Why Obama needs to get a move on in Afghanistan

Even as the Pakistani army fights and dies in South Waziristan in their most determined attempt yet to reshape the militant-spawning region, the Obama administration is giving us an object example of how not to plan and execute a war strategy in Afghanistan.  When you’re taking lessons in the political will needed to combat the Taliban from the Pakistani army, it might just be time to throw in the towel altogether.

It’s important to remember, briefly, now we got to the situation we are now in.  America invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and then quickly turned its attention to Iraq.  The Bush administration did not put sufficient resources into Afghanistan to achieve its desired goals; it seems it did not even put in enough resources to forestall eventual defeat.  As the situation in Iraq improved and that in Afghanistan deteriorated, Bush dispatched 7,000 more U.S. troops to the latter country in 2008.  He also launched a policy review, the result of which was kept from the media at the request of the incoming Obama administration (its existence was definitely talked about in the media at the time though, because I remember reading about it).

Then Obama came into office.  It has been his war since January, 2009, although on any given day you might he persuaded by the way he talks that it just landed in his in-tray courtesy of Dubya yesterday.  In March, Obama announced that after a “careful review” he had a “comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan” which involved dispatching 21,000 more troops and switching to a population-centric counterinsurgency approach that was like the one which worked during the surge in Iraq.  The new plan was similar in its broad outlines to the outcome of the review launched by the Bush administration – hardly surprising, given that the two administrations had the same defence secretary.  Obama’s liberal base opposed the strategy, but Republicans were united in their praise for the president.

As 2009 progressed, Western forces launched a bloody campaign to recapture parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan that had fallen under Taliban control – this was the first part of Obama’s “comprehensive new strategy”.  This resulted in dozens of Western casualties, but dealt a blow to the Taliban.  Little else changed in Afghanistan during 2009.  The Taliban failed to disrupt the Afghan presidential election to any appreciable degree, and electoral fraud was of an expected scale, if perhaps slightly towards the high end.  After the initial gains of the summer offensive, General Stanley McChrystal, who was hand-picked by Obama to carry out the new strategy, told Obama that he needed more troops to hold the ground he had captured and capture more.

This was by no means a surprise.  When the strategy was unveiled in March, it was clear to every informed observer that more troops would be needed.  And, we reasoned, Obama would not be announcing his commitment to the new strategy unless he was going to be willing to eventually resource it properly as well.  The staggering of the troop surges were, we thought (we hoped), dictated by the availability of troops and the need to placate his liberal base.

I did not expect to be sat here on 25 October, more than a month into another, completely new ”strategy review”, with Obama having rejected the full implementation of his March strategy as apparently too politically costly at home.  I did not expect to be listening to Obama administration saying that their new policy review was “asking questions that have never been asked” because the Bush administration never asked them, raising profound questions about their own March review and the previous ten months they’ve spent in charge of this war.  I did not expect to have the administration’s internal divisions openly revealed, even flaunted, in the newspapers every day, as if they represented some sort of strength through diversity rather than a dangerous signal to the enemy that Washington is not committed to defeating him.

I will seek to avoid the personal and political attacks that I could launch on the administration after ten months of such undilted dithering and cowardly refusal to take responsibility for the war and the future of South Asia.  Let us consider it purely as a strategic question.  The minimum U.S. goal in Afghanistan is to prevent the country from becoming the base of the international jihadi movement as it was in the late 1990s.

In March, the administration accepted a counterinsurgency strategy which would decouple the Afghan people from the Taliban as the only way of making this happen.  It implicitly rejected all other options, which it is now re-considering.  These options include a dramatic drawdown and a shift to targeting al-Qaeda from outside of the theatre and a new focus on training the Afghan army (the “counter-terror” or “Biden” option), a dramatic new troop surge to do counter-insurgency properly in key areas of the country (the “McCrystal” option) and an ill-defined “middle” option which will likely not give McChrystal all the troops he wants but hope for a broadly similar outcome.

The important thing to realize about the Biden option is that it amounts to a managed retreat, with an attempt to minimize the costs of failure.  This becomes apparent when you consider that everything in the Biden option – the stepped up drone attacks, increased training of the Afghan army – is completely compatible with other, more aggressive strategies.  The Biden option is a subset of the other options; an enhanced counterinsurgency strategy will also include increased drone attacks and training of the Afghans.  The Biden strategy does not have any unique selling point and does not do anything that the other options don’t.  It simply calls for a withdrawal and hopes we can manage the ensuing chaos.  There are numerous reasons to be profoundly sceptical about this plan, and we must realize that it amounts to a pre-emptive admission of defeat.  We can’t win, says the Biden option, so why bother?

The other options, from the middle option to the McChrystal one, require more troops.  What they hold in common is they require the fundamental reshaping of the political reality in Afghanistan to one that is not amenable to the Taliban; that is the point of victory in war, imposing your political reality on the enemy.  The reshaping requires that the Afghan people, who still do not have a favourable view of the Taliban on the whole, believe that the U.S. is committed to defeating the extremists; otherwise they will have to reach an accomodation with them.  It is this reshaping that the Biden strategy says is impossible, and hence does not call for us to attempt.  But if we are to attempt it, we need more troops, and we need a greater commitment to our goals than the enemy has.  This is why Obama’s hesitation over his commitment to this outcome, and his hesitation over sending more troops as soon as possible, is so incredibly damaging.  But really, as he himself acknowledged in March and since, there is no alternative.  He needs to embrace it, and fast.

