Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 12: Running to Stand Still

Destroying the Village to Save It

Considering their failure the first time, its sad to see that the ISAF has brought the age old practice of "zippo raids" - pumped up on 50,000 pounds of steroids - to Afghanistan.


Destroy the village to save it:

Translated from obnoxious mil-speak, she is describing the village being intimidated by the Taliban, who are chased away by soldiers, then “cleared” by special forces, and leveled by massive aerial bombardment, apparently with no casualties. Nowhere in this account is there a sense that the villagers felt any ill-will toward the Americans beforehand—rather, Broadwell explicitly describes the village as being victimized by the Taliban first, then being completely obliterated by the Americans. In other words, rather than actually clearing the village—not just chasing away the Taliban but cleaning up the bombs and munitions left over—the soldiers got lazy and decided to destroy the entire settlement… “to give the men confidence.”

Its little wonder that these sorts of activities have costs as much as $100 million dollars in damage in the last 6 months.

Tell Me How This Ends 

Back at the end of May, I had my own version of a 'Walter Cronkite Moment' as I realized that the war in Afghanistan possibly couldn't be won, and that even it could be, the U.S. was not fighting to win but instead was planning to fail.

Today we see that planning to fail has evolved into a strategy of tying to blast our way out. If Obama was planning to keep his 2011 draw down date this would be less odious, but the administration has now shifted to keeping American forces in Afghanistan until at least 2014.


Apparently, the developing U.S. strategy is just to wait out the remainder of Karzai's administration and then hope for a reboot, of sorts, in 2014. In retrospect, backing Karzai versus Abdullah was probably a bad move. At this rate, the U.S. will be just wasting time - and burning through $100 billion per year - and watching 500 troops dies, per year - while we run out the clock on Karzai's administration.
 

Obama's Middle East End Game, ctd.

Introduction: On the Brink

Like Sisyphus, Obama is moving his grand strategy for the Middle East closer to the top of mountain. It's possible he's walked Israel back their coming war with Iran, he's made Russia responsible for monitoring Iran's nuclear program - and Russia does not want a nuclear Iran - and he's begun a "deck clearing" for building a regional security alliance to contain Iran.

Israel Decides to Dance With the One that Brought 'em

Earlier this summer I was one of a cacophony of voices who believed that Israel was probably on the verge of striking Iran's nascent nuclear program. I even ventured to guess that Israel would do with the tacit approval or even active support of the U.S. and the Gulf States.  I assumed that Israel really did not trust MAD to keep them secure vis-a-vis a nuclear Iran and I assumed that once the Gulf States got on board it was only a matter of time before the JDAMs started falling.

I was probably wrong.

Obama has always pursued two strategies WRT Iran; one was to get them give up the bomb peacefully, the other was to build a regional alliance to contain Iran once they went nuclear. Now, given that Iran lives in a really bad neighborhood, with nasty neighbors who harbor terrorists - including Bin Laden and Mullah Omar - it's logical for Iran to want either an actual warhead or at least break out capacity.

So that leaves containment.

But getting containment right involves building a security alliance for the Middle East ala NATO in Europe (just imagine the day those Gerrys and Frogs work together! Madness I say,  Madness!). And getting that security alliance involves getting the Arabs and Israelis to clear the deck -so-to-speak- when it comes to the two generations of animosity they share (it's a bullshit argument that there has "always been war in the Middle East, the regions has enjoyed long stretches of peace punctuated by periods of violence following imperial decline and everything we've seen since WWII is fallout from the British, French and German empires running out steam).

So, for the time being at least, Israel appears to be ready to gamble on with Obama towards some better greater Middle Eastern end-state.

Clearing the Deck

In this context, clearing the deck means putting the Palestinian issue to rest, thus providing top cover for the Saudis to finally recognize Israel's right to exist. To that end the talks that Obama announced late last week couldn't be more important to the future of the region.        

The NYT Rethinks the Strategic Assumptions of the Bush Administration

In June, I had a post I called "Rethinking the Strategic Assumptions if the Bush administration", in which I argued that:

But both things can be true: Bush was a bad president; he was also right about Iraq versus Afghanistan in 2002. He was right that Afghanistan would turn out to be un-winnable.

In short, I argued that all the assumptions about Bush's policies towards Afghanistan missing some opportunity in 2002 or 2003 were probably wrong, and that in hindsight taking out Hussein remains a pretty good bet given the alternative of doubling down in the 'Stan.

Now, the NYT's David Sanger seems to be coming around to my point of view:

Removing the Taliban from power in 2001 was deceptively easy, leading Washington to believe that the Afghans could largely take it from there. Fewer than a thousand American troops and C.I.A. officers, some on horseback, joined with the indigenous Northern Alliance to chase the Taliban leader Mullah Omar and his forces out of Kabul. That would have been the moment, it is argued, to put 20,000 to 30,000 American troops — and perhaps a similar number of NATO forces — into the country as a stabilization force.

But Mr. Bush and his defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, wouldn’t hear of it. “The consensus was that little could be accomplished in Afghanistan given its history, culture and composition, and there would be little payoff beyond Afghanistan even if things there went better than expected,” Richard Haass, a senior official at the State Department in the Bush administration who advocated the insertion of a far larger force, wrote recently. “They had no appetite for on-the-ground nation building.”

Gee, I wonder why?

Bush and Rumsfeld's first instincts on Afghanistan were correct. Iraq was an easier - and likely more successful - venture in nation building. Also, the doctrinal changes that occurred during the tough slog in Iraq allowed American to build a skill set that can be applied to the Af/Pak theater.

The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama, pt 2

 

The breaking wikileaks scandal has the possibility of becoming a true Katrina moment for Barack Obama, depending on how things shake out.

But as the early-viewing New York Times reports, WikiLeaks presents a new depth of detail about how the U.S. military has seen, for six years, the depths of ISI facilitation of the Afghan insurgency. For instance: a three-star Pakistani general active during the 80s-era U.S.-Pakistani-Saudi sponsorship of the anti-Soviet insurgency, Hamid Gul, allegedly met with insurgent leaders in South Waziristan in January 2009 to plot vengeance for the drone-inflicted death of an al-Qaeda operative. (Gul called it “absolute nonsense” to the Times reporters.)

Other reports, stretching back to 2004, offer chilling, granular detail about the Taliban’s return to potency after the U.S. and Afghan militias routed the religious-based movement in 2001. Some of them, as the Times notes, cast serious doubt on official U.S. and NATO accounts of how insurgents prosecute the war. Apparently, the insurgents have used “heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft,” eerily reminiscent of the famous Stinger missiles that the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan provided to the mujahideen to down Soviet helicopters. One such missile downed a Chinook over Helmand in May 2007.

Typically, NATO accounts of copter downings are vague — and I’ve never seen one that cited the Taliban’s use of a guided missile. This clearly isn’t just Koran, Kalashnikov and laptop anymore. And someone is selling the insurgents these missiles, after all. That someone just might be slated to receive $7.5 billion of U.S. aid over the next five years.

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/wikileaks-drops-90000-secret-war-docs-fingers-pakistan-as-insurgent-ally/#more-28442#ixzz0un4c3UlL

If it comes out that the Obama administration has been a.) actively covering up Pakistani involvement or, b.) So incompetent as to have overlooked obvious Pakistani involvement, then these documents could have a real impact on the already weakened Obama administration.

Obama's post presidency is fast approaching, and the most important thing for him to do with that time is to plan to fail in Afghanistan. 

Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 11: The "Fail" meme goes viral

Glad to see the NYT is now accurately reporting about our real enemy in Afghanistan - Pakistan:

Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports to be made public Sunday.

