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?

Is Afghanistan worth it?

Bret Stephens column in WSJ by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

Solid piece that made me covetous of its argument the moment I read it.  Nicely done.

The guy navigates some dicey terrain:

It's never easy to point out that, in the scale of American military sacrifice, Afghanistan does not figure large. But acknowledging a historical fact does nothing to belittle the cost the war has exacted on America's soldiers and their families: It merely offers some mental ballast to offset the swelling panic. What does belittle the sacrifice—both for those who have fallen and those who fight—is to suggest that the war is nothing but a misbegotten errand in a godforsaken land.

And then lays down the conservative case with great intelligence:

For conservatives in particular, the answer ought to entail notions of consistency and responsibility. Consistency, in the sense of supporting a counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan similar to the one conservatives urged (and that worked) for Iraq after the abject failure of the "light footprint" approach advocated by Joe Biden. Responsibility, in the sense of keeping faith with those to whom we make commitments.

This is not just a moral argument: The U.S. cannot remain a superpower if the suspicion takes root that we are a feckless nation that can be stampeded into surrender by a domestic caucus of defeatists. Allies or would-be allies will make their own calculations and hedge their bets. Why should we be surprised that this is precisely what Pakistan has done vis-a-vis the Taliban? It's not as if the U.S. hasn't abandoned that corner of the world before to its furies.

How a feckless America is perceived by its friends is equally material to how we are perceived by our enemies. In his 1996 fatwa declaring war on the U.S., Osama bin Laden took note of American withdrawals from Beirut in 1983 and Mogadishu a decade later. "When tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was dragged through the streets . . . you withdrew, the extent of your impotence and weakness became very clear." Is it the new conservative wisdom to prove bin Laden's point (one that the hard men in Tehran undoubtedly share), only on a vastly greater scale?

Nor does it seem especially conservative to subscribe to the non sequitur that because Hamid Karzai is not George Washington our efforts in Afghanistan will be of no avail. Utopia is a liberal temptation; conservatism is comfortable with the good enough. In Afghanistan that would mean a run-of-the-mill Third World country that can fend for itself, menaces nobody and is an updated version of what the country was in the 1960s. That's a reminder that Afghan history does not ineluctably condemn it to chaos or fanaticism. It's also a reminder that the measure of success in Afghanistan isn't whether we create a new Switzerland, but whether we avoid another South Vietnam.

Nothing to add, save that I admire the logic and the writing.

WPR's The New Rules: For U.S. After Iraq, History Once Again Awaits

America has entered a new phase in its Iraq operations, one that represents the end of the “lost war” to many, the non-combat continuation of nation-building to others, and a vague sense of a never-ending global security commitment to just about everyone.  Americans, who crave clear definitions of success or failure, aren’t sure what to make of this turning point, especially since for many, their attention has already shifted to the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. Meanwhile, some pundits sound the alarm with cries of “permanent war,” even though we haven’t officially declared war on anybody since 1943. As for the rest of the planet, humanity currently enjoys the most systematically peaceful period in its recorded history.

Read the entire column at World Politics Review.

Perfectly fine to arm up the Sunnis

WSJ front-pager on US selling $30B worth of F-15s to the Saudis, albeit lacking features that Israel opposes.

I'm not a fan of Saudi Arabia, even as I wish King Abdullah (and his reforms) a much longer life, but frankly, I'd sell the Saudis whatever they want in whatever amounts they want, because, once Iran gets the bomb, the Saudis will be sorely tempted to follow suit.  So the more cool we keep them in the short run, the better.

The Saudis are never going to attack Israel and wouldn't find any utility in letting others do the same.  They've grown beyond such dynamics, so why not arm them and everybody else in the region to the teeth, so as to make clear to Tehran how they gain nothing in military influence by achieving the bomb.

I still await the argument that proves how nukes ever got anybody anything--other than safe harbor from attack by other great powers.  About the best case you can make is that Ike signaled his willingness to go all the way on Korea, convincing the Soviet bloc to avoid escalation.  But even there, you're talking about a bad thing being prevented more than any victory won or influence cemented. 

