuclear doctrine, defined by New START, the Nuclear Security Summit, and the Nuclear Posture Review, is a responsible approach to improving US security. It builds on a long, bipartisan history of seeking to contain and reduce the prevalence of nuclear weapons around the world. It properly places the threat of nuclear terrorism as a top security priority, clarifies the US nuclear position for our allies, and singles out bad actors, like Iran and North Korea, as worthy of international sanction and exempt from any US security guarantees.

Last year — in stories from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times — we saw the emergence of a narrative that Palestinians in the West Bank are living through an economic miracle. One very important missing piece of this puzzling story is Gaza and its desperate state of affairs. While this may seem like a small story in the context of much larger conflict, the economic well-being of West Bank residents has taken on increasing importance as leaders on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide are banking on economic growth as a route to a viable two-state solution, while simultaneously ignoring the situation in Gaza. If there is one thing the Palestinians certainly aren’t buying, it’s this “West Bank economic miracle” narrative.

Last month, I visited Israel and the West Bank to get a better understanding of the economic situation there in light of this growing narrative on peace and state-building through economic growth. As I met with entrepreneurs, business consultants, academics, American development professionals and Palestinian Authority officials, I found deep skepticism about the widely touted growth of the West Bank economy. Rather than actual development, they spoke of growth in the West Bank as “Ramallah-centric” and fueled mostly by international donor aid, which funds increased employment (in the PA, municipal governments and development projects).

It is true that the West Bank’s GDP registered as one of the top 10 growth rates in the world for 2009 (seven percent) during one of the worst global recessions in history. Even so, Palestinians and Americans alike noted that any small gains made in calculating the GDP statistics of the West Bank are almost certainly offset by the economic pain of Gaza’s closure. The Gaza Strip is a critical component of the Palestinian economy; without it, the West Bank loses much of its domestic market and can’t benefit from cheaper Gaza imports. Unless and until Israel and Egypt can determine a way to relax import and export controls on the Gaza Strip and increase trade between it and the West Bank, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s vision of economic peace and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s plan for declaring a Palestinian state in 2011 are both dead on arrival.

Israel sees the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip as a hostile entity along its border and has little interest in relaxing restrictions on the movement of goods into and out of Gaza. Egypt doesn’t want to open up its border along Gaza’s southern tip for fear of having Gaza become its sole responsibility. This Israeli and Egyptian blockade has produced, as Rex Brynen termed it, “a tragically peculiar economy” within the Gaza Strip. The effects of this closed economy, though, reverberate well beyond Gaza’s borders.

Gaza is home to more than 1.5 million Palestinians. The West Bank has about 2.5 million residents, and there are at least another 1.5 million Arabs living in Israel, many with close family or commercial ties to the West Bank. Even if you add the Arabs living in Israel to the total market (as they are in some ways part of the Palestinian economy since they can access the West Bank and are to spend money there), then Gaza still represents 28 percent of the domestic Palestinian market. With the closure of Gaza and more stringent restrictions today on who can cross into the West Bank, businesses there are operating with a significantly diminished domestic market size. Though many Palestinian businesses conduct business within the Israeli market, increased security procedures at checkpoints along the Green Line have made shipping prohibitively expensive for all but the largest Palestinian firms.

In addition to losing Gaza as an export market for its goods, the West Bank is now increasingly reliant on more expensive Israeli produce and other basic products, some of which used to come more cheaply from Gaza. Economic linkages between Israelis and Palestinians should be encouraged, but the two economies are nowhere near on par with each other, making trade somewhat unbalanced. Losing cheap imports from Gaza won’t decimate the West Bank economically, but it does add to the pain.

Even if the West Bank is able to produce enough growth to statistically overcome these trade challenges posed by Gaza’s closure, it’s going to be hard to convince most Palestinians that their situation has improved unless they see tangible improvements in Gaza, too. West Bank Palestinians, regardless of their political stripes, are deeply concerned about Gaza’s future and think of the health of their own in economy in terms of the combined situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

It is within Israel’s and Egypt’s interests to relax some of the trade flows into Gaza. As it stands now, goods coming into Gaza are smuggled through tunnels, many of which are either directly run by Hamas or are “taxed” by Hamas. Allowing the West Bank’s goods into Gaza could funnel some this tunnel-based money away from Hamas and instead help bolster the West Bank’s economy. This wouldn’t require Israel to come to any agreements with Hamas; they could simply allow more goods in from the West Bank and rely on well-established security protocols at the checkpoints to safeguard against weapons or other dangerous materials from entering the Gaza Strip.

