Caution fills Obama’s playbook

By David Ignatius, Published: September 23 2011
The Washington Post

It was painful to watch President Obama last week at the United Nations, backing away from the goal of Palestinian statehood he had championed when he took office. The best that could be said was that it was a bit of foreign-policy realism, acknowledging the political and strategic fact that the United States will never abandon Israel in the U.N. Security Council.

Obama is playing defense in foreign policy these days, trying not to make costly mistakes. Like a football team protecting a slim lead, he wants to avoid fumbles that would cost him the game. The idea of daring offensive moves — the risky touchdown pass — is a distant memory from 2009. This is a team that chants to itself: “Dee-fense!”

There are worse things than playing cautiously. The big gamble may be tempting, but it can lead to disaster, as Menachem Begin found with his invasion of Lebanon in 1982, and George W. Bush learned after his occupation of Iraq in 2003. Though commentators may be howling for a big, bold move, the correct choice is often the one that hedges against really bad outcomes. Papa Bush (“41”) was teased on “Saturday Night Live” with the mocking phrase “wouldn’t be prudent,” but he politely backed his way right into the dismantlement of the Soviet Union.

It should be said that Obama is playing defense reasonably well. There are big, long-lasting mistakes lurking in the Arab Spring — chief among them a chaotic implosion of Syria that could trigger a wave of sectarian massacres on the order of Iraq in 2006. Obama has understood the need to be cautious about the Syrian transition, even if he gets hammered sometimes in the editorial pages.

Obama is hedging, too, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The danger there is the perception that America is leaving and the ensuing scramble to fill the power vacuum. Recognizing that problem, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is already talking about the likelihood that the United States will keep some troops in Afghanistan after 2014. Obama could have avoided a lot of his current Af-Pak problems if he hadn’t coupled his December 2009 troop surge with a pledge to start withdrawing those troops in July 2011. The wiser course would have been deliberate ambiguity.

The retreat on the Palestinian issue must be a bitter pill for Obama. Regaining America’s role as an evenhanded mediator seemed his top priority when he took office. His first interview as president was with the Arabic news channel al-Arabiya; his June 2009 speech in Cairo was a masterful signal that America was ready to engage its Muslim adversaries and make peace. Obama knew that America’s security, and Israel’s, required creation of a Palestinian state.

What happened to that promise? It’s a long and depressing story, but the simple answer is that Obama got outfoxed. He decided not to immediately enunciate core principles for an agreement, which would have built on the remarkable progress made in 2008 by Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas, a story that awaits Condoleezza Rice’s memoirs. Instead, he picked a fight over Israeli settlements that landed him in the morass of Israeli coalition politics.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu waited Obama out. Every month that the diplomatic wrangling went on, Obama grew weaker politically and Netanyahu stronger. The denouement was Obama’s speech Wednesday, in which he spoke almost ruefully of “peace in an imperfect world.” His best hope now is that he won’t actually have to veto a statehood resolution. Talk about playing defense.

While crediting Obama’s caution, I wish he would study the example of Henry Kissinger, who was playing a weak hand in 1971 when the Vietnam War was unraveling. Kissinger dealt a new set of cards by traveling secretly to China. He recalls in his memoirs that in his first meeting with Zhou Enlai, he cautiously opted for a broad, philosophical discussion of “our perceptions of global and especially Asian affairs.”

“The statesman finds opportunity,” even in adversity, notes Robert Blackwill, a Republican foreign policy expert who worked for Kissinger and both Bushes. That’s a good prescription for Obama. He’s in damage-limitation mode — sensible enough in a time of uncertainty but not really a strategy. What’s the opportunity — in Pakistan, in India, in Turkey, in Syria — and yes, in the Palestinian state that inevitably will be declared?

Playing defense works if you’ve got a lead to protect. But it’s not enough when that lead is slipping away.

davidignatius@washpost.com

In tropical paradise, U.S. drones meant revenue

Posted at 08:09 AM ET, 09/22/2011

By Craig Whitlock

U.S. Navy Commander Greg Hand speaks to participants during a media day event in Victoria, Seychelles, in 2009. An MQ-9 Reaper can be seen in background. (Maj. Eric Hillard — U.S. Africa Command)

Drones can clearly track down terrorists. But they can apparently boost an economy, too.
The U.S. military’s deployment of MQ-9 Reaper drones to the Seychelles, a tropical paradise in the Indian Ocean, generated $3.1 million in revenue for local businesses during their first four months of operations, according to an unclassified U.S. diplomatic cable buried in the database of State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks.
As the subject line of the 2010 cable touted: “U.S. Military Presence Benefits Seychelles Economy.”
The Reapers – known as “hunter-killer” drones for their tracking ability – may be unmanned. But it takes a whole village of military personnel and contractors to operate the aircraft from the ground. In this case, that meant 82 people deploying to Victoria, the capital of the Seychelles, the island chain known for its Sports Illustrated swimsuit model shoots and royal honeymoons.
When they weren’t flying the Reapers, the drone crew spent $937,260 on “Food/Liberty,” or about $11,400 per person over a four-month period ending in December 2009 (the Reapers arrived in late September).
Expenses also included $51,760 for vehicle rentals, $70,777 for aircraft fuel and $598,363 for the catchall category of “facilities/services.”
All told, “a significant sum in a country as small as Seychelles,” the cable noted.
“The Seychellois have already taken notice of the economic benefits,” the cable continued. “Local shop owners and restaurateurs have commented that the U.S. military is bringing a steady income into hotels, restaurants, and shops: a direct influence of the American presence.” 
Accommodations accounted for a particularly large chunk of change. The drone crew accumulated a tab of $1,457,784, which comes to roughly $150 per night per person over four months.
Not bad for a tropical dreamland. The Four Seasons Resort nearby charges more than $500 a day.

From Pakistan’s ISI, an act of folly

Posted at 05:35 PM ET, 09/22/2011
By David Ignatius
WP

In the annals of global folly, I’d give high marks to the continuing refusal of Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, to break decisively with the terrorist Haqqani network.