All Iran does by getting the bomb is to make itself Israel's strategic equal in the region, logically triggering bilateral talks once the brinkmanship gets tiresome (less for them than for interested great powers).  To the extent that Turkey and the Saudis step into that dynamic on their own, I see less danger in proliferation and more safety in a truly regional strategic security architecture.

But meanwhile, we balance appropriately.

A bad call by Obama on Turkey

FT front-pager on how Obama warns the Turks to change their stance on Israel and Iran or risk being denied US weapons.

This while we sell the store to the Saudis, birthplace of most of the 9/11 terrorists, and keep the pipeline open to the Pakistanis. Talk about screwed up.

This is an immature response to a maturing foreign policy.

An anonymous administration official is quoted as saying the Turks need to show that they take our national security interests seriously.

Definitely a realism deficit--on our side.

Pakistan finally wakes up on its own insurgency

WSJ story on how Pakistan now admits its own internal militant insurgencies problem is a bigger threat than India.

Hmmm.  About ten years and $10B in military aid too late.

No impact yet seen on troop positioning.  Pakistan has about 150k soldiers in the Taliban fight, with 100k in reserve.  350k keep a close eye on India to the south.

Experts say that the ISI (intell service) may be leaning this way, but the military still likes to use the militants as a tool against hated India.

America gives upwards of $2B a year in military aid to Pakistan.  No ultimatums issued by Team Obama--unlike in the case of Turkey.

The Pakistan Taliban kill about 1,000 Pakistanis every year since 2003.

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.

WPR's The New Rules: Putting the Brakes on China until Beijing Can

In late-July, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gently put China on notice regarding its increasingly aggressive claims over the near-entirety of the South China Sea by proposing a formal international legal process to resolve territorial disputes there.  Naturally, the Chinese were not pleased, but the proposal was a great move by the Obama administration. Every step that China takes to build up its military power naturally triggers a strong balancing desire throughout the rest of Asia.  But with none of those far-smaller economies looking to anger “rising China,” somebody needs to give voice to those fears and create vehicles for organizing the sought-after balancing.

That somebody can only be the United States.

Read the rest of the column at World Politics Review.

The Af-Pak trade pact--45 years in the negotiating!

Score two for Hillary in July: the proposed internationalization of a legal process to resolve South China Sea claims and then this Pakistan-Afghanistan trade deal.

The United States had prodded the two countries to sign the accord, calculating that it would bolster the Afghan economy by expanding its trade routes and curbing rampant smuggling. The pact could cover a multitude of trade and transit issues, ranging from import duties to port access. Example of progress: killing the requirement to reload all Afghan exports at Pakistan’s border instead of at some downstream port.

The two countries have been working on the deal since . . . oh, when did it start?  Oh right, 1965!

I’m happy to say I lived long enough (born 1962) to see this day come.

The uncertainty principle divides Obama’s achievements from his political reality

NOTE:  No World Politics Review column today, so I offer this up as replacement.

President Obama’s sour relationship with American business is much in the news these days, with even the usually staid U.S. Chamber of Commerce publicly voicing the private sector’s growing concern that he’s “anti-business.”  Despite several significant legislative achievements in his first 18 months in office (e.g., the stimulus, healthcare, higher education, financial regulations—next up, energy), all of which demonstrated the president’s tremendous responsiveness to the political challenges of the day, Obama is losing the center of the electorate to the GOP for precisely the same reason he’s losing the business community:  he’s introduced too much uncertainty in a time already fraught with it.

In my day job I help run a technology firm that capitalizes on such sentiment by providing business solutions as a service (e.g., making supply chains more transparent, improving patient flow in major medical centers, securing critical infrastructure), so from my selfish perspective, I don’t mind additional uncertainty—especially when it’s created by more complex regulatory schemes.  But my company also needs businesses to be aggressive about tackling that complexity, trusting that today’s investments will better position their companies for tomorrow’s competitive landscape.   And here’s where too much uncertainty sabotages economic decision making and business planning:  unsure of the longer payoff, too much of the private sector—and its money—is staying on the sidelines of this “statistical recovery.”

