The Song Remains the Same: Obama vs. the Pentagon

This reminds me a lot of what we saw in the 1990s WRT Clinton and the military. Whether it was DADT or Bosnia, mistrust and second guessing (in both directions) clouded the relationship and occasionally harmed American foreign policy, like the time Colin Powell wrote a letter to the editor in the NYT predicting that a military operation designed to stop 100,000 Bosnian Muslims from being raped, tens of thousands from being murdered and hundreds of thousands from being locked in death camps would certinally turn into a quaqmire from which there would be no escape.*

*We subsequently won the war in 2 weeks. It was the closest Powell ever came to being right.


So now it begins again. Last week somebody had the temerity to ask General McChrystal his thoughts on the probability that various strategies being bandied about may succeed or fail. And he had the audacity to answer honestly and objectively, based on nothing more than his 20+ years of professional experience and the most up-to-date orders he has received from his commander and chief.

The Obama/McChrystal plan is classic counterinsurgency and focuses on protecting the Afghan population while strengthening Afghan security forces and government. McChrystal was asked about a "counterterrorism" strategy that would purportedly contain al-Qaeda with much lower numbers of American troops, casualties and other costs. McChrystal did not try to force the president's hand on whether to increase the foreign troop presence in Afghanistan. The general critiqued an option that is at direct odds with Obama's policy and conflicts with the experiences of the U.S. military this decade. That is not fundamentally out of line for a commander.

It important to remember in this debate that Obama has not made any official decision on a new strategy for Afghanistan. As far as anybody knows, Obama still plans to fight "the good war" and beat the Taliban.

But that hasn't stopped the cadre of armchair commandos from trying to muzzle the opinion of the professional.

McChrystal's view -- that a strategy employing fewer resources, in pursuit of more limited goals, would be "short-sighted" -- is something the White House needs to hear. He is, after all, the man Obama put in charge in Afghanistan, and it would be absurd not to take his analysis of the situation into account. But McChrystal is out of line in trying to sell his position publicly, as he did last week in a speech in London

I don't think McChrystal was trying to "sell" his idea so much as he was trying to give an honest answer to an honest question. For what its worth, his answer was almost identical to the answers I heard from a room full of experts- civilian, military, and retired military - only a few days before.

 It's clear that one thing that is happening here is that Obama, once again, is asking a question publicly without knowing the answer ahead of time. McChrystal wasn't sitting in his HQ in Afghanistan inventing cold fusion or something; his formula for troop increases was based on a careful study of both a history of COIN, stretching back to Indian fighting on the frontier, and the current reality on the ground and the nature of the Pashtun insurgents and AQ. The bottom line: Obama should have had a pretty good idea about what McChrystal was going to recommend before he even asked for the recommendation, and if he knew he wasn't going to want to increase troops he should have said so upfront. If he knew he was going to outsource his grand strategy to Biden, he should have said so as well.

It's also clear and unfortunate that this debate reflects residual antipathy that arose between the military and American liberals/Leftists during the Vietnam war. The animosity between  those in uniform and their civilian commanders created a "stabbed in the back" myth that took hold within the officer corps in the shadow of Vietnam and led the military to completely forsake its COIN capability in favor of the Powell doctrine so as to avoid ever being betrayed by the politicians again.

I just hope Obama realizes that his actions in the next few months will continue to affect policy long after he has been impeached for losing the war left office.

 

Obama 2012: Some really early thoughts....

LFP = Light Foot Print, meaning drones, CIA paramilitary operators and SOCOM

The above chart represents my guess, as of right now, about how the different scenarios will play out for both Obama's choice on Afghanistan and the economy.  I've come up with three scenarios (good, bad and ugly) for each and handicapped Obama's reelection chances if each scenario comes to pass.

On the economy:

Three words: jobs jobs jobs.

As you can see, my ugly scenario involves us heading into approximately January/February 2012 with unemployment =/>10%. Under this scenario, Obama might as well step aside and give Hillary Clinton or Jim Webb a shot at the presidency, because he will be unable to even campaign. Also, he'll be able to do whatever he wants in Afghanistan and it and won't matter, because with an economy in that condition no one will be paying attention to Afghanistan. I find this scenario the least likely of the three.