There is no path to victory that does not involve the commitment of more troops.  Every day that these troops are not dispatched is a day in which the situation for the Afghan government and NATO deteriorates.  There is no strategic benefit in delay, and there are plenty of costs.  Obama’s drawn out seminar sessions might be appropriate if there wasn’t already a strategy already in place, but there is: the man that Obama put in charge of a war plan that Obama himself approved says he can win this war with more resources, and yet the White House acts as if it just stumbled into Afghanistan yesterday.

This long process is designed as a balm to his liberal base – look how learned and careful and un-Bush-like we are, it soothes – but it is much more of a balm to the Taliban.  They have the momentum.  They have the committment.  They have the Afghan people scared.  They have Obama scared as well.  And unless Obama moves to decisively turn all of this around, and unless he does it very soon, they will win.  It is criminal for the administration to play politics with this war, and to ask American, NATO and Pakistani soldiers to die for a conflict to which the civilian leadership is not committed.  America’s allies will vote with their feet soon enough; America’s soldiers will simply die, along with many Afghans, until eventually Obama will have to decide whether to fight this war properly or abandon the country altogether.  He could take that decision now rather than later.  But he won’t.

Add comment October 25, 2009

What is happening in Pakistan?

As you’ve probably heard, Pakistani military and paramilitary forces have just launched an offensive into South Waziristan to take on elements of the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies.  This operation is by far the most important development in the region since Obama took over the presidency, overshadowing his dispatch of 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan earlier this year in importance.  While the deployment of those troops was merely a holding action to prevent a rapid deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan, the Pakistani offensive could – if done properly – contribute towards bringing a real shift in the situation in the region.

However, the improvements, if they come at all, are not likely to come quickly.  To understand what is happening here, a very brief history lesson is required.

During and after the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan in 2001, Taliban and al-Qaeda poured out of Afghanistan through the effectively non-existent border with Pakistan and set up camp throughout the northwest of the country, melding easily into the Pashtun culture from whence many of them came and finding networks of support in the massive Afghan refugee population in the region.

It’s important to recognize the extent to which the Taliban’s initial takeover of Kabul and Afghanistan was in essence a Pashtun colonial project; the homeland of the Taliban has always been Pakistan, specifically the little-governed northwest.  Pakistan encouraged the Taliban to direct their energies in this direction because they viewed Afghanistan as a proxy battleground with India, and because it kept the militants from causing trouble throughout mainland Pakistan.  The U.S. invasion pushed them back.  The Pakistani public routinely describe the U.S. as the biggest threat to their security in polls, and one reason they do this is because they believe the U.S. drove militants from Afghanistan back to Pakistan, there to sow a campaign of terror.

But the groups that were driven from Afghanistan by the U.S. are not the only Taliban.  What we commonly refer to as “the Taliban” is in fact a bewildering array of different groups who lack any centralized command structure.  The Taliban who vex NATO in Afghanistan are not always the same as the Taliban who have been responsible for a recent string of bombings in Pakistan, although the groups have obvious similarities and co-operate with each other.  In December 2007 some 20 groups formed an umbrella organization called Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which has given them some unity, but they still have differing agendas.

The first important point about what is currently happening in Pakistan is that the military offensive is restricted in its goals, and is not aimed at all the Taliban groups who carry out cross-border incursions into Afghanistan.  Rather, Pakistani military spokesman have explicitly stated that the offensive is aimed only at militants belonging to the Mehsud network, which has the stated goal of Talibanizing Pakistan – and a more limited, although very real, role in Afghanistan.  Indeed, the military’s area of operations here does not even border Afghanistan.

If the rest of the militant groups in South Waziristan – those who usually concentrate on the fight against NATO – were to join the battle against the military, then the latter would quickly lose.  Many of the militant groups in Waziristan, even some of those under the TTP banner, actively co-operate with the Pakistani state, and appear to have been convinced to stay neutral during this operation – at least for now.  These include groups who send fighters into Afghanistan.

The drone strike that killed Beitullah has made Hakimullah Mehsud, the new emir of the TTP, more disposed than ever towards harming the U.S., on whom he has vowed revenge.  However, the most destructive acts his group have carried out have been in Pakistan – these include the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and the recent spate of high-profile bombings that were intended to deter the present offensive.  The TTP is currently experiencing a period of turmoil in its leadership following the death of Baitullah Mehsud in a U.S. drone strike in August, but nothing is more likely to unite the groups than a Pakistani incursion and occupation.  Their attention will be focused on repelling this offensive for some time, giving NATO some temporary breathing room in Afghanistan.

However, the prospect that Pakistan can deliver a long-term pacification even of the limited area of operations in South Waziristan with which it is now concerned is remote.  Much-touted offensives elsewhere against militants have led to proclamations of victory, only to give way to the harsh reality of under-investment in reconstruction and a resurgence of violence.  This is a slight improvement on the peace deals that Islamabad made a habit of cutting with the Taliban during previous offensives, and indeed may be the best that can be hoped for.  But the simple fact is that Pakistan lacks the political will – as well as the military capability – to deliver a long-term pacification of the tribal regions.

