Over the weekend Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari told the Guardian that the American war in Afghanistan was destabilizing his country. Presumably with a straight face he averred that absent the war being waged by the US, Pakistan would be a fountainhead of democracy, free enterprise, and tranquility with nary a problem of the social, economic, political, or religious sort.
Continuing the exercise in monumental dementia, the head of the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which is the organization that not only cranked up Taliban in the first place but has done everything in its considerable power to prop up, assist, hide, and facilitate in all respects not only Taliban but other, to use the Pakistani term, "anti-Indian assets," was in Washington today. The ISI chief, LtGen Ahmad Sujah Pasha, was passing on an ultimatum which was decreed by the most powerful man in Pakistan today.
No. Not the president. Rather the armed forces chief of staff, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. General Kayani no doubt with the complete support and approval of LtGen Sujah Pasha has demanded an end to most Predator strikes, a reduction in force of both CIA and Special Operations personnel, and an abandonment of the Agency's attempts to penetrate the assorted "anti-Indian assets" established and to some extent controlled by ISI.
The purported basis for the virtual ending of the effective use of CIA personnel as well as the training program being operated by Special Forces troopers for the Pakistani Frontier Force was the arrest of CIA contract employee Raymond Davis. Davis, you will certainly recall was busted on a murder rap after having blown away two Pakistanis usually characterized as "muggers." Davis executed a good shoot on two men who were almost certainly assets of ISI who were assigned to harass Davis if not do more.
Davis, a former Green Beret fluent in Pushtu had been working out of the consulate in Kandahar tasked with penetrating Lashkar-e-Taiba. LeT is another of those "anti-Indian assets" such as the Haqqani network both established and protected/facilitated by ISI. CIA attempts to penetrate these groups without authorization from ISI, which is the only possible way to play the game given that ISI is not given to cooperation against its own goons.
ISI along with the Pakistani armed forces lives in a delusional universe where the most important consideration, the prime directive, is to defeat India in the next war. These men are all of the view that another war with India is not only inevitable, it is desirable and will be won by the Mighty Warriors of the Koran if only the Pakistanis have sufficient strategic depth, a large nuclear arsenal, and the means of waging war on all levels from local terrorism to nuclear Armageddon.
To this end, the Pakistani military and its supporters in the country's elite have bent every effort toward the blessed day when war again breaks out. The mere fact that this orientation has distorted the country's economy, suppressed domestic political freedoms, truncated education, imported Wahhibism and all that implies, fostered social divisions, and fractured the political structure is of no consequence. Nor is it worthy of considering all available evidence indicating India has no desire for war, no plans of initiating war, and well understands that war would be very bloody, extremely destructive, and might take decades for recovery--and that is for the winner.
The Pakistani military is so consumed by its delusions that it sincerely believes that the US has two goals in mind currently: (1) Suppressing totally Pakistani influence in Afghanistan while allowing Indian influence to increase without limit, (2) Suppress Pakistan's nuclear capability while allowing that of India to cruise along unimpeded. Therefore, the Agency and Special Forces operations in Pakistan are actually oriented toward one or the other of these two goals.
The military is supreme in Pakistan and President Zardari knows this. His civilian government like all those which have gone before stays in office at the let and sufferance of the military. Of course, it helps that Mr Zardiri like his predecessors lacks moral courage, lacks the capacity to take on the military, to enlist the citizenry of the long suffering nation in a hard trek back to some sort of political sanity.
The position of the US is of no aid in this matter. While different administrations may from time to time weakly chastise the Pakistani government as the Obama administration did last week, the various extortion efforts made by Islamabad always result in more cash flowing to Pakistan's coffers.
When the end of the Cold War opened the door for the US to reappraise its long standing hostility to India and friendship with Pakistan, it took the chance. There was a definite tilt to India during the years of Bill Clinton. The Pakistanis were left comparatively speaking high and dry. They were given a fresh start and a brand new chance following 9/11.
The W. Bush administration made the horrid decision that we could do nothing in Afghanistan without the cooperation of Pakistan. This choice was made despite the definite knowledge extant inside the Beltway of the relationship between ISI and both Taliban and al-Qaeda. The choice was made despite the awareness of history, awareness that the decision made by Reagan to hand off the endgame in Afghanistan to the Pakistanis had resulted in the creation of Taliban. (The junior partnership of CIA in this creation should not be seen as mitigation of primary ISI culpability.)
The fateful decisions made by Bush/Cheney--not only the involvement of Pakistan, the paying of bribes to Pakistan, but also and more importantly, the changing of the mission from one which was primarily punitive to one of "nation-building"--cast our policy in a way which could do nothing but impair our interests in the region and block our goal of defeating violent political Islam in both Afghanistan and across the border in the FATA and adjacent regions of Pakistan such as Kandahar and Quetta.
Even now with the Pakistani president and chief of staff undertaking efforts of both rhetorical and practical nature to impair further the American efforts and policies, the US, at least publicly, continues to dance to the tune called in Islamabad. The US ambassador has called for a "renewal." Cameron Munter is of the view, if his public pronouncements are to be taken at face value (admittedly a dangerous activity when assessing the words of a diplomat) the US and Pakistan are on the same side facing the same enemy: violent political Islam.
Of course we are, provided one is willing to define the intelligence service of our "ally" here as something other than the founder, protector, and aid of nearly every Islamist group the US is fighting. That can be done, but only if the US is willing to join Pakistan in the deadly morass of delusions. Unfortunately, it appears that the Obama administration is willing to do so.
Showing posts with label Afpak Strategy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Afpak Strategy. Show all posts
Monday, April 11, 2011
Monday, December 13, 2010
Once Again It's "Strategic Review" Time For Afghanistan
While there is none of the delay and pseudo-drama of last year's "debate" over the Big Question of "Whether Afghanistan," there are definite and deep currents of difference regarding how well the US is doing in whatever it is purportedly doing in Afghanistan. There is the ongoing contretemps between Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the US--particularly General Petraeus--over where American and other NATO or ISAF troops should be doing what. And, not surprisingly there is the usual highly credentialed panel of self-designated experts damning the entire effort and the Obama ordered escalation as a total failure.
As if that were not a sufficient number of conflicting chefs to spoil the soup, the Pakistanis, which is to say the Army and Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has come roaring back demanding that Karzai enter into a power sharing agreement with Taliban and the Haqqani network without delay. It borders on the ironic that the proposal set forth by Pakistani Army Chief of Staff Asfaq Kiyani is simply a more robust form of the conclusions drawn by the twenty-three academics, journalists, and former government officials. Far less ironic and far more honest is the implicit admission by General Kiyani that Pakistan is and has been working both sides of the street in Afghanistan.
At the same time the Kiyani proposition underscores the major message of Karzai. For years now the oft derided (by senior American diplomats and policy makers) Afghan president has argued that without ending the Pakistani support of Taliban, the Haqqani network, and al-Qaeda or sealing the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan hermetically, there will be no end to the war. It is for this reason that Karzai has repeatedly and stridently demanded that the US and others deploy their combat power along the border rather than stage nocturnal raids on isolated Afghan homesteads or stage forcible entries into Afghan cities and towns.
While the US and its allies have seen the war in Afghanistan as one of counterinsurgency, Karzai and some others in both the Afghan government and military have seen it as one of an interstate nature. The truth is that the war is a hybrid. The war is an example of a very rare sort of conflict, the partisan war. In a partisan war the combatants may be organic to the society under stress but do not have sufficient capabilities on their own to continue the war successfully. The continuation of combat depends upon a direct cross-border supporter.
In the past century the best examples of partisan war are to be found in the several resistance movements in occupied Western Europe during World War II. In none of the countries under Nazi domination could the domestic, organic resistance forces have accomplished the goal of ejecting the occupier on their own. The French, the Dutch, the Danes, the Norse all relied not only on outside support from the Western Allies to continue their struggle but needed the outsiders to actually do the heavy lifting of killing Germans and destroying Germany.
The wars in South Vietnam contained partisan features when the North decided to answer the challenge of Operation Rolling Thunder by supplying and supporting the indigenous insurgents. The partisan nature of the war became clear when Northern forces directly entered the war in sizable numbers thus relegating the insurgents to a supporting role at best.
While it is unlikely in the extreme that Pakistani forces will cross the border into Afghanistan, there has never been any lack of evidence regarding the degree to which Pakistan supports Taliban and others. Nor has there been any doubt but Pakistan has established and controls the agenda behind the fighting in Afghanistan. As a consequence, characterizing the war(s) in Afghanistan as a mixed state involving both insurgent and partisan features is the most accurate way of defining the war and the operational doctrines necessary to bring it to a successful (from the perspectives of Kabul and Washington) conclusion.
Ending the war will be a two stage process. The first stage is that of hostilities termination. The second consists of conflict resolution. The first is primarily military in its accomplishment. The second, the final stage, is completely political in nature. It has been evident that the US at its senior decision making levels has never taken a firm grip on this reality.
Despite the impressive credentials of the "experts" and the cogency of their argument, their conclusion is fatally flawed at least in part. The Obama ordered escalation has provided the manpower necessary to take the war directly to the insurgents. The result has been a transfer in initiative from the Taliban to the US and its allies. The increasing pressure on the insurgents has constricted both their ability and will to operate. Even the resort to civilian casualty producing tactics such as the escalating employment of IEDs attests to this. The Karzai decried nocturnal raids by Special Forces units and Afghan partners has done much to disrupt the organizational integrity of the Taliban and Haqqani network.
The overall effects of the offensive operations have been attenuated severely by the existence of the cross-border sanctuary in the Pakistani FATA. Further attenuation has resulted directly from the on-going support and assistance provided by ISI and the army. As long as these partisan war features continue, so also will the war. It is just that simple.
The Predator and Reaper strikes against Taliban facilities and personnel in the FATA are not sufficient to offset the Pakistani assistance. While these strikes send a nice number of trigger pullers and a small group of leaders to the Big Mo and seventy-two virgins, the net effect is not crippling to the Taliban and Haqqani network. Crippling requires an end (or a serious reduction) of Pakistani support.
One can understand Karzai's frustration. He has seen the problem for years with great clarity. He has spoken and written to his American partners about it with force and moral courage. At the same time he must deal with the internal political fallout from the nocturnal raids as he must with the collateral casualties of air strikes or artillery bombardments. His political enemies (and he has many other than the insurgents) use every grievance real and pretended which results from a raid or air strike against him. This has to become a real drag after a few years.
Karzai is a nationalist first and foremost. This means he has to be treated as the head of a sovereign state. Even when he is tossing one of his many hissy fits, he must still be treated with the respect which he believes he is entitled to and which demonstrates to the Afghan people that he and they are sovereign, respected, dignified, not the puppets and lackeys of foreigners. General McChrystal understood this. It is not at all evident that General Petraeus does so as well.
The matter of interpersonal relations factors directly into the problem of gaining Karzai's support for the current approach rather than attempting the utterly impossible--sealing the Pakistani border the air tight level which would be necessary to stop effective Pakistani support. Karzai must be brought carefully on board. He must be shown why even the advanced technology available to the US is not up to the task of securing the border. At the same time he and his people must be given more approval rights with respect to the controversial nocturnal raids. Again, this requires very careful handling and a willingness to forgo a raid or two in deference to local (and militarily irrational) considerations.
At the same time the US has to put pressure on the Pakistanis. The new Pakistani "peace plan" gives adequate base to do so. They have admitted they have the juice with Taliban and the Haqqani network. They have effectively entered a guilty plea to Karzai's accusations. Use it to get the ISI and army to turn the spigot down if not all the way off.
The reduction of support need not happen overnight to be effective. It can be a process rather than an event as even a slight diminuation of Pakistani support will be reflected quickly by a degradation of insurgent combat capacity and will. Coupled with a modest decrease of outside support and access to the sanctuaries of the FATA, the current offensive efforts (including the nocturnal raids) will prove effective in hostilities termination within a politically reasonable period (twelve to eighteen months.)
At this point--the point of hostilities termination which, to err on the side of accuracy, is more a process than an event--the politically oriented matter of conflict resolution takes over. Importantly, as it the Afghans who must all live together in the years to come, the conflict resolution portion of the effort is almost entirely an Afghan owned procedure. The nature and extent of power sharing is up to the Afghans alone--even if we are not pleased with the result.
It is true that problems of governance and governmental legitimacy are in play even before hostilities are terminated. It is one more unpleasant ground truth that this is a matter for Afghans in which we outsiders play a limited role. The degree of acceptable corruption is an Afghan matter not an American or European one. As noted in a previous post bribery, graft, and corruption of both a political and economic nature are internal matters. It is up to the locals to say how much is enough as well as to define what might be called equality of opportunity to be corrupt.
The way in which the several tribes, linguistic groups, and religious communities define political legitimacy, judicial independence, openness, and transparency or even fundamental honesty in government will be messy, convoluted, and probably throughly unpleasant when viewed from a Western perspective, but that is the way life is lived--get a grip on it. Afghanistan is not, repeat, not, a contemporary Western polity and society in the making. And, it never will be. We have to get a grip on that as well.