My bad scenario has unemployment hovering somewhere between 6 and 10% basically for all of Obama's first term. My gut tells me we stay on the high side of that range, maybe an average of around 8.5% for Obama's whole first term. But the absolute unemployment rate probably matters less than the trend line in early 2012, and if the president can catch a couple of lucky breaks he could make the "morning in America" argument if unemployment is dropping from 8.5 or 9% in 2011 down to 7 or 8% in 2012. Indeed, after four years of suffering such a rapid drop will wind up looking very refreshing to most Americans.

In the bad (and most likely) scenario, the economy is just bad enough to make the race against (insert not-Palin here) competitive but just good enough to make reelection possible. In this scenario Afghanistan could matter a great deal if it is handled wrong. First, if Obama goes with my bad Afghan scenario and either completely withdraws or leaves behind just Spec Ops guys and killer robots, maybe, just maybe, the American people will be so sick of war and so happy with the relative economic gains that they will be willing to overlook the Republicans attack on Obama's "surrender"* to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

What will not fly under any circumstances is the status quo "ugly" scenario that basically kicks the can down the road on the COIN vs. outsource-it-to-killer-robot decision and allows enough troops to stay in the country to provide decent targets to the Taliban but not enough to really protect the population. This is the situation we are in now and it is untenable, even if some bloggers think we have the option of waiting.  My sources say we have to shift from "don't worry we're leaving" to "don't worry we're staying" or we will never build the kind of relationships we need to fight the Taliban.

Finally, I have an across the board "good scenario" in which unemployment drops back down the 2005-06 or mid to late 1990s levels. Under this scenario, Obama could win pretty handily even if he leaves Afghanistan to the Terminators and the Taliban and he will be almost unbeatable if he orders a successful "surge" style COIN strategy that stands up local militias to fight the Taliban all over the country.

I've made it clear that I believe Obama should support General McChrystal's recommendation and order a full on COIN strategy (based on what I heard at the COIN conference we need ~30 battalions - 30k troops) that both protects the population and begins embedding American forces with their Afghan counter-parts. But I'll admit there are plenty of risks, not the least of which is that the Afghan government could continue to be plagued with corruption and allegations of election fraud which would make it very difficult to counter the Taliban's argument that Karzi's regime is the corrupt tool of the imperialist west. It's also possible that Pakistan could continue to hedge between the U.S. and a Pashtun (read: Taliban) government in Afghanistan which would allow the ISI to continue to build their "farm team" for the coming war with India in Kashmir. Both AQ and the Taliban would love to see another Mumbai-style (or better yet 9/11) attack inside India that will be linked back to the ISI and force America to choose between the two south Asian states.

At home, the war appears to be loosing support but I say ignore the polls for the time being. The Republicans are basically in favor of increasing the troops in Afghanistan and that means that both Obama and whoever his opponent will be in 2012 will own this war (to see how this plays out in a national elections Google, Kerry, John: Voted for it before I voted against it). So unless Obama is worried that Cindy Sheehan and Micheal Moore are going to run against him, I don't think the negative polling on Afghanistan will have any real negative consequences if he decides to go with the high end of McChrystal's recommendation. In fact, Obama should be hoping for such a confrontation, because a public slap-down on Micheal Moore would probably boost Obama's approval among moderates and independents.   

In conclusion, I believe Obama has one path on the economy and two paths on Afghanistan if he is going to seek reelection in 2012. On the economy, the most important factor will be putting America back to work, but he can win without achieving "full employment" so long as the the unemployment numbers are trending down by 2012. In Afghanistan, Obama can go big and long or go home, but the status quo both in terms of troop strength and strategy is unacceptable and will cost Obama the presidency in 2012 no matter what happens to the economy.

*This depends on who he runs against. I'll deal with this in another post.

Eyeballing the Link Between Unemployment and Reelection..

All stats from this website.

Weird. Hmm. I would have expected a much clearer correlation between the unemployment rate and presidential reelection.

I started looking at these numbers wondering what Obama's chances of reelection are if unemployment remains high and from a historical perspective things may not be quit as bleak as they appear. I would say unemployment has to be trending down by, oh, say January of 2012 for Obama to have a decent shot at a second term, and obviously if the numbers are still trending up by then both Obama but the whole country will be in a lot of trouble. But as Reagan proved, unemployment does not necessarily have to be low by 2012, it just has to be trending down. And as both Bush 41 and Carter show, trending down after the spring of the election year seems to be too late, so January 2012 will probably be the moment of truth for Obama to make or break his second term.