The documents, to be made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.

While current and former American officials interviewed could not corroborate individual reports, they said that the portrait of the spy agency’s collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence.

Some of the reports describe Pakistani intelligence working alongside Al Qaeda to plan attacks. Experts cautioned that although Pakistan’s militant groups and Al Qaeda work together, directly linking the Pakistani spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, with Al Qaeda is difficult.

The records also contain firsthand accounts of American anger at Pakistan’s unwillingness to confront insurgents who launched attacks near Pakistani border posts, moved openly by the truckload across the frontier, and retreated to Pakistani territory for safety.

The behind-the-scenes frustrations of soldiers on the ground and glimpses of what appear to be Pakistani skullduggery contrast sharply with the frequently rosy public pronouncements of Pakistan as an ally by American officials, looking to sustain a drone campaign over parts of Pakistani territory to strike at Qaeda havens. Administration officials also want to keep nuclear-armed Pakistan on their side to safeguard NATO supplies flowing on routes that cross Pakistan to Afghanistan.

Read the whole thing. 

Pakistan is not our friend. Pakistan is a rouge nation - the enemy of the both the United States and of Globalization's Rising Core-  and they will have to be dealt with, sooner or later. When something goes thump in the night - see the recent almost attack in Time Square - we will have to face the fact that Pakistan is not merely home to a loose nit collection of non-state actors but is actually actively supporting terrorists that kill American troops and undermine our foreign policy goals in South Asia and around the world.

The U.S. has not dealt with a situation like Pakistan since the end of the Cold War. Because not since the Soviet Union collapsed have we been forced to deal with a nuclear armed, heavily militarized nation that was actively supporting notoriously anti-America elements around the world. Since 1989 the U.S. has faced small powers - Iraq, Panama, Serbia - who did not posses nuclear arms. Meanwhile,  we dreamed of hypothetical wars with potential super powers, China, Japan, a resurgent Russia, while we engaged a series of non-state actors during peace building and counter insurgency operations. But Pakistan is a different story. Handling Pakistan might wind up looking a lot like handling the Soviet Union - we'll have to go back to containment (not of "Islamism", etc, but of Pakistan) by building a security alliance with like minded - or at least like interested - nations such as India and Iran. Over time, we'll have to hope that Pakistan's internal contradictions will rip it apart without allowing their nukes to fall into the wrong hands.

The good news is that Pakistan is a poor nation with little industry. Unlike the Soviet Union, Pakistan is not capable of global or even regional "Pakistani block" nor are they capable of building up a military with global reach. What they are capable of is ruining our plans for Afghanistan and triggering a regional war with India. And that is why we must plan to fail in Afghanistan while building a strong strategic relationship with India.

Planning to Fail Win in Afghanistan, pt 10: 10 Days in, 10 Years Late

Introduction

When I heard about the changing of the guard in Afghanistan, I wrote that one metric that would be important in determining whether or not the situation could be turned around would be how General Petraeus handled Pakistani meddling in Afghan affairs:

Let's see, however, how Petraeus deals with Pakistan. The good general has a reputation of being a amiable guy and with a great sense for PR - I found him to be both a great public speaker and legitimately funny guy when I saw him speak last year - but he's also a stone cold soldier, and his surge in Iraq included both "soft" elements of population security and hard core kinetics, like tracking down and killing AQI and Iranian special groups operating inside Iraq. So it'll be interesting to see how Petraeus might handle Pakistani or Iranian assets he catches in country - I'd not want to cross the border if I were a soldier in either of those countries armies right now, BTW.

Now, about 10 days after taking command, a picture seems to be emerging. Petraeus is mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore:

General Petraeus introduced the idea of blacklisting the group, known as the Haqqani network, late last week in discussions with President Obama’s senior advisers on Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to several administration officials, who said it was being seriously considered.

Such a move could risk antagonizing Pakistan, a critical partner in the war effort, but one that is closely tied to the Haqqani network. It could also frustrate the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who is pressing to reconcile with all the insurgent groups as a way to end the nine-year-old war and consolidate his own grip on power.

A Strategic Asset No More 

General Kayani apparently once referred to the Haqqani network as a "strategic asset"  and there is every indication that the ISI has an all-too-close relationship with Haqqani, so listing them as a terrorist organization, while somewhat symbolic, is still important when, in the years to come, we decide to start considering Pakistan a state-sponsor of terrorism - which they are.

Meanwhile, on the other side of that hundred miles of rocks and dirt that has been responsible for most of our problems for the last ten years, my nominee for the next permanent member of the U.N. security council is making some pretty serious allegations about the ISI:

India has accused Pakistani intelligence services of overseeing the 2008 militant attacks on Mumbai, a report said Wednesday ahead of a major meeting between the rival nations.
Home Secretary G. K. Pillai told the Indian Express newspaper that the level of involvement of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had become clear through recent questioning of David Headley, a suspect under arrest in the United States.

"The real sense that has come out from Headley?s interrogation is that the ISI has had a much more significant role to play (than was earlier thought)," Pillai said.

Uh-Oh. Yeah, that whole Mumbai thing was sort, kind of an act of war, and I'm sure the U.S. has been trying to hold India back. Maybe no more. Hopefully this is all part of a broader strategy, with Petraeus traveling to Islamabad and playing good cop to India's bad cop and telling the Pakistanis that there is only so much America can do to hold the Indians back, so they better start dissolving their relationships with terrorists organizations, like the ISI.

On the ground in Afghanistan, Petraeus appears to be taking the advice offered in by numerous sources last year and standing up local security militias to augment the police and military:

KABUL, Afghanistan — After intensive discussions with NATO military commanders, the Afghan government on Wednesday approved a program to establish local defense forces around the country, with the potential to help remote areas thwart attacks by Taliban insurgents.

The NATO-backed program, which will be supervised by the Interior Ministry, will pay salaries to the members of these new forces, an inducement that could generate widespread recruitment, although Afghan aides have said they prefer to keep the program small.
 

A Fine Line Between Militias and Warlords 

 Johnson and Mason (2009) writing in military review last year were skeptical of the tribal militia idea (I referenced their work in Moral Warfare in Southwest Asia) and Malkasian and Meyerle (2009) point out that Afghanistan has a long history of warlordism whereas Iraq had almost no history of militias and warlords run a muck. It's worth considering that one of the QST's primary arguments when they were sweeping the country from 1994-96 was that the warlords and local militias (almost all old Mujihadeen commanders) were too corrupt and did not protect the people. Would these new militias be different? Will they be loyal to Kabul? Will they self finance with graft and drug dealing? Do we want them to be loyal to Kabul - given the corruption of Karzai and his band of merry men? Is this part of Bing West's "mushroom" (keep them in the dark and feed them shit) strategy WRT to Kabul?

I think all of these questions need to be answered if the ISAF is going to get in the business of supporting local militias. Ironically, critic of president Bush's Afghan policy, such as Ahmed Rashid, often suggest that is was the reliance on former Northern Alliance commanders - acting as warlords - that helped fuel the rise of the neo-Taliban throughout 2002-06.

The Coming Divsion of Labor: Israeli Levithan/Russian Sys Admin

Introduction

Russia appears to be tilting towards an "all clear" on the coming Israel-Arab strike on Iran:

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Monday Iran was gaining the ability to build a nuclear bomb, remarks welcomed in Washington as a sign of growing international unity behind a tough line toward Tehran.

Medvedev's comments were the strongest criticism of Iran's nuclear program to emerge from the Kremlin under either Medvedev or his predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

A major goal of U.S. President Barack Obama's "reset" of relations with Moscow has been winning Russian backing for a tougher international line toward Iran.