Pace, experts, but we are not yet losing in Afghanistan. The Obama escalation is not yet a failure. Provided we do not make the fatal mistake we did in Vietnam of trying to take over both war and government, we will not lose, not militarily at least. Provided we allow the Afghans to be effective stakeholders, we can actually reach a reasonable facsimile of winning--again at least through the hostilities termination phase.
To do this we need to keep on with our current operational doctrine. We need to do a better job of bringing Karzai on board. Most of all we must, repeat, must, lean on Islamabad to start the process of tamping down the partisan war aspects of the conflict. Left to their own military and psychological resources, the organic insurgents can not hope to win. Their only hope is to end the hostilities and seek the best accommodation in the conflict resolution process.
The road to peace in Afghanistan runs, in major part, through Islamabad but not in the way the Pakistani army and ISI hope. The zealots in those two organizations must be brought to realize that without abandoning their duplicity in Afghanistan and getting right with Washington, they will lose access to the great American cash cow. Since the Chinese will not play the same sort of obliging game which we have, this means they will be left very high and dry while still facing their own homegrown existential threat.
Survival is the name of the game for the men in Islamabad. We just have to make certain that they understand it depends on the way in which they continue to play the game in Afghanistan.
As if that were not a sufficient number of conflicting chefs to spoil the soup, the Pakistanis, which is to say the Army and Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has come roaring back demanding that Karzai enter into a power sharing agreement with Taliban and the Haqqani network without delay. It borders on the ironic that the proposal set forth by Pakistani Army Chief of Staff Asfaq Kiyani is simply a more robust form of the conclusions drawn by the twenty-three academics, journalists, and former government officials. Far less ironic and far more honest is the implicit admission by General Kiyani that Pakistan is and has been working both sides of the street in Afghanistan.
At the same time the Kiyani proposition underscores the major message of Karzai. For years now the oft derided (by senior American diplomats and policy makers) Afghan president has argued that without ending the Pakistani support of Taliban, the Haqqani network, and al-Qaeda or sealing the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan hermetically, there will be no end to the war. It is for this reason that Karzai has repeatedly and stridently demanded that the US and others deploy their combat power along the border rather than stage nocturnal raids on isolated Afghan homesteads or stage forcible entries into Afghan cities and towns.
While the US and its allies have seen the war in Afghanistan as one of counterinsurgency, Karzai and some others in both the Afghan government and military have seen it as one of an interstate nature. The truth is that the war is a hybrid. The war is an example of a very rare sort of conflict, the partisan war. In a partisan war the combatants may be organic to the society under stress but do not have sufficient capabilities on their own to continue the war successfully. The continuation of combat depends upon a direct cross-border supporter.
In the past century the best examples of partisan war are to be found in the several resistance movements in occupied Western Europe during World War II. In none of the countries under Nazi domination could the domestic, organic resistance forces have accomplished the goal of ejecting the occupier on their own. The French, the Dutch, the Danes, the Norse all relied not only on outside support from the Western Allies to continue their struggle but needed the outsiders to actually do the heavy lifting of killing Germans and destroying Germany.
The wars in South Vietnam contained partisan features when the North decided to answer the challenge of Operation Rolling Thunder by supplying and supporting the indigenous insurgents. The partisan nature of the war became clear when Northern forces directly entered the war in sizable numbers thus relegating the insurgents to a supporting role at best.
While it is unlikely in the extreme that Pakistani forces will cross the border into Afghanistan, there has never been any lack of evidence regarding the degree to which Pakistan supports Taliban and others. Nor has there been any doubt but Pakistan has established and controls the agenda behind the fighting in Afghanistan. As a consequence, characterizing the war(s) in Afghanistan as a mixed state involving both insurgent and partisan features is the most accurate way of defining the war and the operational doctrines necessary to bring it to a successful (from the perspectives of Kabul and Washington) conclusion.
Ending the war will be a two stage process. The first stage is that of hostilities termination. The second consists of conflict resolution. The first is primarily military in its accomplishment. The second, the final stage, is completely political in nature. It has been evident that the US at its senior decision making levels has never taken a firm grip on this reality.
Despite the impressive credentials of the "experts" and the cogency of their argument, their conclusion is fatally flawed at least in part. The Obama ordered escalation has provided the manpower necessary to take the war directly to the insurgents. The result has been a transfer in initiative from the Taliban to the US and its allies. The increasing pressure on the insurgents has constricted both their ability and will to operate. Even the resort to civilian casualty producing tactics such as the escalating employment of IEDs attests to this. The Karzai decried nocturnal raids by Special Forces units and Afghan partners has done much to disrupt the organizational integrity of the Taliban and Haqqani network.
The overall effects of the offensive operations have been attenuated severely by the existence of the cross-border sanctuary in the Pakistani FATA. Further attenuation has resulted directly from the on-going support and assistance provided by ISI and the army. As long as these partisan war features continue, so also will the war. It is just that simple.
The Predator and Reaper strikes against Taliban facilities and personnel in the FATA are not sufficient to offset the Pakistani assistance. While these strikes send a nice number of trigger pullers and a small group of leaders to the Big Mo and seventy-two virgins, the net effect is not crippling to the Taliban and Haqqani network. Crippling requires an end (or a serious reduction) of Pakistani support.
One can understand Karzai's frustration. He has seen the problem for years with great clarity. He has spoken and written to his American partners about it with force and moral courage. At the same time he must deal with the internal political fallout from the nocturnal raids as he must with the collateral casualties of air strikes or artillery bombardments. His political enemies (and he has many other than the insurgents) use every grievance real and pretended which results from a raid or air strike against him. This has to become a real drag after a few years.
Karzai is a nationalist first and foremost. This means he has to be treated as the head of a sovereign state. Even when he is tossing one of his many hissy fits, he must still be treated with the respect which he believes he is entitled to and which demonstrates to the Afghan people that he and they are sovereign, respected, dignified, not the puppets and lackeys of foreigners. General McChrystal understood this. It is not at all evident that General Petraeus does so as well.
The matter of interpersonal relations factors directly into the problem of gaining Karzai's support for the current approach rather than attempting the utterly impossible--sealing the Pakistani border the air tight level which would be necessary to stop effective Pakistani support. Karzai must be brought carefully on board. He must be shown why even the advanced technology available to the US is not up to the task of securing the border. At the same time he and his people must be given more approval rights with respect to the controversial nocturnal raids. Again, this requires very careful handling and a willingness to forgo a raid or two in deference to local (and militarily irrational) considerations.
At the same time the US has to put pressure on the Pakistanis. The new Pakistani "peace plan" gives adequate base to do so. They have admitted they have the juice with Taliban and the Haqqani network. They have effectively entered a guilty plea to Karzai's accusations. Use it to get the ISI and army to turn the spigot down if not all the way off.
The reduction of support need not happen overnight to be effective. It can be a process rather than an event as even a slight diminuation of Pakistani support will be reflected quickly by a degradation of insurgent combat capacity and will. Coupled with a modest decrease of outside support and access to the sanctuaries of the FATA, the current offensive efforts (including the nocturnal raids) will prove effective in hostilities termination within a politically reasonable period (twelve to eighteen months.)
At this point--the point of hostilities termination which, to err on the side of accuracy, is more a process than an event--the politically oriented matter of conflict resolution takes over. Importantly, as it the Afghans who must all live together in the years to come, the conflict resolution portion of the effort is almost entirely an Afghan owned procedure. The nature and extent of power sharing is up to the Afghans alone--even if we are not pleased with the result.
It is true that problems of governance and governmental legitimacy are in play even before hostilities are terminated. It is one more unpleasant ground truth that this is a matter for Afghans in which we outsiders play a limited role. The degree of acceptable corruption is an Afghan matter not an American or European one. As noted in a previous post bribery, graft, and corruption of both a political and economic nature are internal matters. It is up to the locals to say how much is enough as well as to define what might be called equality of opportunity to be corrupt.
The way in which the several tribes, linguistic groups, and religious communities define political legitimacy, judicial independence, openness, and transparency or even fundamental honesty in government will be messy, convoluted, and probably throughly unpleasant when viewed from a Western perspective, but that is the way life is lived--get a grip on it. Afghanistan is not, repeat, not, a contemporary Western polity and society in the making. And, it never will be. We have to get a grip on that as well.
Pace, experts, but we are not yet losing in Afghanistan. The Obama escalation is not yet a failure. Provided we do not make the fatal mistake we did in Vietnam of trying to take over both war and government, we will not lose, not militarily at least. Provided we allow the Afghans to be effective stakeholders, we can actually reach a reasonable facsimile of winning--again at least through the hostilities termination phase.
To do this we need to keep on with our current operational doctrine. We need to do a better job of bringing Karzai on board. Most of all we must, repeat, must, lean on Islamabad to start the process of tamping down the partisan war aspects of the conflict. Left to their own military and psychological resources, the organic insurgents can not hope to win. Their only hope is to end the hostilities and seek the best accommodation in the conflict resolution process.
The road to peace in Afghanistan runs, in major part, through Islamabad but not in the way the Pakistani army and ISI hope. The zealots in those two organizations must be brought to realize that without abandoning their duplicity in Afghanistan and getting right with Washington, they will lose access to the great American cash cow. Since the Chinese will not play the same sort of obliging game which we have, this means they will be left very high and dry while still facing their own homegrown existential threat.
Survival is the name of the game for the men in Islamabad. We just have to make certain that they understand it depends on the way in which they continue to play the game in Afghanistan.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Resetting The "Reset" Button?
Life is getting tougher for the Guy In The Oval in the old foreign relations corral. You know matters are heading down the tubes when Afghan president Hamid Karzai demands--in the WaPo no less--that the US, in a term beloved by noted pundit Sarah Palin, "cease and desist" in executing the highly successful nighttime raids on suspected Taliban and Haqqani sites.
Admittedly this latest twist in the Saga of Hamid puts one in a position of accepting the diagnosis of manic-depressive psychosis once offered by Ambassador Eikenberry. In the real world the probability of the hours of darkness operations taken always in conjunction with Afghan National Force members being halted is somewhat less than Ron Paul voting to expand the powers of the Federal Reserve System. Hitting the heavyweights, the hard core of an insurgent group with a rapid tempo is a highly effective means of degrading both the combat efficiency and political will of the target groups.
The fact that some Afghans are bothered by the notion of women and children being rousted by Americans whose combat kit makes them look about as sympathetically human as the Imperial Stormtroops of Star Wars fame is a case of TS. A few hurt Islamic sensibilities is a small cost to pay for the prospect of genuine lowering of the violence, the blood and death which falls disproportionately on the same civilian population. Even Karzai must be aware of this governing reality and its necessary corollary: You can't be president of anything if the purveyors of violent political Islam take over or even remain as a viable, nascent threat to the Kabul regime.
The takeaway from the latest gust from the mouth of Hamid is simple: This too will pass. Swiftly.
The same realistic optimism cannot be applied to the growing frictions between the Obama administration and the Dynamic Duo in the Kremlin. The festering issue of American ratification of the pending new START is developing with the rapidity of a case of gas gangrene.
Senator Jon Kyl, (R) Arizona, who is the point man for the GOP on the START ratification, has cut Mr Obama off at the knees. Obama was so ill-advised (or so unrealistically certain of his own political juice) that he assured Russian president Medvedev that the treaty would be brought to a successful conclusion during the lame duck session. Kyl has demurred. This means the treaty in all its contentious whole will linger on until the next Congress with the increased Republican presence in the Senate.
The administration has attempted to sweeten the deal--or, more accurately--has genuflected to Republican fears that the new version of START will limit the capacity of the US to upgrade and modernize its rather elderly nuclear arsenal. The difficulty comes in that the money pledges are scheduled over a ten year period with no enforceable means of assuring that future administrations and congresses will honor the promises. Kyl and other Republicans want more money upfront so that work can be started and a dynamic created to make future funding more probable. On this the current administration has dragged its collective feet.
Overall, the new START is a decent treaty. It does, as usually has been the case in this sort of matter, give advantages to the Russians. However none of these seriously alter the balance of terror which has worked so well so long to keep the peace between Russia and the US. Ratification would provide a reasonably firm basis for other agreements on "tactical" nuclear systems, for example, or a new and more comprehensive test ban understanding. It might even serve to increase mutual confidence such as to allow the Kremlin to work with the US in the anti-ballistic missile arena. A creative and mutual understanding in this area would serve both countries' interests in a measurable way.
When the proposed treaty is finally brought to the Senate, the debate may be quite contentious. There are more than a few Republicans there who are unreconstructed Cold Warriors who seem to believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union was some sort of shrewd commie plot. There is a bit of truth here, but not in the way presumed.