A devastating new portrait of the ISI’s madness was provided Thursday by Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in his farewell testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Mullen said he had “credible intelligence” that a Sept. 11 bombing that wounded 70 U.S. and NATO troops and a Sept. 13 assault on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul were done “with ISI support.”

This is a bombshell, especially coming from Mullen, who has been the best American friend of ISI and the Pakistani military. When an intelligence agency is involved with (or condones) the bombing of another country’s embassy, that is perilously close to a covert act of war.

What does the ISI imagine lies ahead? More of its games with the Haqqanis, which fit the British description of fatuous actions that are “too clever by half”? More double- and triple-gaming of the sort into which it has entangled itself and the CIA for several decades? No, I don’t think so. When a Mullen goes before Congress and says our nominal ally is responsible for killing Americans and trying to take down our embassy, that’s a break from business as usual.

ISI officials tend to throw up their hands in a gesture of wounded innocence when the Haqqani network is mentioned. Of course we have contacts with them, they will say; that’s what intelligence services do. Sometimes they will go further and say they are willing to help contain the Haqqanis, but only as part of a broader deal in Afghanistan. Sorry, but the clock just ran out on those arguments.

The tragedy of what’s happening now is that the ISI and Pakistan were moving in the right direction just two years ago, when they summoned up their courage and attacked the Taliban in the Swat Valley and then assaulted the Mehsud tribal militants in South Waziristan.

There were signs then of the resolve and strategic clarity that might make Pakistan one nation at last, with the tribal areas under the writ of Islamabad, more than 60 years after the nation was founded.

But they blew it. Sad to say, especially for someone like me who likes Pakistan and admires many officials there, even in the ISI. But they blew it. Now they have to figure out a way to dig themselves out of the hole that they have created in their half-clever folly.

U.S.: Pakistanis supported Afghan attacks

Posted at 12:12 PM ET, 09/22/2011
By Karen DeYoung
(Associated Press)

Pakistan-based insurgents planned and conducted some of the major attacks in Afghanistan recently, including the one on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul last week, with the support of Pakistan’s intelligence service, senior U.S. defense officials told Congress on Thursday.

“The Haqqani network ... acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency,” Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said. “With ISI support, Haqqani operatives plan and conducted” a truck bomb attack that wounded more than 70 U.S. and NATO troops on Sept. 11, “as well as the assault on our embassy” two days later.

“We also have credible intelligence that they were behind the June 28th attack on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul and a host of smaller but effective operations,” he added.

Mullen’s statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, together with remarks by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to the panel, were the most specific in a week of strong administration criticism of Pakistan.

“In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy,” Mullen said in a prepared opening statement, “the government of Pakistan, and most especially the Pakistani army and ISI, jeopardizes not only the prospect of our strategic partnership but Pakistan’s opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate regional influence.

“They may believe that by using these proxies, they are hedging their bets or redressing what they feel is an imbalance in regional power,” he said. “But in reality, they have already lost that bet. ... They have undermined their international credibility and threatened their economic well-being.”

Both Mullen and Panetta resisted lawmakers’ attempts to describe what Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the committee, called “the kind of options available to us to stop” Pakistani support for the insurgents and the “actions the administration is prepared to take” to ensure it.

“We’ve made clear that we are going to do everything we have to do to defend our forces,” Panetta said. “I don’t think it would be helpful to describe what those options would look like and what operational steps we might or might not face.”

The administration has insisted that Pakistan sever its ties with the insurgents, in particular the Haqqani forces based in the tribal region of North Waziristan, and supply all available intelligence on the group. Although senior administration officials have said they would prefer to work together with Pakistan against the group, they have indicated they are prepared to consider an expansion of drone strikes in the region, as well as surgical ground strikes, according to senior administration officials.

“The first order now,” Panetta told lawmakers, “is to put as much pressure on Pakistan as we can to deal with this issue.”

Levin noted that similar public pressure has continued for several years, and asked whether “Pakistan’s leaders are aware of what options are open to us, so they’re not caught by any surprise.”

“I don’t think they would be surprised by the actions that we might or might not take,” Panetta said.

Ahmadinejad’s U.N. speech sparks walkout

By Joby Warrick, Thursday, September 22, 2:07 PM 2011
The Washington Post

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad triggered a mass exodus from the U.N. General Assembly’s chamber Thursday with a combative speech that blasted the United States and other Western powers and questioned whether Islamist terrorists were behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Iranian leader, known for his bomb-throwing rhetoric, used his allotted 15 minutes before the world body to blame the West for a list of ills throughout history, from slavery to the two world wars and the global economic crisis.

He also criticized the Obama administration for killing Osama bin Laden, suggesting that the al-Qaeda leader could have been the star witness at a trial that would reveal the true culprits behind the attacks on New York and Washington.

“Instead of assigning a fact-finding team, they killed the main perpetrator and threw his body into the sea,” Ahmadinejad said. Meanwhile, those who raised questions about Sept. 11 or the Nazi Holocaust were “threatened with sanctions and military action,” he said.

His words sent diplomats streaming for the exits, starting with the U.S. delegation and followed by dozens of Europeans and others. More than a third of the General Assembly seats were empty by the time Ahmadinejad finished speaking, to polite applause.

The Iranian president had recently made conciliatory gestures to the West, including his support for a decision to free Americans Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who were arrested in 2009 after straying into Iranian territory during a hike along the Iraqi border. But there were no olive branches in evidence during his sharply worded speech, which was accompanied by finger-wagging and dramatic hand gestures.

“Do these arrogant powers really have the competence and ability to run or govern the world?” he asked, referring to the United States and the former colonial powers of Europe. In an apparent reference to the Western-led military intervention in Libya, he added: “Can the flower of democracy blossom from NATO’s missiles, bombs and guns?”

Positioning himself as spokesman for developing and non-aligned countries, Ahmadinejad called for scrapping the “prevailing world order” — including the U.N. Security Council as currently structured — in favor of a more evenly balanced system.

“There is no other way than the shared and collective management of the world to put an end to the present disorders, tyranny and discriminations worldwide,” he said.

