All Sticks, No Carrots, and the Occasional High Profile Insult
This looks like a calculated slap in the face:
The US president has accused China of "wilful blindness" in remaining silent over North Korea's suspected sinking of a South Korean warship in March.
Barack Obama said he hoped that Hu Jintao, his Chinese counterpart, would recognise that North Korea crossed a line in the sinking of the Cheonan warship, which killed 46 South Korean sailors.
...
He said he understood that North Korea and China were neighbours, "there's a difference between restraint and wilful blindness to consistent problems".
Obama held talks with Hu on the sidelines of the summit and said he had been "blunt" with him on the issue of North Korea.
"My hope is that President Hu will recognise as well that this is an example of Pyongyang going over the line," he said.
...
China, which is Pyongyang's main international ally, has so far remained non-committal on the issue, prompting Obama to say that shying away from the harsh facts about North Korea's behaviour was "a bad habit we need to break".
Obama said he wanted the UN Security Council to produce a "crystal-clear acknowledgment" of the North's alleged action, which would require the co-operation of veto-wielding member China.
...
Obama, who met Lee Myung-Bak, the South Korean president, on the sidelines of the G20 summit, said it was "absolutely critical that the international community rally behind him and send a clear message to North Korea that this kind of behaviour is unacceptable".
It looks like President Obama has decisively put his eggs in the ROK basket, backing South Korean president Lee Myung-bak on the Cheonan sinking, putting aside his previous doubts about the KORUS FTA (US-South Korea Free Trade Agreement) to push for its ratification, and encouraging South Korea's ambitions to upgrade its regional profile to what looks like parity or more with the PRC.
I was struck with Korea Times' coverage of President Lee's remarks at the Toronto summit:
South Korea to represent voices of emerging countries at Seoul summit
TORONTO ― President Lee Myung-bak said Sunday (local time) that Korea will help countries reach an agreement on establishing a global financial safety net at the next Group of 20 Summit, slated for November in Seoul, to prevent the recurrence of a global financial crisis.
Korea will also host a meeting of 100 CEOs from globally renowned companies ahead of the G-20 Summit to discuss ways to boost private investment and the issues of global trade, investment and corporate responsibility.
Lee made the pledges in his closing remarks at the final session of the two-day Toronto summit.
The initiatives are in line with Korea's efforts to represent the voices of emerging and poorer nations on the global stage so that countries, rich or poor, can work together under a shared goal of achieving sustainable, balanced long-term growth, according to Seoul officials.
"Representing the voices of emerging countries" used to be China's self-assigned role.
Beyond the ROK-USA strategic romance, Beijing probably noticed that one other country that has yet to endorse the Cheonan report was not accused of "wilfull blindness": Russia.
That would lead one to believe that Russian President Medvedev had--upon the conclusion of a successful US visit during which he became "the first iPhone 4 owner in Russia" and President Obama was apparently unfazed by the uncovering of a large Russian spy ring operating within the United States--either signed on to the US position, or the Obama administration was staking out its Cheonan stance pre-emptively, expecting that Russia would decide to line up with the United States in order to avoid endangering the reset.
People's Daily English edition promptly ran a Global Times editorial pointedly titled "Blindness to China's efforts on the Peninsula ".
"Blindness". Get it?
It went on to say:
US President Barack Obama groundlessly blamed China for "blindness" to North Korea's "belligerent behavior" in an alleged attack on the South Korean navel vessel the Cheonan while speaking at the G20 summit Monday.
His words on such an important occasion, based on ignorance of China's consistent and difficult efforts in pushing for peace on the peninsula, has come as a shock to China and the world at large.
As a close neighbor of North Korea, China and its people have immediate and vital stakes in peace and stability on the peninsula. China's worries over the North Korean nuclear issue are by no means less than those of the US.
The US president should have taken these into consideration before making irresponsible and flippant remarks about China's role in the region.
Characterizing the US president as "irresponsible and flippant" is a convenient indicator that US-China relations are headed for the meat locker.
Another indication is the Chinese announcement that it will conduct live fire naval exercises as a riposte to the US-ROK joint exercises scheduled June 30 to July 5, which may or may not include a US aircraft carrier sailing around the Yellow Sea between the Korean peninsula and the Chinese mainland.
I came across another interesting and possibly telling news item relevant to the widening US-China rift.