The question of political will boils down to who Pakistanis see as their biggest threat, and hence against whom they array most of their military might.  This is India.  The number of troops deployed to the pacification of the tribal regions is a small fraction of the number deployed on the Indian border.  Hundreds of thousands more would be needed to be moved from the Indian border to the tribal regions for the military to be able to clear the area of the enemy, hold it indefinitely, and build civilian projects to win over the population; this would divert an unrealistic quantity of resources from the rest of Pakistan and is likely to fail anyway because of the deep animus felt by the residents of the area towards Islamabad.  It would be a generational effort, at great cost, for a cause that Pakistanis consider of minor importance to themselves and only of concern to their hated U.S. patron.

The Pakistani military also lack the capability for the sort of low-intensity counter-insurgency war that they would need to fight in the tribal regions to be ultimately successful, because the Pakistani militant is equipped for large-scale, Cold War-era battles against a conventional foe, not guerrilla war.  Their previous operations in the tribal agencies have been punitive raids which were over-reliant on air power and artillery and that left the region strewn with civilian casualties.  The Taliban don’t even need to fight in such battles; they just hide, let civilians die, and reap a propaganda victory, much like Hamas did during Operation Cast Lead.  The military then eventually leaves and the militants re-emerge, stronger than before.

In the West, we have to understand that Pakistan considers the risk posed by the Taliban to be, if not insignificant, certainly not the most pressing strategic priority.  There is a broad consensus on this between the military and the civilian population.  The astute observer will also notice that all of the targets of terrorist outrages in Pakistan prior to this offensive have been military or police ones, not civilian.  The terrorists know that civilian outrages would delegitimize them and lead to a violent swing in public opinion against them, where at the moment there is a deep ambivalence.  The message is simple.  To the security forces: leave us alone and we will leave you alone.  To the people of Pakistan: why meddle?

The end-game of this offensive is very hard to fathom.  But it will not be a resolution of the problems in South Asia for either Islamabad or Washington.  It could certainly lead to the death of a great many dangerous people, but if handled improperly it will create more.  It is hard to believe that the hardcore al-Qaeda infrastructure is remaining in the area to be destroyed, and indeed the offensive could have the effect of dispersing a lot of dangerous terrorists all over the world.  Some will be caught as they flee, others will not; don’t expect Osama bin Laden to be found in a spiderhole.  It could, maybe, lead to the pacification of this small area.  A crucial sanctuary for terror could be destroyed, but the ideology, the means, and the people will move on, and the war will continue; as, it seems, it always does.

2 comments October 17, 2009

Obama, McChrystal, and Afghanistan

Two fairly extraordinary things have happened in the relationship between Barack Obama and Gen Stanley McChrystal, the NATO commander in Afghanistan, in recent days.  The first is that McChrystal came to London and gave a speech (pdf) which certainly struck me as unusually political and has some commentators in the U.S. talking (inappropriately) about a threat to civilian control of the military.  The second is that the Obama administration seems now to have launched a briefing war against him, with the Gen Jim Jones (the National Security Advisor) chiding McChrystal publicly and one administration adviser saying off the record that people in the White House think McChrystal, who was a second lieutenant before Obama was old enough to buy a beer, “is naive or an upstart”.

What is the significance of this rift?

The Obama White House is right to be worried about the political impact of McChrystal’s speech.  What probably got to the White House was when McChrystal voiced concerns about the apparent equivocation in the administration.  “We must show resolve,” he said. “Uncertainty disheartens our allies, emboldens our foes”.  He also bluntly said that the strategy advocated by Joe Biden – pulling back to a counter-terrorism strategy with fewer troops and less or no direct control of Afghanistan – wouldn’t work.  Obama has now made it clear he won’t follow this strategy – thanks heavens – but you can imagine its advocates in the White House were irked to have McChrystal publicly denounce it.  Finally, and must damningly in my view, McChrystal pointed out that time is not on America’s side and that waiting around to craft a strategy telegraphs weakness and uncertainty to the enemy.  This can be seen as a fairly pointed criticism of the administration.  He’s saying, in effect, get on and do what I recommended.

For the Obama administration, the problem stretches beyond one talkative general.  The McChrystal report, which contained the reasoning behind his call for more troops, was leaked by someone in the Pentagon, presumably to pressure the administration into compliance.  So for the White House it could well look like a co-ordinated campaign to try and pre-judge the Afghanistan policy review.

But the Obama administration is in a bind of its own making.  Obama campaigned on the promise of winning the war in Afghanistan, and he described it as a war of necessity and swore to achieve victory after being elected.  All the military advice tells him that the war is winnable if he follows a well-resourced counter-insurgency strategy of the sort launched in Iraq after 2007.  The same is true, by the way, here in Britain as well, where serving and retired generals all advocate the same strategy as their American counterparts.  Obama has swore he will win the war, and he’s been told how to do it, and yet he is resisting for political reasons.  If it doesn’t look good, that’s because it isn’t good.  McChrystal’s speech in London added fuel to the fire.