"It is obvious that Iran is moving closer to possessing the potential which in principle could be used for the creation of nuclear weapons," Medvedev told a meeting of Russia's ambassadors in Moscow.

Russia's Strategic Interests

Interesting. If Medvedev asked me, not only should Russia (from their perspective - not an American perspective) support an Israeli strike, they should also adopt a policy of intelligence sharing with Israel (WRT Iran's nukes and air defenses) and even offer to use Russian intelligence assets or special forces as needed to assist Israel. This is because a nuclear Iran is a bigger threat to Russia than to anyone else:

To top it all off, Iran, which already posses a missile that can hit Russia, had crowds in the street today shouting "Down with Russia!"

The day will come in the not-too-distant future, when Russia wants to throw its weight around in the Caucuses or central Asia and all of these answered prayers are going to haunt them. Until then, I hope the Poles and Czechs do their part to reduce global warming, I hope the protesters keep going until A-Jad either steps down or "gets Ceascued" and I hope Putin keeps getting everything he wants. 

Besides the obvious benefits of setting the Iranian program back a few years, I continue to suspect that Russian companies will be in a the cat-bird-seat, so-to-speak, when it comes to rebuilding the destroyed infrastructure in Iran:

Russia, Turkey and Pakistan want nothing more than an Iranian client state, stripped of all international connectivity and forced to conduct business through Russian/Turkish and Pakistani smugglers. These guys will be popping popcorn and laughing with glee as Israel destroys Iran's nuclear capacity - I'd not rule out Turkish, Pakistani and Russian complicity in such an attack, by the way - because it ensures an even weaker Iranian position and greater levels of dependency upon its patrons.

A Road to Damascus Tehran Conversion?

So there you have it. The world is lining up to support either an Israeli or American strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. The question now is not about the strike, per se, but instead its about whether or not a solid long-term shift in regional politics will emerge in the Middle East, post strike. The Arab countries are scared and the Israelis are talking about resuming peace talks, setting the stage for a regional deal.

I remain opposed to an American strike on Iran, in theory, but I'm always most strongly in favor of playing the hand we've been dealt. If planning to bomb Iran is Obama's way to plan to fail in Afghanistan, then so be it. Let's do it right - get the Arab's and Israelis to bury to hatchet, once and for all, and we'll have more than made up for the cost, both monetary and human, of destroying Iranian nuclear facilities.

Given these developments, I have moved from "opposed" to "agnostic but skeptical" when it comes to either an Israeli or American strike on Iran - so long as it's part of a larger strategy to disengage from Afghanistan and cement a permanent Arab-Israeli peace in the Middle East. Given my dithers between American or Israeli jets delivering the goods, I order my preference:

#1. Joint Arab-Israeli operation - with Saudi jets flying cover for Israel.

Baring notorious Arab-Israeli cooperation, I shift to my preference to:

#2. A multi-day American air campaign designed to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities, Republican Guard and key nodes of civilian infrastructure, including power plants and communications grid. America can get things done that Israel can't, and if we're going to strike let's minimize their ability to make trouble in the region by doing whatever we can to cripple or even destroy the Iranian state.

#3. An Israeli strike. Ok, but less likely to be successful than an American strike.

#4. An American or Israeli preemptive nuclear strike. From a tactical perspective, it gets the job done even more effectively then option #2 and but, oh boy, we better really have out ducks in a row WRT regional strategy before we open that door.

 

Iran, Israel, the Gulf States and a New Big Bang: Considering Vertical and Horizontal Scenarios

"For by wise council, you shall make your war" -- Proverbs 24:6 

Introduction

The term "the big  bang" was first used by Tom Barnett in his Pentagon's New Map piece in Esquire and was further explained in his book of the same name. A quick rundown: a "big bang" is vertical scenario - for example, the war in Iraq - which sets off a series of horizontal changes in political realities of a given region. In the original article, Barnett was arguing that invading Iraq was a way to lay a big bang on the calcified political institutions of the Sunni Arab world. Barnett's core argument is that the U.S. can have a positive impact on the world when we construct horizontal strategies to deal with vertical shocks (even if we create those vertical shock ourselves) and that Iraq could have been/maybe still is an opportunity for the U.S. to redefine our relationship with both key Middle Eastern states and the rising new core of globalization, including India and China.

Today a new "big bang" waits in the wings, this time to be led by the Middle East's regional Leviathan - Israel - and this later day big bang offers a chance for the United States, if we seize the opportunity, to redefine the politics of the Middle East for the next century.


The Coming Vertical Scenario in the Mid East: The Iranian-Israeli War

I've been pretty critical of a potential American/Israel - for all intents and purposes there is little difference in this case - strike on Iran.

But Joe Liberman rarely calls me for advice about foreign policy - too bad, because we'd agree on a lot (but not Iran) - and he currently has more influence than I do:

U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman says there is a broad consensus in Congress that military force can be used if necessary to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Lieberman cites a recent set of sanctions passed by Congress against Iran as a potential deterrent. But he insists that the goal of keeping Iran from becoming a nuclear power will be accomplished "through diplomatic and economic sanctions if we possibly can, through military actions if we must."

Liberman's comments, in a vacuum, might be disregarded were it not for a growing international cacophony calling for Israel to DO SOMETHING!:

"I think it's a cost-benefit analysis," Mr. al-Otaiba said. "I think despite the large amount of trade we do with Iran, which is close to $12 billion … there will be consequences, there will be a backlash and there will be problems with people protesting and rioting and very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country; that is going to happen no matter what."

"If you are asking me, 'Am I willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran?,' my answer is still the same: 'We cannot live with a nuclear Iran.' I am willing to absorb what takes place at the expense of the security of the U.A.E."
 

When a prominent Arab leader is publicly calling for a strike - implicitly endorsing an Israeli strike against a Muslim nation, well, that sound you hear is Israeli jets revving their engines. This news, taken along with news that the Saudis are willing to look the other way while Israel uses their airspace - maybe even their territory - well, that sound you hear are Saudi F-15s gearing up to cover Israel on their way in:

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defenses to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.  

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defense sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defense systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defenses will return to full alert.

D-Day -1: Considering the Vertical Dimension


Before those jets take off, however, it's important to consider the long term implication of an Iranian-Israeli war. Of particular importance we should consider the chances that such a strike would be successful and what the costs of even a successful strike might be.


Fortunately, we don't have to engage in wild speculation when it comes to an Israeli strike on Iran, because the Center for Strategic and International Studies has published a fairly comprehensive study on the issue.

First, let's take a look at the route:

At the time this report was written the CSIS determined that all three possible routes - southern, central and northern carried with them substantial political risk. Recent developments have eliminated many political risks. For example, although Israel's recent raid on the Turkish flotilla has virtually ruled out the northern route, the Gulf States are now clearly on board and I firmly believe the Obama administration - and by extension Iraq - have or will soon green light the operation, so the southern skies are clear for a strike anytime the mood strikes the IDF. Interestingly, the CSIS report lists the southern route as also having the lowest operational risk, which only supports my belief that what we see publicly WRT Middle East politics is so much theater and all the interested parties decided to hit the Shiite Devil many years ago.

The report goes on to suggest that an air-to-ground strike would push the Israeli air force to its limits and would require the deployment of the bulk of Israel's air asset, about 90 fighters, including all of their most advanced F-16i and F-15is and all four of their KC-135 tankers. It's not hard to imagine that Israel would be reluctant to commit all of their air assets to this one strike, no matter how big of a threat they considered Iran.