Obama tells U.N. he sees ‘no shortcut’ to Israeli-Palestinian peace

By Scott Wilson and William Branigin, Published: September 21 2011
The Washington Post

UNITED NATIONS — President Obama on Wednesday hailed the popular revolutions that have transformed the political landscape of the Middle East and urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to revive talks toward a difficult peace.

In the third address of his presidency to the U.N. General Assembly, Obama acknowledged that he is frustrated by lack of progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace, but he stressed that there is “no shortcut” to ending the conflict, and he called for understanding of each side’s “legitimate aspirations.”

Obama spoke ahead of a likely effort by the Palestinian Authority to seek U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state, an effort that the United States has vowed to veto in the U.N. Security Council, which must endorse the statehood bid before it goes to the General Assembly.

But Obama made no direct reference to a U.S. veto, instead maintaining that a resolution of the conflict can come only through negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas plans to give the Security Council on Friday a letter seeking statehood but will allow “some time” for the council to consider the request before taking the case to the General Assembly, a senior Palestinian official told reporters Wednesday afternoon. This would avert an immediate showdown at the United Nations over the statehood bid.

In his speech, Obama also called on the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on the Syrian government, which he accused of murdering, detaining and torturing thousands of opposition protesters.

He spoke poetically about the anti-government revolutions that have ousted long-standing autocrats in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia since he last appeared before the General Assembly a year ago.

“Something is happening in our world,” Obama told the gathered heads of state, diplomats and others. “The way things have been is not the way they will be. The humiliating grip of corruption and tyranny is being pried open.”

But Obama noted that in places such as Syria, Iran and other nations facing citizen revolts, there is more work to be done to achieve the rights and freedoms he said were spreading in much of the world.

And he acknowledged that for much of his audience the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “stands as a test of these principles — and for American foreign policy.”

When he spoke last year here, Obama had only weeks before inaugurated a new round of direct negotiations between Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But those talks collapsed soon after when Netanyahu declined to renew a politically difficult moratorium on Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank that he had imposed to meet a Palestinian condition for talks. The two sides have not negotiated since, and Abbas, frustrated by the lack of movement, has decided to seek U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state this month.

Recalling that he called for an independent Palestine when he addressed the U.N. General Assembly from the same podium a year ago, Obama said: “I know that many are frustrated by the lack of progress. I assure you, so am I. But the question isn’t the goal we seek. The question is how to reach it. And I am convinced that there is no shortcut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades.”

He added: “Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the U.N. If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is Israelis and Palestinians — not us — who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and on security; on refugees and Jerusalem.”

Obama called for “compromise,” but stressed that “America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakable.” Noting that Israel “is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it,” he said, “friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two-state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine.”

Obama described in detail Israel’s tenuous security situation in a part of the world where it is largely isolated and often under attack — diplomatically and, at times, militarily. And he reaffirmed the right of Palestinians to have an independent state and live in dignity.

“That truth — that each side has legitimate aspirations — is what makes peace so hard,” Obama said. “And the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in each other’s shoes. That’s what we should be encouraging.”

U.S. diplomats are working to round up enough votes against the Palestinian statehood resolution to make a U.S. veto unnecessary, although it remains unclear whether a majority of the 15-member council will oppose a bid that is backed by most U.N. members.

Abbas appears determined to submit the Palestinian membership application to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Friday. But diplomats note that ensuing diplomatic maneuvering within the Security Council could delay a vote on the proposal for days, weeks or longer.

White House advisers acknowledge the toll that the administration’s lack of progress in brokering an Israeli-Palestinian peace has taken on its regional standing.

Soon after taking office, Obama chose to deliver his appeal for “a new beginning” with the Muslim world in Cairo, emphasizing that the Arab Middle East was among his most important audiences.

Asked recently how the president’s Muslim outreach was faring, Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said that while there has been progress in some Islamic countries, there remains a “continued challenge around public opinion in the Arab world.”

“I think the principal challenge has been the Israeli-Palestinian issue,” said Rhodes, adding that it is “not surprising given how important that issue is to people.”

Obama also used his address Wednesday to trace the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the beginning of a troop drawdown in Afghanistan, telling the audience that he has reduced by half the 180,000 U.S. soldiers deployed in those countries when he took office.

“So let there be no doubt: The tide of war is receding,” Obama said. “This is critical to the sovereignty of Iraq and Afghanistan, and to the strength of the United States as we build our nation at home.”

But his theme — that “peace is hard,” a phrase he repeated several times — gave his remarks a sharper edge than in the past, when he used his address to the General Assembly lay out the loftier aspirations of his foreign policy for the year ahead.

Touching on other topics in his speech Wednesday, Obama castigated Iran as a “government that refuses to recognize the rights of its own people” and blasted Syria for killing thousands of opposition demonstrators, while detaining and torturing many others. He praised the demonstrators and called on the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“The Syrian people have shown dignity and courage in their pursuit of justice — protesting peacefully, standing silently in the streets, dying for the same values that this institution is supposed to stand for,” Obama said. “The question for us is clear: Will we stand with the Syrian people, or with their oppressors?”

He said the United States already has imposed “strong sanctions” on Syria’s leaders and that many U.S. allies have joined in supporting a transfer of power in the country.

“But for the sake of Syria — and the peace and security of the world — we must speak with one voice,” he said. “There is no excuse for inaction. Now is the time for the United Nations Security Council to sanction the Syrian regime, and to stand with the Syrian people.”

After his address, Obama met with Netanyahu, who thanked the U.S. president “for standing with Israel and supporting peace.”

“I think this is a badge of honor, and I want to thank you for wearing that badge of honor,” Netanyahu said, referring to Obama’s vow to veto a Palestinian statehood bid.

Netanyahu, who has had a rocky relationship with Obama, said “you’ve also made it clear that the Palestinians deserve a peace, but it’s a state that has to make that peace with Israel.”

“I think the Palestinians want to achieve a state, but they’re not prepared yet to make peace with Israel,” Netanyahu said.

Meanwhile, at the General Assembly, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said leaders have “a moral and political obligation” to help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He devoted his entire address to the issue, saying that “60 years without moving one inch forward — doesn’t it seem like time to do something new?”

