Paris Peace Accords

Avoiding a summer of blood

“Peace is at hand,” Henry Kissinger famously announced in October 1972 after a seeming breakthrough in Vietnam negotiations. But it wasn’t at hand. It took three more months to complete the Paris Peace Accords, which collapsed in 1975 when North Vietnam overran Saigon.

This Vietnam history is a caution against premature optimism about diplomatic solutions to deeply embedded conflicts, such as the one in Afghanistan. But the fact remains, as is so often stated, that there is no military solution to such conflicts. The challenge is creating a dialogue among people who profoundly mistrust each other — and averting a pell-mell civil war.

President Obama is embracing the logic of a political settlement for Afghanistan with his speech Wednesday night. With Osama bin Laden dead, Obama can claim that America’s core mission of combating al-Qaeda is succeeding. He can bring some troops home and step up diplomatic negotiations with the Taliban to reach a broad peace deal by 2014.

Obama’s strategy for the Afghanistan negotiations highlights two factors that could also be relevant in the increasingly messy conflicts in Libya and Syria. First, the dialogue must be sponsored by people inside the country that’s facing internal strife. The United States may encourage contacts, but the process has to be “Afghan-led,” or “Libyan-led,” or “Syrian-led.” Second, this dialogue requires a regional framework, so that the combatants don’t turn to meddling neighbors for help.

America’s secret contacts with the Taliban have made progress partly because President Hamid Karzai wants them to succeed and, perhaps more important, because India, Pakistan, Russia and China are also supporting the outreach process — with silent acquiescence from Iran, too. This regional framework is the real exit ramp that will allow withdrawal of U.S. troops.

Let’s think about how this diplomatic model might apply to Libya and Syria. In both cases, the insurgents are seen in the West as the “good guys,” battling corrupt, autocratic leaders. Personally, I wish that both Moammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad would give up power tomorrow. But that doesn’t seem in the cards: Both leaders have shown they’re willing to kill thousands of their citizens to hang on, and the rebel movements in both countries seem too weak to displace the dictators by force. Outside military intervention may seem tempting, but it isn’t working very well in Libya, and might fare even worse in Syria.

RealClearPolitics - Webb: "Serious Problems" With Libya Conflict

Sen. Jim Webb (Va.), a leading Democratic authority on national security policy, on Sunday said he has “serious problems” with President Obama’s decision to support NATO operations in Libya.

Webb has criticized Obama’s decision to send U.S. forces to intervene in the Libyan civil war but he ratcheted up his criticism this weekend.

Webb, former Secretary of the Navy and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the action set a worrisome precedent.

Paris Peace Accords

America's war in Vietnam, a short narrative history

Hearings on the Paris Peace Accords, hearings before the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs, United States Senate, One Hundred Second Congress, second session ... September 21, 22, and 24, 1992

The Vietnam era

CliffsNotes AP U.S. History Flashcards