Posts Tagged ‘
Afghanistan ’
Friday, September 23rd, 2011
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
Top U.S. officials this week accused Pakistan of abetting a terrorist group responsible for attacks on U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The bombshell here isn’t Pakistani duplicity—that’s old news—but the Obama administration’s decision to go public. It means Washington finally has run out of patience with our supposed “ally.”
The U.S. complaint centers on the Haqqani network, an Afghan terrorist group holed up in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the network is “a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.” He said the ISI helped Haqqani operatives carry out a truck bomb attack that wounded more than 70 U.S. and NATO troops on Sept. 11, as well as a suicide assault on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.
The ISI’s ties to Haqqani network date back to the anti-Soviet jihad and subsequent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Apparently, the ISI sees no reason to sever those ties just because the Haqqanis are now killing U.S. and NATO forces instead of Russians. As Mullen explained, the ISI sees the network as a valuable “proxy” that can give Pakistan leverage in Afghanistan, especially after U.S. forces have gone home. There’s another somewhat more sinister explanation: many in the ISI and army hierarchy share an ideological affinity with Islamic terror groups that target both Afghanistan and India.
So is Pakistan really an enemy masquerading as a friend? The situation is complicated because Pakistan has cooperated with the United States in targeting al Qaeda and the Taliban, even as its army rebuffs our pleas to expel the Haqqanis from North Waziristan.
The blunt testimony by Mullen and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta signals the end of several years of “quiet diplomacy” aimed at getting Pakistan to make a clean break with jihadi terrorism. Outing the ISI may put more pressure on a weak civilian government. However, the Pakistani government is not only looking over its shoulder at the powerful security branches, but also at a public strongly opposed to U.S. infringements of Pakistani sovereignty.
On the other hand, Americans are entitled to ask what we have to show for the $20 billion in U.S. aid sent to Pakistan over the last decade. Last year, Congress approved $1.7 billion for economic aid for Pakistan, and $2.7 billion in security aid. At a minimum, we ought to stop trying to bribe a government that is playing us for fools.
With two wars on its hands, maybe the United States can’t afford a total rupture with Pakistan. But we can’t achieve any kind of lasting success in Afghanistan as long as Pakistan provides a safe refuge to the Haqqanis and other insurgents. That’s a genuine dilemma, but at least U.S. leaders have begun to grapple with it honestly.
Tags: Admiral Mike Mullen, Afghanistan, Haqqani, Inter-Services Intelligence agency, Leon Panetta, NATO, Obama Administration, Pakistan, Russians, United States, Waziristan
Posted in
A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix |
No Comments »
Thursday, September 15th, 2011
Jordan Tama
Jordan Tama is an assistant professor at American University’s School of International Service and a fellow at the Truman National Security Project.
by Jordan Tama
In June 2011, the House Appropriations Committee unanimously approved an amendment introduced by U.S. Representative Frank Wolf (R-Va.) that would provide $1 million for the establishment of an independent Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group. The blue-ribbon panel’s charge would be to assess U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and offer recommendations within 120 days.
Could an Afghanistan-Pakistan Commission actually accomplish anything? Although the popular perception is that commission reports achieve little beyond giving publicity to the graybeards that serve on them, my research on over 50 blue-ribbon panels shows that under the right circumstances they can catalyze important policy changes.
At first blush, an Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group might seem pointless, since President Obama has already decided to implement a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. But beyond the withdrawal of our surge forces much of our policy remains uncertain or undecided.
In particular, it remains unclear how large of a troop presence we will maintain in Afghanistan beyond 2012, how we will seek a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan and deal with the Taliban if they gain ground as we pull out, and, as relations with Pakistan remain tumultuous in the wake of the Bin Laden assassination, how the U.S. will craft a comprehensive, stable policy toward Islamabad that best serves national interests over the long term.
Read the entire brief.
Tags: Afghanistan, Frank Wolf, Pakistan, President Obama, study group
Posted in
A Progressive Security Strategy |
No Comments »
Thursday, June 23rd, 2011
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
President Obama is taking heat for announcing troop withdrawals last night without clarifying U.S. war aims in Afghanistan. Yet his basic strategy couldn’t be clearer. It is to depart Afghanistan gradually – a fighting withdrawal – to maximize the odds that the Taliban won’t be able to take over once U.S. troops are gone.
It may not work, but it’s hard to see a better alternative. The United States can’t “win” this war in any conventional sense. We can’t defeat the Taliban, which unfortunately has an ethnic and popular base in Pashtun regions. We can’t afford nation-building in Afghanistan right now, even if we knew how to do it. We can’t make the central government fundamentally less corrupt and more effective in delivering basic services. The best we can do is to build and train Afghan security forces, bolster local resistance to the Taliban and degrade the insurgents’ military strength.