On the other hand, the report suggests that Israel could use up to 30 Jericho III ballistic missiles which would do an equivalent amount of damage to Iran's nuclear program, setting it back perhaps several years.

When taken together; Israel's aircraft, ground based ballistic missiles and submarine based cruise missiles; combined with the Arab world seemingly announcing "clear skies" for an Israeli strike, all the pieces are in place for a vertical scenario. According the CSIS report, the best case scenario pushes Iran's nuclear program back several years.


D-Day +1: Considering Horizontal Dimensions

It's worth considering, however, that even the best case scenario acknowledges that Iran will be able to rebuild, probably will, and will do so outside the confines of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, from which they will certainly withdraw. So even if the vertical shock - the strike itself - works like a charm, the world will still have to gird itself for the eventual Shiite bomb, as well as fallout - literal and figurative - from the strike itself.

When it comes to literal fallout, CSIS report is pretty pessimistic about the radiation related deaths. From  page 90 of the report:

• Highest level of environmental damage is caused by a strike on the Reactor, Spent Fuel Storage and the Reprocessing Plants.
• Actinides and Fission products are highly radioactive elements resulting from the fission process in the Reactor. Iodine-131, Stontium-90, Cesium-137 and Plutonium-239, have all been identified as the most damaging to human health.
• Attacking the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor would release contamination in the form of radionuclides into the air.
• Most definitely Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE will be heavily affected by the radionuclides.
• Any strike on the Bushehr Nuclear Reactor will cause the immediate death of thousands of people living in or adjacent to the site, and thousands of subsequent cancer deaths or even up to hundreds of thousands depending on the population density along the contamination plume.

The above quotes and map help illustrate the difference between a vertical and horizontal scenario.Thousands of deaths. As the map I posted above demonstrates, prevailing winds could easily carry contaminates over hundreds or even thousands of square miles, including over the territory of gulf states currently cheer leading for the strike. So even a perfect strike is going to set off political turmoil throughout the region, including in Afghanistan, where the Iranians are likely to take the gloves off - so -to-speak- when it comes to arming and training insurgents to kill American troops. Make no mistake, the soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines on the ground in central Asia will pay a tremendous price to support Israel's grand strategy - a price so high as to virtually guarantee an American withdraw.

What Kind of Day Had it Been?

In a perfect world, Israel wouldn't be considering a strike on Iran. In a perfect world, or even one that makes a bit more sense then the one we live, the U.S. would have normalized with Iran shortly after 9/11 and leveraged that relationship to buttress out other regional goals, including stabilizing Afghanistan and undermining Saddam Hussein. In even a marginally more rational world, the U.S. would have sent representatives to Tehran - say Kissinger, Bush 41, James Baker and Bill Clinton - to make peace with Iran as we ramped up for the invasion of Iraq. In that world, Hussein might have taken the very generous exile offer that was on the table before him in 2003 and gone away quietly, lest he fall before the coming American/Iranian onslaught.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world. We live in a world with a government controlled by failed lawyers (successful lawyers can't afford a career in government) where few Americans know the differences between Shiites and Sunnis, Arabs and Persians or even Iraq and Iran. In this world, the control of U.S. domestic and foreign policy has always been at least marginally influenced by radical Christianists (not to be confused with actual Christians) and faux patriots who were always on the verge of slightly deranged policy choices detached from reality. In this world, we look for the least bad American policy choice and understand that formulating a sustainable "grand strategy" is beyond the ability of any American government that can get elected.

Given the reality and limitations we face, we must deal with situation at hand. It's likely that Israel will attack Iran and, for better or worse, the U.S. will get sucked into the melee. Stopping Israel at this point probably forces Obama to pay an untenable political price - domestically - and further add to his international reputation as a later day Hamlet - a man who has allowed the native hue of his resolution to be sicklied over by the pale cast of thought. By wasting so much time and diplomatic leverage pressing for sanctions on Iran Obama backed himself into this corner, but here we are, and now the time has come to deal with coming vertical shock by coming up with a horizontal scenario that not only makes best of an ugly situation, but actually set up both the United States and the world for positive developments.

D-Day+2: A Horizontal Scenario for 2010

If we accept that Israel will strike, and that she will strike with the implicit or explicit support of both the U.S. and the Arab world, then it is vital that the U.S., Israel, the Arab world, and the world at large get something out of the strike. Because no matter what Israel does Iran will get the bomb, but a post-strike Iran is going to be even more paranoid, less connected and less transparent than the Iran we deal with today, and they'll be nursing a serious national trauma in the form of thousands of casualties from the strike.  So we don't get a non-nuclear Iran out of the deal, but here is a list of things we ought to get:

#1. Rapprochement  between Israel and Saudi Arabia. This must be the sine qua non of American support for any military action. I would even support the U.S. moving a squadron of F-22s to Iraq and making it very clear that any Israeli or Saudi jet that overflies is being shot down unless we see these two countries bury their respective hatchets.  Because whatever differences Israel and Saudi Arabia claim to have, its become pretty clear that in the real world their respective national strategies rarely diverge and increasingly we're seeing a convergence - which is terrific - but we can no longer let two of our strongest allies pretend to hate each other strictly for domestic political reasons. So if Israel and Saudi Arabia agree to recognize one another and begin a diplomatic relationship, the U.S. should agree to underwrite whatever they're planning WRT to Iran.

And if you think peace between Arabs and Israelis is a lot to ask....

#2. Israel, Saudi Arabia and India get permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council. For too long, the U.N. Security Council has been a the group that won WWII, and sooner or later the UNSC will have to grow, and this is as good a time as any.  Each of the three countries I've selected is important in both their respective regions and in terms of the global economy. All three are also relatively stable in terms of both their governments and their borders, and all three have a serious interest in the stability of both the global economy and international security. In short, all three are perfect candidates for the first round of new admits to the UNSC since 1945 (not counting the ROC/PRC switch and the Soviet Union/Russia switch).

Given their nuclear status, population and increasingly prominent diplomatic and economic position in the world, its high time India joined China on the UNSC anyway.  For the U.S. India is a largely selfish pickup, because bombing Iran probably means giving up on Afghanistan this round, which means we're going to have to use India to counterbalance Pakistan and as a base for deploying drones and Spec Ops forces to kill ISI assets (let us call things by their proper names: Taliban, Al Qeada = ISI asssets) in the region. Sponsoring them for UNSC membership is just our way of saying "you guys were right about Pakistan, we're sorry, let's be friends". 

This whole mess has been at least partially driven by Israel's - not entirely unjustified - belief that the whole world is out to get them and that too many countries in the world today might be more or less indifferent to A-Jad following through on his promise to "wipe Israel off the map (the actual quote was probably a mis translation, but I digress). UNSC membership, when combined with a daring raid on Iran nuclear facilities and rapprochement with the House of Saud finally gives Israel the global respect and sense of stability they've been clambering for since 1948. They'll soon discover that with great power comes great responsibility, and also along with their new relationship with Saudi Arabia they'll have to deal with some lingering issues WRT both Gaza and West Bank, but resolving those issue is both inevitable and desirable if Israel is to develop global economic power commensurate with their regional military prowess.

Finally, Saudi Arabia may seem like an odd choice. They are neither the largest nor the most progressive Muslim nation, nor are they all that integrated into global economy - oil exports notwithstanding - and they certainly leave much to be desired when it comes to human rights. In the scenario at hand, however, the Saudi's are willing to stick their necks out, both to recognize Israel and to strike Iran, and they deserve something for that effort. Also, the strike on Iran, assuming it goes down as described in the CSIS report, will kill thousands of Muslims in Iran and maybe other countries in the region, so sponsoring the nation that houses Mecca for membership on the body that can veto U.N. action should go a long way to make clear that our beef is not with Islam. As a bonus, just as UNSC membership will elevate Israel and force them to deal with internal contradictions, UNSC membership will give a little push to a lot of the changes underway in Saudi society.