I hazard most people don't get around to reading the Nepali press, but the news outlet Republica had an fascinating and carefully reported article by Kosh Raj Koirala entitled
Squeezed between China and West over Tibet
KATHMANDU, June 28: Department of Immigration (DoI) sent nine Tibetans to jail on April 30 after they refused to pay fines for illegally entering Nepal. The detention evoked so much diplomatic pressure from Western countries, mainly the US, that the Tibetans were released after five days in jail.
The pressure was so intense that officials at the Nepali embassy in Washington DC had to call up the Immigration Office in Nepal, asking it to release the arrested.
Following the release, Nepali immigration authorities have not detained any more Tibetans though there is a sustained flow of Tibetans to Kathmandu. DoI these days quietly hands over Tibetans illegally coming to Nepal to UNHCR-Nepal [UN High Commissioner for Refugees] without taking legal action as it used to in recent years.
...
Officials in Nepal fear that there could be a well-coordinated organization involved in bringing Tibetans illegally to Nepal and later sending them to Dharamshala, India and to Western countries through the help of UNHCR.
According to Koirala, it appears that the Tibetan Reception Center, which works with the UNHCR, is paying a bounty of Rs25,000 (about US$350) to policemen to bring Tibetans who have entered Nepal illegaly to the UNHCR-Nepal for eventual patriation to Dharmsala and the West, instead of turning them over to the Department of Immigration.
Interestingly, the DoI was not apparently planning to repatriate the Tibetans to China (although there had been rumblings of a China-friendly policy of shipping Tibetans back to the TAR); they simply wanted to fine them, and the Tibetans went to jail only because they refused to pay the fine.
Sordid commerce is apparently a factor in these escapes:
...arrested Tibetans said, during interrogations, that brokers brought them to Nepal with promises to take them to Western countries where they could lead comfortable lives. Those arrested even disclosed that they each paid Chinese Yuan 15,000 to 17,000 [US$2300 or so] to brokers.
So it's interesting that the UN is apparently helping Tibetan refugees to evade Nepalese jurisdiction. Nepal is under intense pressure from China to keep a lid on the flow and activities of Tibetans, so maybe UNHCR is just going the extra mile to shield Tibetans under new circumstances.
However, what's really interesting was the concerted pressure from the US and the Western countries to make sure that this dubious arrangement is sustained, even to the point of demanding the release of some guys who were apparently in jail just because they refused to pay a fine.
Tibet is a core interest of China. Reaffirmation of the one-China policy (including Chinese sovereignty over Tibet) was supposed to be the key concession granted by the US in the laborious negotiations with China over participation in the UN Iran sanctions discussions.
I guess the Chinese are finding out they should have read the fine print, and "acknowleding PRC sovereignty over Tibet" does not preclude "promoting the establishment of protected emigration routes to offshore havens for potentially anti-PRC Tibetans".
Speaking of U.S.-China deals that aren't turning out the way Beijing prefers, I have an article up at Asia Times entitled China in US sanctions cross-hairs (my suggested title, Stuart Levey, father of the North Korean atomic bomb, is back, did not make the cut).
It makes the case that the Obama administration has done a much better job than the Bush administration in laying a solid legal and diplomatic foundation for using US national Iran sanctions to pressure China on energy-related business in Iran and, for that matter, what else it wants to (like North Korea, RMB revaluation, etc.) and China may find that the US may be preparing to honor the imputed "We'll support UN sanctions if you won't pursue national sanctions against us" deal in the breach, as it were.
What interests me as that, as far as I can see, the Obama administration policy toward China is all sticks no carrots. The consequences of crossing the United States are meant to be dire, but I haven't seen any significant proffered benefits to China for toeing the U.S. line, other than the intangible ones--like not having President Obama insult your President at high profile international forums.
It will be interesting to watch this play out, especially in the run-up to the 2010 US congressional elections.
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, July 13, 2009
Obama to Africa: Drop Dead
I have a certain respect for what I see as President Obama’s clear-eyed exercises in foreign affairs triage.
Obviously, his plate is full with Iraq/Iran/Pakistan/Afghanistan and keeping Europe on board for the whole global-recession-fighting deal, and the Obama administration has shown little interest in looking for solutions (or trouble) in strategic backwaters of the world like Burma and North Korea...and, apparently, Africa.