Vladimir Putin shows both his age and background in his fundamental distrust of the US. The current prime minister and past (as well as possible future) Russian president is rather much of the Cold Warrior himself albeit in more nationalistic ways than his predecessors of the pre-1991 sort. That is why he has so obviously left the America brief in the hands of Medvedev. Putin anticipates failure and is not going to have the tar of catastrophe sticking to his hands. The Bare Chested Man On Horseback sees the US as the Main Enemy to this day and his attitude is not going to change for the better.
This is another good reason to ratify START. A quick and relatively low contention ratification process will weaken Putin's hold on the internal levers of power in the Kremlin coterie. The relative reduction of the power of Putin's anti-American view will enhance the possibilities of enhanced cooperation in the myriad of matters of coinciding national interest which rest on the table currently.
Putin's suspicions about and distrust of the US received a shot of steroids with the sudden, unannounced rendition of Viktor Bout by the government of Thailand. Bout, a long time international dealer in weapons whose favored customers were rogue states and insurgent or terrorist groups, was indicted for violation of US law following a Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation. Arrested in Thailand the legal wrangle was finally settled in favor of the American demand that the man be extradited for trial in the US.
When the rendition went down the Russians screamed bloody murder. It was an unusual event. Even the Russian foreign minister got into the act. Rarely, if ever, has an international criminal received such massive and vocal support from the government of a major state.
To the Russians--who had used any amount of pressure and inducement to free Bout from the clutches of the Thais--the extradition as well as the process leading to it were redolent of American arrogance, of the sort of unilateralism regularly decried by Vladimir Putin back in the days of George W. His foreign ministry and other organs of official opinion singled out the unwillingness of the American side to put its case on the table for mutual examination and joint determination. This perspective is not uniquely Russian but the passion with which it is stated is as Russian as Ivan the Terrible.
There is, of course, more than insulted Russian national ego involved in the Bout Affair. Faced with a horrific number of years as a guest of the Bureau of Prisons, there is a chance that Viktor will have an attack of the Talking Disease. Certainly there are a lot of questions the US would like to place before the one time Russian air force interpreter. We would like to know just how he got his hands on the more major weapons he peddled. And, it would be interesting to determine who authorized the use of Russian Air Force transports to carry his "private enterprise" cargo. The list goes on at some length but you get the point, eh, bucko?
Bout knows where the bodies are buried. He knows just how ranking the buried bodies are. He has a set of very good reasons to dime out anybody and everybody. This gives Viktor a great capacity to produce fear in major sections of the Russian elite both in and out of the government and military services.
Coming hard on the heels of the revelations regarding the defection of a very high ranking spook in the successor agency of Vladimir's alma mater KGB, the prospects of the damage which a fast talking Bout might do is and will cause sleepness nights in the Kremlin and its ancillaries. Both the Bout Affair and its spook community predecessor have heightened the Putin fear and loathing of the US. Any delay or modification of the proposed START ratification process will do the same only more so.
President Obama will be meeting the "good cop" of the Dynamic Duo in the context of the upcoming NATO conference at which the top topics will be Afghanistan and the (not officially of course due to Turkish sensibilities) anti-Iran missile defense system. Both subjects would be benefited greatly by Russian cooperation. At this juncture, due to the ability of Mr Obama to promise what he cannot deliver and the bonfire of the Bout Affair, this cooperation is less rather than more likely.
In terms of US national interest Medvedev is greatly to be preferred as an interlocutor over his higher profile and nominally junior prime minister, Putin. It is important, therefore, that both Mr Obama and the Republicans understand this as well as the ground truth that Russia is not going to go away. It is not and never has been--pace the unfortunate and misguided remarks and policies of George W. Bush and, later, Joe Biden--one with Nineveh and Tyre.
The Russians and the Russian leadership are both insecure and possessed of a prickly sense of national pride. In all diplomatic doings including presidential promises this foundation reality must be kept in mind. Russia is, at least in the minds of Russians high and low, a Great Power, and it is an absolute imperative that the US treat it as such in all matters, great and small. Only by doing so with the utmost of sedulousness can the US hope to accomplish critical matters of central national interest.
Admittedly this latest twist in the Saga of Hamid puts one in a position of accepting the diagnosis of manic-depressive psychosis once offered by Ambassador Eikenberry. In the real world the probability of the hours of darkness operations taken always in conjunction with Afghan National Force members being halted is somewhat less than Ron Paul voting to expand the powers of the Federal Reserve System. Hitting the heavyweights, the hard core of an insurgent group with a rapid tempo is a highly effective means of degrading both the combat efficiency and political will of the target groups.
The fact that some Afghans are bothered by the notion of women and children being rousted by Americans whose combat kit makes them look about as sympathetically human as the Imperial Stormtroops of Star Wars fame is a case of TS. A few hurt Islamic sensibilities is a small cost to pay for the prospect of genuine lowering of the violence, the blood and death which falls disproportionately on the same civilian population. Even Karzai must be aware of this governing reality and its necessary corollary: You can't be president of anything if the purveyors of violent political Islam take over or even remain as a viable, nascent threat to the Kabul regime.
The takeaway from the latest gust from the mouth of Hamid is simple: This too will pass. Swiftly.
The same realistic optimism cannot be applied to the growing frictions between the Obama administration and the Dynamic Duo in the Kremlin. The festering issue of American ratification of the pending new START is developing with the rapidity of a case of gas gangrene.
Senator Jon Kyl, (R) Arizona, who is the point man for the GOP on the START ratification, has cut Mr Obama off at the knees. Obama was so ill-advised (or so unrealistically certain of his own political juice) that he assured Russian president Medvedev that the treaty would be brought to a successful conclusion during the lame duck session. Kyl has demurred. This means the treaty in all its contentious whole will linger on until the next Congress with the increased Republican presence in the Senate.
The administration has attempted to sweeten the deal--or, more accurately--has genuflected to Republican fears that the new version of START will limit the capacity of the US to upgrade and modernize its rather elderly nuclear arsenal. The difficulty comes in that the money pledges are scheduled over a ten year period with no enforceable means of assuring that future administrations and congresses will honor the promises. Kyl and other Republicans want more money upfront so that work can be started and a dynamic created to make future funding more probable. On this the current administration has dragged its collective feet.
Overall, the new START is a decent treaty. It does, as usually has been the case in this sort of matter, give advantages to the Russians. However none of these seriously alter the balance of terror which has worked so well so long to keep the peace between Russia and the US. Ratification would provide a reasonably firm basis for other agreements on "tactical" nuclear systems, for example, or a new and more comprehensive test ban understanding. It might even serve to increase mutual confidence such as to allow the Kremlin to work with the US in the anti-ballistic missile arena. A creative and mutual understanding in this area would serve both countries' interests in a measurable way.
When the proposed treaty is finally brought to the Senate, the debate may be quite contentious. There are more than a few Republicans there who are unreconstructed Cold Warriors who seem to believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union was some sort of shrewd commie plot. There is a bit of truth here, but not in the way presumed.
Vladimir Putin shows both his age and background in his fundamental distrust of the US. The current prime minister and past (as well as possible future) Russian president is rather much of the Cold Warrior himself albeit in more nationalistic ways than his predecessors of the pre-1991 sort. That is why he has so obviously left the America brief in the hands of Medvedev. Putin anticipates failure and is not going to have the tar of catastrophe sticking to his hands. The Bare Chested Man On Horseback sees the US as the Main Enemy to this day and his attitude is not going to change for the better.
This is another good reason to ratify START. A quick and relatively low contention ratification process will weaken Putin's hold on the internal levers of power in the Kremlin coterie. The relative reduction of the power of Putin's anti-American view will enhance the possibilities of enhanced cooperation in the myriad of matters of coinciding national interest which rest on the table currently.
Putin's suspicions about and distrust of the US received a shot of steroids with the sudden, unannounced rendition of Viktor Bout by the government of Thailand. Bout, a long time international dealer in weapons whose favored customers were rogue states and insurgent or terrorist groups, was indicted for violation of US law following a Drug Enforcement Administration sting operation. Arrested in Thailand the legal wrangle was finally settled in favor of the American demand that the man be extradited for trial in the US.
When the rendition went down the Russians screamed bloody murder. It was an unusual event. Even the Russian foreign minister got into the act. Rarely, if ever, has an international criminal received such massive and vocal support from the government of a major state.
To the Russians--who had used any amount of pressure and inducement to free Bout from the clutches of the Thais--the extradition as well as the process leading to it were redolent of American arrogance, of the sort of unilateralism regularly decried by Vladimir Putin back in the days of George W. His foreign ministry and other organs of official opinion singled out the unwillingness of the American side to put its case on the table for mutual examination and joint determination. This perspective is not uniquely Russian but the passion with which it is stated is as Russian as Ivan the Terrible.
There is, of course, more than insulted Russian national ego involved in the Bout Affair. Faced with a horrific number of years as a guest of the Bureau of Prisons, there is a chance that Viktor will have an attack of the Talking Disease. Certainly there are a lot of questions the US would like to place before the one time Russian air force interpreter. We would like to know just how he got his hands on the more major weapons he peddled. And, it would be interesting to determine who authorized the use of Russian Air Force transports to carry his "private enterprise" cargo. The list goes on at some length but you get the point, eh, bucko?
Bout knows where the bodies are buried. He knows just how ranking the buried bodies are. He has a set of very good reasons to dime out anybody and everybody. This gives Viktor a great capacity to produce fear in major sections of the Russian elite both in and out of the government and military services.
Coming hard on the heels of the revelations regarding the defection of a very high ranking spook in the successor agency of Vladimir's alma mater KGB, the prospects of the damage which a fast talking Bout might do is and will cause sleepness nights in the Kremlin and its ancillaries. Both the Bout Affair and its spook community predecessor have heightened the Putin fear and loathing of the US. Any delay or modification of the proposed START ratification process will do the same only more so.
President Obama will be meeting the "good cop" of the Dynamic Duo in the context of the upcoming NATO conference at which the top topics will be Afghanistan and the (not officially of course due to Turkish sensibilities) anti-Iran missile defense system. Both subjects would be benefited greatly by Russian cooperation. At this juncture, due to the ability of Mr Obama to promise what he cannot deliver and the bonfire of the Bout Affair, this cooperation is less rather than more likely.
In terms of US national interest Medvedev is greatly to be preferred as an interlocutor over his higher profile and nominally junior prime minister, Putin. It is important, therefore, that both Mr Obama and the Republicans understand this as well as the ground truth that Russia is not going to go away. It is not and never has been--pace the unfortunate and misguided remarks and policies of George W. Bush and, later, Joe Biden--one with Nineveh and Tyre.
The Russians and the Russian leadership are both insecure and possessed of a prickly sense of national pride. In all diplomatic doings including presidential promises this foundation reality must be kept in mind. Russia is, at least in the minds of Russians high and low, a Great Power, and it is an absolute imperative that the US treat it as such in all matters, great and small. Only by doing so with the utmost of sedulousness can the US hope to accomplish critical matters of central national interest.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Back To The Old Who-Is-Winning Question Again
The NYT, which as desperately wants to declare defeat in Afghanistan as it did in Iraq, has brought up the issue of just how much in the current estimate of success given by the US military should be believed. With the upcoming review of American progress or lack thereof in Afghanistan the topic is both timely and important.
The military has a rather positive view of developments such the introduction of more boots on the ground due to the Obama surge approved a year ago. The intelligence community is not so sure, some of its reporting is at sharp contrast with the military assessments.
This is not new. The same dynamic occurred during the Vietnam War. Repeatedly, and, as it turned out, accurately, CIA was the odd man out, the naysayer in the optimist's club. CIA was so much of a "non-team player" that its reports were shuffled to the bottom of the pile throughout the administration of LBJ. Not until a new Director of Central Intelligence demanded a "shading" of reports so that they might be read during the years of Nixon did anyone at the highest levels of the US government take a look at the findings of the lads in Langley.
Based on experience the Geek has a tendency to side with the gloomy bunch in the intel shop. In the world, particularly in the war part of the world, all surprises tend to be bad ones. Pessimism is a realistic way to view uncertain and highly flexible events. Certainly the state of play in Afghanistan is filled with potentials for surprise as well as vast numbers of Rumsfeldian "unknowable unknowns." No responsible intelligence analyst would be given to donning rose colored glasses when taking a dekko at Afghanistan.
Of course, the first order of business is defining what constitutes success. As the experience in Iraq has made crystalline, success is not easy to define. If the goal is overly expansive--as American goals tend to be--success will prove illusive or illusionary. There was--and is--no way that the US or any coalition could succeed if the goal was that of producing a fully functioning Western style nation-state with all the requisite features thereof in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Even though Iraq was at one time a reasonable facsimile of a modern, authoritarian nation-state with a reasonably advanced and complex economy supported by a similarly advanced technological base, the reality underneath the surface was far different, a fundamentally primitive society based on tribal and religious identifications further riven by decades of unsettled scores.