In order to make this plan happen, it would have to be a package. I'm not sure how a state gets a permanent seat on the UNSC, but I'd imagine a unanimous vote of all 5 current permanent members ought to be enough. While the 5 member may find reasons to object to any of the 3 new members individually, forcing them in as a package deal makes it difficult for anybody to object. France and the U.K. would be fairly easy to convince to go along with whatever the U.S. suggests, and Russia has a long-standing relationship with India and a developing relationship with Israel they would want to buttress. China will protest to India's ascension to permanent status, but recent history suggests that China rarely wants to be the odd man out on the UNSC, so once the three European (counting U.S. as "European") powers plus Russia are on board, China should come along.     

Conclusion 

In a perfect world, this wouldn't be an issue. In a perfect world, the U.S. and Israel would both realize the realpolitik advantages of an alliance with Iran and count on deterrence to keep their nuclear weapons in check. But we don't live in a perfect world, so we have to make do with the hand we've been dealt. As Israel and the Arab countries beat the drum for the ultimate vertical solution to Iran's nuclear program, it falls on the U.S. to demand a horizontal strategy that forever changes the politics of both the Middle East and South Asia.  
 

 

 

Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 9: Plan B is All Kinetic All the Time

I'm glad that the CIA analyst are at least as sharp as me.

Case in point, here is the director of the CIA on Iran WRT nukes: 

 Do you think the latest sanctions will dissuade the Iranians from trying to enrich uranium? “I think the sanctions will have some impact… Will it deter them from their ambitions with regards to nuclear capability? Probably not.”

“We think [the Iranians] have enough low-enriched uranium right now for two weapons. They do have to enrich it, fully, in order to get there. And we would estimate that if they made that decision, it would probably take a year to get there, probably another year to develop the kind of weapon delivery system in order to make that viable.”

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/cia-chief-irans-bomb-two-years-away-sanctions-wont-work/#ixzz0sCqLKPPu

And here is me, on the same subject:

 Iran will go nuclear, and if they become angry/frightened enough they will shoot, just like other countries in the region have at moments of high tension.

But we're both in agreement - the sanctions are worthless and the Obama administration wasted 18 months on pointless diplomatic wrangling just to produce sanctions that will accomplish nothing. Thanks Mr. President, I'm sure there was no more useful or pressing issue to which you could have devoted time and diplomatic energy.


So, why would Leon Panetta show up on ABC's Sunday show just to tell everybody what any amateur foreign policy analyst from Columbus, Ohio (technically I guess I'm turning pro or at least semi pro in August when I start getting paid to study international relations) already knows? Maybe he was trying to lay the groundwork for the coming war with Iran:

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.
In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.

Again, what did those sanctions accomplish? Oh, right, they made sure that Obama covered his ass so that he can plan to fail in Afghanistan. 

Step 1 in Afghanistan: Avoid the Rerun

One of the first problems Petraeus is going to have when take over Afghanistan is to set conditions which prevent a rerun of the dynamics that ruined Afghanistan across the 1990s.

To that end, he'll have to put a leash on Pakistan by hook or by crook:

Pakistan is presenting itself as the new viable partner for Afghanistan to President Hamid Karzai, who has soured on the Americans. Pakistani officials say they can deliver the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, an ally of Al Qaeda who runs a major part of the insurgency in Afghanistan, into a power-sharing arrangement.

In addition, Afghan officials say, the Pakistanis are pushing various other proxies, with General Kayani personally offering to broker a deal with the Taliban leadership.
Washington has watched with some nervousness as General Kayani and Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, shuttle between Islamabad and Kabul, telling Mr. Karzai that they agree with his assessment that the United States cannot win in Afghanistan, and that a postwar Afghanistan should incorporate the Haqqani network, a longtime Pakistani asset. In a sign of the shift in momentum, the two Pakistani officials were next scheduled to visit Kabul on Monday, according to Afghan TV.

Despite General McChrystal’s 11 visits to General Kayani in Islamabad in the past year, the Pakistanis have not been altogether forthcoming on details of the conversations in the last two months, making the Pakistani moves even more worrisome for the United States, said an American official involved in the administration’s Afghanistan and Pakistan deliberations.

Translation: Hey Karzai, nice country you got there, be ashamed if something should exploit long standing ethic tensions happen to it.  And Pakistan's support of the Pashtun insurgency (Taliban) is causing a lot of bad blood between ethnic groups, setting up a similar situation to the one the Soviets left behind in 1989:

The leaders of the country’s Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara communities, which make up close to half of Afghanistan’s population, are vowing to resist — and if necessary, fight — any deal that involves bringing members of the Taliban insurgency into a power-sharing arrangement with the government.

Alienated by discussions between President Karzai and the Pakistani military and intelligence officials, minority leaders are taking their first steps toward organizing against what they fear is Mr. Karzai’s long-held desire to restore the dominance of ethnic Pashtuns, who ruled the country for generations.

About a month ago, I predicted that Afghanistan was headed down the same path as South Vietnam:

After the U.S. withdraws - and between the president's commitment to a July 2011 time-line and mounting U.S. casualties our withdraw is a near certainty - Afghanistan will suffer a similar fate to that of South Vietnam. Pakistan will play the role of both the Soviet Union and China as they fund, train and run logistics for whatever rough coalition of Taliban forces has the best chance of taking Kabul whole. Meanwhile, I expect the Karzai administration to continue to flounder through one scandal after another while they burn through whatever cash and equipment we leave when we go and ultimately share the fate of Dr. Najibullah at the hands of the Neo-Taliban.

So what can be done to avoid this outcome? How can Afghanistan be saved at this point? Here are a list of three possible options the Obama administration has right now:


1. Acquiesce to Pakistani control of Afghanistan, call it a victory and go home.
 
2. Acquiesce to Pakistani control of Afghanistan, announce that Pakistan has gotten what it wants and is now in control of Afghanistan and that any terrorist attacks from either Pakistani or Afghan territory will be considered a direct attack by the Pakistani military and will earn a nuclear response on Islamabad.

3. Work with Russia and India to rebuild the Northern Alliance, overthrow Karzai and hope that we can find an Uzbek or Tajik who will rule the Pashtuns with an iron fist.

4. Normalize relations with Iran.

My pick is options 3 and 4. One of the core advantages Pakistan has over the U.S. is that they are our primary route for getting supplies and troops into the country. This is because Pakistan has the best deep water port in the region. If we were to normalize relations with Iran, that would open up an entirely new route into Afghanistan would allow us to make life a lot harder on Pakistan, by declaring them a state sponsor of terror and assassinating every ISI or Pakistani Army agent we find in Afghanistan. We could also sponsor a U.N. security resolution demanding Pakistan acknowledge the Durand line as the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan, thus making Pakistani incursions across the border an act of war.     

The challenge at that point would be to find someone to rule Afghanistan. I would imagine we should be able to find a Tajik general who would be willing to ruthlessly rule over the Pashtuns - maybe to the point of cleansing a large percentage of them - with an iron fist. While this may sound like a cruel solution to a westerner, its probably the only way Afghanistan will ever be brought under control. And, not for nothing, but what's at stake is the safety and security of a large percentage of Afghans, because the Taliban is the worst outcome, especially for females living in Afghanistan. But the Taliban is a Pashtun insurgency, so if the Pashtuns aren't ready to turn against them they might have to share in their fate.

