Esquire's Politics Blog: 5 Reasons Ahmadinejad Might Just Be Good for the World

Ah, U.N. Week — that time of year when Fox News sounds the alarm bells and The National Review starts making musical-theater references to impending speeches from Dictators with an Important Audience. And when the rest of us realize that Thursday's session with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be quite the opposite: another round of comic relief sure to sabotage his own attempts to be taken seriously, followed by another round of (mostly) effective sanctions. The Obama administration already rolled one eye on Monday by refusing a detainee swap, so let's see just how far one man's stubbornness can be leveraged, shall we?

Read the entire post at Esquire's The Politics Blog.

Good instinct, bad linkage on Iran-Afghanistan

Ignatius piece in WAPO that starts out promisingly:

Iran is signaling that it wants to join regional efforts to stabilize Afghanistan -- presenting President Obama with an interesting diplomatic opportunity. He had solicited just such help from Tehran last month, but the administration has not yet responded to the Iranian feelers.

And then replays past mistakes:

U.S. policy is still in flux, but the administration appears ready for a limited dialogue with Iran about Afghanistan, perhaps conducted through the two countries' embassies in Kabul. This position has not been communicated to the Iranians, in part because Washington is waiting to see whether Iran will return soon to negotiations about its nuclear program with the "P-5 plus 1" group.

Thus we see yet again what our mania with nukes costs us in the Long War.  Sadder still, but telegraphing our conditions in such a rote fashion, we cede all initiative and put Tehran in the driver's seat on both scores.

Unimpressive.

What a serious containment of nuclear Iran would demand of US

cool graphic here

Nice op-ed in The Daily Star by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

Author is Middle East expert at Jamestown Foundation, an unusually solid source of common sense.

After laying out the realism that is accepting Iran will get nukes, Ramzy Mardini addresses what a serious containment strategy would require:

Three crucial features must be included in any containment approach. First, the US must strive for a coherent foreign policy vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic, with interests pegged to regional stability, not democracy and regime-change. Secondly, the US should be prepared to play a pacifying role in the region: restricting Iran, but simultaneously working to minimize dangerous escalations involving local allies, particularly when it involves Israel.

Finally, the US must offer a degree of certainty to its allies in the region – building on, reiterating, and implementing promises of active engagement in containing Iran. The growing uncertainty about Washington’s commitment will dramatically increase the incentive for regional states to seek self-assurance, and hence, indigenous nuclear deterrents of their own. Egypt, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia are among those who might seek this form of reassurance.

Without the necessary diplomatic arrangements and American leadership, the danger is that a containment strategy may be both amorphous and fragile. Tehran could easily engage uncertain actors interested in hedging their bets and, consequently, erode the cohesiveness of the coalition aligned against it.

American prudence and recognition of the limitations of power should not be confused with weak and ineffective policymaking. Given the uncertainties involved when it comes to Iran, Washington should emphasize realpolitik in addressing Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Pretty solid list, in my opinion. 

And despite all the brave talk, I think the Obama administration is actually moving down this path with a lot of care--and genuine success.

Iran's oil exports not choked, but redirected eastward

Our sanctions are described as "choking" Iran's exports.  But what I see is an export level dropping in concert with production, where the sanctions may be having significant impact, but probably not as much as claimed. 

Clearly, what the sanctions etc. has done is redirect Iranian oil exports from Europe & Japan to "rising" Asia. Eventually, the investment profile will change to reflect that, meaning the energy investments Iran attracts will likewise be shifted from West to East.  It just takes longer.  

Naturally, the Obama administration wants to shut down that possibility as well, but I suspect it'll be far less successful simply because rising Asia needs oil and gas from EVERYBODY, and can't afford our WMD qualms.

And frankly, why should they when we shield our best-boy in the region on the same subject?

Scary, I know, but eventually Iran's nukes gets Israel the strategic security it needs.  Frightening journey, yes, but I've yet to see an alternative pathway of any serious plausibility.