I was rather surprised at the favorable response not only by the middle-finger humanitarians who populate the Wall Street Journal's editorial page but also by some reform-oriented Africa aid activists to President Obama’s July 11th speech in Ghana and its signature statement: “We must start from the simple premise that the future of Africa is up to Africans”, followed by the condescending get your house in order/good governance/democracy tropes that have been a mainstay of Western rhetoric toward Africa for the last few years.
That line might have had more credibility in the pre-recession boom years, when there was a rising tide to lift all boats and the prospect of economic growth and increased trade and investment justified calls for Africa to do its fair share of bootstrapping (clamping down on corruption and capital flight, getting governments’ fiscal houses in order, liberalizing economic policies, bringing the informal economy into the banking system, etc.) to generate more internal capital for investment.
But now that the geniuses of Western finance have sent the global economy off a cliff, the three vital engines for market-based economic growth in Africa—international trade, foreign direct investment, and inward remittances—are all taking 20%-plus hits as a result, and the United States and Europe are putting billions on the line to stimulate demand and prop up their financial institutions while at the same time honoring the commitments of the Gleneagles G8 summit for increases in aid to less developed countries “in the breach” as it were, it takes a certain amount of crust to tell the Africans to suck it up.
China doesn’t see it that way. I have an article up at Asia Times under the pen name “Peter Lee”, entitled “China Doubles Down in Africa”, describing some major post-crash initiatives Beijing is undertaking in Africa.
I also look at signs that China’s position in Africa is evolving into a more sophisticated engagement in response to the stresses of the global recession and China’s own shortcomings in Africa policy, and conclude:
It appears that China hopes to emerge from the global recession not only with its economic standing intact; it intends to enhance its position and present itself in Africa as the responsible, perhaps indispensable stakeholder that the West has claimed to yearn for but is perhaps not anxious to see materialize.
Hey, read the whole thing!
Obviously, his plate is full with Iraq/Iran/Pakistan/Afghanistan and keeping Europe on board for the whole global-recession-fighting deal, and the Obama administration has shown little interest in looking for solutions (or trouble) in strategic backwaters of the world like Burma and North Korea...and, apparently, Africa.
I was rather surprised at the favorable response not only by the middle-finger humanitarians who populate the Wall Street Journal's editorial page but also by some reform-oriented Africa aid activists to President Obama’s July 11th speech in Ghana and its signature statement: “We must start from the simple premise that the future of Africa is up to Africans”, followed by the condescending get your house in order/good governance/democracy tropes that have been a mainstay of Western rhetoric toward Africa for the last few years.
That line might have had more credibility in the pre-recession boom years, when there was a rising tide to lift all boats and the prospect of economic growth and increased trade and investment justified calls for Africa to do its fair share of bootstrapping (clamping down on corruption and capital flight, getting governments’ fiscal houses in order, liberalizing economic policies, bringing the informal economy into the banking system, etc.) to generate more internal capital for investment.
But now that the geniuses of Western finance have sent the global economy off a cliff, the three vital engines for market-based economic growth in Africa—international trade, foreign direct investment, and inward remittances—are all taking 20%-plus hits as a result, and the United States and Europe are putting billions on the line to stimulate demand and prop up their financial institutions while at the same time honoring the commitments of the Gleneagles G8 summit for increases in aid to less developed countries “in the breach” as it were, it takes a certain amount of crust to tell the Africans to suck it up.
China doesn’t see it that way. I have an article up at Asia Times under the pen name “Peter Lee”, entitled “China Doubles Down in Africa”, describing some major post-crash initiatives Beijing is undertaking in Africa.
I also look at signs that China’s position in Africa is evolving into a more sophisticated engagement in response to the stresses of the global recession and China’s own shortcomings in Africa policy, and conclude:
It appears that China hopes to emerge from the global recession not only with its economic standing intact; it intends to enhance its position and present itself in Africa as the responsible, perhaps indispensable stakeholder that the West has claimed to yearn for but is perhaps not anxious to see materialize.
Hey, read the whole thing!
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
New Hope for Pakistan?
And a Dose of Realism for Afghanistan?
Candidate Obama declared his determination to scale up the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, apparently in an effort to demonstrate that, despite his opposition to the Iraq war, he possessed the necessary bombs away! martial ardor to serve as America’s Commander in Chief.