 

Planning to Fail Win in Afghanistan, pt 8: Independence Day Redux

In this picture, president Bill Pullman is having a good Independence Day.

Barack Obama is also going to have a good Independence Day, this year.

As critical as I've been of president Obama's policies in Afghanistan recently, appointing General Petraeus to take command in Afghanistan could be just the policy shake up - assuming that's not the only change that's being made - to change course and secure, if not a win, at least a "loose good" scenario that minimizes the chances that we'll have to rerun this particular episode of Pashtunwalli and Co.

If two changes follow in the coming days; publicly backing away from July 2011 and letting Petraeus hand pick the diplomatic team (better yet, bring in Ryan Crocker); then this move could really pay off in a longer term.

Let's see, however, how Petraeus deals with Pakistan. The good general has a reputation of being a amiable guy and with a great sense for PR - I found him to be both a great public speaker and legitimately funny guy when I saw him speak last year - but he's also a stone cold soldier, and his surge in Iraq included both "soft" elements of population security and hard core kinetics, like tracking down and killing AQI and Iranian special groups operating inside Iraq. So it'll be interesting to see how Petraeus might handle Pakistani or Iranian assets he catches in country - I'd not want to cross the border if I were a soldier in either of those countries armies right now, BTW.

As for Obama's handling of the situation, well, let's just say that this is why I don't (yet) regret my vote. Today, if only for a few minutes, Obama was the commander and chief. He took care of the McChrystal situation as quickly, gracefully and decisively as possible and he managed to do it all while avoiding asking any questions to which he should have already known the answer.

All and all, this was a good day for Obama's presidency and for the future of America's military operations in Afghanistan. I'm more optimistic about the situation then I've been in a while.  

Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 7: Why We Fail

Reading through the Rolling Stone  piece on McChrystal's comments I was struck by one passage - it was something so prophane and shocking that I could scarcely believe what I was seeing, but it was right there, in black and white:

The assembled men may look and sound like a bunch of combat veterans letting off steam, but in fact this tight-knit group represents the most powerful force shaping U.S. policy in Afghanistan. While McChrystal and his men are in indisputable command of all military aspects of the war, there is no equivalent position on the diplomatic or political side. Instead, an assortment of administration players compete over the Afghan portfolio: U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Special Representative to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not to mention 40 or so other coalition ambassadors and a host of talking heads who try to insert themselves into the mess, from John Kerry to John McCain. This diplomatic incoherence has effectively allowed McChrystal's team to call the shots and hampered efforts to build a stable and credible government in Afghanistan. "It jeopardizes the mission," says Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who supports McChrystal. "The military cannot by itself create governance reform." [ITALICS ADDED BY ME]

I lied before when I said this was shocking. Its not. But its a god damn shame none-the-less. And it answers every question that every historian is going to ask about Afghanistan someday, and every question some future president is going to ask as he goes to survey some smoking crater somewhere in the U.S. and ponder his response. 

It's too bad we can't get Tea Parties organized to give a damn about Afghanistan or America's neglect when it comes to assembling a coalition to win in Afghanistan, but I just don't see it happening. Whomever said that war was just natures way of teaching Americans about geography really hadn't spent much time with "Americans"(outside politics and academia, perhaps).

If McChrystal resigns tomorrow - and I think he has to - he should do so with his head held high. Better to walk out the front door of the White House then get thrown under the proverbial bus when Obama starts sinking in 2012. I think this Rolling Stone interview was a bone headed move but I also think General Stanley McChrystal has served his country honorably for over 30 years and has more than earned both his retirement and the nation's gratitude.

Our military did not fail us. Our civilian leaders failed them.  

Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 6: Independence Day

Barack Obama is about to have either the best or worst Independence Day of any president since Bill Pullman.

Fortunately for the people of Earth, this bad (could it be good?) day will not be brought about by a genocidal war against extraterrestrials, but instead by a general giving way too much access to a Rolling Stone reporter:

The profile in Rolling Stone magazine, titled the "Runaway General," is certain to increase tension between the White House and Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

It also raises fresh questions about the judgment and leadership style of the commander Obama appointed last year in an effort to turn around a worsening conflict.
McChrystal and some of his senior advisors are quoted criticizing top administration officials, at times in starkly derisive terms. An anonymous McChrystal aide is quoted calling national security adviser James Jones a "clown."

Referring to Richard Holbrooke, Obama's senior envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, one McChrystal aide is quoted saying: "The Boss says he's like a wounded animal. Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he's going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous."
On one occasion, McChrystal appears to react with exasperation when he receives an e-mail from Holbrooke, saying, "Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke. I don't even want to read it."

U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, a retired three-star general, isn't spared. Referring to a leaked cable from Eikenberry that expressed concerns about the trustworthiness of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, McChrystal is quoted as having said: "Here's one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, 'I told you so.'"

So, dose this mean that McChrystal feels corruption in the Afghan government has no impact on his counter insurgency efforts?

In any case, this could lead to Obama having either the best or worst 4th of July of his life. If he turns this into another White House versus the military battle, and if he gives McChrystal and Co. time to ramp up their P.R. efforts this will be Obama's worst 4th of July ever. It will be one more nail in the coffin of the Obama presidency and possibly even set up some general to run for president in 2012.

If, on the other hand, Obama steps up and promptly takes control - i.e., asks McChrystal for his resignation - this could be a positive development. This could allow Obama the opportunity to reassess (again, but I digress) his commitment to Afghanistan and, as I've argued, what we need now is not a series of "re commitments", but instead a Mad Man who demonstrates that everything everyone knows about American foreign policy is wrong.

A re-re-assessment at this point will lead to the Pakistanis stepping up their game and may tilt Karzai even closer to the Pakistanis, but those events are feit accomplis at this point anyway. Republicans will scream bloody murder at Obama but they too will do that no matter what the president does in Afghanistan, so why not give them something to crow about.

Update: McChrystal has been recalled to D.C. per the BBC.



Update 2: My idea; fire McChrystal, then fire Eikeberry, then fire Biden and make Clinton VP.

Update 3: CNN reports that McChrystal has offered his resignation.

Good, now Obama can get back to planning to fail in Afghanistan.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama

I don't regret my vote.

Yet.

But it's becoming increasingly apparent that Barack Obama is racking up a record fit to be mocked by both Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson. If Obama has decided that he will be a failed foreign policy president with a domestic "win" on his record - ala LBJ - well, so be it, but the least he could do would be to adopt a "first do no harm" approach to foreign policy by essentially doing nothing at all. Instead, Obama is actually making things worse.

On Iran 

Congratulations, 18+ months of begging cajoling diplomacy have earned a sanctions regime that is set up to become just as big a joke as the current sanctions regime which has been in place for many years.

Well, at least this new sanctions regime will stop Iran from acquiring modern anti-aircraft missiles from Russia, right?

Nope.

Conflicting statements from Russian officials on whether or not it will scrap the pending S-300 surface-to-air missile system sale to Iran because of new United Nations sanctions over Tehran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons. First, an “industry source” said the S-300 deal was off. Now, Russia’s Foreign Ministry says the sale is still on. Israel has stated publicly that the sale of S-300s to Iran is a red line that would prompt an Israeli military attack.

So, let's review. Obama has:

Not stopped Iran from getting the bomb.

Not stopped Iran from getting advanced Russian anti-aircraft missiles.

And probably not stopped Israel from wanting to attack Iran.

Great, mister president, that was an awesome use of 18 months and god knows how many face-to-face pathetic groveling sessions meetings with world leaders who have more important things to do.