Sarkozy warned that a Security Council rejection of a Palestinian state could provoke violence in the Middle East. Instead, he said, the General Assembly should grant “observer status” to the Palestinians, a step that a majority of the body appears to support, and set a one-year timeline for negotiations to achieve a peace agreement.

Obama has not endorsed that “intermediate step,” as Sarkozy characterized it. Obama was meeting with both Sarkozy and Abbas later Wednesday.

Branigin reported from Washington.

House Republicans Discover a Growing Bond With Netanyahu

9/21/2011
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER and STEVEN LEE MYERS
NYT

WASHINGTON — When the Obama administration wanted to be certain that Congress would not block $50 million in new aid to the Palestinian Authority last month, it turned to a singularly influential lobbyist: Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the request of the American Embassy and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Netanyahu urged dozens of members of Congress visiting Israel last month not to object to the aid, according to Congressional and diplomatic officials. Mr. Netanyahu’s intervention with Congress underscored an extraordinary intersection of American diplomacy and domestic politics, the result of an ever-tightening relationship between the Israeli government and the Republican Party that now controls the House.

On Tuesday, one of President Obama’s potential rivals in 2012, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, delivered a speech in New York criticizing Mr. Obama’s stance toward Israel as “naïve, arrogant, misguided and dangerous.” Mr. Perry said that he would be a guest soon of Danny Danon, the hard-right deputy speaker of the Israeli Parliament.

The relationship between the Israeli government and the Republican Party has significantly complicated the administration’s diplomatic efforts to avert a confrontation at the United Nations this week over the Palestinian bid for full membership as a state, limiting President Obama’s ability to exert pressure on Mr. Netanyahu to make concessions that could restart negotiations with the Palestinians.

One of the members of Congress who attended the meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in August, Representative Michael G. Grimm of New York, a Republican, said that it was carefully explained to the delegation that the money would be used for training Palestinian police officers who work closely with the Israeli government.

Mr. Grimm said he felt more comfortable receiving the explanation from the prime minister than from Obama administration officials.

“I think the credibility is different,” he said, “in the sense that this is his country and he certainly would not support something that would have negative effects within his country.”

For the Republicans, the relationship with the Israeli government has created what many see as an opportunity. Mindful of Mr. Obama’s strained relationship with Mr. Netanyahu and emboldened by a special election victory last week in a heavily Jewish Congressional district in New York, Republicans hope the tensions between Mr. Obama and Israel — underscored by the latest developments at the United Nations — will help propel future political victories for their party.

Even as Mrs. Clinton continued this week to pursue what she called “extremely intensive ongoing diplomacy” to find a compromise between the Israelis and the Palestinians, Republicans sought to leverage support among Jewish voters here at home who traditionally have favored Democrats.

The National Republican Congressional Committee has drawn up a list of several Democrat-rich Congressional districts — including one on Long Island now held by Representative Steve Israel, who leads a rival Democratic group — where it believes Republicans have a fighting chance by appealing to Jewish voters.

The House speaker, John A. Boehner, addressed a Jewish group in his home state, Ohio, last weekend, contrasting his invitation to Mr. Netanyahu to address Congress in May with the Israeli leader’s more frosty relationship with the administration; Mr. Boehner plans another speech this week to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington.

Unbending support for Israel has long been a bipartisan fact of American politics, but Mr. Netanyahu’s popularity in Congress now runs deeper than ever. When he appeared before Congress in the spring, his speech rebutting Mr. Obama’s ambitious peace proposals was interrupted by nearly three dozen standing ovations.

Mr. Netanyahu’s standing has complicated American diplomatic and financial support for the Palestinians as Mr. Obama tries to reach a peace between the two sides that would establish a Palestinian state, the stated goal of the last two presidential administrations.

As the Palestinian bid for recognition at the United Nations gained momentum this summer, both Republicans and Democrats warned that Congress would sever the American financial assistance that began under President George W. Bush if the Palestinians proceeded in that effort.

“The U.S. Congress has generously supported Palestinian efforts to build infrastructure and build the capacity of institutions in the past,” Representative Kay Granger of Texas, the Republican chairwoman of the House subcommittee overseeing foreign aid, and her Democratic counterpart, Representative Nita M. Lowey of New York, wrote in a letter to the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas.

“However, American assistance has always been predicated upon Palestinian leaders’ commitment to resolve all outstanding issues through direct negotiations.”

Since 2007, the United States has spent $600 million a year supporting the Palestinians, training its security forces, providing direct budget assistance to the Palestinian coffers for essential services and delivering humanitarian assistance through nongovernmental organizations working in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel views the money as helping to foster stability by supporting Palestinian government services and professionalizing security forces. American aid, however, has come with restrictions and requires White House waivers and notifications to Congress.

One provision forbids aid to any terrorist group, raising questions about the future of financing after the announcement in April of a unity government between the Palestinians in the West Bank and Hamas, which controls Gaza and remains a designated terrorist organization. That reconciliation has not been taken place, however, averting at least for now a cutoff in aid.

The notifications required to Congress before releasing the aid give committee leaders the power to put holds on delivery of the aid — something the administration sought to avoid by urging Mr. Netanyahu to intervene to keep the money flowing last month. The $50 million was the last of $200 million this year in direct budget assistance to the Palestinians.

While the American aid to the Palestinians has been viewed with suspicion by some of Israel’s supporters, the Israeli government, especially through its security officials, has expressed support for it.

“Netanyahu made the pitch to members at the request of the secretary and embassy,” a Congressional official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private diplomatic discussions. That the financing request first had to pass muster with House Republicans — many of them backbenchers who were among the 81 members of Congress to visit Israel — demonstrates the power of that relationship.

Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the most powerful Jewish member of Congress, said the importance of the Israeli-American security connections was driven home during their August visit, during which a bus was bombed. “We saw U.S. taxpayer dollars in cooperation between American interest and Israeli interests toward the same end,” Mr. Cantor said.

“We’re in it together.”

“What you have on the Hill is a bipartisan demonstration for the U.S./Israeli relationship, and frankly I think it’s in contrast to the signals being sent from the White House,” he said. Mr. Cantor has written an op-ed article, which has yet to be published, with Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the minority whip, expressing their support for the nation.