This course at least gives Afghans a fighting chance to keep the Taliban at bay without foreign help, and may reinforce efforts to find a political resolution to the conflict. Otherwise, the United States faces an unpalatable choice between getting out quickly and hoping for the best, or an endless military engagement to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a haven for Islamist militancy and terror plots.
The political media interpreted Obama’s decision to withdraw 10,000 troops as a bid to split the difference between a public that seems increasingly disenchanted with the war and U.S. military leaders, who believe we are making progress against the insurgency. In fact, the president’s purpose was to buy time for the U.S. military to continue its campaign to weaken the Taliban. Here’s the headline we should have seen: “Obama promises three more years of war.”
The president plans to draw down an additional 20,000 troops by next summer, but that will leave over 60,000 U.S. troops in the fight until 2014. He argued that his surge of 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan has succeeded in dislodging the Taliban from broad swaths of the south. Meanwhile, drone attacks have taken a heavy toll on al Qaeda and Taliban leaders in Pakistan, and of course U.S. forces finally caught up with Osama bin Laden. It wasn’t quite a “mission accomplished” moment, but Obama clearly believes these tactical gains justify a more deliberate withdrawal than many in his own party – and a growing band of restive Republicans – would like.
In a sense, Obama is applying the Iraq template to Afghanistan. His pledge during the campaign to withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2012 helped cool anti-war passions at home and give Gen. David Petraeus’s surge a chance to work. Likewise, by setting a date certain for an end to U.S. operations in Afghanistan, Obama buys time to build on the U.S. military’s hard-won successes.
The big difference, though, is that Iraq’s Sunnis turned against al Qaeda. The Taliban is an indigenous insurgency, not an imported conspiracy like al Qaeda. And the longer U.S. forces stay in Afghanistan, the more they risk triggering a broader and more nationalistic revolt against the latest foreign invader.
Obama is betting that we have a brief window of opportunity to wear down the still unpopular Taliban before that sort of transformation can take place, and before war-weary Americans give up on the Afghan mission. It’s not a bet that inspires confidence, but for now it’s the least-bad option.
Photo Credit: Dan Love
Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Strategy, Will Marshall
Posted in
A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix |
3 Comments »
Tuesday, December 21st, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
The 111th Congress is still a few days from concluding, but with Saturday’s Senate vote repealing the military’s Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell policy, it can boast a record of progressive accomplishment that may give pause to liberal critics of the Obama administration. Ratification of the START treaty just before Christmas would be a nice capper before the difficult period begins with the Republican takeover of the House and the official burial of any filibuster-proof Democratic Senate Majority.
Since this is my last memo for 2010, it’s as good time as any to examine the political mood of the country going into 2011.
It’s worth noting that there’s really no consensus interpretation of what ultimately happened in the midterm elections. Democrats remain divided between those who view the November setback as primarily a structural phenomenon attributable to a bad economy and inevitable shifts in the turnout patterns, and those who believe strategic and tactical errors by the President and congressional leaders invited the defeat. Liberal activist criticism of Obama for his conciliatory public attitude towards Republicans, conservative Democrats, and “big business,” while familiar to anyone who remembers the Clinton years, reached a sharp new point near the end of the year, nearly producing a revolt in the House against the Obama-McConnell tax deal.
But it’s unclear whether this hostility among opinion-leaders is widely shared in the actual “base” of Democratic voters. The latest Gallup tracking poll does show Obama’s job approval rating among self-identified liberal Democrats dipping below 80 percent for the first time, but 79 percent approval is still a pretty high number. Anyone fantasizing about a left-bent primary challenge to the president should look at last week’s Magellan poll of NH, which showed Obama trouncing any potential rival there, even though it should be one of his weakest states.
Republicans, meanwhile, have largely taken a triumphalist view of the midterms as indicating a conscious conservative “turn” in the electorate that has rejected Obama, Pelosi and their “socialist” policies. The major topic of dissension among conservative commentators is whether the risk to be most avoided is an ideological rigidity that prevents Republicans from taking advantage of Democratic missteps, or instead a return to the “big government conservatism” and ideological laxity that, in their view, doomed the Bush administration.
Since the air is often full of warnings to party leaders from both sides of the spectrum against compromise with the satanic opposition, it’s interesting to look a little more deeply at Democratic and Republican attitudes on the subject of bipartisanship. A recent analysis by Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal reaches the striking conclusion that poll numbers showing high public support for “compromise” can be misleading:
For many partisans, “compromise” is really a disguised expression of partisanship. They want to see the leaders of both parties working together, but mostly in support of their preferred policies. A larger number of Democrats — a third to half — are open to their leaders compromising with the Republicans, and that difference helps tilt the overall numbers in favor of compromise.
In other words, support for “compromise” is lower than it looks, but for all the progressive angst about Obama betraying his base, he appears to have more maneuverability when it comes to compromise than does his Republican counterparts. Certainly the base-dominated 2012 presidential nominating process is likely to exert a strong rightward influence on the GOP.