Obama and the IOC: A Knucklehead Move

(h/t to I hate Linux for the pic)

I was not a person who criticized the president for trying to bring the Olympics to Chicago - because I think its not only ok but admirable when the president is a booster for team America.

But Obama's Copenhagen trip was a real screw up.

The president is an accomplished attorney and former law professor, so he should know that the first rule of being a lawyer is that you never ask a question to which you do not already know the answer (at least not in public).

Promoting a great American city for the Olympics was not his sin; his sin was not looking before he leaped. Obama should have only gone to Copenhagen if he already had the IOC sewn up (and if there was no room for him to know that; no back channel negotiations; then the trip should have been a no go). Frankly, a pissant NGO like to the IOC should be so honored that the U.S. president took time out of his day to meet with them they should do what he asks, and if they aren't willing to do that then they don't get to meet him.

President Obama is under estimating the power of the presidency and over estimating the power of Obama. He thought that somehow his personal appeal would overcome fashionable Euro-Trash anti-Americanism, and it didn't. At the same time, he didn't even consider that a presidential visit to an NGO should be a special treat to reward good behavior (every judge on that panel took a picture and went home and told their kids "I just met Obama!") and not a tag along with Oprah.

This dichotomy, overestimating his own abilities and under estimating the power of the office, could become very dangerous if it is not brought to heal ASAP. Obama should start running ALL of his foreign affairs decisions; whether on trade, immigration, security, or visits with Euro-Trash dilettantes, by Hillary Clinton or Bob Gates. Clinton and Gates have the judgment and experience to keep Obama on the right track so long as he keeps the lines of communication open and pays attention to the advice he receives.

The New Core Gets the New Olympics: Congratulations Rio!

Steve Coll is missing the forrest for the trees...

I like Steve Coll. His book Ghost Wars:The Secrete History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, is probably the best single volume on both Afghanistan and American foreign policy. But he is missing a number of a salient points in his recent blog post comparing the U.S. COIN strategy in Afghanistan to the Soviet COIN strategy:

Then, during the late nineteen-eighties, faced with a dilemma similar to that facing the United States, the Soviets tried to “Afghan-ize” their occupation, much as the U.S. proposes to do now. The built up Afghan forces, put them in the lead in combat, supplied them with sophisticated weapons, and, ultimately, decided to withdraw. This strategy actually worked reasonably well for a while, although the government only controlled the major cities, never the countryside. But the factional and tribal splits within the Army persisted, defections were chronic, and a civil war among the insurgents also played out within the Army, ensuring that when the Soviet Union fell apart, and supplies halted, the Army too would crack up and dissolve en masse. (I happened to be in Kabul when this happened, in 1992. On a single day, thousands and thousands of soldiers and policemen took off their uniforms, put on civilian clothes, and went home.)

Finally, during the mid-nineteen-nineties, a fragmented and internally feuding Kabul government, in which Karzai was a participant for a time, tried to build up national forces to hold off the Taliban, but splits within the Kabul coalitions caused important militias and sections of the security forces to defect to the Taliban. The Taliban took Kabul in 1996 as much by exploiting Kabul’s political disarray as by military conquest. The history of the Afghan Army since 1970 is one in which the Army has never actually been defeated in the field, but has literally dissolved for lack of political glue on several occasions.

The first point he misses in this post, but does deal with in a post he made a few days later, is that the U.S. was actively working against the Afghan (or Soviet puppet, depending on your point of view) government right up through the early 1990s. The weapons and training given by both the U.S. and Pakistan intelligence services went a long way in bringing down the Afghan government.

Ironically, another point he makes in the second post is that the American effort to stabilize Afghanistan, after we decided to stop funding the insurgency, was only an, at best, half hearted effort (I think Bush 41 was a dud; complete lack of strategic imagination on a number of issues; handled the Soviet collapse well).

With all of this in mind it stands to reason that we are in a much better position then the Soviets were for the following reasons:

#1. There is no super power supporting the Taliban today. In fact, both India and China seem to be playing a constructive role. And of the U.S. is committed (for now..)

#2. The Pakistanis have a very different view of Taliban than they did of the Mujahadeen.