Mr. Cantor also recalled the conversation concerning the $50 million, and the prime minister’s support for it, and said that further monies from Congress would be “colored greatly by the Palestinians’ actions at the U.N.”

Obama aims to salvage Mideast crisis aversion plan

By BRADLEY KLAPPER and MATTHEW LEE - Associated Press 9/20/2011

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. and its allies changed tactics Tuesday on how to avert a crisis over a Palestinian statehood bid, as the White House announced that President Barack Obama would meet Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. At the same time, U.S. officials conceded they could not stop Abbas from officially launching his case for the Security Council's approval of the statehood effort.

But they hoped to contain the fallout by urging Abbas not to push for an actual vote in the Council, where the U.S. has promised a veto, to give international peacemakers time to produce a statement that would be the basis for resumed Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Obama is expected to make a pro forma request to Abbas when they meet Wednesday not to proceed with his initial plan, but also make the case for the Palestinian leader to essentially drop the move for statehood recognition after delivering his letter of intent to the U.N., expected Friday.

"The president will be able to say very directly why we believe that action at the United Nations is not the way to achieve a Palestinian state," said Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser. He noted that Abbas has indicated his intent to go the Security Council, but said Obama "has made it clear that we do not believe that that will lead to a Palestinian state, that we oppose such efforts."

Obama will also meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday.

The new approach would see the "quartet" of Mideast peace mediators — the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia — issue a statement addressing both Palestinian and Israeli concerns and setting a timetable for a return to the long-stalled peace talks, officials said.

Israel would have to accept its pre-1967 borders with land exchanges as the basis for a two-state solution, and the Palestinians would have to recognize Israel's Jewish character if they were to reach a deal quickly, officials close to the talks said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing diplomacy.

European officials, supported by the United States, were presenting the contours of a compromise agreement to the Israeli and Palestinian governments, and asking for tough concessions from each. Officials said several extremely challenging hurdles were leading to some pessimism as to whether mediators would be able to bring Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table, with both sides being pressed to accept positions they've long deemed anathema to their visions of a two-state peace pact.

The difficult diplomacy reflected in some ways the intractability of a dispute that has foiled would-be peacemakers for decades, even though none of the actual elements of a final agreement was being discussed.

Quartet envoys met for a third straight day in New York to come up with a formula that would lead to direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The goal is to reach a comprehensive agreement that would address this week's three major issues, officials said.

The Palestinians would be allowed to deliver their letter of request Friday to the United Nations, but the Palestinians would not act on it for a year or would withdraw it at a later point. That would allow Abbas to save face and prevent an embarrassing defeat that might empower his party's rival faction, Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by Israel and the United States.

The Palestinians could also go to the U.N. General Assembly, where they have overwhelming support, but would have to seek instead some form of intermediate upgrade that would stop short of a full recognition of statehood.

And the quartet, with Israel and the Palestinians' advance approval, would give the two sides a year to reach a framework agreement, based on Obama's vision of borders fashioned from Israel's pre-1967 boundary, with agreed land swaps. The statement would also endorse the idea of "two states for two peoples, Jewish and Palestinian," which would be a slightly amended version of Israel's demand for recognition specifically as a "Jewish state."

So far, neither side seemed willing to make such a dramatic concession, officials said. There was also some disagreement among the quartet with Russia expressing its displeasure with a number of EU and U.S. supported ideas, they said. And they cautioned that the agreement could cause the same conundrum at next year's U.N. General Assembly meeting if talks fail to advance by then.

Obama met on Tuesday with Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan of Turkey, once a close regional partner of Israel but lately an increasingly vociferous critic, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton discussed the Palestinian plan with Saudi Arabia's foreign minister.

In addition to international pressure, Obama was coming under fire from leading Republican hopefuls over his handling of the Mideast peace process.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry said Obama was part of the problem, criticizing him for demanding concessions from Israel and claiming that the president had emboldened the Palestinians to take their case to the United Nations.

"We would not be here today at this very precipice of such a dangerous move if the Obama policy in the Middle East wasn't naive and arrogant, misguided and dangerous," Perry said in a speech in New York. "The Obama policy of moral equivalency, which gives equal standing to the grievances of Israelis and Palestinians, including the orchestrators of terrorism, is a very dangerous insult."

In a statement before Perry spoke, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney also waded into the dispute and called the jockeying at the United Nations this week "an unmitigated disaster." He accused Obama's administration of "repeated efforts over three years to throw Israel under the bus and undermine its negotiating position."

In Congress, Republicans and Democrats expressed their opposition to the Palestinian effort and implored world leaders to vote against any U.N. resolution. Leading Senate voices on foreign policy have written to Latin American and African governments asking that they oppose the Palestinian action, and warning the Palestinians that they could lose millions of dollars in U.S. aid.

"U.S. foreign assistance is not an entitlement," Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said. "Assistance is not automatic."

Embracing Israel, GOP candidates assail Obama

By BETH FOUHY and KASIE HUNT - Associated Press 9/20/2011

NEW YORK (AP) — Rick Perry, Mitt Romney and their GOP presidential rivals slammed President Barack Obama's Middle East policies Tuesday while emphatically declaring their ownsupport for Israel as the United Nations considered a bid for Palestinian statehood.

Republican front-runner Perry, the Texas governor, denounced the president's Israel policy as "misguided and dangerous," speaking to supporters in New York as the Obama administration worked a few miles away to thwart a U.N. vote to grant formal recognition to the Palestinian Authority.

Perry also accused Obama of appeasement, as did Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, who assailed the president from the Midwest.

Perry's chief rival for the nomination, former Massachusetts Gov. Romney, issued a statement accusing Obama of "throwing Israel under the bus."

The Republican campaigns have similar goals: establish contrasts with Obama on an issue where he's struggled; chip away at American Jews' support for Democrats and prove their conservative, pro-Israel bona fides with the evangelical voters who will play a significant role in the GOP presidential primaries.

During the 2008 election campaign, Obama worked hard to reassure nervous Jewish voters that he would defend Israel as president. But he's faced doubts and criticism since then.