President Obama, in one his first acts upon taking office, explicitly authorized a drone attack that killed 18 in Pakistan’s Waziristan (in contrast to the unacknowledged incursions under the Bush administration), in order to show his determination to pursue the fight into Pakistan despite misgivings in Islamabad.
These actions, combined with the extensive publicity giving to the reassessment of Afghanistan strategy conducted under the aegis of CENTCOM commander and Iraq surge mastermind General David Petraeus, aroused concerns that the Obama administration would pursue a ruinous escalation of the conflict that would do a lot to destabilize Pakistan while doing little to improve the situation in Afghanistan, all to provide political cover against Republican critics.
In a piece I wrote in August of last year, America Drinks the COIN Kool-aid, I pointed out Pakistan’s inability to withstand blowback in its heartland engineered by the Pakistani Taliban in response to attacks in the border regions and warned:
American planners originally hoped that Musharraf’s armies would be the anvil upon which Western forces crushed the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan.
Pakistan is more like a rotten melon that will fly apart under the hammer blows of a U.S. counter-insurgency campaign in west Pakistan.
In a Salon op-ed on January 26, Juan Cole criticized the implications of the drone attack authorized by President Obama for America's Afghanistan policy, warned of the dangers of becoming infatuated with a search for a military solution, and invoked the dreaded “V” (Vietnam) and “Q” (Quagmire) words.
However, based on the statements of Defense Secretary Gates and news coming out of Pakistan, I have hope.
Perhaps not Obama-hope that the magic aura of our president will bring about the yearned for “Grand Bargain”—miraculous progress on Kashmir, the emergence of a forceful and capable civilian Pakistan government from the unlikely chrysalis of the inept and opportunistic Zardari regime, the unprecedented success of a counterinsurgency campaign in the Pashtun areas of eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan after 100 years of futility, climaxed with a convivial dogpile of Afghan, Taliban, Pakistani, and Indian lions and lambs in Kabul…
…but hope that intelligent people will look at a situation intelligently and do something intelligent.
Consider this quote from Secretary Gates in the January 28 New York Times:
“If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who served under Mr. Bush and is staying on under Mr. Obama, told Congress on Tuesday. He said there was not enough “time, patience or money” to pursue overly ambitious goals in Afghanistan, and he called the war there “our greatest military challenge.”
The title of the article is “Aides Say Obama’s Afghan Aims Elevate War”, an unmistakable indication to a cynic like myself that President Obama’s intention is not to elevate the war; just the opposite—he is busy, with the unstinting assistance of the New York Times, trying to lower expectations and downgrade the objectives of the Afghan war while using the rhetoric of a great military effort to obtain political cover.
Meanwhile, the Zardari administration has been lobbying for an end to drone strikes and a fundamental rethink of U.S. policy away from military counterinsurgency toward an accommodation with the Taliban—and a rebalancing of U.S. foreign policy for South Asia that takes Pakistan’s circumstances and priorities into greater account.
Judging from Pakistani media coverage (here, here, and here) of President Zardari’s and Prime Minister Gilani’s remarks in Europe and a publicity given to a negative assessment on the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Pakistan hopes that a split within NATO between the United States and Europe on further commitments to Afghanistan will compel the United States to adopt a more accommodating posture vis a vis the Taliban, allow the Pakistan government to deal with its Pashtun problem in a more relaxed, protracted, and political manner, and, on a more fundamental level, focus Washington’s attention on Pakistan as a key regional partner whose quest for security, political stability and economic growth is a worthy object of sympathy and U.S. aid in its own right, and not simply as a footdragging adjunct to the Afghan adventure and an impediment to Washington’s all-important relationship with India.
For an example of the current framing, Pakistan’s GEO media outlet reported on Prime Minister Gilani’s remarks as follows:
US Afghan policy has been a failure:
PM Updated at: 2103 PST, Wednesday, January 28, 2009
DAVOS: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has called upon the world leaders to renew their commitment to introduce equitable global rules and ensure participation of developing countries including Pakistan in economic decision-making.
In his message to the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, the prime minister said that the US policy in Afghanistan has failed to achieve its objectives. Gilani said Pakistan has sacrificed more than any other country including NATO in war against terrorism.