WPR's The New Rules: U.S. Needs an Activist, Independent Turkey

 

If America could be magically granted its ideal Muslim strategic partner, what would we ask for? Would we want a country that fell in line with every U.S. foreign policy stance? Not if the regime was to have any credibility with the Islamic world. No, ideally, the government would be just Islamist enough to be seen as preserving the nation's religious and cultural identity, even as it aggressively modernized its society and connected its economy to the larger world. It would have an activist foreign policy that emphasized diplomacy, multilateralism and regional stability, while also maintaining sufficient independence from America to demonstrate that it was not Washington's proxy, but rather a confident great power navigating the currents of history. In sum, it would serve as an example to its co-religionists of how a Muslim state can progressively improve itself amid globalization's deepening embrace -- while remaining a Muslim state.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review

An India-Iran-Russia package on Afghanistan stability: sounds smarter to me than relying on NATO's staying power

WSJ op-ed via WPR's Media Roundup.  Shanthie Mariet D'Souza is an Indian academic.

The gist of the tripartite vision, as seen from India:

At the moment it's tough to discern what the details of this tripartite cooperation might look like. The overarching goal is to prevent the return of the Taliban to any position of influence in Afghanistan. India would of course welcome any initiative to inhibit the political legitimization of the Taliban and, by extension, Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan. One example is the Indian government's construction of the Zaranj Delaram road, which connects landlocked Afghanistan to Central Asia and Iran, reducing the country's dependence on Pakistan for trade.

India's vision shouldn't be surprising. The country has historically been allied with Iran and Russia, so in some respects Delhi is simply reverting to form. But since the Clinton administration, India has drawn closer to the U.S., both economically and militarily, as a response to the rise of China. Given the Obama administration's strained relationship with Russia and Iran, Delhi will have to proceed cautiously to avoid a rift with its U.S. partner.

This isn't an impossible mission. Even Washington must agree that in the long run, Afghanistan will be better off if all of its neighbors have a stake in the country's stability. When President Obama visits Delhi in November, India should present its roadmap for how it can contribute to this vision, either as a direct participant or as a bridge between the U.S., Russia and Iran.

For years, India pursued a "soft power" approach to Afghanistan that focused on economic aid and development. Its reinvigorated regional diplomacy shows how its role in the region is changing. Unlike in the past, India is a key power that needs to be involved, consulted and heard in discussions on Afghanistan. Washington should take note.

I couldn't agree more.  The lack of this sort of wider regional involvement to date in Obama Administration efforts is very frustrating.

I know, I know.  Admin officials will say, "We've broached this subject with the X's!"  But I would like a bit more than the usual box checking.  Didn't we get enough of that empty gesture from Condi "talking-points" Rice?

Iran's real ambitions have little to do with religion, terrorism or nukes

 

Powerfully sensible piece by Dario Cristiani in World Politics Review via WPR's Weekly Article Alert.

The guts of the logic WRT Central Asia:

If Iran has always been geographically part of the regional context of Central Asia and the Caucasus, Tehran's geopolitical orientation has historically been focused southward, on the Persian Gulf. For more than a century, Iranian interests in the area were limited to dealing with Russia's -- and later the Soviet Union's -- expansionism. The end of the Cold War and the implosion of the Soviet Union opened new opportunities on Iran's northern borders, even if Iran remained more preoccupied with the need for domestic reconstruction following the war with Iraq. 

In the past 15 years, however, Tehran has been particularly active in trying to create a deep net of institutional and economic links in the region, in part to counter the increasing reach of Turkey, perceived as an American proxy, and of Pakistan, historically an enemy of Iran. Such an approach has been characterized by the "pragmatism" typical of Iran's post-revolutionary leadership. Eschewing the idea of exporting revolution, Iran has instead tried to improve ties with all the countries of the region, focusing on those with which it shares cultural and historical links. This explains the strong attention paid by Tehran to Tajikistan and Afghanistan, which represent cornerstones of the Iranian strategy in the region. At the same time, a clear example of Iran's pragmatism is the close relationship it has forged with Armenia, cemented by the common interest of containing Azerbaijan. 

Iran's ultimate goal is to become a technological and economic power in the region, and to this end, Tehran is supplementing its cultural and historical links with a more resolute economic presence, including investments in massive infrastructure projects.

The surprising conclusion:  even though Russia, China, the US and Iran all want stability in Afghanistan, because of regional rivalries, Iran has been unable to cooperate with any of them on the subject.

Great piece of Nasr/Takeyh quality.

Mullahs even more marginalized in Iran

FT story and editorial.

Story claims the split "deepens Ahmadi-Nejad's woes," but me thinks not.