But hey, at least Obama didn't alienate any allies in the process or anything:

Now, even as the U.N. Security Council prepares to impose its fourth round of sanctions on Iran with a vote slated for Wednesday, Tehran is demonstrating remarkable resilience, insulating some of its most crucial industries from U.S.-backed financial restrictions and building a formidable diplomatic network that should help it withstand some of the pressure from the West.

Iranian leaders are meeting politicians in world capitals from Tokyo to Brussels. They are also signing game-changing energy deals, increasing their economic self-sufficiency and even gaining seats on international bodies.

Iran's ability to navigate such a perilous diplomatic course, analysts say, reflects both Iranian savvy and U.S. shortcomings as up-and-coming global players attempt to challenge U.S. supremacy, and look to Iran as a useful instrument.
"We are very proud of our diplomacy, although we are mainly benefiting from mistakes made by the United States and its allies," said Kazem Jalali, a key member of the Iranian parliament's commission on national security and foreign policy. "We are using all our resources to exploit these weaknesses."

Ok, screw them anyway. It's not like the U.S. is committed to any sort of ongoing military operation where we might need allies or anything.

Except Afghanistan.

And Iraq.

And North Korea.. 

On Afghanistan

The COIN strategy appears to be faltering:

Government assassinations are nothing new as a Taliban tactic, but now the Taliban are taking aim at officials who are much more low-level, who often do not have the sort of bodyguards or other protection that top leaders do. Some of the victims have only the slimmest connections to the authorities. The most egregious example came Wednesday in Helmand Province, where according to Afghan officials the insurgents executed a 7-year-old boy as an informant.

Man, if we can't even protect friendly village and local leaders, what the hell are we still doing in Afghanistan?

Now, to be fair, Afghanistan is very complex situation and the Bush administration took its eye off the ball in Afghanistan before Barack Obama was even a senator. Still, Obama's plan to fail in Afghanistan remains overly Afghan centric, and at least some of that diplomatic energy wasted on those absolutely pointless Iran sanctions could have been used to find more partners to either help in Afghanistan or at least contain the worst exports from Pakistan's tribal regions.

A Set of Strategically Tone Deaf Priorities 

I've written that Obama has a nasty tendency to ask questions to which he should already know the answer. So far, his whole foreign policy has been based on asking for things that he should have known he was never going to get. For example, while he was considering how many more troops to send to Afghanistan, he was also haranguing China's president Hu about economic growth ManBearPig global warming rather than asking Hu to cooperate with U.S. efforts on Afghanistan. Because the Chinese are already nibbling around the edges of both peace building and investment in Afghanistan there was far more room for agreement on that issue as opposed to hoping they would sign on for "binding" limits on CO2 emissions.

You can take everything said above about China and replace China with India and its just as true.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to take a schizo-frantic approach to distinguishing between friends and enemies in the region. We bomb our "friends" while they support our enemies and while we continue to ramp up the tension with possible allies (see: Iran).

Then the KFR provokes and we are left dumbstruck, because Obama has been arguing with China and Russia about Iran (oh China, will you please poke your largest energy supplier with a large stick so we can stop a feit accompli in Iran's acquisition of a nuclear capacity?) rather than negotiating an end to the world's single greatest criminal enterprise - a country that actually has nuclear weapons and has shown no compunction what-so-ever about exporting to other rouge states.

Conclusion:Mad-Man Diplomacy, Dangerous Nations and Obama's Only Term

The problems that president Obama have are exasperated by several factors. He's backed himself into several rhetorical holes, on Iran and Afghanistan, for example, and so it will be hard for him to walk these situations back. Afghanistan will, unfortunately, end the same way Vietnam did, but with drones playing the role of off-shore balancer. Pakistan will be getting their backyard playground back and they will return to planning for their regularly scheduled war with India. Iran will go nuclear, and if they become angry/frightened enough they will shoot, just like other countries in the region have at moments of high tension.

And Obama will be returning to Chicago in 2013, despondent over his wasted potential. He won't be alone in his disappointment,  but he made his choices.   

With this in mind, the next president should adhere to a variant of Richard Nixon's Mad-Man Theory,except instead of trying to convince the world the U.S. would attack anybody at any time he or she should set out to convince the powers that be that the U.S. might normalize or break relations with various countries at any time. Specifically, the next president should find as many excuses to insinuate that he's prepared to break relations with Pakistan as possible. In a similar vein, he should be prepared to insinuate - and then follow through immediately - with normalization with Iran. Right now Russia Turkey and Pakistan enjoy all the fruits of both our strategic limitations and Iran's situation as an international pariah. Russia, Turkey and Pakistan want nothing more than an Iranian client state, stripped of all international connectivity and forced to conduct business through Russian/Turkish and Pakistani smugglers. These guys will be popping popcorn and laughing with glee as Israel destroys Iran's nuclear capacity - I'd not rule out Turkish, Pakistani and Russian complicity in such an attack, by the way - because it ensures an even weaker Iran position and greater levels of dependency upon its patrons.

But think of the alternative. Imagine a world where Turkey, Russia and Pakistan watch in horror as James Baker, Henry Kissinger and Bill Clinton step off a plane in Tehran and shake hands with A-Jad and his merry men. Yes, the Iranian leader (ship) is a thugocracy, but so was Mao and that didn't stop Nixon from securing a relationship with China, for similar strategic reasons. And the only thing that happened when Nixon went to China was that the Russians rushed to negotiate a series of arms control treaties, because they didn't want to be outbid by the Chinese. Oh, and a few things changes in China after that as well, or so I've heard.

Now, its important to realize that Iran is highly unlikely to negotiate away their nuclear stockpile, and we shouldn't ask that of them. It will be a lot more fun watching Russia and Pakistan figure out how to live with a nuclear Iran, and Turkey wants an excuse to get the bomb anyway, so we might as well embrace the future. Normalization between Iran and the U.S. will happen. It can happen now or it can happen after the next 9/11 or Mumbai when the the world comes together to dissolve Pakistan. Let's get proactive and maybe, just maybe, we can prevent the next 9/11.

In any case, the next president should make it a goal to come into office with as few international promises as possible. Leave global warming completely off the table and whatever you do don't wade into the morass that is Gaza and the West Bank. Stick to throwing strategic elbows - so to speak- by slapping down useless and dangerous allies like Pakistan and suddenly getting chummy with formerly blood enemies like Iran. And the day after the trip to Tehran, call China and let them know you'd love to talk to Kim. Tell him it will be two party talks. See if the possibility of the U.S. throwing the chess board into the air and openly negotiating with the KFR doesn't make China decide to hasten Kim's exit from this mortal coil (handle Iran first because negotiating with the KFR will bear no fruit, rack up a win before you go for something truly crazy).

America's fundamental strategic issue right now is stagnation and predictability. When GWB was president he tried to remind people that the U.S. can occasionally bob and weave with the best of them (see: Operation Iraqi Freedom) but his decisions have left his successor tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. To make America again relevant is to make America again unpredictable, make us again Robert Kagan's Dangerous Nation.

An Honorable Stalement: My Walter Cronkite Moment

Background: The above video is an interview from Walter Cronkite where he discusses the moment he expressed on national T.V. what many Americans were feeling in 1968; the Vietnam war was a lost cause.