The best the US could hope to accomplish in Iraq was a temporary imposition of stability sufficient to allow nascent domestic institutions to take shape and root. This was accomplished. But it was all that was accomplished. The later, internally driven political stasis and violence is not the responsibility of the US; it was not an American failure. Insofar as any outside party is directly involved, it is Iran, and Iran is no ally of stability or peace in Iraq.
The situation is similar but not quite identical in Afghanistan. The best that can be expected is the US and associated forces will reduce the violence to a point where indigenous institutions might survive and prosper. Long term success is out of our control. We cannot make the central government or the local ones legitimate, non-corrupt, and efficient. Nor can the US and its allies in country assure that the Afghan security forces are fully up to the task of extending and maintaining internal security. Neither can the US and its partners cleanse the FATA of al-Qaeda, Taliban, and Haqqani network commanders and trigger pullers.
If we define success in seeing Afghanistan a fully functioning nation-state of the Western sort, failure might as well be declared right now. Given that Afghanistan is tribal in its social and political nature, riven by linguistic, religious, and provincial differences, and considering the evil hand played by Pakistan, there is no way that a mere military defeat short of total obliteration of the jihadists will lead to peace and stabiliity.
It deserves, even requires restatement, that the goal laid out by George W. Bush of "nation-building" in Afghanistan with all that implied was totally unrealistic in all respects. That goal should not be used in assessing the relative success to date of the new American operational doctrine set forth barely more than a year ago. Rather the correct base for evaluation is the degree to which the efforts of the US and its partners have neutered the capacity of the assorted groups to wage war effectively and to mount out of country operations.
On the more limited basis the indicators are all positive. That does not imply success. The advocates of violent political Islam have demonstrated tactical flexibility and high recuperative powers. The cross border sanctuaries of the FATA as well as other assistance provided by the Pakistanis have gone a long way in assuring the hydra headed nature of the anti-government groups.
The uncertainties involving the Afghan government, the Afghan National Forces, the role of Pakistan all combine with the basic nature of the Afghan human terrain, its cultural values, and norms; the nature of tribal society and understandings of loyalty; and the deeply divided nature of the polity to make any but the most limited and pessimistic assessments of success the most rational and credible. While it is possible, even probable, that General Petreaus, a man who is a PR genius but limited as a fighter of wars, has massaged the data: the recent trends in initiative, refugee generation, civilian collateral casualties and enemy tactics as all swinging in the favor of the US and its allies, including Kabul.
The takeaway? Caution is appropriate as is limited, controlled scepticism but anticipations of American failure to achieve the limited goal, the goal of "not-losing" are way premature. Much as the NYT and others of that ilk are chomping at the bit to announce one more US defeat, they are not likely to gain that goal. If the US and its partners can keep on keeping on along the course plotted in recent months, success is far more likely than not--even with continued Pakistani pertinacity.
The military has a rather positive view of developments such the introduction of more boots on the ground due to the Obama surge approved a year ago. The intelligence community is not so sure, some of its reporting is at sharp contrast with the military assessments.
This is not new. The same dynamic occurred during the Vietnam War. Repeatedly, and, as it turned out, accurately, CIA was the odd man out, the naysayer in the optimist's club. CIA was so much of a "non-team player" that its reports were shuffled to the bottom of the pile throughout the administration of LBJ. Not until a new Director of Central Intelligence demanded a "shading" of reports so that they might be read during the years of Nixon did anyone at the highest levels of the US government take a look at the findings of the lads in Langley.
Based on experience the Geek has a tendency to side with the gloomy bunch in the intel shop. In the world, particularly in the war part of the world, all surprises tend to be bad ones. Pessimism is a realistic way to view uncertain and highly flexible events. Certainly the state of play in Afghanistan is filled with potentials for surprise as well as vast numbers of Rumsfeldian "unknowable unknowns." No responsible intelligence analyst would be given to donning rose colored glasses when taking a dekko at Afghanistan.
Of course, the first order of business is defining what constitutes success. As the experience in Iraq has made crystalline, success is not easy to define. If the goal is overly expansive--as American goals tend to be--success will prove illusive or illusionary. There was--and is--no way that the US or any coalition could succeed if the goal was that of producing a fully functioning Western style nation-state with all the requisite features thereof in either Iraq or Afghanistan. Even though Iraq was at one time a reasonable facsimile of a modern, authoritarian nation-state with a reasonably advanced and complex economy supported by a similarly advanced technological base, the reality underneath the surface was far different, a fundamentally primitive society based on tribal and religious identifications further riven by decades of unsettled scores.
The best the US could hope to accomplish in Iraq was a temporary imposition of stability sufficient to allow nascent domestic institutions to take shape and root. This was accomplished. But it was all that was accomplished. The later, internally driven political stasis and violence is not the responsibility of the US; it was not an American failure. Insofar as any outside party is directly involved, it is Iran, and Iran is no ally of stability or peace in Iraq.
The situation is similar but not quite identical in Afghanistan. The best that can be expected is the US and associated forces will reduce the violence to a point where indigenous institutions might survive and prosper. Long term success is out of our control. We cannot make the central government or the local ones legitimate, non-corrupt, and efficient. Nor can the US and its allies in country assure that the Afghan security forces are fully up to the task of extending and maintaining internal security. Neither can the US and its partners cleanse the FATA of al-Qaeda, Taliban, and Haqqani network commanders and trigger pullers.
If we define success in seeing Afghanistan a fully functioning nation-state of the Western sort, failure might as well be declared right now. Given that Afghanistan is tribal in its social and political nature, riven by linguistic, religious, and provincial differences, and considering the evil hand played by Pakistan, there is no way that a mere military defeat short of total obliteration of the jihadists will lead to peace and stabiliity.
It deserves, even requires restatement, that the goal laid out by George W. Bush of "nation-building" in Afghanistan with all that implied was totally unrealistic in all respects. That goal should not be used in assessing the relative success to date of the new American operational doctrine set forth barely more than a year ago. Rather the correct base for evaluation is the degree to which the efforts of the US and its partners have neutered the capacity of the assorted groups to wage war effectively and to mount out of country operations.
On the more limited basis the indicators are all positive. That does not imply success. The advocates of violent political Islam have demonstrated tactical flexibility and high recuperative powers. The cross border sanctuaries of the FATA as well as other assistance provided by the Pakistanis have gone a long way in assuring the hydra headed nature of the anti-government groups.
The uncertainties involving the Afghan government, the Afghan National Forces, the role of Pakistan all combine with the basic nature of the Afghan human terrain, its cultural values, and norms; the nature of tribal society and understandings of loyalty; and the deeply divided nature of the polity to make any but the most limited and pessimistic assessments of success the most rational and credible. While it is possible, even probable, that General Petreaus, a man who is a PR genius but limited as a fighter of wars, has massaged the data: the recent trends in initiative, refugee generation, civilian collateral casualties and enemy tactics as all swinging in the favor of the US and its allies, including Kabul.
The takeaway? Caution is appropriate as is limited, controlled scepticism but anticipations of American failure to achieve the limited goal, the goal of "not-losing" are way premature. Much as the NYT and others of that ilk are chomping at the bit to announce one more US defeat, they are not likely to gain that goal. If the US and its partners can keep on keeping on along the course plotted in recent months, success is far more likely than not--even with continued Pakistani pertinacity.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Failed And Failing States--And Violent Political Islam
There is a pair of diplomatic T. rex sized critters stomping around the room today. As this nearly conjoined twin blunder about threatening to trash the international furniture, all the polite people in high places carefully avert their eyes and keep their mouths resolutely shut.
Virtually all hands studiously have ignored the reality presented by violent political Islam. With the notable exception of former British prime minister Tony Blair there has been a veritable conspiracy of silence concerning not only the nature of the enemy of the civilized states but, more importantly, the success which has been enjoyed by the enemy over the past several years. Instead of confronting the face of the enemy, rather than name the name of the guilty, the tired, hackneyed, long discredited tropes regarding poverty, political marginalization, the Israeli refusal to make a deal acceptable to the Palestinians, or American foreign policy generally are trotted out as if repetition could remake reality.
Even though the recent rumors of back channel talks between the Karzai government and elements of both Taliban and the Haqqani network give some hint that the military pressures are showing on the political will of the insurgents to continue, this straw in a favorable wind is more than offset by the many alarming (and that is not too strong a word) developments in Pakistan, Tajikistan, Chechnya, and other parts of the North Caucasus to say nothing of Yemen, Sudan, and Nigeria. The bad outnumbers the faint good by an overwhelming amount.
Pakistan is lurching ever closer to either collapse or a co-option by the indigenous groups advocating violent political Islam. Even though those Pakistanis who found from personal experience that living in the Islamic paradise promised by Taliban was far closer to hell on Earth than the heavenly reward have had ample time and opportunity to spread the word, the majority of the people are so fed up with the corruption and inefficiency of the government that the Islamist way seems the better one. Coupled with a virulent anti-Americanism, which has been in no significant way lessened by the outpouring of US aid following the floods, this widespread public mood bodes poorly for the future stability of Pakistan.
Even a perfectly calibrated American policy which demonstrates the ideal mix of pressure and inducement will not change the underlying reality--most Pakistanis have come to see the US as being in demonic alliance with both India and Israel. This unholy trinity constitutes the stuff of Pakistani nightmares--and has as little substance. However, the power of the nightmare is great and real. Thus the US and others in the small and beleaguered community of civilized states had best prepare for the eventuality of Pakistani state failure or the equally probable embrace by Islamabad of some variant of political Islam. To do less is to court major disaster given the nuclear arsenal in Pakistan's possession.
This aspect of regional political context also demands a very hard look be taken at our current goals and plans in Afghanistan. Bluntly, there is no hope of accomplishing more than further perturbation of armed political Islam espousing groups before changes in Pakistan render our presence in Afghanistan nugatory. The best nightfall case we can now expect in Kabul is a regime which includes both Taliban and the Haqqani network. This implies that the most we can hope for is a regime which will not provide support, sanctuary, or assistance to advocates of armed political Islam contemplating operations outside Afghanistan or the FATA of Pakistan.
The upcoming strategic review of the AfPak campaign will have little realistic alternative to that of reorienting to a goal of a coalition government in Kabul whose components are willing to forswear cooperating with groups such as al-Qaeda. Ironically, this means we must "settle" for a goal and definition of victory which should have been in place when the first American boots hit the ground all those years, dollars, and dead bodies ago. Had only we gone for the punitive expedition model in the first place, sigh.
Preparations for the Pakistani implosion should accompany the reframing of goals in Afghanistan. It will be nearly impossible to assure that Pakistan does not become even more than it currently is the seedbed of plots against the West by violent political Islamists. The most the US and others can hope to do successfully is pull Pakistan's nuclear fangs. That along with finally turning off the great spigot of foreign aid will do much to lower the danger presented by Islamists emerging from the hospitable human and geographic terrain of that country.
Shifting from Northwest Asia, the unpleasant facts of failing states must be confronted. There has been more than a little wringing of hands over the impending collapse of Yemen and what that would mean taken in conjunction with the mess called Somalia. Yemen seems doomed to fail. It is running out of its only cash crop--oil. It is running out of water for its population burgeoning not only from indigenous increase but from the flow of refugees from Africa. The government is so corrupt, so unbelievably inefficient, so riddled with cronyism, so laden with denial as to make the lads in Islamabad look like recipients of the Nobel Prize in good governance.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is not responsible for the current sorry state of affairs in Yemen. It is not behind the two separate defensive insurgencies. Nor is it an outside agitator stirring up discontent within the population. Those honors belong to the government. True, they are enhanced by the history and social construction of the Yemeni people.
However, AQAP can and is benefiting from the internal disorder created in largest measure by the government. To the extent AQAP benefits, the other countries of the Arabian Peninsula as well as the civilized states generally will suffer. This implies that the US has a dog in the fight.
The problem comes in that there is little, if anything, that the US and other outside powers can do about the root causes of insurgency or political disaffiliation within Yemen. We can provide aid, military supplies, and training, intelligence support, but none of these will change the fundamental trajectory of Yemen. Its failure is virtually certain so the most outsiders can hope for is the delay of the final collapse.
Time is a precious commodity since time is what is needed to build a diplomatic consensus about what the "international community" can do, if anything, regarding the challenge of failed states generally and those which harbor violent political Islam in particular. Perhaps this will mean the nearly impossible task of reinventing the old "trusteeship" concept of the UN. Perhaps it will mean an open ended international "peace keeping" presence oriented to suppressing advocates of violent political Islam--even though this will seem one more example of a "war on Islam."
The challenge of failed and failing states looms larger, much larger, when the dynamics of Sudan are considered. The real deal is Sudan is poised on the brink of multi-party internal war. The North-South divorce will not occur without bloodshed even if the vote goes off as scheduled and is cleaner than clean, attested to by Jimmy Carter. The North is not going to let the cash cow of Southern oil get milked without Khartoum holding the pail. And, the South will not twiddle its thumbs if Southerners living in the North are persecuted, which seems as likely as the Pope being against married priests.
