Now at Foreign Policy!

Dear loyal readers,

This is to announce that I’m now blogging for Foreign Policy’s Passport for the summer. Follow me there! To give you a small taste of what I’ve been up to so far, here are some samples:

Americans favor keeping Gitmo in business

Who else is eyeing Kim’s throne?

What are we learning from Iran’s election?

U.S.-led ambush strikes a positive note in Afghanistan

Source: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/04/17/world/ 17afghan2_600.JPG

A New York Times reporter recounts the story of a one-sided ambush in Afghanistan — this time launched by U.S. forces:

Lieutenant Smith was new to the platoon. This was his fourth patrol. He was in a situation that every infantry lieutenant trains for, but almost no infantry lieutenant ever sees. “Fire,” he said, softly into the radio. “Fire. Fire. Fire.”

The platoon’s frontage exploded with noise and flashes of light as soldiers fired. Bullets struck all of the lead Taliban fighters, the soldiers said. The first Afghans fell where they were hit, not managing to fire a single shot.

This doesn’t say much about the overall strategic situation in Afghanistan, but it’s pretty uplifting to see certain things going well. It’s also a great story.

Tehran’s and Washington’s interests aren’t mutually exclusive

The Obama administration today announced that it would drop a key precondition for negotiations with Iran — a precondition that the Bush administration had insisted on maintaining, says the NYT.

The theory is that by allowing Tehran to continue enriching uranium for an as-yet unspecified length of time during talks, the country will have an incentive to negotiate. “We are going to start with some interim steps,” said an unnamed European official, “to build a little trust.”

Source: http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200804/r240208_972753.jpg

But Obama’s concession doesn’t fundamentally change the cost-benefit analysis for Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. Certainly, from his perspective, keeping the enrichment facilities up and running as long as possible is in Iran’s interest. But if the outcome is still going to be that Tehran gives up its nuclear programs, you can bet that Ahmedinejad will do everything he can to sabotage the process.

What we need is a solution that’s mutually agreeable. Iran’s goal is to keep its nuclear facilities. Westerners don’t want Tehran to build a bomb. These aren’t mutually exclusive objectives. Yes, it’s difficult to implement effective oversight, and it’s not that far a jump from civilian nuclear energy to something more dangerous. But the hardest part is coming to a satisfactory agreement in the first place. Everything after should be a piece of cake by comparison.

A middle-ground solution would be to do what the U.S. recently did with the United Arab Emirates: sign a cooperative nuclear treaty that would see American technology exported to the Middle East. Done this way, Ahmedinejad gets to keep his nuclear energy program, and the U.S. gets to keep track of every piece of equipment that goes over there. Periodic, perhaps random maintenance checks, would also give Obama an opportunity to oversee what’s happening.

The danger that Ahmedinejad might co-opt even this program into producing enriched uranium is not nonexistent. But risk management, while more difficult, is also more realistic than the inflexibility of risk avoidance.

The difference between counterinsurgency and counterterrorism

Earlier, we spent some time parsing the White House’s new policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. But the truth is, no matter how explicit President Barack Obama’s expression of strategy is, there are profound disagreements over how that strategy should be implemented.

Obama can talk all he wants about how he hopes to “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return.” Yet the procedure for achieving those goals isn’t all that well defined.

There are really two ways to approach the fight against al-Qaeda: the counterinsurgency (COIN) method, and what many refer to as the counterterrorism (CT) method. At first glance, both terms appear to describe the same thing — which is the trap that the president is in danger of falling into.

Both philosophies overlap to a certain degree, but to paint a starker picture, I think the term “anti-terrorism” is more appropriate instead of CT. What distinguishes antiterrorism (call it “AT,” perhaps) from COIN? AT seeks to limit the effects of terrorism by thwarting attackers and preparing defenses, whereas COIN calls for neutralizing the incentives that encourage the spread of radicalism.

Recent U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan has featured an increase in the use of UAV attacks and small-team strike forces killing groups of suspected insurgents. That’s a short-term strategy at best. Think of it this way: CT is best used as a tactic, not a strategy. Meanwhile, COIN is best used as a strategy, not a tactic. Put them together, and what should happen is the use of offensive tactics in the larger context of a campaign that seeks to disincentivize radicalism.

Trouble is, not enough people realize the difference between each approach.

Obama Unveils a Promising New Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Facing Facts

The President presented the key components of his administration’s new strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan in a press conference on Friday. Finally, it would seem, America is looking upon the obstacles at hand with open eyes and a clear head.