The prime minister said that narco-money coming from Afghanistan into Pakistan was destabilizing the county. Gilani said Pakistan wants peace in the region and a stable Afghanistan was in the interest of Pakistan.
I speculate that Pakistan is hoping for a new, post-election realism in the Obama administration that draws on several facts:
1) The Mumbai attacks and Islamabad’s shaky response have put Pakistan-India relations in the deep freeze and demonstrated the inability of the Zardari administration to pursue rapprochement with India over the objections of the army;
2) As the estimable Laura Rozen reported, the Indian government deep-sixed the idea of internationalizing (or at least multi-lateralizing) the Kashmir problem by lobbying the Obama administration to remove the issue (and India itself) from newly minted Afghanistan/Pakistan envoy Richard Holbrooke’s brief;
3) The bloom is, therefore, off the “Grand Bargain” rose;
4) Judging from Secretary Gates’ remarks, I speculate that General Petraeus’ assessment indicates that, absent the “Grand Bargain” miracle, equivocal Pakistan support of counterinsurgency operations in Pashtun areas on both sides of the Durand line means that the Taliban will continue to kick behind in Afghanistan;
5) Given the slim likelihood of a spectacular sea change in Western fortunes in Afghanistan, I am hoping that the Obama administration re-examined its assumptions for the region and decided that the immediate risks of destabilizing Pakistan—a huge (population 170 million, GDP $500 billion) Muslim, nuclear-armed country with a vigorous democratic movement, highly developed economy, a military whose leadership is finally trying to remove itself from domestic politics, and enormous urbanized population sick of extremism and violence—outweighed the pie-in-the sky hope of crushing the Taliban and creating a democratic showcase for 33 million impoverished Afghans (GDP $35 billion) riven by tribal loyalties and at the mercy of a determined and effective insurgency.
America’s stated strategic posture under both Bush and the new Obama administration is, of course, unchanged: turning around Afghanistan, cleaning up the tribal areas of western Pakistan/eastern Afghanistan, and tilting toward India.
And, given the welter of conflicting, inconvenient, and politically explosive interests surrounding any major policy change, the temptation will be great to stay the course with the same murderous muddling that has characterized America’s South Asia policy over the last years.
However, I would say that the most practical objective for Mr. Obama would be to keep the Afghan turd swirling aimlessly in the foreign policy commode for the rest of his administration, but chunk enough troops in there to make sure that, in 2012, the Republicans are not running campaign ads showing triumphant Taliban reoccupying the presidential palace in Kabul on his watch…
…while focusing some of America’s attention and energy on protecting and preserving Pakistan’s democratic government and society.
It will be an interesting test of President Obama’s pragmatism, vision, and ability to innovate to see if he decides to complement a political and security hedge on Afghanistan with an effective and far-sighted rethink of America’s Pakistan policy.
Candidate Obama declared his determination to scale up the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, apparently in an effort to demonstrate that, despite his opposition to the Iraq war, he possessed the necessary bombs away! martial ardor to serve as America’s Commander in Chief.
President Obama, in one his first acts upon taking office, explicitly authorized a drone attack that killed 18 in Pakistan’s Waziristan (in contrast to the unacknowledged incursions under the Bush administration), in order to show his determination to pursue the fight into Pakistan despite misgivings in Islamabad.
These actions, combined with the extensive publicity giving to the reassessment of Afghanistan strategy conducted under the aegis of CENTCOM commander and Iraq surge mastermind General David Petraeus, aroused concerns that the Obama administration would pursue a ruinous escalation of the conflict that would do a lot to destabilize Pakistan while doing little to improve the situation in Afghanistan, all to provide political cover against Republican critics.
In a piece I wrote in August of last year, America Drinks the COIN Kool-aid, I pointed out Pakistan’s inability to withstand blowback in its heartland engineered by the Pakistani Taliban in response to attacks in the border regions and warned:
American planners originally hoped that Musharraf’s armies would be the anvil upon which Western forces crushed the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan.
Pakistan is more like a rotten melon that will fly apart under the hammer blows of a U.S. counter-insurgency campaign in west Pakistan.
In a Salon op-ed on January 26, Juan Cole criticized the implications of the drone attack authorized by President Obama for America's Afghanistan policy, warned of the dangers of becoming infatuated with a search for a military solution, and invoked the dreaded “V” (Vietnam) and “Q” (Quagmire) words.