Darfur is doomed to crank up again. There are no alternatives. The Khartoum regime isn't about to see the huge desert area drift away while it may have to watch the South go its separate way. The residuum of hate left from the past conflict assures scores still must be settled in the one acceptable currency--dead bodies.
Africa's most populous state must be placed on the list of failing states. The frontline of political Islam runs through the country. The dynamics of the upcoming election are framed by the Muslim versus everyone else contest. Much of the prevailing sentiment is anyone who is not Muslim is the enemy. Given the record of what can be termed politely as "sectarian" violence, the election is not going to settle the great divide which pits Nigerian against Nigerian. The most active and influential group in the Muslim north is avowedly violent political Islam in its agenda and methods.
The last time Nigeria fell apart was over forty years ago. The secessionist movement was defeated, but the time was long and the cost high. While Nigeria recovered from that adventure in falling apart before it collapsed as a state, it was a near run thing. Since then much has changed so that the probability of holding together this side of failure in the likely event of a Muslim generated internal war is low to nonexistent.
That's enough as the Geek is a sensitive sort of guy who can take only limited amounts of bad news. The takeaway is self-evident though. The enemy is violent political Islam. The best friend of the enemy is the failed and failing state. And, the time to get a grip on both is short.
Virtually all hands studiously have ignored the reality presented by violent political Islam. With the notable exception of former British prime minister Tony Blair there has been a veritable conspiracy of silence concerning not only the nature of the enemy of the civilized states but, more importantly, the success which has been enjoyed by the enemy over the past several years. Instead of confronting the face of the enemy, rather than name the name of the guilty, the tired, hackneyed, long discredited tropes regarding poverty, political marginalization, the Israeli refusal to make a deal acceptable to the Palestinians, or American foreign policy generally are trotted out as if repetition could remake reality.
Even though the recent rumors of back channel talks between the Karzai government and elements of both Taliban and the Haqqani network give some hint that the military pressures are showing on the political will of the insurgents to continue, this straw in a favorable wind is more than offset by the many alarming (and that is not too strong a word) developments in Pakistan, Tajikistan, Chechnya, and other parts of the North Caucasus to say nothing of Yemen, Sudan, and Nigeria. The bad outnumbers the faint good by an overwhelming amount.
Pakistan is lurching ever closer to either collapse or a co-option by the indigenous groups advocating violent political Islam. Even though those Pakistanis who found from personal experience that living in the Islamic paradise promised by Taliban was far closer to hell on Earth than the heavenly reward have had ample time and opportunity to spread the word, the majority of the people are so fed up with the corruption and inefficiency of the government that the Islamist way seems the better one. Coupled with a virulent anti-Americanism, which has been in no significant way lessened by the outpouring of US aid following the floods, this widespread public mood bodes poorly for the future stability of Pakistan.
Even a perfectly calibrated American policy which demonstrates the ideal mix of pressure and inducement will not change the underlying reality--most Pakistanis have come to see the US as being in demonic alliance with both India and Israel. This unholy trinity constitutes the stuff of Pakistani nightmares--and has as little substance. However, the power of the nightmare is great and real. Thus the US and others in the small and beleaguered community of civilized states had best prepare for the eventuality of Pakistani state failure or the equally probable embrace by Islamabad of some variant of political Islam. To do less is to court major disaster given the nuclear arsenal in Pakistan's possession.
This aspect of regional political context also demands a very hard look be taken at our current goals and plans in Afghanistan. Bluntly, there is no hope of accomplishing more than further perturbation of armed political Islam espousing groups before changes in Pakistan render our presence in Afghanistan nugatory. The best nightfall case we can now expect in Kabul is a regime which includes both Taliban and the Haqqani network. This implies that the most we can hope for is a regime which will not provide support, sanctuary, or assistance to advocates of armed political Islam contemplating operations outside Afghanistan or the FATA of Pakistan.
The upcoming strategic review of the AfPak campaign will have little realistic alternative to that of reorienting to a goal of a coalition government in Kabul whose components are willing to forswear cooperating with groups such as al-Qaeda. Ironically, this means we must "settle" for a goal and definition of victory which should have been in place when the first American boots hit the ground all those years, dollars, and dead bodies ago. Had only we gone for the punitive expedition model in the first place, sigh.
Preparations for the Pakistani implosion should accompany the reframing of goals in Afghanistan. It will be nearly impossible to assure that Pakistan does not become even more than it currently is the seedbed of plots against the West by violent political Islamists. The most the US and others can hope to do successfully is pull Pakistan's nuclear fangs. That along with finally turning off the great spigot of foreign aid will do much to lower the danger presented by Islamists emerging from the hospitable human and geographic terrain of that country.
Shifting from Northwest Asia, the unpleasant facts of failing states must be confronted. There has been more than a little wringing of hands over the impending collapse of Yemen and what that would mean taken in conjunction with the mess called Somalia. Yemen seems doomed to fail. It is running out of its only cash crop--oil. It is running out of water for its population burgeoning not only from indigenous increase but from the flow of refugees from Africa. The government is so corrupt, so unbelievably inefficient, so riddled with cronyism, so laden with denial as to make the lads in Islamabad look like recipients of the Nobel Prize in good governance.
Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) is not responsible for the current sorry state of affairs in Yemen. It is not behind the two separate defensive insurgencies. Nor is it an outside agitator stirring up discontent within the population. Those honors belong to the government. True, they are enhanced by the history and social construction of the Yemeni people.
However, AQAP can and is benefiting from the internal disorder created in largest measure by the government. To the extent AQAP benefits, the other countries of the Arabian Peninsula as well as the civilized states generally will suffer. This implies that the US has a dog in the fight.
The problem comes in that there is little, if anything, that the US and other outside powers can do about the root causes of insurgency or political disaffiliation within Yemen. We can provide aid, military supplies, and training, intelligence support, but none of these will change the fundamental trajectory of Yemen. Its failure is virtually certain so the most outsiders can hope for is the delay of the final collapse.
Time is a precious commodity since time is what is needed to build a diplomatic consensus about what the "international community" can do, if anything, regarding the challenge of failed states generally and those which harbor violent political Islam in particular. Perhaps this will mean the nearly impossible task of reinventing the old "trusteeship" concept of the UN. Perhaps it will mean an open ended international "peace keeping" presence oriented to suppressing advocates of violent political Islam--even though this will seem one more example of a "war on Islam."
The challenge of failed and failing states looms larger, much larger, when the dynamics of Sudan are considered. The real deal is Sudan is poised on the brink of multi-party internal war. The North-South divorce will not occur without bloodshed even if the vote goes off as scheduled and is cleaner than clean, attested to by Jimmy Carter. The North is not going to let the cash cow of Southern oil get milked without Khartoum holding the pail. And, the South will not twiddle its thumbs if Southerners living in the North are persecuted, which seems as likely as the Pope being against married priests.
Darfur is doomed to crank up again. There are no alternatives. The Khartoum regime isn't about to see the huge desert area drift away while it may have to watch the South go its separate way. The residuum of hate left from the past conflict assures scores still must be settled in the one acceptable currency--dead bodies.
Africa's most populous state must be placed on the list of failing states. The frontline of political Islam runs through the country. The dynamics of the upcoming election are framed by the Muslim versus everyone else contest. Much of the prevailing sentiment is anyone who is not Muslim is the enemy. Given the record of what can be termed politely as "sectarian" violence, the election is not going to settle the great divide which pits Nigerian against Nigerian. The most active and influential group in the Muslim north is avowedly violent political Islam in its agenda and methods.
The last time Nigeria fell apart was over forty years ago. The secessionist movement was defeated, but the time was long and the cost high. While Nigeria recovered from that adventure in falling apart before it collapsed as a state, it was a near run thing. Since then much has changed so that the probability of holding together this side of failure in the likely event of a Muslim generated internal war is low to nonexistent.
That's enough as the Geek is a sensitive sort of guy who can take only limited amounts of bad news. The takeaway is self-evident though. The enemy is violent political Islam. The best friend of the enemy is the failed and failing state. And, the time to get a grip on both is short.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
A Small Man Has Just Gotten Smaller
One doubts that Bob Woodward intended to diminish President Obama in his latest exercise of "insta-history," but that is precisely what has occurred. That is, assuming the snippets appearing in the Big Two of the MSM are accurate representatives of the book as a whole.
Most bothersome is the President's evident desire for the military to get him off the hook of making decisions by providing him with an exit strategy. The refusal of the senior military command to take on a job properly resting with the Guy in the Oval is to their collective credit.
Whether Mr Obama likes the idea or not, the defining of the conditions under which American forces will be withdrawn from Afghanistan or any other theater of war is a purely political one. It is necessary under the American doctrine of civilian supremacy--a doctrine so beloved by the President that he fired General McChrystal for allegedly violating it--for the president to define both the political goal and the minimum necessary signs of accomplishing that goal.
It is the president who determines what constitutes the better state of peace for which the war is being fought and defines "victory." The military command has the task of advising the president as to what its forces can be expected to accomplish, the cost associated with any given level of accomplishment as well as developing and implementing the "theory of victory" by which the goal and its associated concept of "victory" might be achieved.
This dynamic, a process sanctioned by generations of presidents and generals, required that Mr Obama lay out for the military just what constituted a better state of peace. It also required that the president decide what costs would be acceptable. Attempting to off-load these messy but central tasks on to the military command structure was both gutless and witless.
A year ago when the overly prolonged exercise in soul searching over Afghanistan was underway, the president and his "team" had a simple choice to make. They had to decide which of two quite different options would provide the better state of peace in and around Afghanistan.
The choice was termed one between "counter-terrorism" and "counter-insurgency." In actuality the choice was between a limited punitive and deterrent effort directed against the advocates of violent political Islam in al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the Haqqani network and the far more expansive, not to say, unlimited one of combining a defeat of Taliban et al with the building of an effectively Western style nation-state in Afghanistan.
While there existed a continuum of alternatives between the poles of limited counter-terrorism and unlimited counter-insurgency, the decision was or should have been one of focus, emphasis. The debate within the ranks of presidential advisers was quite robust as Woodward underscores. It was also, if Woodward is to be accepted, a debate which was colored heavily by the considerations of domestic politics.
There is, of course, nothing new nor wrongheaded in the involvement of domestic politics in the decision making process regardless of what some Republican critics may say now. It is and always has been a necessary part of the process. Arguably it is the single most important consideration when considering involvement in counterinsurgency as this type of war is a struggle between the political wills of the contesting polities, both indigenous and foreign.
The proposition is different when domestic politics becomes the major, perhaps the preeminent policy consideration. This was the case in the Afghanistan decision. Mr Obama made the worst of all choices and then made the results of a bad decision even worse.
In essence, the president opted for the counterinsurgency orientation without providing sufficient resources. At the same time he failed to prepare the American public, particularly that segment most closely aligned with the Democratic Party, for the reality that counterinsurgency demanded extraordinary patience, a willingness to accept inconclusive measurements of progress, and an outcome which would not make everybody--perhaps anybody--happy.
In short, Mr Obama made the same basic errors as had the Bush/Cheney administration--too broad a goal, too few resources, and no proper preparation of the American public so political will would be sapped quickly. To this recipe for failure, he added a new ingredient.
Mr Obama accompanied his announcement of a mini-surge with a date certain when US combat forces would commence withdrawal. The justification offered in Mr Woodward's book is the one so obvious at the time--fear of alienating the Democratic Party's progressive base.
The imperatives of what passed for Presidential thinking were pathetically obvious at the time even without Woodward's insider quotes. Mr Obama wished to protect his flank against attacks from the Right by appearing tough-minded and vigorous as a wartime leader dedicated to the defeat of "extremism" and the installation of democracy. At the same time he sought to protect his Left flank from attacks on that vector by providing a "date certain" and limiting the number of new hostages to fortune deployed to the war zone.
The results of this politically driven decision were obvious at the time. The chief beneficiary would be Taliban which now understood that US patience was officially limited. Paradoxically the next beneficiary would be the government of Hamid Karzai, which would see it could afford to ignore the calls for Westernization and chat up Taliban in search of a middle ground.
There is no real doubt that Afghanistan, the US, and even Pakistan would have been better off had the Nice Young Man From Chicago opted for the limited counter-terrorism approach. In effect, had Obama picked up the ball which had been dropped so badly by Bush/Cheney. It is ironic, deliciously so, that had Obama gone for the punitive expedition option discarded by the ever-so-muscular dude from Texas, he would have had a very good chance of successfully achieving a better state of peace characterized by a greatly diminished threat from al-Qaeda, Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other advocates of violent political Islam in the region.
Of course, to expect Mr Obama to have made an intelligent decision about war is too expect the utterly impossible. The idea of war offends his tidy, lawyerly mind. It outrages his personal morality of progressivism. It violates his belief in the pussiance of international institutions. War is a subject about which Mr Obama knows so little he has no capacity to know what he does not know. And, war is a subject which so deeply revolts the Obama sensibilities that he has no desire to rectify his abysmal ignorance nor to come to respect the knowledge and capacities of men in uniform who do know wars and how to fight them.