Perception versus Reality

Although Cronkite's malaise was brought on by the Tet Offensive, which he, inaccurately, gaged as a defeat of American and ROVN forces [1], the impact of his speech on the American public and political discourse would be difficult to overstate. Cronkite's weariness reflected both a larger popular zeitgeist as well as the default ant-war, anti-imperial, anti-expansion, anti-anything-people-in-the-Old-South-might-think-of-as-a-good-idea position of Greater New England [2]. Coupled with a disastrous accidental president - who lacked the strategic imagination God gave pistachio nuts - and a government wide penchant (left over from the New Deal and WWII) for engaging in pointless and damaging social experiments the weariness expressed by Cronkite contributed directly to the hemming in of Johnson's much more talented and imaginative successors. Eventually, the whole shooting match was brought to grinding halt by a domestic political scandal of Shakespearian proportions , absent which South Vietnam may continue to exist as a viable state in Southeast Asia [3].

Afghanistan and Vietnam

But without re-fighting Vietnam its important to consider what Cronkite said and how it relates to Afghanistan today.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Just as Vietnam was an honorable cause[4], so our endeavor in Afghanistan began as an honorable cause in the wake of 9/11. But just as in Vietnam, Afghanistan may be rapidly approaching a tipping point beyond which the continued commitment of American blood and treasure may become futile. I was a big advocate of doubling down on America's commitment in the fall of 2009:

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.

Knowing what I know now I stand by what I wrote in 2009. I thought then, and think now, that a victory in Afghanistan was worth bearing a tremendous burden. But when it came time to make a decision president Obama decided for a temporary surge and for a slightly longer time horizon over which the U.S. would begin a draw down. In retrospect, its possible that this solution actually represented the worst path America had to chose from, because in signaling our desire for a rapid exit we set off a later day "Great Game" to determine who gets what when we depart.

The Worst of Both Worlds

The United States is currently in the process of the "Afghanization" of the war, which Obama made a key part of the "surge" he approved last year. The problem is the process may not be going very well because Afghanistan is not an "Afghan" problem, but is instead a battlefield in the ongoing, low level war between India and Pakistan. Until we understand the regional issues at play in Afghanistan, and understand that we are currently backing the wrong horse both in Pakistan and in our "partner" in the Afghan government, we will be stuck with a deteriorating security situation in which the Taliban will out administer ISAF and Afghan government forces when they can and simply run out the clock when they cannot. Meanwhile, our quirky little ally -aka Pakistan - is making plans for the day we leave.


When he became president in 1969, Richard Nixon began a "Vietnamization" process which saw the U.S. hand over increasingly larger responsibility to the ARVN. As this process unfolded the U.S. also experienced greater and greater success against the V.C., which eventually saw the V.C. effectively broken as a serious military organization in by late 1969. [5]  At the same time, the government in the South began to stand up in earnest, and, as I stated above, I believe South Vietnam had a real shot at turning into a viable state by the early 1970s. However, South Vietnam was to be done in by the situation in the region, which was not at all amiable to an American-friendly South Vietnam.

What I see in the offing in Afghanistan is exactly what happened in Vietnam, without the defeat of the insurgency. Because not only is America losing the war against the Taliban, but we are also not doing enough to create a regional partnership with a vested interest in Afghanistan's success. We are picking enemies and friends haphazardly, siding with the nuclear proliferating rouge state Pakistan, for example; yet creating tension with non-nuclear Iran over their alleged future nuclear ambitions. We are also stuck in a Cold War mindset of picking Takfiri friendly Pakistan over market and economic development friendly India.

After the U.S. withdraws - and between the president's commitment to a July 2011 time-line and mounting U.S. casualties our withdraw is a near certainty - Afghanistan will suffer a similar fate to that of South Vietnam. Pakistan will play the role of both the Soviet Union and China as they fund, train and run logistics for whatever rough coalition of Taliban forces has the best chance of taking Kabul whole. Meanwhile, I expect the Karzai administration to continue to flounder through one scandal after another while they burn through whatever cash and equipment we leave when we go and ultimately share the fate of Dr. Najibullah at the hands of the Neo-Taliban.

Dr. Najibullah's story is at least as illuminating about a potential future in Afghanistan as the ROVN's example. Najibullah's government, set up in the wake of the Soviet withdraw, proved itself to be remarkably resilient, surviving coup attempts and direct attacks by the mujihaden and eventually seeing some semblance of stability being achieved in Afghanistan's major cities.  Ironically, Najibullah did the right thing (intellectually) by siding with India and it eventually cost him his life at the hands of the Pakistani paramilitaries Taliban. Though less notoriously pro-Indian than Najibullah, Karzai has proved plenty dangerous to the ISI and Frontier Corps Taliban and members of his administration have made no attempt to hide their disdain for Pakistan's behavior.

Planning to Fail in Afghanistan 

All of this leaves the U.S. with only one option: we must plan for a world where we have failed in Afghanistan. The best plan would involve regionalizing a grand strategy for both helping secure and develop Afghanistan with India and China playing the role of key pillars. Unfortunately, I do not believe this will happen because whenever the president gets the key leaders (i.e. the leaders of India and China) in a room he wants to talk about either ManBearPig or Iran, neither of which has killed as many American troops as Pakistan the Taliban in Afghanistan. In any case, it seems that the Obama administration has decided to go for a 100% kinetic failsafe plan in the event we fail to secure Afghanistan. On an A-F grading scale, Obama's all kinetic plan B deserves a grade of C+. It's a passing grade, but we must take note of its complete lack of originality and also note that the plan answers only part of the question - security - while ignoring the far more important (in the long run) geo-political and economic questions at the heart of Afghan instability. Ultimately, Afghanistan is merely one battlefield in an ongoing war between globalizing Asia and Deobanists who wish to see the region thrown back into the 7th century.  

My Walter Cronkite Moment


American forces arrived in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 while the rubble was still smoldering in NYC; this was an honorable thing to do. This was a "good war".  But the results of our endeavors have failed to live up to the lofty heights of our best aspirations 9 years ago . Our troops have performed admirably, operating in the most austere conditions imaginable while upholding the military traditions of honor, courage and protecting those who cannot protect themselves. Our troops did not fail us; the civilian leaders failed them. Our leaders failed to provide the military a grand strategy worth the price the military paid in blood. Our leaders failed to fight the war on the fields of diplomacy and geo-politics with the ferocity and skill the troops brought to the war on the battlefield. And ultimately we have failed the Afghan people; failed to provide them with safety; failed to provide them with effective government; failed to provide them with economic opportunity.

And so today the questions about Afghanistan have moved beyond "failure" and "success" and have instead becomes a challenge to either "lose good" or "lose bad".  We need to plan to fail, by creating a stronger regional coalition that will own Afghanistan when we leave or we must accept that Afghanistan will once again become a large irregular training base for the ISI and Pakistani army. As we wind down our presence in Afghanistan we have to bear in mind the tremendous sacrifice that has already been paid in blood and treasure for what seems to now to be a quixotic misadventure; we must do all we can to salvage a stable outcome for Afghanistan and the region while acknowledging that we have reached the point of diminishing return for our own presence in the region. To do less is to dishonor those who strove to build a future worth creating in Afghanistan.


[1] See: Sorley's A Better War for a fuller explanation of the positive post-Tet changes in America's efforts against both the V.C. and North Vietnam.  

[2] For a brief on the anti-foreign proclivities of New England and the Upper Mid-West see Lind's Vietnam: A Necessary War.  

[3] This is a bit of counter factual history based on the facts on the ground, as described in the two volumes referenced above, and assumes that South Vietnam would have been able to hold back the North in 1975 with American air and logistical support.

[4] Lind's (1996) argument in favor of Vietnam can be summed thusly: There is no strategic rationale for fighting the Cold War that does not demand we fight in Vietnam as well. 

[5] Again, I refer to Sorley.