That trillion-dollar tentativeness across the private sector helps explain the persistently high unemployment rate of almost 10 percent, with one out of six work-seeking Americans saying they’re underemployed.  But don’t forget about the other five-sixths of the workforce, who certainly are being overworked to achieve that recovery—such as it is.   That middle class (and political middle) wants nothing less from its government than protection from economic uncertainty: it has achieved a decent lifestyle and wants to pass it on to its children with slight but steady improvements—a long-term trend that disappeared this last decade.  Spook that herd and it will come thundering down on incumbents of all political stripes.  No wonder so many Democrat-leaning pundits are calling for a renewed Keynesian push. 

But more importantly, remember that, prior to the crash, we spent six long years enduring all new manner of fears on the previously stable national-security side of the ledger, so all this recent individual economic uncertainty has been piled on top of that baseline anxiety.  Obama’s “big government” answers on the economy haven’t really been all that much bigger than Bush-Cheney’s efforts were on national security (check out the Washington Post’s recent series on “Top Secret America”), but again, there’s that cumulative difference between piling up and piling on.  Obama suffers the distinct misfortune of coming late to what New York Times columnist David Brooks has dubbed the “technocracy boom” of the last decade.

Obama now needs American capitalism to rescue his depressed presidency, even as his political language remains harsh in that direction.  Like a Theodore or Franklin Roosevelt, Obama presents himself as a protector of the “little man” against the moneyed interests, but rhetorically choosing Main Street over Wall Street is pure theater.  Frankly, it’s like the surgeon asking the patient if he likes his heart better than his lungs.  Good example:  by cracking down on derivatives (originally known as “crop futures”) in its massive financial reform bill, the administration has introduced vast uncertainty into the otherwise strong agricultural industry, where your average mid-sized farmer hedges most of his annual crop through such “nefarious” financial instruments.

And unlike either Roosevelt, Obama can’t even be cast—however unflatteringly—as a “traitor to his own class.”  Having never been a businessperson, his re-regulating of core industries—after three decades of de-regulation, mind you—has invariably earned him the “socialist” label from a slight majority of Americans in one recent poll.  And in a nation that’s roughly split, 70-to-30, between those who favor retaining American-style capitalism over European-style socialism, those negative numbers can only go up—unless perceptions are dramatically changed.

Of course, the easiest way to improve presidential poll numbers is for the economy to improve in time for the 2012 elections (forget about this November, when the GOP should grab at least the House).  But, again, with smart guys like David Brooks predicting a “nasty crawl” when it comes to income growth, we should expect an even nastier, impatient and intolerant electorate.  Read Benjamin Friedman’s book, “The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth,” where he explores the consistency of that political causality across America’s many decades.

So how does Obama improve his standing before 2012?  The temptation is always to turn to foreign affairs when domestic constraints abound, but even here, Obama faces a narrow menu of options, all of which demand great exertion while promising little popular credit.  Take Afghanistan:  running with Robert Blackwill’s tempting logic, Obama can “give the south to the Taliban” and hope such “reconciliation” holds through the election.  But as the Times Square bomber demonstrated, the Af-Pak’s pool of violent fundamentalists can re-capture the president’s national security agenda at will.

Indeed, plenty of people within both Washington’s national security community and New York City’s first-responder community choose—with utmost realism—to view the Times Square incident as less a legitimate attempt and more a calculated probe.  The new buzz phrase in both communities is improvised nuclear device (IND), or what most experts call the “dirty bomb” because the blast is less frightening and/or damaging than the dispersal of radioactive material.  Again, the whole point of such an attack would be to spook America’s middle ranks into an even greater sense of uncertainty by despoiling its favorite town square.  Like so many things we seek to understand today, like the new financial regulations, the full impact of such an attack wouldn’t be known for years. 

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan opines that “American politics is desperately in need of adult supervision”—her sideways suggestion that we currently lack great “statesmen” with sufficiently white hair.  Perhaps so.  With this great confluence of uncertainties we surely need more leaders who can confidently say, “I’ve seen it all before”—even if they haven’t.  Because one thing is for certain:  the combination of an unpopular president, a dysfunctionally partisan Congress, and a reluctant business community is no way to move forward.

Don't forget Kosovo!

map here

NYT “Washington memo” reminding us that roughly 1,500 US troops still help keep the peace in the Balkans, along with 8k other troops (mostly European).