In this respect he exceeds even Bill Clinton.
Mr Clinton at the least had the vague understanding that defeat by an enemy such as al-Qaeda would have long lasting and very negative consequences for the US--and the rest of the civilized world. In his distaste for war--and his acceptance of the tenets of the "blame American first" school of history and politics, Mr Obama lacks even this.
Mr Obama is quite evidently unbothered by the possibility of American defeat in Afghanistan. He is not even overly concerned about the resumption of terror attacks against the continental United States as he has observed that the US could "absorb" more attacks. This is correct if one restricts the use of the word "absorb" to the purely physical effects of an attack and puts to the side the impact upon national morale, self-confidence, and American standing in global politics.
If the tantalizing bits from Woodward's forthcoming book are accurate, he has performed a useful albeit unpleasant service to We the People. He has shot another and well deserved arrow into the blimp of myth which is President Barack Obama.
Most bothersome is the President's evident desire for the military to get him off the hook of making decisions by providing him with an exit strategy. The refusal of the senior military command to take on a job properly resting with the Guy in the Oval is to their collective credit.
Whether Mr Obama likes the idea or not, the defining of the conditions under which American forces will be withdrawn from Afghanistan or any other theater of war is a purely political one. It is necessary under the American doctrine of civilian supremacy--a doctrine so beloved by the President that he fired General McChrystal for allegedly violating it--for the president to define both the political goal and the minimum necessary signs of accomplishing that goal.
It is the president who determines what constitutes the better state of peace for which the war is being fought and defines "victory." The military command has the task of advising the president as to what its forces can be expected to accomplish, the cost associated with any given level of accomplishment as well as developing and implementing the "theory of victory" by which the goal and its associated concept of "victory" might be achieved.
This dynamic, a process sanctioned by generations of presidents and generals, required that Mr Obama lay out for the military just what constituted a better state of peace. It also required that the president decide what costs would be acceptable. Attempting to off-load these messy but central tasks on to the military command structure was both gutless and witless.
A year ago when the overly prolonged exercise in soul searching over Afghanistan was underway, the president and his "team" had a simple choice to make. They had to decide which of two quite different options would provide the better state of peace in and around Afghanistan.
The choice was termed one between "counter-terrorism" and "counter-insurgency." In actuality the choice was between a limited punitive and deterrent effort directed against the advocates of violent political Islam in al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the Haqqani network and the far more expansive, not to say, unlimited one of combining a defeat of Taliban et al with the building of an effectively Western style nation-state in Afghanistan.
While there existed a continuum of alternatives between the poles of limited counter-terrorism and unlimited counter-insurgency, the decision was or should have been one of focus, emphasis. The debate within the ranks of presidential advisers was quite robust as Woodward underscores. It was also, if Woodward is to be accepted, a debate which was colored heavily by the considerations of domestic politics.
There is, of course, nothing new nor wrongheaded in the involvement of domestic politics in the decision making process regardless of what some Republican critics may say now. It is and always has been a necessary part of the process. Arguably it is the single most important consideration when considering involvement in counterinsurgency as this type of war is a struggle between the political wills of the contesting polities, both indigenous and foreign.
The proposition is different when domestic politics becomes the major, perhaps the preeminent policy consideration. This was the case in the Afghanistan decision. Mr Obama made the worst of all choices and then made the results of a bad decision even worse.
In essence, the president opted for the counterinsurgency orientation without providing sufficient resources. At the same time he failed to prepare the American public, particularly that segment most closely aligned with the Democratic Party, for the reality that counterinsurgency demanded extraordinary patience, a willingness to accept inconclusive measurements of progress, and an outcome which would not make everybody--perhaps anybody--happy.
In short, Mr Obama made the same basic errors as had the Bush/Cheney administration--too broad a goal, too few resources, and no proper preparation of the American public so political will would be sapped quickly. To this recipe for failure, he added a new ingredient.
Mr Obama accompanied his announcement of a mini-surge with a date certain when US combat forces would commence withdrawal. The justification offered in Mr Woodward's book is the one so obvious at the time--fear of alienating the Democratic Party's progressive base.
The imperatives of what passed for Presidential thinking were pathetically obvious at the time even without Woodward's insider quotes. Mr Obama wished to protect his flank against attacks from the Right by appearing tough-minded and vigorous as a wartime leader dedicated to the defeat of "extremism" and the installation of democracy. At the same time he sought to protect his Left flank from attacks on that vector by providing a "date certain" and limiting the number of new hostages to fortune deployed to the war zone.
The results of this politically driven decision were obvious at the time. The chief beneficiary would be Taliban which now understood that US patience was officially limited. Paradoxically the next beneficiary would be the government of Hamid Karzai, which would see it could afford to ignore the calls for Westernization and chat up Taliban in search of a middle ground.
There is no real doubt that Afghanistan, the US, and even Pakistan would have been better off had the Nice Young Man From Chicago opted for the limited counter-terrorism approach. In effect, had Obama picked up the ball which had been dropped so badly by Bush/Cheney. It is ironic, deliciously so, that had Obama gone for the punitive expedition option discarded by the ever-so-muscular dude from Texas, he would have had a very good chance of successfully achieving a better state of peace characterized by a greatly diminished threat from al-Qaeda, Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other advocates of violent political Islam in the region.
Of course, to expect Mr Obama to have made an intelligent decision about war is too expect the utterly impossible. The idea of war offends his tidy, lawyerly mind. It outrages his personal morality of progressivism. It violates his belief in the pussiance of international institutions. War is a subject about which Mr Obama knows so little he has no capacity to know what he does not know. And, war is a subject which so deeply revolts the Obama sensibilities that he has no desire to rectify his abysmal ignorance nor to come to respect the knowledge and capacities of men in uniform who do know wars and how to fight them.
In this respect he exceeds even Bill Clinton.
Mr Clinton at the least had the vague understanding that defeat by an enemy such as al-Qaeda would have long lasting and very negative consequences for the US--and the rest of the civilized world. In his distaste for war--and his acceptance of the tenets of the "blame American first" school of history and politics, Mr Obama lacks even this.
Mr Obama is quite evidently unbothered by the possibility of American defeat in Afghanistan. He is not even overly concerned about the resumption of terror attacks against the continental United States as he has observed that the US could "absorb" more attacks. This is correct if one restricts the use of the word "absorb" to the purely physical effects of an attack and puts to the side the impact upon national morale, self-confidence, and American standing in global politics.
If the tantalizing bits from Woodward's forthcoming book are accurate, he has performed a useful albeit unpleasant service to We the People. He has shot another and well deserved arrow into the blimp of myth which is President Barack Obama.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Let's Try Bribery--Again
Stripped of all the high minded and lofty rhetoric, foreign aid is simply bribery much of the time. It is an attempt to create a simulacrum of coinciding national interest. That is, when there is an insufficiency of actual coinciding national interest so that two states can work jointly on a joint problem, foreign aid can be trotted out to manufacture the appearance of coincidence of interest.
For obvious reasons this kind of fiction is generally the prerogative of Great Powers, or, at least, countries laden with cash or other equally useful and attractive items. The potlatch of bribe-your-way-to-an-alliance hit a (temporary) pinnacle of drunk sailor spending during the Cold War. The old Soviet Union built steel mills in countries without iron ore while China built eight lane divided highways or dual track railroads from Nowhere to Nothingness. For its part, the US scattered shiny new weapons and fresh from the factory warlike stores to armed forces better suited to brigandage than to any real national security use.
At least most of the recipient states had the common courtesy to stay bought for at least a few years. And, these grateful new allies and supporters of whichever Great Power had spilled the greatest amount of its wealth rarely crossed the line from bribery--a limited activity--to flat out extortion--an endless exercise in ever increasing demands.
Bribery as a tool of foreign policy entered into a brief decline during the years immediately following the end of the Cold War. It was no longer necessary for the US to rent-a-friend by foreign aid largess in most of the world.
There were, however, exceptions. One was Egypt. The US under four administrations has felt (word used advisedly as the process has been less than rational, other than based on careful calculation) that Egypt must continue to be bribed lest something unspecified but terrible occur. Another exception was carved out for Pakistan.
In the case of Pakistan the thin and wavering line separating bribery from extortion was crossed years ago, during the days of Bill Clinton. For each and every year of the Clinton, W. Bush, and, now, Obama administrations, the extortion campaign waged by Islamabad has accelerated. Each of these presidents has felt the need to pay more and more tribute to the Pakistanis lest something horrid happen.
Lest, for example, the Pakistanis gain nuclear power status. Lest, for example, the Pakistanis stir up more trouble with India, or in Afghanistan. Lest, for example, the Pakistanis surrender to the importuning and threats of the Islamists. Lest, for example, the Pakistanis fail to fight with valor and dedication against the terrorists of al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the Haqqani network. Lest, for example, Islamabad cozies up with the Trolls of Beijing.
Billions of dollars have flowed from future generations of Americans to the leaders and military commanders of today's Pakistan. The result of all these bribes, of answering all the extortionate demands of the government and military of Pakistan?
The Pakistanis have the bomb. The Pakistanis have worked overtime to exacerbate tensions with India. The army and government of Pakistan have waged a quarter-hearted war against carefully selected portions of the Islamist/jihadi congeries in the FATA. Islamabad has cozied up with Beijing to the extent of entering into a deal to purchase two Chinese nuclear reactors despite the objections of the US.
Wow! With this record it seems only sensible that we ship another giant bunch of money to Pakistan. Perhaps the concept "more is more" will work. This time.
Secretary of State Clinton, who is well-known to harbor significant doubts regarding the reliability of Pakistan in the "common" war against Islamic terrorist groups (OOPS! Bad Geek! The Geek meant to write, "radical extremest groups") is in Pakistan with a wad of cash in her hand.
The cash, one and half gigabucks worth, is the first installment of the seven and a half billion promised by Congress for civilian development projects over the next five years. This masterpiece of fabricating the appearance but not the reality of coinciding national interest, the Kerry-Lugar-Berman act, was passed last year. The intent is to purchase Pakistani cooperation in the war against al-Qaeda, Taliban, and the Haqqani Network as well as to buy a large measure of economic, social, and political stability in the country.
Ms Clinton, in announcing the payment of the civilian portion of the annual Pakistani Extortion Scheme, made loud reference as to the emphasis on civilian development as being a dramatic departure from the bad old days of George W. Bush. She is, of course, being quite economical with the truth.
George W. Bush's administration did hand over ten or so billion dollars in military aid to the military junta which ran Pakistan. This is what the Pakistanis demanded lest something horrid but unspecified occur. Similarly Ms Clinton's husband, Bill, did the same when he was in the Oval. So did George H.W. Bush. And, Ronald Reagan.
It is simple to understand why all these presidents paid off in military coin. When one is paying bribery or extortion, one pays in the coin demanded by the recipient. The Pakistanis have always preferred the warlike to the peaceful as they live in a paranoid fear and desire for one more war with India.
Adding civilian assistance, the building of dams, irrigation projects, infrastructure, electric generation plants, and the like is a form of bonus. The real deal continues to be the military assistance. When the US insisted on providing equipment more suitable to counterinsurgency than to a force-on-force war with India, it was necessary to sweeten the deal--again lest something horrid but unspecified occur.
The sweetener, the bonus is the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Soak Our Great-Grandchildren-To-Rent-The-Paks bill. As with all previous bribes or extortion payments, the money will be spent, some projects will be finished in a blare of Thanks Be To Our Government And Allah The Most Merciful And Compassionate propaganda. And, Islamabad will do what it wants to regardless of US interests or representations.
Islamabad has a ready portfolio of reasons why it cannot do what the US desires. It is oh-so-easy to point at the low repute in which the US is held by the great Pakistani public. It is oh-so-easy to say the US is responsible for the animus held against it due to our Predator attacks, or the presence of US troops in Afghanistan, or US support for Israel, or, even the tolerance showed to homosexuals in the US.
"See! You Americans do it to yourselves! And, that is why, we, the democratically elected government of Pakistan cannot and will not compromise our sovereignty by fighting terrorists or seeking genuine peace with India or even not buying Chinese plutonium producing power reactors."
Unless, of course, the US sends more money. Do that and amazing things can happen. For enough of a bribe, we will even grant visas to the more than four hundred diplomatic personnel who have been waiting for weeks, months. Money can move mountains. (Provided doing so does not run across Pakistani national interests as the Paks define them.)
Mr Obama, Ms Clinton, and Congress have set the stage for We the People to once more learn a basic lesson. Bribery is limited in its effects. Extortion has no limits to its demands.
They just don't teach that sort of thing at Harvard Law School, do they?
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Mr Obama--This Isn't The Time To Kick Ass!