To expound a bit on point #1, the world has really changed since the 1980s. Back then India was a basket case, China was a less developed country, the Soviets were still the Big Bad and the U.S. wanted a good relationship with Pakistan to hedge against an Indian/Soviet alliance and as a nice place to spy on China and Russia. By the mid 90s we decided we cared about Pakistan's bomb and slapped them with a nonsensical sancations regime that would last until the 2001 and we decided we didn't care at all about Afghanistan.

Today its all changed. China is a growing economic power that needs two things, resources and regional stability, and a stable Afghanistan may just help them achieve both. India is economically joined-at the hip to both China and the United States and we aren't going anywhere when it comes to South and Central Asia because of our relationships with those two countries.

Pakistan, which has oscillated back and forth on being a basket case, is a less sure ally today then they were in our proxy war against the Soviets but they are clearly scared to death of the Taliban, and, unlike during the 1990s, we've completely forsaken the notion that Pakistan is somehow sovereign and we run raids into the Swat valley with alacrity.

In conclusion, we are not rerunning the Soviet mistakes on Afghanistan. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was opposed by the whole world; the U.S. invasion is currently supported by 41 countries. The Soviet army wasn't much better than the Afghan army; with tales of widspread desertion and drug use among Soviet conscripts its a wonder they were able to hold out as long as they did. The U.S., on the other hand, has a large and extremely well trained volunteer force that has a great deal of experience dealing with COIN missions in the last few years.

How this guy got to be a professor of anything is beyond me....

This video clip describes how I feel reading the latest tripe from Bacevich.  And you know, there is never a sock full of horse manure around when you need one.

Fortunately, there is an alternative to a global counterinsurgency campaign. Instead of fighting an endless hot war in a vain effort to eliminate the jihadist threat, the United States should wage a cold war to keep the threat at bay. Such a strategy worked before. It can work again.

Where oh where do I begin?

#1. Endless global counterinsurgency? Bullshit. The COIN campaign is hardly global; its focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan - and only certain regions of Pakistan. How he gets "global" from that I don't know. If he's referring to Iraq then maybe he didn't notice a salient fact about Iraq: we won.

#2. To paraphrase Henry Kissinger "what's the number for the Islamic world"? I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize on behalf of America to Muslims around the world. Please know that many non-Muslims in the U.S. are non-the-less informed about Islam and we understand that the very idea of an "Islamic world" is offensive and that there is at least as much diversity of opinion about the nature of the relationship between God and man within Islam as there is within Christianity. Sorry.

#3. The high tech American way of war is discredited? If by discredited you mean so successful that the U.S. took down Iraq in 3 weeks and has achieved such a lead in kinetic capability that there is no one in the world even building a force to compete with us, then yes, discredited is a good word. Seriously, when was the last time anybody had the guts to send a fighter against an F-15? When was the last time anybody had the guts to challenge our sea power? We are fucking these dudes up with killer robots. Got it? We don't even have to waste the time to send a human anymore, we'll send a Terminator to get you. And that's what this guy calls discredited? The only problem with our military capability has been that we have won wars way too fast for our military civil-affairs and civilian aid agencies to catch up. But that capability is improving.

#4. What role did "containment" play in the Cold War, anyway? I would say exploiting fissures within the "communist world" was at least as effective, and maybe more effective, than "containment".

#5. Decapitating strikes. Right. We did that in the 1990s and now there's a big hole in the New York skyline. My single biggest beef with this strategy is this: what did we lack in our strikes against AQ leadership in the 1990s? Actionable intelligence. What did we lack against Iraq in 2003? Actionable intelligence. How do you get intelligence? You have to build relationships on the ground. The Taliban, which hides AQ, is a primarily Pashtun insurgency that hides among a Pashtun population. To find the Taliban we have to engage with the Pashtun people, and the only way they are going to trust us enough to talk is if they know we can protect them from the Taliban.

#6. Perfect our society for competition? Will somebody get this guy a copy of The World is Flat? This guy was in the army for how long and he never noticed they have T.V. in other countries? People in the Gap WANT the connectivity - the Takffaris want to sever the connection. Besides, there is NO poverty in America when compared with the poverty in Afghanistan.

The really scary thing about this article is that there are kids at Boston University whose only exposer to IR or American foreign policy is going to be the class they take from him. I feel bad for those kids.