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?

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.

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.

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.

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. 

The problem with FCS isn’t its cost — because how do you put a price on saving soldiers’ lives? The same argument led Congress to approve some of the largest defense budgets in history. No, the real reason critics should oppose FCS is because it was a poorly executed idea. It’s a relic of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld‘s notion of network-centric warfare. Rumsfeld’s vision of a lighter, mobile military that can move faster, shoot farther and hide better is an extension of the idea that “if we can see it, we can hit it — and if we can hit it, we can destroy it.”

For the military, being able to destroy anything more efficiently has become a goal in itself. Most of the time, that’s a good thing. What use is a fighting force if it can’t disarm opponents quickly? But killing the enemy has now become less productive than it once was. Today, building infrastructure and providing basic services like sanitation have become critical to winning small wars — arguably more so than simply shooting at things.

It’s still important to prepare for conventional war. FCS would prove most useful in an all-out fight with a state with lots of tanks, planes and men. But as John Nagl has said, the U.S. has given up only a fraction of its conventional warfighting capability in exchange for immeasurable amounts of experience infighting unconventional wars.

So while FCS would be useful, it’s not clear that it makes any significant contributions to the U.S.’s already rock-solid global military posture. It’s a project that’s effective conceptually, and would certainly provide soldiers a huge tactical advantage on the ground.  Still, I can’t help but think it was designed for the wrong war — or at least, the kind of war that the U.S. should be less interested in waging these days.

1. A war between the U.S. and China is “quite likely.”
2. People fret about terrorism the same way that Chicken Little worried about the sky falling. “Compared to interstate war, terrorism … is a minor menace.”
3. “NATO-Russian relations are an accident waiting to happen.”

Gutsy indeed. I think Gray is wrong on all counts. Maybe I’m overly idealistic, but I just can’t see it happening. Yes, China’s growing cyberwarfare capabilities are a threat to U.S. security, and the two countries differ over issues of development and human rights. But I’m not convinced those differences outweigh our similarities (read: both countries just want to get rich). China’s politics may differ from America’s, but that’s not to say they’re necessarily in direct competition.

John Nagl, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, one of the nation’s foremost counterinsurgency thinkers and a senior fellow at CNAS, has argued that the U.S. military has given up only about three percent of its conventional warfighting capability — for a 300 percent increase in its capacity to fight unconventional wars. Even if interstate war is really more important than low-intensity conflict, the U.S. is still more than prepared for a conventional fight. And the payoff we’ve had from redirecting our resources to learn about unconventional warfare have been massive, enough to make them a valuable pursuit in themselves.

NATO’s recent olive branch extended to Russia suggests relations are improving, not worsening. Despite the historically tense ties between the alliance and Moscow, I don’t think a Russia-NATO partnership is out of the question. If NATO can get Russia to become a net security provider instead of a security liability (maybe even bring Russia on board as a member!) that will mean huge gains for European and Asian security. And that would be a bonus for NATO, who’s looking to justify its relevance in the post-Cold War age. A bonus, too, for Russia — they get to be part of the club that all the popular countries are in. Everybody wins.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00030/mexico_drug_war4_30955a.jpg

Mexico’s uncontrollable drug war is so problematic that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has plans to get involved. This is the kind of conflict that blurs state borders, making efforts to come to closure a transnational issue. It’s about time the U.S. took action. The Mexican cartels have allegedly killed as many as 6,300 people since last January amid the ongoing shooting war with government forces.

Mexican officials have said the only way to successfully limit the drug trade’s influence in the country is to add U.S. support. Much of the cartels’ money laundering and production of methamphetamine and marijuana takes place in the United States, according to the Congressional Research Service. Today, Mexican drug lords dominate the entire spectrum of drugs:

Mexican drug cartels already control about 90 percent of the cocaine trade across the United States and most of the market for marijuana, methamphetamine and heroin, with operations in 230 cities, according to the U.S. Justice Department’s National Drug Intelligence Center. They have essentially supplanted the Colombian and Dominican criminal groups that terrorized major U.S. cities through the 1980s and ’90s, the agency said.

Add to that the tremendous volume of firearms (including high-power, select-fire assault rifles) that flow across the U.S.-Mexican border every day — and what you have is the ammunition (literally) for the continued violence. American weapons “account for 95 percent of Mexico’s drug-related killings,” says CBS News.

The U.S. finally realizes that it’s contributing to the problem, and it’s said it wants to respond to the war with counterinsurgency measures. The military plans to give Mexico $1.4 billion and assistance with intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance.

Source: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/02/04/world/asia/1231547102124/us-troops-out-of-kyrgyzstan-.html

By now, you’ve probably found out that the government of Kyrgyzstan wants to kick the U.S. out of the country. If you  haven’t — well, you heard it here first.

It’s a big deal when any country asks the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world to leave. But the strategic location of Kyrgyzstan makes this particular request especially problematic for the U.S.

The American air base in Manas, Kyrgyzstan, lies within striking distance of Afghanistan. It serves as the logistics hub for everything related to the U.S. mission against the Taliban. From cargo shipments to tanker refueling, the Manas air base is central to the U.S. military.

There are signs that Moscow may have had a hand in the incident. It’s in preliminary negotiations with Washington about putting the air base somewhere in Russia — this, just after Russia agreed to loan Kyrgyzstan a large sum of money.

The hullaballoo over Kyrgyzstan raises some important questions: did Kyrgyzstan decide to force the U.S. out as a result of the loan? And did Russia make the loan intending for that to happen? If so, the follow-up: did Russia simply want to disrupt American operations in Afghanistan, or did it want something else? The U.S. to relocate the base within Russia’s own borders, perhaps, given the ongoing negotiations? And the follow-up to all of that: why??

I don’t profess to know the answer to all these questions. But while I try to find out, here’s a video from the New York Times to hold you over. It’s about life in Manas — the kind that you don’t normally hear about on the wires.