And still Kosovo wobbles, 11 years after Milosevic fell and two years after the small nation declared its independence—the last of the breakaways.  The recent International Court of Justice approval of that declaration pissed off Serbia and Russia, but so be it.

The key thing is that:

Kosovo, at least, is largely free of the violence that tore it apart two presidents ago, and Mr. Obama can afford to leave it to his vice president or secretary of state, both of whom played a role in the 1999 war.  But it remains unnerving to those in Washington with their eyes on larger problems that the impasse continues to defy efforts to move on.

Oh boo-hoo.  Recovery and full resolution is a generational affair—quelle surprise!

What's clear to me: the fight over the kids ain't over.  Check out the Serb-heavy slice to the north.  If Kosovo wants the clean break, it needs to break off that chunk and send it on its way.

US-SouKo naval exercise: I say, stick it to the new emperor!

pic here

WSJ on the message that was sent by the US-South Korea large-scale naval exercise, despite China’s objections and NorKo’s pathetically over-the-top threats of raining down nukes on the whole proceedings.

China fears nothing about the exercise in a direct sense. It’s just Beijing worrying that the US and SouKo intending to pressurize the new kid on the block—Kim Jong Un.

Coincidentally, that is exactly what I would advocate.

Anything else lets Beijing off its self-created hook and gives Idiot Son #3 the wrong impression (i.e., that he’s anything but a historical placeholder).  If we feed that numbskull’s ego, we will regret it in spades (like the kind you use to dig mass graves).

Hillary pushes for the internationalization of the South China Sea dispute process

WSJ on sharp move and plan by Hillary Clinton to set up multinational legal process for Asian nations to resolve claims in the South China Sea.

Naturally, China is pissed, preferring to keep the whole mess on a bilateral basis, which would allow Beijing maximum advantage in bullying smaller neighbors. Having it all out in the open complicates China’s claims.

Yes, as the piece argues, it’s “a move that could raise new tensions with China,” but it’s well worth the hassle.  The competing South China Sea claims are the last-gasp hope for the big-war-with-China crowd that exists in our national security community, primarily because the old standby dream, the Taiwan scenario, is bleeding out its plausibility with the signing of the free-trade agreement linking the island with the mainland.

This is exactly the kind of far-sighted stuff Clinton should be pursuing—a truly impressive achievement.

The multilat process is to be based on the international law of the sea—even better despite our long-standing problems with it.

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.

Toward a muddling-out option on Afghanistan

Show me the exitHaas piece in Newsweek is intelligent enough.  In effect, he argues that a nation-building effort designed to make Afghanistan whole will not succeed and will cost too much, so accept that this fake state will feature a Taliban-heavy south a la Blackwill and then make your choices on how you want to manage the situation, his big choice being either you seek “reintegration” with the Taliban or you acquiesce to their enclave in the south and spend your time and money building up the north and competing enclaves in the south (Tajik, Baluchi, Hazara) that would otherwise be trapped in an achieved rump Pashtunistan.

Haas argues that Pakistan would never accept a true Pashtunistan because it would threaten the integrity of its own fake state, which is probably true in terms of initial reaction, but I suspect that Islamabad would ultimately see such a soft border solution as to its advantage—legitimizing its “strategic depth” argument.  The question would be, would that be enough for Islamabad or would it pursue its historical habit of wanting Pashtun control to extend all the way to Kabul.

As I’ve argued earlier here, I see real promise in soft border solutions both north (Pashtunistan) and south (Kashmir) of Islamabad, not in the sense that I see them as easy outs, but rather that I don’t see any other long-term solution that will work better.

I honestly see the Pashtun southern enclave solution in Afghanistan to be not that much unlike the Kurdistan Regional Gov in Iraq.  Yes, the sheer existence raises the possibility of a “greater X” ambition on the part of co-ethnics “trapped” in neighboring states, but it’s an elegant solution compared to any drive to re-unify the fake state through force or even soft-power nation-building.  Plus, it creates the breathing space opportunity to work economic solutions on the enclave itself, which, in the case of the Taliban-controlled south, will admittedly be far harder to pursue than in the welcoming-if-corrupt KRG.