Perry criticized Obama's stated goal that any negotiations should be based on Israel's borders prior to the 1967 Mideast war, with mutually agreed adjustments and land swaps to accommodate population shifts and some homebuilding since 1967. Perry called that stance "insulting and naïve."

Obama angered Israel earlier this year by endorsing a Palestinian demand that negotiations over future borders begin with the lines Israel held before capturing the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem in 1967.

In regard to potential official recognition, the administration has been working intensively behind the scenes to restart direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and to persuade Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to drop his push and avoid an explosive confrontation at the U.N. later in the week.

But Perry had strong criticism nonetheless, speaking to a group of ultraconservative Jewish and Israeli leaders at a New York hotel.

"Simply put, we would not be here today at the precipice of such a dangerous move if the Obama policy in the Middle East wasn't naïve, arrogant, misguided and dangerous," Perry said, flanked by U.S. and Israeli flags. "The Obama administration has appeased the Arab Street at the expense of our own national security interests. They have sowed instability that threatens the prospect of peace."

Romney said, "What we are watching unfold at the United Nations is an unmitigated diplomatic disaster. It is the culmination of President Obama's repeated efforts over three years to undermine its negotiating position." He called for an end to U.S. foreign aid to the Palestinian Authority if the U.N. vote went the Palestinians' way.

The candidates' remarks represented their efforts to win over the conservative and evangelical voters who care deeply about GOP support for Israel. They back Israel as a U.S. ally in the fight against terror and as a rare democracy in the volatile Mideast. Some also support Israel for theological reasons.

Perry told reporters his support for Israel was in part driven by his religious faith.

"I also as a Christian have a clear directive to support Israel, so from my perspective it's pretty easy," Perry said when a reporter asked if Perry's faith was driving his views. "Both as an American and as a Christian, I am going to stand with Israel."

Republicans who describe themselves as evangelical prefer Perry over Romney — 33 percent really like Perry while just 17 percent really like Romney, according to an August AP-GfK poll. Republicans who aren't evangelical like both men about the same.

A third Republican candidate, Minnesota Rep. Bachmann, also weighed in Tuesday — but Bachmann, also an evangelical, left religion out of it and instead issued a statement calling on Obama to prevent Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from coming to the U.N.

"Ahmadinejad has shown himself to be an enemy not only of Israel, but also of the United States," the Minnesota congresswoman said. "This administration tried and failed to do outreach to Iran, reminding us once again that appeasement of deadly dictators is never a wise or effective strategy."

Perry also accused the Obama administration of appeasing bad actors in the Middle East in connection with the Palestinian statehood effort.

"We're equally indignant of the Obama administration and their Middle East policy of appeasement that has encouraged such an ominous act of bad faith." In a political context, "appeasement" is language used sometimes used to describe how European governments tried to accommodate Adolf Hitler without sparking war.

Obama's re-election campaign was prepared to deal with the political fallout and assembled a team of prominent Jews ready to defend the president's record on Israel.

"It appears to be a coordinated Republican effort to distort and misrepresent Obama's strong record and support for Israel, by these presidential candidates and others, for partisan advantage," said former Democratic Rep. Mel Levine of California, who spoke to The Associated Press after Obama's campaign asked him to.

In 2008, Obama won 78 percent of the Jewish vote against Republican John McCain. While few strategists expect Jewish voters to swing heavily toward the GOP next year, even a small erosion of support for Obama could make a difference in Florida, a major swing state, and in several House districts across the country.

Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes strongly defended the president's record on Israel Tuesday. "This administration could not have been a stronger friend and supporter here," Rhodes told reporters at the U.N. "What we're here to do is strongly support Israel and help work toward a two-state solution" in the best interest of both Israel and the Palestinians, Rhodes said.

Tensions are likely to escalate as the week goes on. Abbas, the Palestinian leader, said he will continue to seek full U.N. membership even though he says he is under "tremendous pressure" to drop the effort. The U.S. has indicated it would veto the proposal in the U.N. Security Council.

U.S. officials are insisting there is still time to avoid a divisive showdown, and have been working with Western allies in hopes of a last-minute compromise. Obama is to address the U.N. Wednesday.

Perry blasts Obama’s policies on Israel, Palestinians

By Philip Rucker, Tuesday, September 20, 11:28 AM 2011
The Washington Post

Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry castigated President Obama for his handling of Israeli-Palestinian relations on Tuesday, accusing Obama of a “policy of appeasement” toward the Palestinians that he said was undermining U.S. security interests in the Middle East.

The Texas governor charged that the Obama administration — which has been trying to head off a U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood this week and relaunch peace talks — was encouraging the Palestinians to shun direct negotiations with the Israelis.

Perry, a leading contender for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, said the United States should reconsider its aid to the Palestinians and close the Palestinian Authority’s offices in Washington if Mahmoud Abbas, president of the authority, succeeds in his quest for formal recognition of statehood at the annual session of the U.N. General Assembly this week.

“We would not be here today at the very precipice of such a dangerous move if the Obama policy in the Middle East wasn’t naive, arrogant, misguided and dangerous,” Perry said in a speech in New York.

He blasted Obama for saying last spring that the 1967 borders should be the starting point for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Perry said Obama’s statement isolated Israel “in a manner that is both insulting and naive.”

Obama’s statement was denounced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the time. But Netanyahu had embraced the 1967 borders as a starting point for negotiations before that, and he said last month that he would do so again if the Palestinians dropped their statehood bid.

Perry’s top GOP rival, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, also assailed Obama’s Middle East policies in a statement issued Tuesday morning.

“What we are watching unfold at the United Nations is an unmitigated diplomatic disaster,” Romney said. “It is the culmination of President Obama’s repeated efforts over three years to throw Israel under the bus and undermine its negotiating position.”

U.S. building secret drone bases in Africa, Arabian Peninsula, officials say

By Craig Whitlock and Greg Miller, Tuesday, September 20, 8:14 PM 2011
The Washington Post

The Obama administration is assembling a constellation of secret drone bases for counterterrorism operations in the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula as part of a newly aggressive campaign to attack al-Qaeda affiliates in Somalia and Yemen, U.S. officials said.