It’s tempting for policy-makers and pundits in Washington, Israel, and even within the PA to dream of a situation in which economic development in the West Bank could lead to a peaceful resolution of conflict and the birth of a Palestinian state, while the long-term issues in Gaza are put off for another day. It certainly seems easy compared with the extremely complex prospect of settling the conflict between Israel and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, which also requires Egyptian cooperation. Unfortunately, this is as unlikely as it is impractical. Focusing on economic growth in the West Bank, while ignoring the key role of Gaza in the Palestinian economy, is a path likely to end in failure for American, Israeli, and Palestinian efforts at peace.

Those are the two policy prescriptions Ephraim Karsh gives us in a New York Times op-ed today called “Muslims won’t play together.” I’m not going to take the time to argue with his policy prescriptions (I argued here for continued engagement with Iran, and I believe the US has a fundamental role to play in promoting Israeli-Palestinian peace). I do think the way in which Karsh arrived at his conclusions, though, gives us a great introduction to how to do bad Middle East analysis. Here are a few lessons drawn from his piece:

1. Talk about the essential nature of Muslims and/or Arabs and rely on events from the 7th century and the crusades to make your point. Karsh writes: “It took a mere 24 years after the Prophet’s death for the head of the universal Islamic community, the caliph Uthman, to be murdered by political rivals. This opened the floodgates to incessant infighting within the House of Islam, which has never ceased.” This is a popular tactic in bad Middle East analysis: trying to understand today’s politics and and prescribe policy based on tracing the essential nature of Arabs or Muslims back to the birth of Islam. This is like trying to understand EU by politics only by reading histories of the Middle Ages. Later, Karsh repeats the error by using Muslim actions in the crusades as support for his policy prescriptions of today.
2. Make the actions of Arabs or other Middle Eastern people sound strange or different, even when people all around the globe exhibit the same behavior. When explaining why there are divisions within the broader Muslim community, Karsh writes: “not only do Arabs consider themselves superior to all other Muslims, but inhabitants of Hijaz, the northwestern part of the Arabian Peninsula and Islam’s birthplace, regard themselves the only true Arabs, and tend to be highly disparaging of all other Arabic-speaking communities.” So, there aren’t ethnic or religious groups in the US that consider themselves to be superior to others? Does Karsh not remember growing up in Israel and seeing how Ashkenazi Jews spoke disparagingly of Sephardic Jews? I’m not saying that the facts in this quote are wrong, but Karsh makes it sound as if this case is special to the Arabs, which is patently false.
3. Make broad generalizations about Muslim or Arab worldviews. Karsh wants us to believe that all Muslims view the West through a single lens, writing: “Nor, for that matter, has the House of Islam ever formed a unified front vis-à-vis the House of War (as Muslims call the rest of the world).” Political and religious leaders sometimes use “House of War” in their rhetoric, but Karsh’s sentence makes it sound like Muslims across the Middle East don’t know the words United States, America, Europe, etc. This just isn’t the case.
4. Throw in a few Arabic words to build your credibility, even if they don’t add to your point. At one point, Karsh translates “worldwide Muslim community” as “umma,” even though he doesn’t refer to the umma at any other point in the piece. The translation was correct, but unnecessary. It seemed like he was just throwing it in there to sound more credible on Arab issues to a lay reader.

These are just a few ways to do really bad Middle East analysis. Any others come to mind? Share them in the comments.

Image: Ali Mansuri

This should be a simple legal question. If a terrorist breaks a US law and would likely face the toughest penalty through a civilian trial, then that’s where they should be tried. If they break the law of war, they should go to a military tribunal. It’s that simple. However, the GOP’s talking points would have you believe that trying terrorists in highly capable civilian courts (that have convicted hundreds of terrorists since 9/11) is a fundamental breach of US national security.

It’s not hard to understand why this is a winning issue for GOP talking points. It’s an extension on the Guantanamo Bay debate they essentially won last year, and a recent CNN poll showed that a majority of Americans (59%) think the Christmas Day bomber should be tried in a military tribunal. Still, the public is of two minds. In the same poll, a majority said that all terrorists suspects should have their Miranda rights read (65%) and be given access to lawyers (56%). So, the public wants terrorists treated as criminals (which would mean that they should go through the civilian court system), but then wants to see them tried in military tribunals.

I take this to mean that Republican attacks on the civilian court system are breaking through, but that there’s room to make the case for swift, harsh justice against terrorists through the criminal courts. My colleagues and I at Third Way made this very case in a memo I co-authored back in November. This is the one big issue where Republicans have a clear advantage over President Obama, but there’s no reason to admit defeat – common sense on this issue can prevail if Democrats will aggressively state their case.

Image: maveric2003

In a memo I co-authored for Third Way, we argue that engagement has shown concrete results and continues to be the optimal policy choice as the international community attempts to exert increased pressure on Iran’s regime. You can check it out here (pdf).

Image: Daniella Zalcman

I also wanted to provide an easy way for people to contact and connect with me. So, this website is just as much about my work as it is about others commenting and interacting whether here or on Facebook and Twitter.

With that said, here we go!

Image: NaJina McEnany