1:30AM
The Obama Doctrine?
Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 1:30AM ARTICLE: Afghan War Debate Now Leans to Focus on Al Qaeda, By PETER BAKER and ERIC SCHMITT, New York Times, October 7, 2009
This shift provides my rationale for saying that Obama is heading toward a non-state-actor-level version of the Powell Doctrine: we go anywhere we need to and kill anybody we deem bad, but as far as the locals are concerned, they can simply fuck off in terms of any implied responsibility on our part to fix the situation.
There is a huge flaw in this reasoning, and it's called pissing off a lot of locals with your bloodthirsty cynicism.
Hard to marry this tack with a Nobel Peace Prize, yeah?
Reader Comments (5)
Terabucks for Government Sachs et. al., and pennies for everyone else.
While I certainly understand the long-term necessity of integrating "Gap" states within the "Core" the United States does have global responsibilities that are broader than only the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
How long must the U.S. remain engaged with significant ground troops in Afghanistan? What are the real chances of successfully establishing a central government that is 1) capable of controlling territory beyond Kabul and 2) not corrupt?
Our interest in Afghanistan seems fairly limited to me. We don't want it to be a location where al-Qaeda or similar groups reconstitute themselves. Obviously, we are concerned about the long-term health of neighboring Pakistan, but this is due mostly to our concerns over the securing of their nuclear weapons from Islamist groups.
It seems our best bet is to slowly disengage from Afghanistan with ground forces (maintaining some economic assistance), retain an intelligence presence and relationship with various tribes, and retain a rapid strike capability when intelligence comes forth that the wrong people are gathering. In this respect we would not be repeating the mistake made after we completely abandoned Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal.
Meanwhle, we continue to push Pakistan aggressively to keep neo-Taliban elements contained within the FTA. This can be done with or without the current rather weak civilian government. Meanwhile, we need to reengage India more initimately than we have since the opening of the Obama Administration. India may be the linchpin to keeping the boiling pot from simmering over at an unacceptable level.
Given the domestic politics and the possibility of Iraq reigniting after the recent terrorist attacks, shipping 40,000 more troops to a nation with no history of long-term effective governance seems more likely to contstrain our options in other areas than resolve the problem.
We make do as best we can. Not total abandonment, but also not total committment. Either extreme is costly in different ways.
If I was a Pashtun tribal elder with a long warrior culture under my belt I'd hardly respect you enough to have you in for dinner and a quick catch up on what bad guys are loitering near enough for your SOF trigger pullers to move in for the kill.
G