One of the installations is being established in Ethi­o­pia, a U.S. ally in the fight against al-Shabab, the Somali militant group that controls much of the country. Another base is in the Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean, where a small fleet of “hunter killer” drones resumed operations this month after an experimental mission demonstrated that the unmanned aircraft could effectively patrol Somali territory from there.

The U.S. military also has flown drones over Somalia and Yemen from bases in Djibouti, a tiny African nation at the junction of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In addition, the CIA is building a secret airstrip in the Arabian Peninsula so it can deploy armed drones over Yemen.

The rapid expansion of the undeclared drone wars is a reflection of the growing alarm with which U.S. officials view the activities of al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Somalia, even as al-Qaeda’s core leadership in Pakistan has been weakened by U.S. counterterrorism operations.

The U.S. government is known to have used drones to carry out lethal attacks in at least six countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen. The negotiations that preceded the establishment of the base in the Republic of the Seychelles illustrate the efforts the United States is making to broaden the range of its drone weapons.

The island nation of 85,000 people has hosted a small fleet of MQ-9 Reaper drones operated by the U.S. Navy and Air Force since September 2009. U.S. and Seychellois officials have previously acknowledged the drones’ presence but have stated their primary mission was to track pirates in regional waters. But classified U.S. diplomatic cables show that the unmanned aircraft have also conducted counterterrorism missions over Somalia, about 800 miles to the northwest.

The cables, obtained by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, reveal that U.S. officials asked leaders in the Seychelles to keep the counterterrorism missions a secret. The Reapers are described by the military as “hunter-killer” drones because they can be equipped with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs.

To allay concerns among islanders, U.S. officials said they had no plans to arm the Reapers when the mission was announced two years ago. The cables show, however, that U.S. officials were actively thinking about weaponizing the drones.

During a meeting with Seychelles President James Michel on Sept. 18, 2009, American diplomats said the U.S. government “would seek discrete [sic], specific discussions . . . to gain approval” to arm the Reapers “should the desire to do so ever arise,” according to a cable summarizing the meeting. Michel concurred, but asked U.S. officials to approach him exclusively for permission “and not anyone else” in his government, the cable reported.

Michel’s chief deputy told a U.S. diplomat on a separate occasion that the Seychelles president “was not philosophically against” arming the drones, according to another cable. But the deputy urged the Americans “to be extremely careful in raising the issue with anyone in the Government outside of the President. Such a request would be ‘politically extremely sensitive’ and would have to be handled with ‘the utmost discreet care.’”

A U.S. military spokesman declined to say whether the Reapers in the Seychelles have ever been armed.

“Because of operational security concerns, I can’t get into specifics,” said Lt. Cmdr. James D. Stockman, a public affairs officer for the U.S. Africa Command, which oversees the drone base in the Seychelles. He noted, however, that the MQ-9 Reapers “can be configured for both surveillance and strike.”

A spokeswoman for Michel said the president was unavailable for comment.

Jean-Paul Adam, who was Michel’s chief deputy in 2009 and now serves as minister of foreign affairs, said U.S. officials had not asked for permission to equip the drones with missiles or bombs.

“The operation of the drones in Seychelles for the purposes of counter-piracy surveillance and other related activities has always been unarmed, and the U.S. government has never asked us for them to be armed,” Adam said in an e-mail. “This was agreed between the two governments at the first deployment and the situation has not changed.”

The State Department cables show that U.S. officials were sensitive to perceptions that the drones might be armed, noting that they “do have equipment that could appear to the public as being weapons.”

To dispel potential concerns, they held a “media day” for about 30 journalists and Seychellois officials at the small, one-runway airport in Victoria, the capital, in November 2009. One of the Reapers was parked on the tarmac.

“The Government of Seychelles invited us here to fight against piracy and that is its mission,” Craig White, a U.S. diplomat, said during the event. “However, these aircraft have a great deal of capabilities and could be used for other missions.”

In fact, U.S. officials had already outlined other purposes for the drones in a classified mission review with Michel and Adam. Saying that the U.S. government “desires to be completely transparent,” the U.S. diplomats informed the Seychellois leaders that the Reapers would also fly over Somalia “to support ongoing counter-terrorism efforts,” though not “direct attacks,” according to a cable summarizing the meeting.

U.S. officials “stressed the sensitive nature of this counter-terrorism mission and that this not be released outside of the highest . . . channels,” the cable stated. “The President wholeheartedly concurred with that request, noting that such issues could be politically sensitive for him as well.”

The Seychelles drone operation has a relatively small footprint. Based in a hangar located about a quarter-mile from the main passenger terminal at the airport, it includes between three and four Reapers and about 100 U.S. military personnel and contractors, according to the cables.

The military operated the flights on a continuous basis until April, when it paused the operations. They resumed this month, said Stockman, the Africa Command spokesman.

The U.S. aim of constructing a constellation of bases in the Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula is to create overlapping circles of surveillance in a region where al-Qaeda offshoots could emerge for years to come, U.S. officials said.

The locations “are based on potential target sets,” said a senior U.S. military official. “If you look at it geographically it makes sense — you get out a ruler and draw the distances [drones] can fly and where they take off from.”

One U.S. official said that there had been discussions about putting a drone base in Ethiopia for as long as four years, but that plan was delayed because “the Ethiopians were not all that jazzed.” Other officials said that Ethiopia has become a valued counterterrorism partner because of threats posed by al-Shabab.

“We have a lot of interesting cooperation and arrangements with the Ethiopians when it comes to intelligence collection and linguistic capabilities,” said a former senior U.S. military official familiar with special operations missions in the region.

The former official said that the United States relies on Ethiopian linguists to translate signals intercepts gathered by U.S. agencies monitoring calls and e-mails of al-Shabab members. The CIA and other agencies also employ Ethiopian informants who gather information from across the border.

Overall, officials said the cluster of bases reflects an effort to have wider geographic coverage, greater leverage with countries in the region and backup facilities if individual airstrips are forced to close.

“It’s a conscious recognition that those are the hot spots developing right now,” said the former senior U.S. military official.