Nagl’s countering analysis on Petraeus’s approach:  that same strategy that stabilized Iraq can work in Afghanistan—the effective building up of Afghan’s security forces to defend themselves against the Taliban.  Frankly, if Petraeus and Caldwell (working the issue directly as a subordinate) can’t make it work, I don’t know who can.

The golden lining to date:  Petraeus convincing Karzai to allow him to pursue McChrystal’s plan to create community-based security forces.  To the extent that Petraeus succeeds, his contribution could dovetail with the Haas/Blackwill notion of  reintegrating the Taliban to the extent of recognizing their enclave in the south while building up the capacity of competing enclaves there to defend themselves.  What you end up with X months/years down the road is a Lebanon-like situation where the Taliban are forced to compete with outside-financed nation-building efforts in a reasonably stable country.  The expectation would be that the Taliban are no Hezbollah, and that Pakistan wouldn’t extend itself to compete via the Taliban in such nation-building, given that the south of Afghanistan was implicitly recognized as constituting a sphere of its influence.

The right kind of aid for Pakistan

 

Ignatius in WAPO complaining bitterly about Congress' inability to make special investment/jobs-creating zones in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

I am embarrassed when I think back to a conversation last October in Wana, South Waziristan -- deep in the tribal areas -- with Maj. Gen. Khalid Rabbani, the commander of Pakistani forces there. He was about to launch an offensive against Taliban fighters, but he worried that the "clear and hold" phase of the campaign would fail if Pakistan couldn't also "build" through economic development.

Be patient, I told him. Congress is working on a bill that will take a first step toward bringing more jobs to the region.

Nine months later, Congress is still caught in partisan gridlock over the plan to create Reconstruction Opportunity Zones in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA. 

Usual fight back here about jobs being lost, but if you don't incentivize the "build," there ain't no sense in Pakistan sacrificing much in the "clear," argues Ignatius.

It's a very valid point.  

But I have to wonder:  should we be aspiring to this A-to-Z coverage?  Or, if Obama is going to use political capital, as Ignatius encourages him to do, shouldn't we more logically entice regional powers into the economic "build"?  I mean, if something this logical and simple encounters such political resistance here, shouldn't we be encouraging more localized stakeholders--the kind who would remain interested long after we're gone?

Wikileaks: the transparency standard we inevitably face in the Long War

NYT story on Wikileaks' motives in publishing what the Times is calling "the war logs," which they and several other big mainstream media players were given access to a while back by the organization, leading to the flood of analyzing stories we shall now encounter.

In "Great Powers," I praised Wikileaks for serving as a "wormhole between the two communities--the secret and the unclassified," describing it as "the Radio Free Europe of the surveillance age."  To me, the organization characterizes an emerging standard of transparency in what many call the "long war," and what I refer to as the integration of frontiers as part of globalization's continuing expansion.  It's this emerging transparency standard, sometimes generated by well-meaning friends, other times by insurgents simply looking to brag or recruit others by displaying their deeds, that pushed me to argue, as one of my "grand compromises" between America and the world, that we will eventually pursue an openness WRT to our security efforts around the planet that will mimic what Americans expect from their own police departments--as in, every round accounted for, like the NYPD has done for the last couple of decades.

Why reach for such an amazingly high standard?  Because the ballooning transparency of this networked world will simply demand it--from the bottom up.  Wikileaks is part of that bottom-up demand, and no matter what you think of its motivations, its impact will be viral--and lasting.

This is the inevitable--and painful--evolution we face: the Leviathan can stay in the secret shadows, but the SysAdmin is held to a supremely more difficult standard--behavior so clean that it can assuage shareholders' values, because if it can't, there's no hope of connecting investments by multinational corporations--aka job creation, and jobs are the only exit strategy.

As usual, such arguments are considered by some in the warrior class as complete nonsense--the fantastic attempt to civilize that which is inherently uncivil.  But stepping back from the challenge is simply to admit that we cannot play in this arena, which in my estimation is damn near the whole enchilada going forward. Yes, we can pull back, stock up on our preferred platforms, and dream of getting it on with China over some distant lithium mine.  But that would be holding on to the past instead of moving toward the future.  China will simply disappoint.