If Obama were to sack McChrystal for speaking out, or if McChrystal leaves because Obama fails to adopt his policy proposals, then a mortal blow will be struck to the effort in Afghanistan.  Not only would this herald the adoption of some middle-of-the-road strategy that would probably fail, the impact on NATO cohesion, the Taliban, and the Pakistanis would all be catastrophic.  NATO would realize Obama isn’t serious and not step up to the plate, the Taliban would scent victory and rapidly move to take it, and the Pakistanis would also realize Obama isn’t serious and start accomodating themselves to a Taliban victory rather than decisively turning against them.  All of these things are in danger of happening anyway thanks to Obama’s dithering, but they would undoubtedly happen if McChrystal leaves.

What is particularly bizzare about the White House’s approach to this problem is how completely they seem to have missed the lessons of Iraq.  Although I could never prove such a generality, it always seemed to me that most people who opposed the Iraq war in 2003 completely stopped paying attention to what happened after that date; they hence missed the strategic revolution in 2007 that saved the country and transformed the way America fights wars.  I was especially struck to read in Obama’s autobiography that he was “surprised” to be told by a journalist in 2005 that Iraq would collapse into an orgy of violecnce if U.S. troops withdrew, as this was clear to anyone paying any attention to what was happening in the country.  I am not convinced he or his inner circle have disabused themselves of the mindset that led to such misperceptions about what was really happening in Iraq.

For instance, we hear he’s searching for a “middle ground“, a term certain to make any military commander cringe; strategies don’t succeed through the middle ground, they succeed through a ruthless pursuit of victory.  He wants to under-resource the effort.  He hasn’t understood the concept of a counter-insurgency campaign, in which the perceived will of the coalition to succeed is one of the main battlefields.  He doesn’t understand that protecting the Afghan population – which needs troops – is the most important goal.  The fact he could even consider the Biden counter-terrorist option shows he doesn’t understand that stepping back and pitching inaccurate, civilian-killing ordnance into Afghanistan is the most surefire way to generate more terrorists.

Perhaps something in the psychology of the administration is loath to admit that the same strategy which eventually worked in Iraq could also work in Afghanistan; they’re loath to admit it because this would involve an acknowledgement of progress in Iraq, something the administration has been incapable of giving.  Iraq, after all, was the worst disaster in hundreds of years of American foreign policy, completely botched, morally bankrupt, horribly damaging to America’s image, a tragic waste of lives and resources, remember?  Well yes, it was all of these things until 2007 – partly because of strategic errors that Obama is now perilously close to repeating – at which point the world’s smartest military turned it around and did the best they could to make an acceptable job of it.  And they’re ready to do it again, Mr. President – if only you’d give them the chance.

Add comment October 7, 2009

Obama, the Olympics, and Afghanistan

It’s hard to know where to begin when criticizing Obama’s conduct in Copenhagen.  And it’s equally hard to know where to end.

Should we begin with the fact he inflicted a blow to his own country’s prestige before the eyes of the world?  Or the fact he personalized it, making it a defeat for himself?  Or maybe the fact that the blow was entirely unnecessary and avoidable?  Or that it came at a time when he already has two wars to fight and an overloaded domestic agenda?  Or that it was unpresidential, especially because of his failure?  Or that it gave the lie to Obama’s claim he can charm the world into providing tangible benefits to America?  Perhaps the fact somewhere between a third and a half of his remarks to the IOC consisted of his own biography?

Or maybe we could focus on the sheer incompetence.  The administration demonstrably failed to suss out the likely outcome of the vote before it put the president on the line.  It failed to pick its battles.  Even their greatest cheerleader in the media thinks it was a mistake.

On the way back from Copenhagen, Obama met General Stanley McChrystal in Denmark to discuss the war in Afghanistan.  The 25-minute meeting was only the third time Obama has talked to McChrystal since he sacked his predecessor and appointed the new commander.  He spent more time in Copenhagen than he has talking to the commander on whom the future of the western alliance and the world’s most volatile region depends.  Let’s hope he packed considerably more judgement into those brief encounters than he showed in Copenhagen.

1 comment October 3, 2009

Arabs confused, scared over Iran

If anyone is in any doubts about the dangers of a nuclear-armed Iran, or thinks it’s just western scare-mongering, listen to the country’s Arab neighbours:

“I think the gulf states are well advised now to develop strategies on the assumption that Iran is about to become a nuclear power,” said Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at United Arab Emirates University. “It’s a whole new ballgame. Iran is forcing everyone in the region now into an arms race.”

This realization, in turn, is raising new anxieties and shaking old assumptions.

Writing in the pan-Arab newspaper Al Quds Al Arabi, for instance, the editor, Abdel-Beri Atwan, said that with recent developments “the Arab regimes, and the gulf ones in particular, will find themselves part of a new alliance against Iran alongside Israel.”

The head of a prominent research center in Dubai said that it might even be better if the West — or Israel — staged a military strike on Iran, rather than letting it emerge as a nuclear power. That kind of talk from Arabs was nearly unheard of before the revelation of the second enrichment plant, and while still rare, it reflects growing alarm.