Rolling Stone magazine living up to its founding tradition as a pillar of the counterculture and deep opponent of the US War in Vietnam is bringing out an article on General Stanley McChrystal which has caused the overly sensitive Nice Young Man From Chicago and his henchmen to go ballistic. As a result General McChrystal has been forced to apologize for saying unkind words about various Team Obama heavyweights and has been recalled to Washington to explain his remarks to SecDef Gates and, presumably, the thin-skinned Obama.
Worse than this recall--which at the least serves to undercut McChrystal's moral authority in theater--the POTUS may well fire the man who has the best chance of pulling something less than total defeat out of the Afghanistan morass. Should Mr Obama take this action either directly or using a safe cut-out such as Secretary Gates or Admiral Mullen, it would constitute a self-inflicted wound with potentially fatal consequences.
In the upcoming profile style article, General McChrystal and his staff are reported to have made less than flattering comments about (1) Vice President Biden, (2) Obama Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke and (3) US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry. Others high in the ranks of Team Obama may have been skewered as well, since only Hilary Clinton was reputedly unscathed. (It is to be hoped that had Mr Gates been the target of a barb or two that his vast experience in Washington has served to cushion their impact.)
The foundation for the critical comments made by either McChrystal or members of his staff resides in the events of last Fall during the unnecessarily prolonged pseudo-debate over the correct American strategy for Afghanistan and the number of additional troops which would be needed to execute that strategy effectively. The Obama orchestrated exercise in foot-dragging was marked by leaked memos, rumors, counter-rumors, and other sorts of typically mean and petty bureaucratic infighting.
It was at this time that Ambassador Eikenberry leaked documents which were critical of McChrystal's request for extra men as well as casting aspersions on both the character and election of Hamid Karzai. To infer that Eikenberry's CYA oriented exercise torqued off General McChrystal and others genuinely seeking a path other than defeat by which to exit Afghanistan would be an exercise in accuracy.
It deserves mention that Ambassador Eikenberry's most undiplomatic excoriation of Afghanistan's president not only hindered General McChrystal but also marked the beginning of the steep and slippery downward slope of Afghan-US relations which has continued to date. The ventilation of frustration and anger with Eikenberry's self-serving act in the presence of a journalist was most unwise, most unfortunate, and most regrettable. But, the basis of the charge was both accurate and fair.
McChrystal and others have been frustrated and angered by Special Envoy Holbrooke as well. Mr Holbrooke has made the mistake of reading and believing his own press releases with the result that he considers himself to be The World's Leading Expert on Hostilities Termination and Conflict Resolution. This preposterously inflated self-assessment is based upon Mr Holbrook's role in brokering the Dayton Peace Accords, which played a less than considerable part in helping bring the ethnic and religiously based violence scarring former Yugoslavia to an end. The hosannas sung to Mr Holbrooke by press and Bill Clinton's White House do not merit Mr Holbrooke's conclusion that he Knows Everything Worth Knowing about both the political and military aspects of interventionary operations. If Mr Holbrooke's emails drip the same smugness and rectitude his remarks on camera and before Congress do, it is easy to see why General McChrystal and his staff are more than a tad annoyed to receive them.
Vice-President Biden is, of course, a cretin. Joe (The Biggest Mouth This Side Of Hugo Chavez) made his intellectually challenged position abundantly clear during the "debate" over AfPak strategy when he seriously proposed that the US withdraw from Afghanistan. At the same time we would cover Pakistan or at least the FATA with horizon-to-horizon swarms of Predators and Reapers so as to snipe al-Qaeda members at very low risk to ourselves.
The fact that this ludicrous idea was not met immediately with gales of derisive laughter but rather was given what appeared to be a respectful hearing in the corridors of power speaks volumes as to the level of strategic and operational thinking (that word used generically only) in the Obama administration. If General McChrystal was called upon to explain to the Policy Level wallahs just what was wrong with War According To Joe, full justification for any number of statements of jocose persiflage is to be found.
Gates and Mullen have engaged in preemptive damage limitation. Both men have severely chastised General McChrystal. This was done, not because the general deserved it but rather in the hopes it might head off some disastrous presidential act of pique.
The word on the street is President Obama likes everything "nicey-nicey" around him. Only the POTUS is allowed to have a temper tantrum, to show outrage, or, even, to be pissed off. We all know that Mr Obama has been looking for some "ass" to kick.
If the president is not in a hurry to be in the Oval while the US loses the war in Afghanistan, he had best decide that General McChrystal does not possess an ass worthy of kicking.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Karzai Is Out For Himself--What A Shock!
There is a piece in the NYT which is disquieting but not at all surprising. Quoting the recently resigned or fired director of Afghan intelligence as well as a passel of unnamed "senior" sources privy to Karzai's thoughts, words, and action, the paper concluded that the Afghan president has lost faith in the US/NATO capacity to defeat Taliban and is off to make a separate peace behind the collective backs of the West.
Despite the introduction of increased forces and the new approach of General Stanley McChrystal, the Afghan president has convinced himself that the Westerners will lose to the Pakistan supported Afghan Taliban. The real deal is, of course, that Karzai is still hacked off from the accusations of vote fraud in last year's election and the high-handed hectoring he received from both President Obama in person and from assorted US civilian personnel.
Karzai is a highly impossible person with whom to deal. He is personally parsimonious with honesty. His relatives are even more afflicted with this feature. Karzai has a most prickly sense of honor and is more easily dissed than the most thin skinned homey in the hood. On top of that, he is tribal to the max, distrustful of other tribals in the extreme, and fiercely xenophobic. All this means Karzai is a good Afghan politician.
It is possible that the dark mutterings of a separate peace are being made and marketed with premeditation as a way of scaring more bucks from the US. And, one must never be ready to overlook the strong tendency of both the NYT and the WaPo to scent American defeat in either Iraq or Afghanistan whenever possible. Yet, there are good reasons for Karzai to cut a deal with Taliban in addition to simply staying alive and in power.
It is in his best interests as well as those of his relatives and tribe to cut the best possible deal with Taliban before the Westerners do more "damage" to the traditional order of affairs in Afghanistan. The slow motion, low friendly casualty approach to Marja and, yet to come, Kandahar does threaten the continuation of Afghan business as usual. It threatens the highly profitable opium trade. It threatens the tight web of corruption and favoritism which cements tribes and creates alliances between tribes.
Worse, as the Americans, British, and others expand their influence, it emboldens the local government types to bitch and moan with great justice regarding the yawning deficiencies in Karzai's central regime. The locals, the elders of the villages, districts, and provinces want to practice self-organization. Karzai and the rest of his Kabul crowd want centralization uber alles.
As long as Taliban controlled Helmand and other disputed territories, the locals had to keep their mouths closed. Now, with American and other foreign troops present and pushing Taliban hard as well as developing the notion of an Afghan national force, the locals are free to talk and the foreign correspondents are there to hear and record. Mr Karzai is not a happy camper with this sort of development.
At the same time we in the West have to keep in mind that Afghanistan under Karzai is not much more "liberal" and not a whit more "pluralistic" or "secular" than it was under the Taliban. The notion that the US or the ISAF or the UN could create a simulacrum of a modern, Western nation state was an exercise in self-delusion which boggles the imagination.
Afghanistan is and will remain a reactionary bastion of tribalism coupled with Islam--a religion which is little noted for its advanced, progressive, and expansive ideology. The place will remain mired in corruption, favoritism, feuds, and the other features of Afghan culture which assure it is not a candidate to join the League of Civilized States at any time soon.
What matters to the national and security interests of the US and others of the ISAF is that the government of Afghanistan--present and future--understand that any future harboring of bad actors such as al-Qaeda and Taliban will bring future boots on the ground. The Bush/Cheney crew had their chance to squash the jihadists and blew it. Now, McChrystal has a much harder task in doing the same--and very little time to do it.
Karzai's attitude does nothing to make McChrystal's job easier. But, provided the troops on the ground are allowed to get on with the job which, from all basic indicators, they are doing well, there is a very good chance that al-Qaeda and Taliban will be militarily defeated on the ground of Afghanistan. Of course, this means they will regroup across the border in Pakistan as well as bide time to do a deal with Karzai which will bring them back to Afghanistan.
As long as the Islamist goons of Taliban focus their free exercise of religion on such matters as keeping women in garbage bags and cutting the heads off of thought criminals along with the odd lopping off of thieves' hands, no worries, mate. Whatever happens in Afghanistan no matter how Medieval and barbaric, stays in Afghanistan. Only when the primitives of Islam decide to leave their stone huts and mountain fastnesses in order to hurt the Great Satan, do we need to be concerned.
Should the primitives of Islam once more seek to hurt Americans or others of a civilized country, then we will have to go back and do what should have been done by the rhetorically muscular but reality challenged Bush/Cheney/Rumfeld mob--go in, break things, and kill people until the survivors rue war for generations to come.
That's right, boyo, treat primitives like primitives. It may be unfashionable to think about let alone write about, but history shows time after (literally) bloody time that the concept has one thing going for it--it works.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
The Prez Sez, "Be Nice To Karzai!"
Apparently the oft-proclaimed "tough love" approach of President Obama for his Afghan counterpart, Hamid Karzai, and so disastrously put into effect during Mr Obama's midnight raid on Karzai a couple of months back has been repealed. At least that is the take home from the article in the WaPo today.
In his reported instruction the President slapped the rumps of Jim Jones and a legion of more or less senior people in his administration all of whom go by the name "anonymous." Presumably Mr Obama is exempting his own exalted self from both commandment and implied disapprobation.
The WaPo treatment is valuable in that it properly reminds not only the Washington insiders but We the People that Karzai is the key player in Afghanistan. No matter how much our ambassador in Kabul may dislike Karzai, see him as a fountainhead of corrupt misgovernment, the fact remains that Karzai holds the broadest brief of legitimacy in the badly fractured Afghan nation.
Ambassador Eikenberry neither likes nor trusts Karzai and as a result keeps plumping for finding ways to evade the central government and work directly with local leaders. The gambit offered by Eikenberry has a superficial plausibility and appeal. Following it would seem to provide a way to deliver security and governance services more effectively to Afghans long alienated from Kabul by the atmosphere of pervasive corruption and inefficiency. The Eikenberry option would also provide a way by which local gripes as well as tensions between Kabul and the locals could be utilized to foster more effective resistance to Taliban and others of its ilk.
However, the Eikenberry Option must founder on the rock of US policy. We are committed to assisting the creation of a centrally directed simulacrum of a nation-state. This implies that we must put our energies on supporting the government in Kabul first and foremost while encouraging the local leaders to rally to the support of Kabul.
It might be noted that the US went through a similar experience in South Vietnam. The Johnson administration exhibited its disgust with the non-democratic, corrupt, and inefficient Saigon regime by seeking with some degree of success to elude the central government in order to work directly with district and provincial officials. The net result of this was a further weakening of the perceived legitimacy of the Saigon regime, the growth of inordinate provincialism, the lowering of efficiency generally--and a vast increase in the scale of corruption.
The ancient saying, "dance with the one you brought" applies in the Afghan situation. Karzai came to power courtesy of the US and its allies. He is--and has been for years--our man in Kabul. Unlike the assorted "our men in Saigon," Karzai is an able political leader with the necessary "street cred" among most (but far from all) Afghans.
He has downsides, downsides with which we have been well acquainted for a long, long time. He is overly loyal to tribal associates, for example. He is self-destructively loyal to family as his protective relationship of his flagrantly criminal half-brother in Kandahar has shown. He is powerfully emotional, mercurial, in no way given to the cool, detached political style currently popular in the US.
It is important to understand that all these "flaws" from our perspective are not necessarily viewed as such within Afghanistan. Tribal and family loyalty are both a sine qua non of proper ethics in Afghanistan. So also are powerful emotions, powerfully expressed. They are the necessary attribute of a true leader. The idea of a Mr King of Cool being an effective leader is a null referent in the emotionally robust Afghan culture.
Corruption exists in many shapes and forms. In Afghanistan as in many traditional societies, it exists in an open, direct way. It is, in effect, a legitimate cost of living, of doing business, of securing justice. Even Taliban which rode to power promising justice without a price tag and without tribal connections speedily reneged. Mullah Omar and his boys--including those on the Shariah courts--came quickly to rediscover that the Koran alone does not change deeply embedded cultural features.
Corruption is something you complain about to willing ears. It is not something to live and die for, to kill or be killed over. Afghans are realists. They would like to see the costs of life lowered--which is what an end to governmental and judicial corruption would mean--but they are not going to fight to the death over its continuation or extinction.
Looking ahead to mid-2011, we must all recall that President Obama has stated we will start reducing our troop commitment in Afghanistan at that time. Leaving aside the debatable merits of providing a date certain so early in the force augmentation game, suffice it to say that the existence of sufficient stability by that date depends in large measure on Karzai's political sense and strength.
Karzai, not Obama, not Hilary Clinton, not Ambassadors Eikenberry or Holbrooke, not even General McChrystal (the American Karzai most trusts) only Karzai has the political instincts relevant to Afghanistan. He has both the ability and the legitimacy to make a deal with Taliban and other insurgent groups. He has the capacity to peel away the softer layers of insurgent support and membership from the true hard core which needs to be killed.