Five key things to look for early next year:
- Most obviously, the economy: Is it recovering in a way that will be tangible to voters in 2012? Will Republicans at the federal and/or state levels take actions that essentially sabotage recovery by depressing consumer demand?
- Redistricting: How aggressively will Republicans pursue their midterm advantage in the states, and how much leeway will courts give them in legislative gerrymandering?
- The deficit debate: Will it develop in a way that encourages cooperation at the risk of premature austerity policies, or that sharpens partisan differences?
- Afghanistan: The one thing that could turn liberal grumbling about Obama into serious intraparty opposition would be the perception that he’s dragging his feet on withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
- Republicans: Will the GOP finally secure visible leadership that helps rather than hurt the party’s political prospects? Can they do better than McConnell and Boehner, Gingrich and Palin?
The dynamics of the 2012 election cycle will depend on all five of these factors, aside from the nuts and bolts of money and organization and candidate personalities. Whether the two parties—or barring that, the president alone via executive action—can accomplish much while jockeying for future position is another question entirely.
Tags: 111th Congress, Afghanistan, austerity, big business, big government, bipartisanship, Boehner, Bush, Clinton, compromise, conservatives, consumer demand, DADT, Deficits and debt, federal, Gallup, gerrymandering, Gingrich, GOP, ideological rigidity, liberal, Magellan, Mark Blumenthal, McConnell, midterm elections, moderate, NH, Obama Administration, Obama-McConnell, Palin, Pollster.com, progressive, redistricting, socialist, START, tax deal
Posted in
Daily Fix, Political Memo |
1 Comment »
Monday, December 20th, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
Look, I realize that Tom Friedman gets a lot of guff from the liberal intelligensia. Matt Taibbi over at Rolling Stone has practically made a second career out of eviscerating Friedman’s sometimes tortured contortions of the Queen’s Tongue. Certainly, Taibbi scores the odd point: “It’s OK to throw out your steering wheel,” Friedman once wrote about George Bush’s Middle East policy, “as long as you remember you’re driving without one.” What?
Fair enough. But Tom, a long-time friend of PPI no less, is an insightful writer who, more often than not, is on the right side of history. Take his column this weekend on the “U.S.S. Prius“:
Spearheaded by Ray Mabus, President Obama’s secretary of the Navy and the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the Navy and Marines are building a strategy for “out-greening” Al Qaeda, “out-greening” the Taliban and “out-greening” the world’s petro-dictators. Their efforts are based in part on a recent study from 2007 data that found that the U.S. military loses one person, killed or wounded, for every 24 fuel convoys it runs in Afghanistan. Today, there are hundreds and hundreds of these convoys needed to truck fuel — to run air-conditioners and power diesel generators — to remote bases all over Afghanistan.
Mabus’s argument is that if the U.S. Navy and Marines could replace those generators with renewable power and more energy efficient buildings, and run its ships on nuclear energy, biofuels and hybrid engines, and fly its jets with bio-fuels, then it could out-green the Taliban — the best way to avoid a roadside bomb is to not have vehicles on the roads — and out-green all the petro-dictators now telling the world what to do.
Let’s just say I’m happy Tom’s reading my stuff. Yep, on October 12, I wrote the following piece in the Los Angeles Times on the same topic to mark the 10th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S.S Cole in Aden harbor:
America forgets Oct. 12 as seamlessly as it remembers Sept. 11. Ten years ago today, 17 U.S. Navy sailors were killed and 39 injured in an Al Qaeda attack against the U.S. destroyer Cole in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. The Cole was relatively defenseless during a 24-hour refueling stop when suicide operatives pulled alongside in a small, explosive-laden boat and detonated a charge, ripping a 40-foot hole in the hull.
Though the lessons from 9/11 will be debated for years, Oct. 12′s message is succinct. It is best summed up by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James T. Conway: “Energy choices can save lives on the battlefield.” The armed forces are searching for next-generation green energy technologies because they provide power at the point of its consumption, which decreases the military’s need to resupply with carbon-based fuels.
…
Mabus is setting big goals for an energy-independent military. He wants to sail a “Great Green Fleet” by 2016 — a full carrier strike group composed of nuclear and hybrid electric ships, as well as biofueled aircraft. By 2020, Mabus wants half of the Navy’s energy to come from alternative sources.
That’s why the Obama administration should consider a Pentagon innovation fund. A few well-spent dollars would help companies tackle the technological learning curve and reduce costs.
To get to where Mabus wants to go, ideas need cash. The Pentagon may have a truly out-of-control budget, but consider this: Radar, GPS and the Internet all started as military-funded projects. The next green technology could be sitting in a lab somewhere, begging for a few dollars to help produce it on a bigger scale.