So the US military either moves to that impossible standard over time, or it will forced out of the global policing business, only to see all manner of other entities fill that space sub-optimally.  We can either lead or follow.

Because if done well, displaying sufficient progress over time, we will set a profound example that will revolutionize global security. 

Obama's Machiavelli? Does "guard dog" McDonough qualify?

David Ignatius worries in WAPO that Obama has no Machiavelli on par with Kissinger or Brzezinski:

But if ever there were a moment when a battle-fatigued United States needs a wily strategist to explore options, this is it.

Just who could play this role among the administration's current cast of characters isn't obvious, and that's a problem President Obama should address.

 The closest thing offered so far is Denis McDonough, chief of staff at NSC, but the WAPO profile makes him sound more like a classic, make-the-trains-run-on-time XO than serious thinker:

Mr. McDonough is intensively protective of the president, and is well known for picking up the phone — or his BlackBerry — to take people to task, from reporters to Washington talking heads to other Obama officials who go off message. He spent the entirety of his bike ride home to Takoma Park, Md., from the White House late one recent night arguing on the cellphone with a reporter who he believed had mischaracterized an internal administration debate over Iraq policy.

He has berated some of the Democratic Party’s most distinguished foreign policy dignitaries when they have dared to critique Mr. Obama publicly, leaving a miffed Washington establishment in his wake muttering — off the record, of course — about just who this guy thinks he is.

His e-mail messages are legendary across Washington, and usually appear right after a critique hits the Web. When David Rothkopf, a national security expert and Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration, wrote a column for The Washington Post last August that praised Mrs. Clinton — and notably, not Mr. Obama — as overseeing “profound changes” to American foreign policy, the first e-mail message Mr. Rothkopf received came from you-know-who.

“Interesting choice for a profile,” Mr. McDonough wrote.

“Political figures like to have people who are watching their back,” Mr. Rothkopf said in an interview. “I understand why people are bugged by McDonough; they’re jealous of his access to the president. But the president deserves to have someone like him.”

We're told he's the real go-to, trusted mind on foreign policy, but the profile offers nothing on his thinking and concentrates totally on his pit-bull role of protecting the president.  Can anybody provide any evidence of this guy's vision--anywhere?  I'm not being accusatory; I'm just curious if this guy has ever projected any agenda other than protecting his principal, which is laudatory but not exactly comforting given his perceived gatekeeper role.

The piece is not comforting in this regard, proclaiming that one can forget about Clinton or Gates or anybody else making similar "closeness to the president" claims, because McDonough is the be-all and end-all in this regard--the first and last to be consulted, the one brain hard-wired to Obama's blackberry.

In the end, we are still left with the suspicion that Obama is such the control freak on the subject that he remains his own foreign policy guru--a brain trust of one, protected by Rahm Emannuel's foreign policy double.

And that disturbs me somewhat.  I mean, shouldn't this guy have more to him than "legendary" crack-the-whip emails?

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.

Blackwill, recalling the Iraq debate on same, predicts partitioning of Afghanistan

map here

Per my Esquire Politics Blog post of yesterday, former ambassador to India Robert Blackwill argues in Politico:

The US polity should stop talking about timelines and exit strategies and accept that the Taliban will inevitably control most of its historic stronghold in the Pashtun south . . . But Washington could ensure that north and west Afghanistan do not succumb to jihadi extremism, using US air power and special forces along with the Afghan army and like-minded nations.

Blackwill admits nobody much would like this, meaning both Karzai and Pakistan would resist for obvious reasons (Karzai wants the pretense of ruling over the entirety of Afghanistan and Pakistan wants the Pashtun to recapture the whole and not just the south), but at least it would make explicit the reality that we'll be spending years pounding the south with military strikes in order to keep the al-Qaeda-Taliban nexus in their box.

The value?  Nation-building in the north can work and this way we admit that doing the same in the south cannot, so long as Pakistan seeks "strategic depth" via the Pashtun. In short, we admit Afghanistan is a fake state, but, by doing so, we suggest the same about Pakistan.

Down with the Durand Line!  Long live Pashtunistan!