Karzai does possess the capacity to sell Kabul to the local leaders (excepting those of long standing tribal antipathy to the Pushtun.) This implies he is best located politically to exploit effectively the fruits of stability planted by the US and other ISAF combat units. The "build" part of "clear, hold, and build" belongs first and foremost to Karzai and his government. Without him exercising all of his capacities in this area, the success of "clear" and "hold" will whither rapidly.
Realizing this and acting on the realization will not be easy for the Obama administration, Congress, or many of We the People. When the sound and fury ends, the resulting nation, polity, and state will not be similar in any essential respect with the ideal held in the West generally and the US in particular. The legacy of the Bush/Cheney "nation-building" enthusiasm with its neocon driven overselling of the idea that a few American lives and a few billion US dollars would purchase a liberal, secular, pluralistic Western style nation-state lingers on with continued bad results in our concept of the possible in Afghanistan.
President Obama deserves faint credit for belatedly realizing that he had shot himself in the foot with his "tough love" campaign. It can only be hoped that he applies the new "be nice" stricture to his own conduct of personal diplomacy with President Karzai. Mr Obama and his "team" should be a bit humble and recognize that they are not and never will be experts on the history, culture, and contemporary dynamics in Afghanistan.
Of course, humility comes hard to the elite of the United States. So, breath holding is not in order. Not yet.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Pakistan--A Dangerously Split Personality
Pakistan tested two nuclear capable ballistic missiles. In the context of this event the Pakistani Prime Minister, Yusuf Raza Gilani, made two statements of importance.
In the first he flatly declared that Pakistan had "laid to rest" all the concerns held regarding the security of the country's nuclear arsenal and program. In the second Gilani said, "It is time for the world to recognize Pakistan as a dejure nuclear power with equal rights and responsibilities."
Don't you love the ambiguity of the PM's use of the phrase "equal rights and responsibilities?" Is it Mr Gilani's intent to assert that Pakistan's possession of nukes gives the country "rights and responsibilities" which are "equal" to those appertaining to other, longer established members of the Official Nuclear Club--the US, the UK, France, Russia, and China? Or does he mean that as a "dejure" nuclear power (whatever that might mean) Pakistan has "responsibilities" which exist equally with its "rights?"
Then there are are a couple of other, more basic questions which scream for answers buried in Gilani's adventure in declaratory policy: What "rights" accrue to a state as a consequence of its owning some nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them? The second is that of just what "responsibilities" can Pakistan be trusted to shoulder?
It is all well and good for Mr Gilani to urge, "There is now a need for the world to move on beyond safety and security concerns." It is something else all together to provide a sound, credible basis for the world to believe the accuracy and relevance of his assertion.
It requires a vast willingness to suspend disbelief to accept the Pakistani PM's contentions. To swallow unquestioningly his view that Pakistan can be counted upon to exercise its "responsibilities" as a nuclear power would necessitate taking a very potent reality altering drug.
The primary responsibility of a country possessing a nuclear capability no matter how small--or large--is to act consistently in its foreign policy so as to be both a force for stability and a predictable actor on the global and regional stages. A closely related responsibility is that of forming a political and military strategy as well as supporting doctrine which serves to decouple crises or uses of force generally with the potential for vertical escalation across the nuclear threshold.
Undergirding both of these exercises in responsibility is the prime requirement that a government be in full and effective control of its country. This duty includes demonstrating both the will and capacity to thwart any group working from an extreme ideological base in its attempts to gain access to the nuclear capacity.
It is not necessary to adopt an unduly jaundiced view of Pakistan's history or current dynamics to conclude that Pakistan fails on each and every of the four points adumbrated. With specific regard to the second two areas of responsibility, the observer need not be overly skeptical to conclude that the government of Pakistan is not in control of its own territory and that it lacks the inherent capacity to prevent Islamist and jihadist groups from accessing its nuclear capacities.
There is no need to resort to overstatement to allege that Pakistan is the epicenter of transnational terrorism conducted by True Believers in political Islam--Islamists. Nor is it mere rodomontade to contend that Islamists exist within the Pakistani government, military, and intelligence service.
The lack of structural integrity so evident in Pakistan is evident not only in the ongoing, daily requirement for their army and our Predators to carry the war against Islamists to the hills, villages, and towns of the FATA. The holes in the hull of the Pakistani ship of state are also demonstrated in the reality that the vast majority of transnational terror operations can be tracked back to Pakistan.
Americans were reminded in a most dramatic way of the role served by Pakistan in the terror business with the failed Times Square vehicle bomb. Leaving aside all the apologetic quacking seeking to explain (and justify) the action of Faisal Shahzad, one important fact remains: The guy went to Pakistan and received training in the fine art of bomb making.
Even if Shahzad was self-recruited to the jihadist mission, there is no way of ignoring that he knew where to go, who to see in order to get both instruction and resources to carry off his attack. Shahzad was no wannabe martyr. He had no intention of dying while he killed. He was expected both to live and return to the hills of Pakistan.
The obvious fact that Shahzad not only intended to live but to return to the people who had underwritten his effort puts his case in a different league all together from that of the Underware Bomber or others of the martyrdom brigade. Inferentially at the least, Shahad's controllers in Pakistan wanted him to come back alive so the knowledge base of penetrating American security could be enhanced. Perhaps the controllers even anticipated Shahzad coming through so clean that he could be used again. Experienced assets with valid US passports are thin on the soil of Pakistan (it can be hoped.)
It is true that Pakistani authorities have made a great show of activity in the days since the smoking Pathfinder attracted unwanted attention. They have made arrests. A good number of arrests. Beyond that they have made promises to the US. A very great number of promises.
But then, the Pakistanis have made any number of promises to the US over quite a few years. On occasion they have even delivered on the promises. These times have occurred when immediate and pressing Pakistani national interests are involved. (Recall that the Army got serious about operation in Swat and portions of South Waziristan only after the Islamists showed a very real, quite immediate capacity to fatally destabilize the regime.)
Even when the Islamists present threats which border on the existential, the government, military, and intelligence service of Pakistan show remarkable reluctance to act with rapidity, overwhelming force, and palpable determination. No amount of American provided mood music regarding Pakistani efforts and sacrifices can change that.
Nor can the honeyed words and soothing music change the reason which most probably underlies the slow, hesitant, and anything-but-resolute actions taken by Islamabad to extend its uncontested authority over all of the geography constituting Pakistan. The real deal of motive is simply that many senior members of government, military, intelligence service, and nuclear weapons program are in basic agreement with the goals of the Islamists.
When ground truths are reached in Pakistan, it is evident that the Islamist agenda, even the jihadist actions, are not actually existential in nature. The structures of the government, the army, the intelligence service, are not threatened in the slightest by the Islamists. Even if the Taliban and its ilk were to come to power, it would not change business as usual for any of these features of state.
The emergence of Taliban from the mountainside caves would mean the faces at the top would change. It would mean more beards, more garbage sacks covering more women, more amputations, more casting of stones, and a whale of lot more regional, even global instability.
It would not mean, however, any fundamental alteration in the government, the army, the intelligence service, or the nuclear weapons program. The agendas of the army, the intelligence service, the nuclear weaponeers, even the bureaucracy, mesh almost seamlessly with the goals and agendas of the Islamists. Both the history of Pakistan from its creation and the current dynamics of the place underscore this melancholy reality.
None of these unpleasant truths mean, necessarily, that Prime Minister Gilani was intentionally dissembling when he made his remarks to a collection of Army officers giddy with the most recent test of missiles capable of planting mushrooms on New Delhi. But, they do mean that the US along with much of the rest of the world should--even must--expend as much anxiety over the nuclear status of Pakistan as is demonstrated over the still under development Iranian bomb project.
More, President Obama must disabuse himself of any specious notion holding Pakistan to be an "ally" of the US in a joint war against the Islamists. At best Pakistan is a semi-hostile neutral in the war. At worst it is in semi-covert league with the enemy.
In any event Pakistan is not capable of exercising the "responsibilities" of being a nuclear power. Thus the time has not yet come when the "world can move beyond safety and security" as such obtains to the defacto nuclear status of Pakistan.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Dithering And Despondency Over Afghanistan
There is still no word from the Commander-in-Chief regarding the deployment of more US troops to Afghanistan. Nor has anyone questioned the wisdom of looking for an exit strategy while the Taliban and al-Qaeda are generally perceived as winning and the Americans seen by and large as on the verge of unmistakable defeat.
As the days and weeks have rolled along, the rationale for delay in making the least worst choice among the many available has eroded. The Pakistani offensive has continued longer than most expected it would--bolstered by the revulsion generally held in Pakistan at the Islamist jihadist resort to indiscriminate suicide bomb attacks on soft targets.
As has been the case so often in both Iraq and the AfPak efforts, the killing of civilians has been shown as quite counterproductive. While the US and its allies have learned the lesson, it is most fortunate that the Islamists are intellectually challenged in this most critical area. The equation is simple and has been seen at work in every war since the 20th Century started.
Killing civilians, particularly in ways which seem particularly cowardly such as air strikes and suicide bombings turns opinion sharply against the killers--not against the side which failed to protect its civilians. When American and other aircraft piled up stinking heaps of dead civilian bodies, sentiment and its handmaiden political will turned against the Americans. When Islamist jihadists blow themselves and oodles of nearby non-combatants into a red froth of protoplasm, sentiment and political turn against the Heroic Warriors of Allah.
The three hundred or so victims of Taliban bombs during the course of the Pakistani offensive into South Waziristan have done much to keep political support on the side of Islamabad. This is good from the American perspective even if Washington does have legitimate grounds to complain that the Pakistani forces have cut deals with anti-American, pro-Afghan Taliban rather than fight them.
However, the American dithering over further troop deployments is serving to erode Pakistani political will within the government, media, and--army. The uncertainty over the willingness of the US under its current administration to pay a higher butcher's bill in Afghanistan has been exacerbated by the never ending delays in the announcement of a decision.
No matter how long the US stays, one month, one year, five years, eventually the last US boot will leave. When that happens Afganhanistan will once more be in play as a proxy theater for competitors in the region. This will be true even if the Karzai regime does the impossible--stops corruption and delivers efficient, competent basic government services and a modicum of economic development.
Iran, Pakistan, India, and at least a couple of the Central Asian Republics see Afghanistan as a theater of political-military operations. Even now with the US still involved, the various external contenders are plumping up those Afghan factions with which they have the most effective relations. Iran has its proxies. Pakistan, just as was the case twenty years ago, has it's. India has made great gains both openly and otherwise cultivating potential proxy assets.
Arriving a bit late but with unlimited ambitions and cash the Chinese have also started finding or manufacturing clients within Afghanistan. At the present their interests are primarily economic but this is liable for change so as to include the political.
The projected uncertainty over the American future in Afghanistan has done nothing to slow the growth of adverse proxy forces in the country. Rather it has done the opposite.
Unless the assorted jihadist groups are neutered to an extent that none are attractive proxies, the scramble for advantage in the war after the war will continue to escalate. Thus the most critical goal of the US--that of destroying the Islamist jihadist groups in Afghanistan and along the porous border between that country and Pakistan becomes even more important.
The improbability of the Karzai regime reforming itself coupled with the strategic plans of neighboring states assures there will be a war after the war. From our perspective the necessity is assuring that the next time around there will be no chance of an Islamist jihadist success being achieved in the manner of the Pakistan created and supported Taliban not quite twenty years ago.
If Afghanistan is not to become a future home of yet one more semi-indigenous, semi-artificial Islamist jihadist government, the jihadists of today must be operationally destroyed. There is no need to create nor to leave behind some sort of imitation Western style secular state--that cannot be done. Nor is there any need to cleanse Afghanistan of Islamist tendencies--that cannot be done either.
What is necessary is to remove the stain of jihadism which covers the territory of both Afghanistan and Pakistan with the color of drying blood. It's simple. Islam? Sure. Islamism? Well, OK. Jihadism? No blinking way!
To achieve even this limited and barely realistic goal it will be necessary to fight directly and back the Pakistanis in their current and (it is to be hoped) future offensives. This means more troops. More body bags. More American blood shed in the hopes that less will be sacrificed in future years.
As the Geek well knows it takes a certain amount of testicular fortitude to enter combat. However, it takes as much--or more--to bite down on an unpleasant, bitter reality and put one's political future on the line and order more men to face the possibility of death, maiming, or psychological trauma in order to have some slight chance of securing a better future for the US.
It is necessary for a real president, or a real man for that matter, to make tough choices, choices between the bad and the worse, choices no one ever wanted to make. But, that is part of a president's job description. In case the current occupant of the Oval has not noticed yet, it takes a lot more than a charming smile and a good way with speeches to be a genuine president. It takes balls.
One can hope that the Nice Young Man From Chicago finds his.
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