Deterrence, and that Truck in Austria

×

Expand

AP Photo/Rick Wilking, Pool

"Deterrence" is the hot word of the summer. Ex-diplomat Dennis Ross and ex-general David Petraeus wrote that they could support the Iran deal if President Obama supplies more deterrence against Iran breaking it. Columnist Thomas Friedman argued that Israelis should see the up side of the agreement, "especially if the U.S. enhanced its deterrence."

Friedman didn't suggest how to do that. But ex-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, coming out for the deal, gave details. The administration's "robust deterrence," she wrote in support of the deal, includes stepped-up "efforts to counter Iranian proxies" and provides Israel with the sophisticated, fabulously expensive F-35 warplane. Obama himself, in his letter to Representative Jerry Nadler, gave a long list of ways he's boosting deterrence against Iran ever building a bomb-and against "Iran's destabilizing activities and support for terrorism."

In our un-utopian world, deterrence is indeed necessary for security. That said, I'm agnostic about how much additional offensive weaponry the U.S. or Israel need in order to convince Iran not to break the deal. Some of this talk seems like a determined effort by deal supporters, from Obama down, to avoid saving a cent on arms after reducing a military threat, lest they look like wimps.

It's true, though, that the accord itself does nothing about "destabilizing" forces in the Middle East. (This isn't a flaw in the deal; it was never meant to solve that problem.) The threats are real, but if you want to talk about groups undermining states, society, and sanity in the Middle East, they're not limited to Iran's proxies.

Likewise, if anyone in Washington-or in other Western capitals-is serious about countering the danger of Hezbollah, the Islamic State, and whatever radical organizations could spring up tomorrow, they need to consider more than military deterrence. They should also be working on humanitarian deterrence. (Yes, that term is a bit Strangelovian. I use it deliberately, to get through to minds that need national security jargon.)

To explain, let me switch news feeds from Washington to Europe. The discovery of 71 bodies of refugees in a truck in Austria has revived the horror that was previously aroused by boats filled with desperate people sinking in the Mediterranean. Boats are still sinking, but that initial wave of shock faded into familiarity until the truck incident.

So far, the European establishment media has mostly reported on a "migrant crisis." So let's get the language straight. The U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees says that people fleeing war and repression should be called refugees. "Migrant" should refer only to those trusting their lives to smugglers for economic reasons-that is, those merely fleeing hunger.

More than 350,000 refugees and migrants have crossed the Mediterranean so far this year, much more than in all of last year. Experts estimate that most are refugees from Syria. Certainly, most of those taking the Balkan route into Europe are. Some Syrian refugees have discovered a new route: North through Russia, then across the Norwegian border above the Arctic Circle by bicycle. The refugee paths are scrawled across the map of Europe, and they spell desperation.

Now take this into account: The news photos come from Macedonia, from the train station in Budapest, from Calais, where refugees have tried to jump Eurostar trains to Britain. But the Syrians who have reached Europe are only a few percent of those who have fled their country.

As of now, the UNHCR reports, over four million Syrians have become refugees. Nearly twice that number have fled their homes but are still inside the borders of what was once Syria and is now the state of chaos. The vast majority of the refugees are in three neighboring countries. The UNHCR lists 1.2 million in Lebanon and 630,000 in Jordan. In Turkey, the number is climbing toward two million. Those numbers are probably lower than the reality. The more that countries try to restrict or block entry, "the more people are likely to come in below the radar and avoid being registered," says Alexander Betts, director of Oxford University's Refugee Studies Center.

In Lebanon, refugees must sign a pledge not to work. Some work illegally. Some try street peddling. Some depend on aid. These are the conditions that drive people who still have cash from home to pay smugglers to stuff them into boats and trucks.

If you go with children, one reason could be that you dream of them going to school. Only a quarter of refugee children in Lebanon are in formal education, says Ariane Rummery, a UNHCR spokesperson.

It's beginning to sink in at aid organizations that the Syrians will not be going home, not within any time relevant to policy. Some will make it to Europe on their own; some will be accepted from afar into the resettlement programs of distant countries. And the rest will live in limbo and bring up children in hopelessness.

The best reason to help refugees is that they are people and deserve lives with dignity. If that consideration doesn't move policymakers, then let's talk about security.

Hundreds of thousands of people without homes or a future are a threat to the stability of the countries on Syria's borders. In the slightly longer term, a lost generation growing up in camps or on streets, without education or work, are the natural recruits of organizations promising redemption through violence and martyrdom-in the name of bizarre, twisted counterfeits of Islam or of whatever extreme ideologies come along next.

The alternative to this is for wealthy countries to adopt a new approach to the refugee crisis, based on investment and development rather than charity.

Right now, resettlement programs take in a tiny portion of refugees. The United States takes the largest number from the world as a whole, but so far has committed itself to taking only a few thousand from Syria, Betts says. The main refugee policy has been handouts of aid. U.N. agencies and NGOs set a goal of raising $4.5 billion for Syrian refugees this year. To date, they've received about a third of that funding. Food aid, health services and schooling for refugees have been cut back. Over time, Betts argues, passing the hat each year doesn't work. "It's an enormous long-term drain. It creates dependency," he says. It also produces donor fatigue.

What's needed is to build new lives for refugees by developing the countries where most are likely to stay. The refugee crisis has to become an opportunity rather than a burden, Betts says; the aid must help the host population as well as the refugees. The West should promote investment in manufacturing, backed with trade benefits. It should invest in schools, clinics, hospitals, fiber-optic cables, water projects, universities and more schools. Alongside that, Betts says, Western countries need to accept more refugees, to demonstrate good faith to the countries bearing the greatest burden.

This is a direction, not yet a plan. It's roughly the direction that the United States took toward rebuilding Western Europe after World War II. It will cost more in the short-term than the kind of aid being offered today but pay off in the long term.

Perhaps, to put things in perspective, we should measure the cost of a new refugee policy in F-35 units. Each F-35 will cost an estimated $180 million. How many schools, clinics and factories can be built in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey with, say, a couple dozen F-35 units?

I know that this is an unreasonable proposal at a time when the U.S. Congress is controlled by a party opposed to investing in its own country, a party whose leading presidential candidate is a vulgar nativist in the tradition of the European far right. Politically it's much safer to ask for investments in bombs than in schools. But anyone who is actually serious about dealing with extremists in the Middle East should be demanding deterrence-humanitarian deterrence.