With conservatives pushing this climate change denial nonsense, it’s an important point that the military is innovating on green-tech because it can’t wait for the political “debate”. So much the better as more-and-more mainstream writers pick up on this narrative.
Tags: Aden harbor, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Climate change, Commandant Gen. James T. Conway, conservatives, energy-independent, George Bush, Great Green Fleet, green energy, gren-tech, Innovation, liberal intelligensia, Los Angeles Time, Marines, Matt Taibbi, Middle East policy, Military, Pentagon, petro-dictators, PPI, Ray Mabus, Rolling Stone, Saudi Arabia, Secretary of the Navy, Taliban, Tech, the Navy, tom friedman, truck fuel, U.S.S Cole, U.S.S. Prius, Yemen
Posted in
A Progressive Security Strategy, Clean Energy and Modern Infrastructure, Daily Fix, Issues |
2 Comments »
Thursday, December 16th, 2010
Jordan Michael Smith
Jordan Michael Smith is writing a book on U.S.-Israeli relations. He’s written for The Atlantic, The Boston Globe and Foreign Policy
by Jordan Michael Smith
The Obama administration released its Afghanistan review this morning, and while everyone will be digging through it for truths and obfuscations, it’s worth simply comparing the review’s conclusions to President Obama’s “Terms Sheet” he dictated at the outset of his Afghanistan surge. Obama’s six-page terms sheet, first revealed and released in Bob Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars, calls for measuring progress in Afghanistan by answering questions in related to governance, Pakistan, training of Afghan forces, and international support. Let’s look at the new review and compare it to some parts of the old one, shall we?
- The new review concludes that “the momentum achieved by the Taliban in recent years has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in some key areas, although these gains remain fragile and reversible.”
The initial review, however, called for “reversing the Taliban’s momentum” everywhere, not merely arresting it in some places (my italics). Small word change, big difference.
- The new review says that “We are also supporting Afghanistan’s efforts to better improve national and sub-national governance, and to build institutions with increased transparency and accountability to reduce corruption – key steps in sustaining the Afghan government.”
The initial review had specific benchmarks to measure governance progress: Has President Karzai made merit-based appointments in the areas most essential to our mission? Has the Afghan government begun to implement an effective reintegration/reconciliation program? The new review is silent on these critical matters.
- The new review holds that Afghanistan forces “have exceeded ANSF growth targets, implemented an expanded array of programs to improve the quality and institutional capacity of the ANSF, and sharply improved their training effectiveness.”
The initial review called for “accelerated ANSF growth while improving quality.” On this score, the U.S. is doing quite well, according to what was released today.
- The new review argues that “Emphasis must continue to be placed on the development of Afghan-led security and governance within areas that have been a focus of military operations.”
The initial review insisted that we needed to establish “a program to transfer responsibility from ISAF to ANSF province by province.” No mention in the new document of what has been achieved, only on what must still be done.
Despite the negative balance sheet, on these and other scores, today’s review is cautiously optimistic. We are making progress, however fragile and recent. “Most important, al-Qa’ida’s senior leadership in Pakistan is weaker and under more sustained pressure than at any other point since it fled Afghanistan in 2001,” Obama’s new review argues. Reviewing the first assessment, however, reminds us that weakening al-Qaeda’s senior leadership in Pakistan was not the primary goal. Perhaps it should have been.
Photo Credit: Truthout
Tags: Afghanistan, al-Qa’ida, ANSF, Bob Woodward, ISAF, Military, Obama Administration, Obama’s Wars, Pakistan, President Karzai, Taliban, Terms Sheet
Posted in
A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Issues |
2 Comments »
Friday, December 10th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
It’s been one of those weeks in Washington. Just a few days ago, it appeared the tax deal between the president and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had broken the lame-duck session logjam, resolving the stickiest problem and paving the way for late-session action on issues like DADT and START.
Now votes on the tax deal have been pushed into next week amidst a resolution of disapproval by House Democrats, and the DADT repeal has lost a key Senate floor vote once again.
It’s hard to say whether the President’s very early signals that he’d be willing to strike a deal to avoid the expiration of Bush’s tax cuts made the ultimate liberal backlash more understandable or puzzling. The only surprises in the final deal were the inclusion of a payroll tax holiday, the one stimulative proposal with significant support in both parties; extension of the enhanced EITC and child tax credits created in the 2009 stimulus package, a total concession to Democrats; and revisions in the resurrected federal estate tax—which didn’t exist in this calendar year—to create lower rates and higher exclusions than was the case before the Bush tax cuts first took place.
Some progressives (though not many) profess to oppose the payroll tax holiday on grounds that it’s part of a collateral attack on Social Security. Some also express moral outrage over the proposed estate tax concessions, pointing out (quite properly) that they will have zero positive impact on investment and growth. But the main complaint is that Obama never really went to the mats to defend the consensus Democratic opposition to high-end Bush tax cuts and their extension, and the main beef seems to be retroactive as much as prospective.