“Israel can start the attack but they can’t sustain it; the United States can start it and sustain it,” said Abdulaziz Sager, a Saudi businessman and former diplomat who is chairman of the Gulf Research Center in the United Arab Emirates. “The region can live with a limited retaliation from Iran better than living with a permanent nuclear deterrent. I favor getting the job done now instead of living the rest of my life with a nuclear hegemony in the region that Iran would like to impose.”

There’s also little doubt of the ability of Iran to use Hamas and Hezbollah for its own ends:

But that is a relatively small consolation, given concerns that Iran might develop nuclear weapons or, if pushed, activate its allies, Hezbollah or Hamas, political analysts here said. Arab capitals already have accused Iran of fueling the recent fighting between Shiite rebels and the government in Yemen, and of inciting conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims in places like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — charges Iran has flatly denied. Egypt has accused Iran of using its ties with Hamas to undermine Palestinian reconciliation and negotiations with Israel, as well.

Important to remember as the Obama administration deludes itself that it can lead a peace process: Hamas and Hezbollah aren’t interested in peace, neither is their main fundraiser, equipper, and patron, and combined they can easily stop it.  The White House has it the wrong way around when it thinks it can solve the Iranian problem by first solving the Israeli-Palestinian problem.  It has to first deal with Tehran, one way or another.

Add comment October 1, 2009

Obama needs to act like a president

I couldn’t agree more with this column:

Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States. As of yet, though, he does not act that way, appearing promiscuously on television and granting interviews like the presidential candidate he no longer is. The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on. The candidate has yet to become commander in chief.

Take last week’s Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh. There, the candidate-in-full commandeered the television networks and the leaders of Britain and France to give the Iranians a dramatic warning. Yet another of their secret nuclear facilities had been revealed and Obama, as anyone could see, was determined to do something about it — just don’t ask what.

The entire episode had a faux Cuban missile crisis quality to it. Something menacing had been discovered — not Soviet missiles a mere 100 miles or so off Florida but an Iranian nuclear installation about 100 miles from Tehran. As befitting the occasion, various publications supplied us with nearly minute-by-minute descriptions of the crisis atmosphere earlier in the week at the U.N. session — the rushing from room to room, presidential aides conferring, undoubtedly aware that they were in the middle of a book they had yet to write. I scanned the accounts looking for familiar names. Where was McNamara? Where was Bundy? Where, in fact, was the crisis?

In fact, there was none. The supposedly secret installation had been known to Western intelligence agencies — Britain, France, the United States and undoubtedly Israel — for several years. Its existence had been deduced by intelligence analysts from Iranian purchases abroad, and it was pinpointed sometime afterward. What had changed was that news of it had gone public. This happened not because Obama announced it but because the Iranians beat him to it after discovering that their cover was blown. They then turned themselves in to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and, as usual, said the site was intended for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. These Persians lie like a rug.

For me though, the fake crisis cooked up over the Iranian nuclear facility wasn’t the most telling example; that wasn’t so much a failure of leadership as a failure of analysis, as if it really matters at the end of the day what Iran declares to the IAEA and what it doesn’t.

Three things jump out at me as exemplifying Obama’s inability to act presidentially: his propensity for setting deadlines and then watching them sail by, his very public and very disturbing panic attack over the war in Afghanistan, and the way he continues to use the rhetoric of opposition.

First, the deadlines.  As Cohen writes, “It seem[s] not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence — meet it or else.”  So far, we’ve had deadlines for healthcare legislation, Iranian compliance (twice), the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks (twice, if you believe Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth - at the trilateral in Washington Obama apparently gave Abbas and Netanyahu “three weeks” to resume talks) and the closure of Guantanamo Bay.  Every time he sets a deadline and doesn’t meet it – especially when he’s issuing ultimatums to foreign leaders – he diminishes the credibility of himself, the presidency, and the country.

It’s a device that ought to be used sparingly.  I can only remember one deadline issued by the Bush administration.  That was to Saddam, Uday, and Qusay Hussein to leave their country within 48 hours or witness the downfall of their odious regime – they didn’t leave and they did witness its downfall.

Presidents often declare long-term policy goals that they’re not going to be able to deliver on.  Bush’s was “I will democratize the Middle East” and an example of Obama’s might be “a world free of nuclear weapons”.  But because these goals are long-term, and some progress towards them can be demonstrated, it doesn’t matter that they’re never actually completely achieved.  In all of the examples noted above where Obama issued a deadline, the goal was impossibly specific and completely beyond his ability to realize.

This is stupid for more reasons than I can enumerate.  It hands to your enemy the ability to humiliate you, for free.  It’s an entirely self-inflicted blow.  It leads to a situation where nobody believes you when you give your word, an especially dangerous situation in a world where much depends on American security guarantees.  It makes you look weak and ineffectual, even though much of the presidency’s power around the world is the authority that comes from strength.  It’s an analytical failure because it ignores the fact soft power and diplomacy are ultimately grounded only in strength, which is why America has them and Sweden doesn’t.

This leads us to the second point, which is Afghanistan.  One of Obama’s problems with Afghanistan, which has been much remarked-upon, is the fact he called it a “war of necessity” and then refused to act like he considered it one.  His administration is known to be split between those who want to retreat and those who want to stay.  The military have told him he’s going to lose without more resources and he’s refusing to give them more resources immediately.  This, the credibility problem that comes with not following through on what you said, is only part of the problem, however.