The trigger:  "a highly controversial interpretation of the Shia faith advanced by close allies of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad, who advocate a radical mixture of Islam and nationalism."

In effect, Ahmadinejad's guys are saying that Shia Muslims "do not need the clergy . . . to connect with God and that direct links can be made with the last, or 'Hidden Imam', who is believed to have disappeared in 1947."

How convenient--for Mr. Ahmadinejad.

Meanwhile, we are told that "the supreme leader is under enormous pressure . . . to remove Mr Ahmadi-Nejad."

Still think the two are on the same side?

As I've argued for years now:  Ahmadinejad's whole scheme is to create a non-clergy-centric, president-centric single-party state with a firm grip over the economy--less a revolutionary state than a sad rerun of Brezhnevian USSR.  The generation of Iran-iraq War vets wants their piece of paper acknowledging their great "triumph" and accomplishments, just like Brezhnev and crew needed that piece of paper from Nixon declaring them a co-equal superpower (lot of good it did them).  

In the end, Ahmadinejad does God's work (pun intended) by disintermediating the clergy and aping the Sovs' sad ideological and economic decline.  He remains a step forward, despite the costs and risks, because, ultimately, those two will prove his undoing.  Nukes will buy him nothing but organized regional resistance, Sunni rapprochement with Israel, etc.

I still bet on Turkey cleaning up--hopefully with our blessing.

Maybe the clergy will strike back at the president, but I continue to bet that the Revolutionary Guard has won decisively in its military putsch and will continue to consolidate power.

Iran's devastating achievement creates its own regional balancing act

This story writes itself.

Elliott Abrams in the WSJ noting how both US and Israeli relationships with Arab neighbors of Iran are much improved with each step Tehran takes toward nuclear weapons capacity:

Who will stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program, the Arabs wonder; they place no faith in endless negotiations between earnest Western diplomats and the clever Persians.

Israel is the enemy of their enemy, Iran. Now, the usual description of Arab-Israeli relations as "hostile" or "belligerent" is giving way to a more complex picture. 

Once begun, the Big Bang is never done.  We topple the Taliban and Saddam, and Iran must reach for protection.  That protection creates its own backlash, and so it goes.  No going back.  The speeding up of history: speeding the killing, speeding the threats, speeding up the dynamics.  Top-down solutions emerging after decades of wasted bottom-up efforts to forge the perfect peace plan.  Nukes clarify the mind all right.

And we are all better off for that scary journey.

Russians to fuel Iranian reactor: out-of-the-blue shock at 11!

WSJ front-pager.

Russia saying it's going to help start up the Bushehr reactor, a stance the US now supports as quid pro quo for gaining Moscow's agreement to the recent--and fourth--round of UN sanctions.

And so the Obama admin spins positively on the development, even as many experts do the exact opposite. The White House hopes and prays the sanctions work new wonders, but this train continues to roll . . ..

Stephens: inching toward realism on Iran's nukes

Bret Stephens in the WSJ asking, why hasn’t Israel bombed Iran yet?

First, he asks, why didn’t Israel strike in the spring of 2008, when such speculation was far hotter than even today?

He answers that Olmert saw it as too big a gamble, and why not let all the diplomatic angles be exhausted first?

After that, the blame shifts to Obama’s election, because of his offer to talk with Tehran.

Now, says Stephens, all such hopes were clearly misplaced.

So why hasn’t Netanyahu struck, as Stephens was certain he would do earlier this year?

Four reasons offered: 

1. Israeli military had low confidence of success;
2. Israel bides its time for defensive measures like Iron Dome to be perfected;
3. Min of Def Ehud Barak opposes Netanyahu and instead believes deterrence is reasonably achieved; and
4. as far as relevant history is concerned, forget about the Osirak strike in 1982 and instead think of 1956 and how the US opposed Israel’s efforts with France and the UK to humiliate Nasser, whom Stephens compares to Ahmadinejad today.

Stephen now places his faint hopes in an Obama Administration reconsidering the utility of military strikes—two plus years later, which makes no sense at all.  If it was a gamble for Israel in the spring of 2008, how can it be any better of a gamble after Iran has had two and a half years to improve its countering preparations?

When even Stephens is reduced to such hope-mongering, you begin to get the sense that the world is learning to accept what was always inevitable.