The tax-deal rebellion reflects gradually building liberal anger towards the Obama administration on topics ranging from the public option in health care to the unwillingness to pursue prosecution of Bush administration figures over civil liberties violations and treatment of terrorism suspects; the expansion of the U.S. troop commitment in Afghanistan; and above all, the President’s continuing protestations of bipartisanship. Furious injunctions to the president to “fight” for progressive principles, regardless of the legislative consequences, have spread far beyond the blogosphere to a wide array of congressional Democrats.
What’s unclear at the moment is whether the House Democratic action represented just a symbolic measure that won’t get in the way of House approval of the tax deal next week, or a more serious protest that will require some sort of modifications in the package that progressives can claim as a trophy. The latter contingency, of course, will give conservative Republicans a new excuse to walk away from the package and try to impose their own tax policies in the next Congress with their enhanced numbers.
In any event, the intra-Democratic rhetoric has grown so strong that it’s revived the immediate-post-election chattering classes talk about a primary challenge to Obama in 2012, with journalist Robert Kuttner being the most outspoken about dumping Obama lest he become the “Democrats’ Hoover,” and with anyone who defends the tax deal getting a lot of heat as a sell-out.
The most certain thing about the tax deal is that it has obliterated the attention that was being given to the Bowles-Simpson commission report and a variety of other deficit reduction proposals, even as the two parties appeared poised to approve measures that would create added deficits in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars. The lack of resistance (so far) by Tea Party Movement figures is as good a sign as any that its alleged total focus on debts and deficits is, like that of the Republican Party it dominates, a mirage that quickly fades once high-end tax cuts are on the table.
In other words, deficit-talk seems most useful in Washington as a way for partisans to excoriate their opponents’ priorities—i.e., the Democratic resistance to “entitlement reform” and the Republican resistance to progressive taxation and restrained defense spending. Actual concern on the topic, however, is harder to find, even at the end of a year where it’s rarely out of the headlines.
Tags: Afghanistan, bipartisanship, Bowles-Simpson, Bush tax cuts, civil liberties violations, DADT, deficit reduction proposals, Deficits and debt, Democrats' Hoover, EITC, estate tax concession, Health care, Lame Duck, liberal backlash, Mitch McConnell, Obama, payroll tax holidays, progressive principles, progressives, Robert Kuttner, Social Security, START, Tax Compromise, Tea Party, Terrorism, U.S. troop commitment
Posted in
Daily Fix, Political Memo |
1 Comment »
Friday, December 10th, 2010
Jordan Michael Smith
Jordan Michael Smith is writing a book on U.S.-Israeli relations. He’s written for The Atlantic, The Boston Globe and Foreign Policy
by Jordan Michael Smith
The Center for New American Security (CNAS) just released a new report on the way forward in Afghanistan. As the report’s title indicates, “Responsible Transition” calls for the United States to hand over responsibility for security to the Afghans over the next few years. The plan involves leaving 25-35,000 U.S. troops behind to defeat Afghanistan, with the rest withdrawn by 2014. “Responsible Transition” also calls for America to put more pressure on Pakistan to crack down on extremists.
CNAS’s plan to scale down the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is a wise one, recognizing as it does that “all options are likely to be suboptimal” but a long-term nation-building project is particularly suboptimal. But it seems wishful thinking that more pressure on Pakistan coming from the Obama administration will do what nine years of pressure haven’t already: convince Pakistan to expel the Taliban and any other troublemakers from its territory. As long as Pakistan knows we need it more than it needs us, it can take U.S. money while doing little.
Moreover, as Michael Cohen points out, CNAS’s report entirely sidesteps the thorny issue of talking with the Taliban. This is a key issue, since the Taliban have deep roots in the Pashtun community. Any long-term peace is going to have to include elements of the Taliban, as the administration sometimes seems to realize.
A more realistic plan would be something along the lines of what the Afghanistan Study Group and the Center for American Progress have recommended. Encouraging political reconciliation must be at the forefront of U.S.’s strategy going forward, not simply an afterthought. Military operations will have to take a backseat to diplomacy and politics if long-term progress is going to be made. Deal-making will have to include bargains with the Taliban, unsavoury though that prospect is. There simply is no other way to bring a modicum of stability to the troubled region unless the Taliban are made a part of some power-sharing agreement.
It’s a positive sign that the gang at CNAS recognizes that a sizable U.S. footprint in Afghanistan is unsustainable. As the strongest boosters of large-scale counterinsurgency approaches, CNAS has an important role to play in forming a strategy that focuses primarily–and eventually, exclusively–on preventing terrorist attacks against the U.S. homeland. That should always be the top priority. When the Obama administration releases its Afghanistan review next week, let’s hope it agrees.