The sort of equivocation he is displaying over what is undoubtedly America’s foremost national interest would ill-befit a candidate for the presidency, never mind the president himself.  Indeed, when Obama was a candidate he tried to out-hawk the Republicans on Afghanistan, declaring it the most important theatre and saying he would redouble his efforts there; remember when he even threatened to send troops into the Pakistani tribal areas, with or without the agreement of the Pakistani government?

Now that he is president, Obama has lost his steel.  Certainly, continuing the war is a risk, but one cannot run a credible American foreign policy without displaying a willingness to take risks.  When the interest involved is so blatant and the costs of failure so evident to everyone but the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, to refuse to take the risk begins to look like abject cowardice.  This is not a world in which the president can afford such a luxury.

Even if, in several weeks, Obama announces that he will give McChrystal everything he wants for the war effort, the damage will already be done: the perception and reality of equivocation will be established.  Given that American’s hardest war aim in South Asia is to convince the Afghans and the Pakistanis of U.S. commitment to the area, this equivocation comes close to inflicting a strategic defeat on the U.S. by itself.  Without firm assurances of this commitment, everyone in the region will begin to accomodate themselves to the eventual resurgence of the Taliban, and in so doing they will create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Finally, the rhetoric.  Obama talks.  A lot.  His foreign policy is, according to its own defenders, basically based on talking.  He pontificates to allies.  “I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world,” he told the United Nations.  Anyone who is aware of the expectations that accompany his presidency in Moscow and Tehran had a rueful smile at that one.  The problem, though, is that talk is cheap.  And it’s also demeaning.  The essence of the presidency is action.  The presidency is the power to make history, not to be merely shaped by it.  But all over the world, history is marching forward and the United States appears impotent to influence its course.  The most Obama can do is give speeches apologizing for what he thinks were the historical mistakes of his predecessors.  He has no concept of how important an assertive America is in an ungrateful world.

I think this may have something to do with the popular narrative of the Bush presidency among Democrats.  Because they saw the Bush administration as too strong, bullying, arrogant, and eager to throw its weight around, they now think the presidency should be timid, weak, afraid to make a stir – although evidently also still arrogant.  Playing to the court of world public opinion will never get a president anywhere.  The only people who really matter won’t respect it, they’ll disdain it.  Weakness is not a magical back alley which leads to strength through popularity; it is just weakness.

Barack Obama may love the United States – I am sure he is a patriot.  But his idea of the United States is not the United States that I love – and it isn’t the one most of his countrymen love, either.  He’s going to find that out, very soon.

1 comment September 29, 2009

Cohen: another option on Iran?

Roger Cohen thinks he has a fourth option in how to deal with Iran.  First, here he  is agreeing that sanctions won’t work and accepting the same logic on likely outcomes as Eliot Cohen did:

Yes, it feels good to do something, but it doesn’t necessarily help. In this case, sanctions won’t for four reasons.

One: Iran is inured to sanctions after years of living with them and has in Dubai a sure-fire conduit for goods at a manageable surtax. Two: Russia and China will never pay more than lip-service to sanctions. Three: You don’t bring down a quasi-holy symbol — nuclear power — by cutting off gasoline sales. Four: sanctions feed the persecution complex on which the Iranian regime thrives.

A senior German Foreign Ministry official last week told an American Council on Germany delegation: “The efficiency of sanctions is not really discussed because if you do, you are left with only two options — a military strike or living with a nuclear Iran — and nobody wants to go there. So the answer is: Let’s impose further sanctions! It’s a dishonest debate.”

His answer?  A negotiated, regional settlement with the Iranians.

The choice is indeed between a military strike and living with a nuclear Iran. But what is a “nuclear Iran?” Is it an Iran that’s nuclear-armed — a very dangerous development — or an Iran with an I.A.E.A,-monitored enrichment facility?

I believe monitored enrichment on Iranian soil in the name of what Obama called Iran’s “right to peaceful nuclear power” remains a possible basis for an agreement that blocks weaponization. Zero enrichment is by now a non-starter.

For fruitless sanctions to be avoided, the mantra of William Burns, the U.S. under secretary for political affairs who will attend multilateral talks with Iran starting Thursday, must be: “Widen the canvas.”

The Iranian regime is weak. Its disarray was again evident last week; it actually feels threatened by George Soros. Significant factions now view an American breakthrough as needed. They have a favorable view of Burns.

Burns must seek to open a parallel bilateral U.S.-Iran negotiation covering at least these areas: Afghanistan and Iraq (where interests often converge); Hezbollah and Hamas (where they do not); human rights; blocked Iranian assets; diplomatic relations; regional security arrangements; drugs; the fight against Al Qaeda; visas and travel.

Isolated, nuclear negotiations will fail. Integrated, they may not. Iran’s sense of humiliation is rooted in its America complex; its nuclear program is above all about the restoration of pride. Settle the complex to contain the program. Triangulate. Think broad. Think E.U., not Versailles.