India: not so happy with Iranian sanctions

Petroleum Secretary S. SundareshanWSJ story about India’s top energy official complaining that new US-engineered sanctions on Iran’s oil & gas industry would prevent India’s desired strategy of making investments there.  Simultaneously, India has revived talks with Tehran about the long-proposed gas pipeline from Iran to India through Pakistan.

Of course, the sanctions ask far more of the East than the West, because the latter has extensive energy connectivity while the former is seeking to ramp up their own at high speed, and, as far as India is concerned, close-by Iran is THE obvious choice.

As the chart shows, India’s crude imports of oil have come close to doubling since just 2007, so one imagines all the low-hanging fruit has been plucked in terms of investments, making Iran all that much more attractive as a target.

And remember that, when talking nuclear sanctions, this is an India that went down the same path prior—despite much hand-wringing in the West, so no surprise that the Indians feel no particular need to freak out about Iran’s obvious ambitions.

Ahmadinejad gets explicit: there is only one party

NYT analysis that notes how brazen Ahmadinejad is becoming in his words and deeds WRT declaring the Revolutionary Guards a single-party dictatorship.

Having successfully suppressed the opposition uprising that followed last summer’s disputed presidential election, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters are now renewing their efforts to marginalize another rival group — Iran’s traditional conservatives.

Conservative rivals of Mr. Ahmadinejad are fighting back, publicly accusing him of sidelining clerics and the Parliament, pursuing an “extremist” ideology, and scheming to consolidate control over all branches of Iran’s political system.

“Now that they think they have ejected the reformists, maybe they think it is time to remove their principalist opponents,” said Morteza Nabavi, the editor of a mainstream conservative newspaper, in an unusually blunt interview published Friday in the weekly Panjereh. Iranian conservatives, including Mr. Ahmadinejad’s group, prefer the term “principalism” to “fundamentalism.”

The strikes that broke out in the Tehran bazaar last week, while provoked by a proposed income tax increase, reflect the growing rift between the conservative factions, with the merchants, or bazaaris, on the side of the traditionalists.

Mr. Ahmadinejad has often fed the traditional conservatives’ fears; he has referred to the divide among conservatives, warning that “the regime has only one party” in a speech published Monday on his official Web site that provoked outrage among his conservative rivals.

“I think we are seeing a kind of Iranian McCarthyism, with Ahmadinejad disposing of all the people who are not with him by accusing them of being anti-revolutionary or un-Islamic,” said an Iranian political analyst, who refused to be identified for fear of retribution.

More to the point, those of the original revolutionary generation, with ties to Khomenei, are being reduced:

The rift is partly a generational one, with Mr. Ahmadinejad leading a combative cohort of conservatives supported by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards. On the other side is an older generation of leaders who derive their authority from their links to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. Reformist lawmakers now represent a largely impotent minority in the Parliament.

Ahmadinejad, feeling confident in his president-centric single-party state, now consolidates his grip, signaling a further diminishment of the clerical elite.

Chart of the day: Iran's major trade partners

FT analysis of sanctions' effects on Iran included this cool graphic, which I scan.

Clear realities:

1) Asia is replacing Europe as primary trade partners;

2) China is clear #1 at almost 16%, a rough doubling since 2003 (almost a quarter of all Iranian trade is concentrated in China and Japan, and if you add India and Korea you're at about 40%);

3) by comparison, the US is a non-entity at less than 1/2 of one percent, hence all our efforts at sanctions are about getting other people to deny Iran trade, with only our European friends and Japan going in that direction and the rising East completely picking up that slack.

It's like a giant teeter-totter with Asia pushing down and Europe being lifted and Turkey serving as the steady fulcrum.

I think you could say that about a lot of things today.

The IRGC does just fine with the "crippling sanctions"

Newsweek story, via WPR's Media Roundup, on Iran's $12B-a-year smuggling market, virtually all of which is controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Analysts say the organization has the structure of a mafia network, with dozens of seemingly legitimate front businesses that mask illicit enterprises or serve as money laundries. “[They’re] extremely creative [with] front organizations, which they’ll open and shut regularly,” says Levitt. The IRGC’s business operations began more than 20 years ago, at the end of the Iran-Iraq War. Fearful of potential unrest among newly unemployed young men flooding back from the front lines, then president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani approved a plan for the IRGC to open companies and bid on government contracts.