A future for drones: Automated killing

By Peter Finn, Published: September 19 2011
The Washington Post

One afternoon last fall at Fort Benning, Ga., two model-size planes took off, climbed to 800 and 1,000 feet, and began criss-crossing the military base in search of an orange, green and blue tarp.

The automated, unpiloted planes worked on their own, with no human guidance, no hand on any control.

After 20 minutes, one of the aircraft, carrying a computer that processed images from an onboard camera, zeroed in on the tarp and contacted the second plane, which flew nearby and used its own sensors to examine the colorful object. Then one of the aircraft signaled to an unmanned car on the ground so it could take a final, close-up look.

Target confirmed.

This successful exercise in autonomous robotics could presage the future of the American way of war: a day when drones hunt, identify and kill the enemy based on calculations made by software, not decisions made by humans. Imagine aerial “Terminators,” minus beefcake and time travel.

The Fort Benning tarp “is a rather simple target, but think of it as a surrogate,” said Charles E. Pippin, a scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, which developed the software to run the demonstration. “You can imagine real-time scenarios where you have 10 of these things up in the air and something is happening on the ground and you don’t have time for a human to say, ‘I need you to do these tasks.’ It needs to happen faster than that.”

The demonstration laid the groundwork for scientific advances that would allow drones to search for a human target and then make an identification based on facial-recognition or other software. Once a match was made, a drone could launch a missile to kill the target.

Military systems with some degree of autonomy — such as robotic, weaponized sentries — have been deployed in the demilitarized zone between South and North Korea and other potential battle areas. Researchers are uncertain how soon machines capable of collaborating and adapting intelligently in battlefield conditions will come online. It could take one or two decades, or longer. The U.S. military is funding numerous research projects on autonomy to develop machines that will perform some dull or dangerous tasks and to maintain its advantage over potential adversaries who are also working on such systems.

The killing of terrorism suspects and insurgents by armed drones, controlled by pilots sitting in bases thousands of miles away in the western United States, has prompted criticism that the technology makes war too antiseptic. Questions also have been raised about the legality of drone strikes when employed in places such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, which are not at war with the United States. This debate will only intensify as technological advances enable what experts call lethal autonomy.

The prospect of machines able to perceive, reason and act in unscripted environments presents a challenge to the current understanding of international humanitarian law. The Geneva Conventions require belligerents to use discrimination and proportionality, standards that would demand that machines distinguish among enemy combatants, surrendering troops and civilians.

“The deployment of such systems would reflect a paradigm shift and a major qualitative change in the conduct of hostilities,” Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said at a conference in Italy this month. “It would also raise a range of fundamental legal, ethical and societal issues, which need to be considered before such systems are developed or deployed.”

Drones flying over Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen can already move automatically from point to point, and it is unclear what surveillance or other tasks, if any, they perform while in autonomous mode. Even when directly linked to human operators, these machines are producing so much data that processors are sifting the material to suggest targets, or at least objects of interest. That trend toward greater autonomy will only increase as the U.S. military shifts from one pilot remotely flying a drone to one pilot remotely managing several drones at once.

But humans still make the decision to fire, and in the case of CIA strikes in Pakistan, that call rests with the director of the agency. In future operations, if drones are deployed against a sophisticated enemy, there may be much less time for deliberation and a greater need for machines that can function on their own.

The U.S. military has begun to grapple with the implications of emerging technologies.

“Authorizing a machine to make lethal combat decisions is contingent upon political and military leaders resolving legal and ethical questions,” according to an Air Force treatise called Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047. “These include the appropriateness of machines having this ability, under what circumstances it should be employed, where responsibility for mistakes lies and what limitations should be placed upon the autonomy of such systems.”

In the future, micro-drones will reconnoiter tunnels and buildings, robotic mules will haul equipment and mobile systems will retrieve the wounded while under fire. Technology will save lives. But the trajectory of military research has led to calls for an arms-control regime to forestall any possibility that autonomous systems could target humans.

In Berlin last year, a group of robotic engineers, philosophers and human rights activists formed the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC) and said such technologies might tempt policymakers to think war can be less bloody.

Some experts also worry that hostile states or terrorist organizations could hack robotic systems and redirect them. Malfunctions also are a problem: In South Africa in 2007, a semiautonomous cannon fatally shot nine friendly soldiers.

The ICRAC would like to see an international treaty, such as the one banning antipersonnel mines, that would outlaw some autonomous lethal machines. Such an agreement could still allow automated antimissile systems.

“The question is whether systems are capable of discrimination,” said Peter Asaro, a founder of the ICRAC and a professor at the New School in New York who teaches a course on digital war. “The good technology is far off, but technology that doesn’t work well is already out there. The worry is that these systems are going to be pushed out too soon, and they make a lot of mistakes, and those mistakes are going to be atrocities.”

Research into autonomy, some of it classified, is racing ahead at universities and research centers in the United States, and that effort is beginning to be replicated in other countries, particularly China.

“Lethal autonomy is inevitable,” said Ronald C. Arkin, the author of “Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots,” a study that was funded by the Army Research Office.

Arkin believes it is possible to build ethical military drones and robots, capable of using deadly force while programmed to adhere to international humanitarian law and the rules of engagement. He said software can be created that would lead machines to return fire with proportionality, minimize collateral damage, recognize surrender, and, in the case of uncertainty, maneuver to reassess or wait for a human assessment.

In other words, rules as understood by humans can be converted into algorithms followed by machines for all kinds of actions on the battlefield.

“How a war-fighting unit may think — we are trying to make our systems behave like that,” said Lora G. Weiss, chief scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Others, however, remain skeptical that humans can be taken out of the loop.

“Autonomy is really the Achilles’ heel of robotics,” said Johann Borenstein, head of the Mobile Robotics Lab at the University of Michigan. “There is a lot of work being done, and still we haven’t gotten to a point where the smallest amount of autonomy is being used in the military field. All robots in the military are remote-controlled. How does that sit with the fact that autonomy has been worked on at universities and companies for well over 20 years?”

Borenstein said human skills will remain critical in battle far into the future.

“The foremost of all skills is common sense,” he said. “Robots don’t have common sense and won’t have common sense in the next 50 years, or however long one might want to guess.”