Before yesterday, any journalistic reference to ‘US policy in Pakistan and Afghanistan’ so constructed, would have been a media error. For all intents and purposes, Bush’s plan of action regarded Pakistan as a mere side-theater to the Afghanistan war, unworthy of further attention.

Obama’s announcement on Friday represented a clear rejection of past policy approaches, stating explicitly that America’s objective is “to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future” – a construction that was both deliberate and realistic in its emphasis.

Pakistan: The New Frontier

Opting for the broader strategy advocated by General Petraeus, Hillary Clinton, and Richard Holbrooke, the President elected to triple development aid to Pakistan in a decisive bid for the hearts and minds of those living in Pakistan’s uncontrolled border areas.

The new US strategy recognizes that the Pakistani “government’s ability to destroy these safe-havens is tied to its own strength and security,” and that if US military action is not balanced by soft power incentives, Pakistan’s already weak civilian government will be undermined in the eyes of its people. With this in mind, Obama has called on Congress to authorize a bipartisan bill granting Pakistan $1.5 billion in aid every year over the next five years.

Furthermore, the new policy prioritizes the diffusion of tensions between Pakistan and India, noting that Pakistani security forces will be unable, and unwilling, to devote their resources to tackling the al-Qaeda threat with a menacing India waiting eagerly to exploit any sign of internal vulnerability. This diplomatic pressure has already born fruit; as early as this morning, The Economic Times reported that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari reached out to India, calling for the resumption of the composite dialogue process, and stating, “we will continue to seek the peaceful settlement for all outstanding disputes, including the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir.”

Afghanistan

Obama’s announcement was well received in Afghanistan, where officials have long pushed for comprehensive engagement with Pakistan. In Kabul, President Karzai informed journalists that he was “in full agreement” with the strategy. According to the BBC, he went on to add: “this is better than we were expecting, as a matter of fact.”

The Afghan Minister of Defense, General Abdul Rahim Wardak, was particularly pleased to see that Obama had decided to deploy an additional 4,000 US ‘enablers’, otherwise defined as men charged with the responsibility of training Afghanistan’s national army and police force. In an interview with the BBC, Wardak said, “since the beginning of 2002 I have been telling everyone that the most cost-effective way for our friends and allies, and politically the less complex way… is to enable the Afghans themselves.”

The President’s addition of 4,000 more troops to the 17,000 he deployed soon after taking office will bring the total number of coalition troops on the ground to 68,000 by this fall – a substantial increase from the 31,000 committed at the end of Bush’s second term. 

Poppies and Agriculture

Perhaps more importantly, however, Obama’s policy team has markedly diverged from their predecessors by choosing to regard the war on drugs as secondary to the newly termed “campaign against extremism”.

Rather than directing more American funds towards the coalition’s notoriously unsuccessful poppy eradication program, which has more often than not driven impoverished local farmers into the hands of the Taliban, Holbrooke has indicated that his team will give the policy “a complete rethink.” As reported by David Corn, Holbrooke went on to say, “it’s just so damn complicated. You can’t eliminate the whole eradication program. You have to put more emphasis on the agricultural sector.”

While hardly explicit, Holbrooke’s remarks can be taken to represent a drift away from eradication in favor of a more realistic scheme of providing Afghan farmers with alternative livelihoods. To assist in this objective, Obama has called for an expanded civilian presence; in his words, this increase in educators, engineers, and agricultural specialists can only help “advance security, opportunity, and justice – not just in Kabul, but from the bottom up, in the provinces.”

The Questions Before Us

Obama’s new strategy is certainly ambitious; it boldly and rightly extends the Afghanistan war into the Pakistan theater. However, the success of this policy ultimately inheres in the delicate matter of its implementation.

Experts have noted that alongside the increase in development aid, Obama seems committed to escalating Drone attacks on al-Qaeda safe-havens in Pakistan. While these attacks have reportedly killed an estimated 9 of the top 20 al-Qaeda commanders, more terrorist leaders have emerged in their stead, and high rates of civilian casualties have only increased local resentment. It remains to be seen whether this policy can be reconciled with America’s fundamental aim to isolate the Pakistani people from the Taliban.

If the campaign against extremism is to succeed in Pakistan, it will be a battle hard-won through American deeds, rather than words. Obama’s strategic review represents a huge leap in the right direction, but there is much still to be done.