The IRGC’s involvement in smuggling began about the same time, when Rafsanjani established free-trade areas in Kish and Qeshm, two islands across the Gulf from Dubai. On paper, the islands’ duty-free goods were tightly controlled; to thwart profiteers, a national ID was required for each purchase. But the IRGC gamed the system using a list of its members’ ID numbers to import scarce household appliances and resell them on the black market. The IRGC had its own private jetties, recalls Mohsen Sazegara, one of the group’s founders, who now lives in exile in Virginia: “I saw the Qeshm one personally. The Customs officer wouldn’t dare go near them. All the years [when] importing household goods—like radios, TVs, refrigerators—was prohibited, the shops in [Tehran’s] Jomhouri Street were stocked full. [Shop owners] would say that travelers had brought the items in from duty-free, but in reality the Revolutionary Guards were bringing it all in from Qeshm.”

Traffic only expanded from there. 

This truly reminds me of Brezhnevian Russia: where officially everything was banned and unofficially everything could be had, so long as the officials got their cut.

Iran's legit businesses hate the smuggling, which gets around all the sanctions while their stuff does not.

The usual outcome with sanctions is thus achieved:  the elite rich get richer and the ordinary businesses lose out and atrophy--the opposite of a connectivity strategy.

Kurdistan pursues its own economic connectivity with Iran

 

NYT piece on how the Kurds are facilitating Iranian oil exports, pocketing the profits in a way than angers Baghdad.

Analysts say that the Kurdish region’s oil trade with Iran provides a revenue source that it does not have to share with Baghdad, at least for now, diminishing its reliance on exports to Turkey. It also grants them leverage in resolving oil and internal border disputes with Baghdad.

“They can negotiate from a position of strength,” says Ruba Husari, an oil specialist and founder of Iraqoilforum.com. “They are running their own oil kingdom.”

But questions about the legitimacy of the region’s oil activities are increasingly coming from within.

“Kurdistan is like an island with no rule of law when it comes to oil,” says Abdulla Malla-Nuri, a member of the region’s Parliament from the Gorran opposition movement, which broke away from one of the governing parties last year and has accused them of rampant corruption.

Kurdistan is acting in its own best interests, as one might expect of a state-within-a-state.  The US under Obama hasn't exactly gone out of its way to work with the Kurds, and they return the favor.

The revolution in Iran focuses on the big picture

Tehran's latest morality crackdown, according to this NYT piece, focuses on acceptable haircuts, which, according to this chart, all seem right out of 1950s America.

The morality crackdown is a bit harsher this year, but it all strikes me as the usual pathetic attempt to dictate the dumbest little bits of everyday life-- a revolution that's dead when it comes to ideas and vision but has plenty of stupid-ass rules.  Oh so Brehznevian.

The public really hates this sort of stuff, which is why Ahmadinejad routinely claims it's not his fault and distances himself from this crap.

Why Iran meddles in Afghanistan

 

Very sensible stuff from Hilary Mann Leverett at ForeignPolicy.com by way of Our Man in Kabul.

The first question covers the gist of her logic.

1. In late May, then-top commander General Stanley McChrystal said there is "clear evidence of Iranian activity" in training and providing weaponry to the Taliban in Afghanistan. What are Iran's core interests in Afghanistan, and how have they evolved in the last nine years? How do those complement or work against what the U.S. and NATO are trying to achieve there?

Iran has a strategic stake in Afghanistan that has not changed in the last nine years. Tehran's overriding interest is to prevent Afghanistan (with its long and lawless border with Iran) from being used as a platform from which to attack or undermine the Islamic Republic or to weaken Iran's standing as a regional power. 