This is no more plausible than when Cohen has tried to sell the idea of a “grand bargain” with Iran in the past.  Cohen fails to understand that Iran sees no reason to offer us anything because it believes it has the upper hand.  As Cohen himself admits, sanctions – our one remaining policy option – won’t work.  Iran has very little reason to fear a muscular response from this president, who can’t even bring himself to properly-resource what he himself has described as a war of necessity in Afghanistan.  Tehran isn’t out to do anyone any favours.

The idea that we could block weaponization by allowing Iran to enrich uranium at an IAEA-monitored facility is ludicrous.  Iran has never shown any inclination to co-operate with international inspectors, and surely subordinating its nuclear programme to the control of the West would grievously harm the nationalistic pride that Cohen so frequently admits is behind the nuclear programme.  Iran has no reason to avoid weaponization, and certainly not merely in exchange for a peaceful, civilian nuclear power capability that it has no need for.

Cohen is right, then, to admit that we would have to provide Tehran with more for it to agree to halt weaponization; much, much more.  Yet there is no reason for the mullahs to agree to do this either, since there is virtually nothing we can give them at an acceptable cost to us that they could not take once they had a nuclear weapon anyway.  Their long-term influence over Iraq is already ensured, and American influence in Baghdad is waning rapidly anyway – setting aside even the morality or wisdom of us negotiating with Iran over the future of a free, sovereign, independent Iraq which thousands of Americans died to bring into being.

It is entirely unclear to me – and Cohen has never spelt it out – what could transpire in negotiations on Hamas and Hezbollah that would persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear programme.  Iran supports Hamas and Hezbollah as means of seeking the eventual destruction of Israel, as tools that allow it to exert enormous influence in Lebanon, among the Palestinians, and in the Middle East as a whole, and as Tehran’s greatest public relations triumph among the Arabs.  The United States opposes them for all of these reasons.

Interests here do not just lack convergence but are diametrically opposed.  It is hard to imagine how this could possibly cease to be the case unless the U.S. reversed decades of foreign policy objectives in the Middle East and abandoned Israel; this is, incidentally, precisely what the Iranians hope will happen once they can exert pressure with a nuclear weapon, and it’s not at all clear to me why it would be good policy to cede this to them earlier, or why it would persuade them that developing a nuclear weapon was a bad idea, given they would already have achieved many of their goals and could look forward to the achievement of many more.

The other issues he mentions are quite obviously not of significant moment to lead to a course correction on Tehran’s nuclear programme.  There is nothing the U.S. can give to the mullahs in terms of unblocking assets, restoring diplomatic relations, battling drugs, or battling al-Qaeda that would lead to it abandoning its nuclear programme.  If the mullahs wanted assets unblocked or diplomatic relations restored, they wouldn’t have begun a nuclear programme in the first place.  Nor would Iran have anything to gain from confronting al-Qaeda, which remains a minor irritant and sometimes ally of it while being a major and distracting strategic obsession of the United States.

Finally, Cohen is incorrect to say the Iranian regime is weak or scared.  Ahmadinejad and his clique have just stolen an election and seized unconstitutional power with virtually no ramifications.  They clearly face no organized or capable domestic opposition.  They have set themselves up for a possible military coup when the Supreme Leader finally dies.  Squabbling among the hard-liners about the distribution of power does not amount to a major weakness.  Besides, given their propensity to paint dissidents as allied with the West, it is unclear why the nuclear programme and the continued tension between Iran and the West that this brings serves to undermine the regime; indeed, it quite obviously serves to strengthen it and undermine the case of the reformists.

A negotiated settlement isn’t going to work.  You only negotiate from a position of strength, not weakness.  There’s nothing we can give the Iranians that they can’t take, along with more, later on.  Cohen and his supporters are a dangerous distraction from the two choices confronting us: war or a nuclear Iran.

Add comment September 28, 2009

Options on Iran

I find the diplomatic and media circus surrounding discussions of sanctions on Iran disturbing not because I don’t think it isn’t a policy worth pursuing – we don’t have a better option at this time – but because I’m worried that many people, particularly those involved in executing it in the Obama administration, might convince themselves it actually has a hope in hell of stopping Iran getting the bomb.  We’ve seen how this sort of thing can lead to an obsession with process rather than results before, and I can’t help but feel this has already happened as I read breathless account after breathless account of what Medvedev said and what he really meant (very little), and whether the Chinese are likely to back a renewed push (they’re not).

We need to be clear on one thing: even if Russia and China did allow for tough new sanctions to be pushed through the Security Council (and this isn’t at all likely anyway), it probably still wouldn’t stop Tehran from seeking the bomb.  Even if Obama got everything he wanted, if Medvedev lined up and China somehow decided to abandon $100bn of economic interests, Iran will still have a nuclear weapon in one to five years.

They didn’t come this far just to give up now; even if they called a temporary halt until the pressure was off, they’ve done enough to restart the programme later on.  Their ability to pursue a programme in secret isn’t in doubt.  They’ve already withstood sanctions, and even the Western powers understand that “crippling” sanctions which severely hurt the Iranian economy are only likely to solidify support behind Ahmadinejad.  China and Russia aren’t likely to support these measures anyway, and they have the collective power to mitigate the impact of any sanctions regime that they are not a part of.  If sanctions were imposed, Tehran would rush towards a bomb at breackneck speed, safe in the knowledge the sanctions would be lifted as soon as they blast a radioactive hole in the desert.