Tags: Afghanistan, Center for New American Security, CNAS, extremists, Michael Cohen, Pakistan, Pashtun, Responsible Transition, Taliban
Posted in
A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix |
No Comments »
Thursday, December 9th, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
Beijing has arm-twisted nineteen countries to not send representatives to tomorrow’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. At issue is the honoree, Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese political prisoner whose views on human rights and democracy don’t jive particularly with the Chinese Communist Party’s. Imagine that.
On the surface, Beijing’s deft deployment of “soft power” seems impressive: to keep nineteen countries from attending supporting democratic movements is impressive. “Soft power,” as Harvard professor Joe Nye explains in an October Washington Quarterly article, is an area where Beijing is just coming into its own.
But Nye also points out that Chinese soft power has limits:
It is not easy for governments to sell their country’s charm if their narrative is inconsistent with domestic realities. In that dimension, except for its economic success, China still has a long way to go.
Such is the case with the Nobel event. Let’s examine the nineteen no-shows, and their political and press rankings from 2009 by Freedom House, the NGO that tracks these sorts of things:
| Country |
Political Status |
Freedom of the press status |
|
|
|
| Afghanistan |
Not Free |
Not Free |
| China |
Not Free |
Not Free |
| Colombia |
Partly Free |
Partly Free |
| Cuba |
Not Free |
Not Free |
| Egypt |
Not Free |
Partly Free |
| Iran |
Not Free |
Not Free |
| Iraq |
Not Free |
Not Free |
| Morocco |
Partly Free |
Not Free |
| Pakistan |
Partly Free |
Not Free |
| Russia |
Not Free |
Not Free |
| Saudi Arabia |
Not Free |
Not Free |
| Serbia |
Free |
Partly Free |
| Sudan |
Not Free |
Not Free |
| The Philippines |
Partly Free |
Partly Free |
| Tunisia |
Not Free |
Not Free |
| Ukraine |
Free |
Partly Free |
| Venezuela |
Partly Free |
Not Free |
| Vietnam |
Not Free |
Not Free |
Yikes. Only two unfettered “free”’s in the lot. In other words, as Nye acutely observes: ‘[I]f the authoritarian growth model produces soft power for China in authoritarian countries, it does not produce attraction in democratic countries. In other words, what attracts in Caracas may repel in Paris.” How spot-on.
And if you’re interested in hearing it straight from the horse’s mouth, come see Joseph Nye, Under Secretary Michele Flournoy, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) and a host of others talk about these issues at a PPI panel discussion on China, next Tuesday, December 14th in DC. Click here to see the invite and RSVP.
Photo credit: Adam
Tags: Afghanistan, authoritarian growth model, Beijing, China, Chinese Communist Party, Chris Coons, Colombia, Cuba, democracy, Egypt, Freedom House, Human rights, Iran, Iraq, Joseph Nye, Kazakhstan, Liu Xiaobo, Michele Flournoy, Morocco, Nobel Peace Prize, Oslo, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, soft power, Strong Arm Tactics, Sudan, the Philippines, Tunisia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Vietnam
Posted in
A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix |
1 Comment »
Friday, November 19th, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
No sooner had Congress convened this week for a post-election, lame duck session than a partisan squabble erupted in the Senate that threatens to scuttle a major nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia.
The contretemps began when Jon Kyl, the Senate Republican Whip, said he doubted the Senate could take up ratification of the NEW START arms accord until next year. This may seem like an innocuous comment on scheduling, but delay could well spell death for the treaty. This year, President Obama needs eight GOP Senators to meet the 67-vote threshold for ratifying treaties; next year, he would need 14.
Kyl’s remarks were especially galling to treaty backers since he had earlier called New START “relatively benign” so long as the United States also takes steps to assure the reliability of its nuclear arsenal. Obama duly committed enormous sums to upgrade national weapons laboratories and modernize again nuclear warheads, including budgeting an additional $4 billion specifically to placate Kyl. In his statement, however, Kyl referred cryptically to “complex and unresolved issues” that still need to be worked out.
The administration nonetheless has said it will press for a vote this year. Failure to ratify the pact would be a major embarrassment for Obama, who promised the Russians the deal would be concluded this year. But even more, it would be a triumph of blind partisan animus over America’s national security interests, and our government’s to carry out a coherent and effective diplomacy with the rest of the world.
More is at stake than the rather modest arms reductions (under the treaty, both sides would cap their nuclear warheads at 1,550, down from the previous ceiling of 2,200). Senate rejection of the treaty could unravel the administration’s efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to disruptive states, as well as its “reset” of relations with Russia, which it believes has begun to pay dividends on Afghanistan, Iran, and other important fronts.
