The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

the aisles, and should include national security profes- sionals of high stature. The panel should clarify when and why counterinsurgency serves the national interest and spell out the capabilities required to support it. The policy must address meaty and nettlesome issues that Iraq raises, but doesn’t answer — questions that are vital for thinking about a broader national security strate- gy in the decade ahead. Will counterinsurgency capacity be used to topple and replace governments in the name of Western values, or will it be used to stabilize fragile regimes whose opponents would be far less palatable to Western interests? What criteria should the United States use to assess whether a state deserves — or continues to deserve — U.S. support? What accommodations to indigenous concepts of governance, human rights and economic organization can the U.S. accept? When does counterinsurgency become plain old war? This effort needs courage and intellectual coherence, not lowest- common-denominator consensus. The commission should include representatives from the relevant agencies, including the military services that have labored so hard to get this policy ball rolling. But it must be led by experienced individuals who are no longer captive to party or position. It needs meaningful support from Congress. Only recommendations from an external bipartisan group like the Iraq Study Group have any chance of serious consideration during the 2008 presiden- tial campaign and beyond. The battle against terrorism is part of a broader strug- gle to sustain the international system and states within it. The United States currently lacks a coherent approach to addressing either challenge. Though it cannot fully sub- stitute for a thoughtful and sustainable American nation- al security strategy that applies adequate U.S. resources toward attainable ends, a national counterinsurgency pol- icy can help fill a conceptual void, recommit the nation to the right side of an ideological struggle, allow for unity of purpose across the government, and help restore the U.S. as a human rights standard-bearer through the challeng- ing times ahead. F O C U S 40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7