To prevent Afghanistan from being used as an anti-Iranian platform, the Islamic Republic has worked, over many years, to form relationships with Afghan players who could keep Iran's Afghan enemies (principally the Taliban but also other anti-Shiite and anti-Persian groups) and their external supporters (principally Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two of Iran's most important regional antagonists) in check. To this end, Iran has worked to strengthen and unite Afghanistan's Shiite Hazara and other Dari/Persian-speaking communities (which together comprise about 45 percent of the population) as a counterweight to anti-Iranian, pro-Saudi, and pro-Pakistani elements among Afghan Pashtuns (roughly 42 percent of the population). The Hazara and other Dari/Persian-speaking communities were, of course, the core of the Northern Alliance that fought the Taliban during the 1990s, and were supported by India and Russia as well as Iran.[[BREAK]]

In contrast to Iraq, where Shia are a clear majority of the population and Shiite groups linked to Tehran are the most important political forces in the country, Iran knows from bitter experience that the Hazara and the other Dari/Persian-speaking communities provide, at best, inadequate protection for Iranian interests in Afghanistan, because they cannot govern the country in a way that keeps it relatively stable and minimizes Pakistani and Saudi influence. So, alongside its alliances with the Hazara and the other Dari/Persian-speaking groups, Iran has also cultivated ties to some Pashtun elements in Afghanistan and supported the country's Pashtun President, Hamid Karzai.

As part of its cultivation of ties to Pashtun elements, Iran has almost certainly reached out to some Taliban factions. But I would wager a substantial sum that America's "ally" Pakistan is providing vastly more support to the Afghan Taliban than anything the Islamic Republic might be doing. And Tehran remains strongly opposed to the Taliban's resurgence as a major force in Afghan politics, for two reasons. First, the Taliban have traditionally persecuted Iran's Afghan allies -- especially the Shia Hazara -- and have even murdered Iranian diplomats. Second, Tehran sees the Taliban as a pawn for the expansion of Pakistani and Saudi influence in Afghanistan.   

As Tehran pursues this strategy of multiple alliances within Afghanistan, it must also assess the evolving role of the United States there and the implications of the U.S. posture toward Iran for Iran's Afghanistan policy. If the United States and NATO could convince Iran that they want an independent and stable Afghanistan that would be friendly to Iran, then U.S./NATO and Iranian strategies and tactics could complement each other very constructively. (This was very much the case in the months following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, when I was one of a small number of U.S. officials engaged in ongoing discussions with Iranian counterparts about how to deal with Afghanistan and al-Qaeda, and U.S. and Iranian policies regarding these issues were rather closely coordinated.)

But, if Tehran perceives Washington as hostile to its interests -- which, unfortunately, is currently the case, given the Obama administration's drive to impose sanctions and continued use of covert operations to undermine the Islamic Republic -- then Iranian policymakers will regard the United States, along with America's Pakistani and Saudi allies, as part of the complex of anti-Iranian external players that Iran needs to balance against in Afghanistan. In this context, Iran has a strong interest in preventing U.S. troops in Afghanistan from being used to attack Iran directly, used as covert operatives to undermine the Iranian government, or used to strengthen Iran's regional rivals.

So often I'm sent stuff that says Iran is meddling in Afghanistan and therefore we shouldn't consider cooperating with them. But as I like to note, Af-Pak is Iran's front yard, so meddling is a given.  When you understand how the Iranians are meddling, you see the potential for collaboration. But as Mann Leverett points out, when you chose Pakistan, you un-choose others--and not just India.

The Politics Blog: Seven Things to Remember When We Talk to the Taliban

 

Is your stomach churning yet? The occasionally salacious but usually accurate Guardian is reporting that Team Obama is signaling that it's ready to negotiate with the Taliban. Through "trusted" intermediaries like the Pakistanis and Saudis, naturally, and via plausibly denied channels, of course, but... really? Is this what a peace-in-your-first-term, Nobel Prize-winning president looks like? If we're going to reconcile ourselves to this kind of indecent proposal — the last one led to the bloody Swat Valley offensive — the U.S. had better not lose site of reality. Here's how. If it's not too late.

Read the entire post at Esquire's The Politics Blog.

WPR's The New Rules: U.S. Must Expand its Pool of Allies in Afghanistan

 

With his recent selections of Gens. David Petraeus and James Mattis for command in Afghanistan and Central Command respectively, President Barack Obama signals his understanding that his previously established deadline of mid-2011 to begin drawing down combat troops in the “good war” cannot be met.  The two were co-architects of the military’s renewed embrace of both counterinsurgency operations and the associated nation-building project that by necessity goes along with it. Neither flag officer can be expected to preside over a Vietnam-like exit that once again puts troubled and untrustworthy Pakistan in charge of Afghanistan’s fate.

Read the rest of the column at World Politics Review.