It’s one thing for Washington partisans to squabble over domestic issues, like extending the Bush tax cuts. It’s quite another to let their fights spill over in the international arena, and undermine America’s ability to lead abroad. In the not-so-distant past – namely, the presidency of George H.W. Bush – arms accords passed the Senate on nearly unanimous votes. If Senate Republicans kill NEW START, it will be another dismal sign that our deeply polarized politics no longer stops at the water’s edge.
This piece is cross-posted at No Labels
Tags: Afghanistan, America's national security interests, Bush, GOP, Homeland security, Iran, Jon Kyl, Lame Duck, Nuclear Arms, Post-Election, President Obama, Russia, Senate Republican Whip, START
Posted in
A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Issues |
1 Comment »
Monday, November 8th, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
Here’s how Bill Kristol, Fox News contributor and editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, summed up a panel discussion I attended at the conservative American Enterprise Institute:
This is a truly distinguished panel, and one I’m happy to say that’s fair and balanced. We have (former Republican Senator from Missouri) Jim Talent, a responsible, respectable hawk. We have a slightly crazed militarist in Tom Donnelly, and a really insane hegemonic imperialist… me. It’s the correct spectrum of opinion.
The crowd chuckled its DC chuckle, and Wild Bill began. As it turned out, he was ironically prophetic – these people are batshit crazy. That tens of newly-elected Tea Partiers – folks who have never had much to say on national security and foreign policy issues – are now taking their cues from these jokers is downright terrifying.
But before diving into the political angles, here’s what makes these nutcases tick:
My suspicions were first aroused when former Senator Jim Talent (MO) blamed Bill Clinton for Iraq. Would that I were joking! Indeed, Talent bemoaned Clinton’s decision to scale down the size of the military in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. He correctly claimed that we were “fully deployed” during Iraq and Afghanistan, meaning that we simply didn’t have the numbers of troops necessary to properly resource both conflicts. It’s painfully and unfortunately obvious that Talent learned exactly the wrong lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan:
How much money and how many lives would it have saved if we’d have had 14 divisions instead of 10 and had been able to do in Afghanistan at the same time as we were (doing) in Iraq? … The blood, the lives, the people who were dying… we could have been years ahead of that schedule!
In other words, not only was invading Iraq the right call, we should have gone bigger and harder. It’s just too bad that all those people had to die and we had to waste all that money there because Bill Clinton decided to cut the size of the military after the Cold War.
Is Jim Talent a co-author on Decision Points or something? And here I was thinking that the decision to go to war without fully understanding what we were getting ourselves into caused all the slow progress.
Then there was Kristol’s fundamentally misguided view of defense spending. And that’s odd because he starts out with a correct general premise: “We should cut what should be cut and shouldn’t cut what shouldn’t.” That’s all well and good, provided you think that there are things to be cut. So over to you, Bill:
The best possible spending you can have is defense spending! We got out of the Great Depression by having a big defense build up…. The Pentagon has plenty of shovel ready projects!
F-22? No way! Foreign aid? Why not? It was deliciously ironic that while Kristol supported the idea of foreign assistance, he was open to restructuring its $45 billion budget; at the same time, Kristol lauded Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), incoming House Appropriations chairman, saying Ryan “knows how little can be saved in the defense budget — maybe $20 billion.” Pssst: Bill, that’s almost half of the foreign aid budget you think is big enough to reexamine. It’s also half of State’s.
It all seems so obvious to Talent: The defense budget “is affordable. To argue that it’s not affordable just isn’t right.” It’s especially affordable if we keep cutting taxes, right Jim?
Talent wrapped it all up in a nice big Fox News bow by tying alleged American declinism to Obama’s nefarious plan to nominate Joseph Stalin’s ghost as Tim Geithner’s replacement: “A socialized economy will not let America remain a great power.” But hold on there –- does a socialist want to “position our nation for success in the global marketplace” via a “strong, innovative, and growing U.S. economy in an open international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity”? Then Talent has some explaining to do, because that’s what the president says in this year’s National Security Strategy.
Thankfully, there was one area these mental dwarfs didn’t completely screw up: New START. Let’s be clear: Their partisan glasses won’t let them whole-heartedly endorse a very sensible treaty. Instead, they’re holding it hostage to more missile defense spending. But they’ll vote for it… hopefully.
Now, this all gets incredibly fascinating when you put it in a political context. The major take-away from this session is that the conservative establishment is pissing down their collective leg at the Tea Party’s soon-to-be dominant position on the Hill. Their plan is to co-opt the Tea Party by supplying it with mainstream conservative positions in an area the Tea Party doesn’t spend much time thinking about.
Kristol liquored up new Tea Partiers in hopes of bringing her home after the prom:
I think the Tea Party gets a bum wrap. They don’t believe we should lose wars, they don’t believe we should weaken the military, they do believe the world would be safer if Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons.
Jim Talent poured a few shots into Kristol’s punchbowl by hitting the “DC Republican establishment” (note to Talent: you’re a member.)