We hence have two options:

Pressure, be it gentle or severe, will not erase that nuclear program. The choices are now what they ever were: an American or an Israeli strike, which would probably cause a substantial war, or living in a world with Iranian nuclear weapons, which may also result in war, perhaps nuclear, over a longer period of time.

Eliot Cohen thinks there’s possibly a third option:

It is, therefore, in the American interest to break with past policy and actively seek the overthrow of the Islamic Republic. Not by invasion, which this administration would not contemplate and could not execute, but through every instrument of U.S. power, soft more than hard. And if, as is most likely, President Obama presides over the emergence of a nuclear Iran, he had best prepare for storms that will make the squawks of protest against his health-care plans look like the merest showers on a sunny day.

Overthrowing the Iranian regime is likely to be impossible, not least because help from America is only likely to undermine the dissidents and make them easier for the regime to paint as Western stooges.  It’s not a policy to bet the farm on.  This administration shows no predisposition to pursuing it anyway. 

One day Iran is going to have the bomb unless events take a dramatic turn.  We need to remember this.  It’s going to be tough.  People are going to die before we even get to that point.  You can forget about an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement for so long as the centrifuges are spinning, and you can certainly forget about it once they’ve stopped.  And while the Obama administration is pursuing this futile policy of pressure, I hope someone somewhere is thinking about what to do on the morning when we wake up and find out that they failed.

1 comment September 28, 2009

A note on settlements

I’d like to just make a little note on Israeli settlements, which will be familiar to some readers and not to others.

I’ve started to notice a tendency in the media to use the term “Israeli settlement” to refer to two things: firstly, a conurbation and the land it is based upon, and secondly structures built on this land.  Hence the FT says ”Israel approves new settlements” when in fact it means new homes that will be built in an existing settlement.

Israel has not appropriated new land on which to build a Jewish settlement in the West Bank since the early 1980s.  There has hence been no “new settlement” in the West Bank during this time.  The sole exception is Maskiot, where construction began out of whole cloth recently.  However, Maskiot was legally incorporated as a settlement in the early 1980s and the land set aside – it has simply been fallow since.  Hence, it is still true that no new land has been appropriated for an Israeli settlement.

Hence, when you hear talk of “settlement expansion” or “new settlements”, the issue is population increase and new buildings on existing land.  No new Palestinian land is being taken and the population increase is a fairly phlegmatic 5%.  And when the settlements are finally abandoned, the Palestinians will take control of the buildings anyway.

Add comment September 22, 2009

Hamas attempts to bomb peace process

Just a few days before Obama is meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas has demonstrated what it thinks of any prospective peace agreement by trying to plant a bomb at the Gaza border fence.  Hamas admits one of its fighters was acting in a rare joint operation with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another militant group.  Bombs of this kind have been used in complex attacks before, such as the kidnapping of Gilad Schalit in 2006, which sparked months of fighting in Gaza.  Such actions are incredibly useful to Hamas because of the high price they can demand for the return of kidnapped soldiers.

Two Qassam rockets were also shot into Israel less than a day earlier.

This demonstrates two of the most ludicrous things about the possibility of a new and effective peace process at this time.  The first is that Hamas could derail it at any time by launching a renewed offensive against Israel – if it launches hundreds of rockets into Israel, then Jerusalem will have to respond and renewed violence is likely to lead to outrage in the West Bank and cause Abbas to walk away from the table.  Hamas gets a vote in peace talks, and it will never vote for peace, not only because it is ideologically-opposed to the two-state solution (seeking instead the destruction of all of Israel), but also because any deal negotiated between Fatah and Israel would weaken its popularity among Palestinians.

Hamas’ continued success depends heavily on the path of violence remaining credible in the eyes of Palestinians.  On the other hand, if the path of negotiation were to deliver results, it would also be undermined; it hence has a vested interest in negotiations failing.  Hamas’ popularity is waning at the moment – one of the few things to be optimistic about in the Middle East – and a majority of Palestinians now disapprove of the group’s rule in Gaza.  Palestinian elections are due to be held in January, and polls show that Hamas would lose them unless it changes course.  Any advance in negotiations threatens them even further.

The other point is that it is once again a reminder of the fact that, if the West Bank were to suffer the same fate as Gaza, then all of Israel would be within reach of militant missiles.  Critics might claim that Netanyahu’s insistence earlier this year that any prospective Palestinian state be demilitarized represents his lack of commitment to the peace process, but it rather represents the simple reality that Israel cannot survive when militants can rain rockets down on Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Israel’s international airport, and the Dimona nuclear complex.  If militants could use the West Bank in the same way they currently use Gaza, Israel would be forced to re-occupy the territory due to the simple reality that a democratic government must respond to the demand of its people for basic security.

It is hence vital for a sustainable peace that the West Bank be prevented from becoming a base for militants such as Hamas in any final peace agreement.  Finding ways to achieve this – such as building Palestinians’ capacity to provide security for themselves and strengthening the West Bank economy, both moves the Netanyahu government is wisely taking – would go a lot further towards achieving a peace agreement than a settlement freeze.

Add comment September 20, 2009

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