People who sat around and didn’t do what had to be done in 2001-2004 (specifically: Don Rumsfeld)… it’s a little much for them to be all up in arms because one Tea Party candidate said something that sounded vaguely not quite correct from the point of view of a strong U.S. foreign policy.
They’re pandering, and hard. Rand Paul doesn’t know it yet, but the Tea Party’s biggest spending hawk is about to vote for an ever-increasing defense budgets soon enough.
It was a mind-blowing Friday morning for yours truly, but was very reassuring in a way: The conservative establishment is as out of touch and irresponsible as always on national security, and they’re trying to take advantage of the strongest but most impressionable subset of their caucus. That’s why now more than ever, progressives have to offer strong, smart, rational approaches to U.S. national security, military, and foreign policy challenges.
Tags: Afghanistan, American declinism, American Enterprise Institute, Bill Clinton, Bill Kristol, Cold War, conservatives, crazed militarist, DC Republican establishment, Decision Points, defense budget, Don Rumsfeld, F-22, Foreign aid, foreign assistance, foreign policy issues, Fox News, global marketplace, Great Depression, great power, hegemonic imperialist, House Appropriations chairman, Iran, Iraq, Jim Talent, Joseph Stalin, national security, National Security Strategy, open international economic system, Paul Ryan, Pentagon, Rand Paul, START, Tea Partiers, Tea Party, The Lunatics, Tim Geithner, Tom Donnelly, U.S. foreign policy, Weekly Standard, Wild Bill
Posted in
A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Issues |
No Comments »
Thursday, November 4th, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
Picture the seventh grader who just brought home a report card full of Cs and Ds. After getting chewed to pieces by his parents, he points to the lone bright spot:
“C’mon… It’s not all bad.. I did get a B+ in art!”
“Art? ART?!?!” the overbearing and despondent father retorts, “Tell me how you’re getting into college with a B+ in art!”
That’s where national security stands as a political issue after this election: A bright spot that the electorate doesn’t much care about. The message from this election on national security is therefore somewhat simple: National security is not on most voters’ radar screen right now, and will stay out of sight until national security is threatened.
In the broad range of national security topics, only Afghanistan so much as registered as an issue this cycle, and barely so: a paltry 8 percent of respondents to a CNN exit poll indicated that the war was their chief concern. Of those, 57 percent voted Democratic, which hints at a (very) quiet confidence in the president’s handling of the war.
Even as it’s not at the top of the issues list, the electorate still supports the president on national security, according to a mid-September Democracy Corps poll. Since there have been no major national security issues in the ensuing six weeks, we have to assume the president’s 53 percent approval rating (42 percent against) stands. In a way, it’s a remarkable achievement for a president whose party has historically suffered in the polls when it comes to national security, something we call the “national security confidence gap” around here.
Despite the positive polls, the Democratic base (possibly in bed with spending hawks in the Tea Party) will likely turn its focus again to Afghanistan. Following Obama’s kept-promise on Iraq, the left will still expect a draw-down begun by mid-2011 in order to come out in force for the re-elect. The drawdown won’t begin in earnest until 2012, but a mid-2011 announcement will at least adhere to the letter of the president’s promise. There’s some wiggle room for progress, but not much.
As for the new Congress, if their performance to date is any indication, Republicans will feel empowered in the wake of this election to pick a few fights. To date, they’ve gone out of their way to hit Obama politically on every attempted terrorist attack. Those attacks have largely wasted their breath to this point, failing to shake public confidence.
But long-standing conservative bugaboos of Gitmo, missile defense, foreign assistance and potentially DADT loom large. (I’ve heard rumors that DADT will definitely be addressed in the coming lame-duck period, however.) Buck McKeon (R-FL) is the incoming HASC chairman and a big proponent of missile defense, so watch that in particular.
This opens an interesting gambit on Pentagon spending: Some sort of defense budget restraint is coming, and there’s probably at least bipartisan acknowledgment of that general principle, but I’d be shocked if this loose consensus included HASC Republicans. News today suggests the military’s $50 billion intelligence budget will be stripped from the Pentagon’s topline and moved under the DNI’s control. Is this just a sleight-of-hand that will substitute $50b more of weapons spending?
These fights will be a painful distraction for the administration, but should not dilute the White House’s core competency: keeping the country safe. Various forces will continue to make progress in Afghanistan frustrating, but the White House should continue to tout its successful record of taking the fight to al Qaeda in Af/Pak, scoring important diplomatic victories against Iran, and defending Americans against terrorist attacks. Continue to do this, and progressives will continue to make strides against the national security confidence gap.
Tags: 2010 midterm election, Afghanistan, CNN exit poll, Democracy Corps poll, Iraq, national security, national security confidence gap, Tea Party
Posted in
A Progressive Security Strategy, Daily Fix, Fixing Our Broken Politics, Issues |
2 Comments »