However, based on the statements of Defense Secretary Gates and news coming out of Pakistan, I have hope.
Perhaps not Obama-hope that the magic aura of our president will bring about the yearned for “Grand Bargain”—miraculous progress on Kashmir, the emergence of a forceful and capable civilian Pakistan government from the unlikely chrysalis of the inept and opportunistic Zardari regime, the unprecedented success of a counterinsurgency campaign in the Pashtun areas of eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan after 100 years of futility, climaxed with a convivial dogpile of Afghan, Taliban, Pakistani, and Indian lions and lambs in Kabul…
…but hope that intelligent people will look at a situation intelligently and do something intelligent.
Consider this quote from Secretary Gates in the January 28 New York Times:
“If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, who served under Mr. Bush and is staying on under Mr. Obama, told Congress on Tuesday. He said there was not enough “time, patience or money” to pursue overly ambitious goals in Afghanistan, and he called the war there “our greatest military challenge.”
The title of the article is “Aides Say Obama’s Afghan Aims Elevate War”, an unmistakable indication to a cynic like myself that President Obama’s intention is not to elevate the war; just the opposite—he is busy, with the unstinting assistance of the New York Times, trying to lower expectations and downgrade the objectives of the Afghan war while using the rhetoric of a great military effort to obtain political cover.
Meanwhile, the Zardari administration has been lobbying for an end to drone strikes and a fundamental rethink of U.S. policy away from military counterinsurgency toward an accommodation with the Taliban—and a rebalancing of U.S. foreign policy for South Asia that takes Pakistan’s circumstances and priorities into greater account.
Judging from Pakistani media coverage (here, here, and here) of President Zardari’s and Prime Minister Gilani’s remarks in Europe and a publicity given to a negative assessment on the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Pakistan hopes that a split within NATO between the United States and Europe on further commitments to Afghanistan will compel the United States to adopt a more accommodating posture vis a vis the Taliban, allow the Pakistan government to deal with its Pashtun problem in a more relaxed, protracted, and political manner, and, on a more fundamental level, focus Washington’s attention on Pakistan as a key regional partner whose quest for security, political stability and economic growth is a worthy object of sympathy and U.S. aid in its own right, and not simply as a footdragging adjunct to the Afghan adventure and an impediment to Washington’s all-important relationship with India.
For an example of the current framing, Pakistan’s GEO media outlet reported on Prime Minister Gilani’s remarks as follows:
US Afghan policy has been a failure:
PM Updated at: 2103 PST, Wednesday, January 28, 2009
DAVOS: Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has called upon the world leaders to renew their commitment to introduce equitable global rules and ensure participation of developing countries including Pakistan in economic decision-making.
In his message to the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting, the prime minister said that the US policy in Afghanistan has failed to achieve its objectives. Gilani said Pakistan has sacrificed more than any other country including NATO in war against terrorism.
The prime minister said that narco-money coming from Afghanistan into Pakistan was destabilizing the county. Gilani said Pakistan wants peace in the region and a stable Afghanistan was in the interest of Pakistan.
I speculate that Pakistan is hoping for a new, post-election realism in the Obama administration that draws on several facts:
1) The Mumbai attacks and Islamabad’s shaky response have put Pakistan-India relations in the deep freeze and demonstrated the inability of the Zardari administration to pursue rapprochement with India over the objections of the army;
2) As the estimable Laura Rozen reported, the Indian government deep-sixed the idea of internationalizing (or at least multi-lateralizing) the Kashmir problem by lobbying the Obama administration to remove the issue (and India itself) from newly minted Afghanistan/Pakistan envoy Richard Holbrooke’s brief;
3) The bloom is, therefore, off the “Grand Bargain” rose;
4) Judging from Secretary Gates’ remarks, I speculate that General Petraeus’ assessment indicates that, absent the “Grand Bargain” miracle, equivocal Pakistan support of counterinsurgency operations in Pashtun areas on both sides of the Durand line means that the Taliban will continue to kick behind in Afghanistan;
5) Given the slim likelihood of a spectacular sea change in Western fortunes in Afghanistan, I am hoping that the Obama administration re-examined its assumptions for the region and decided that the immediate risks of destabilizing Pakistan—a huge (population 170 million, GDP $500 billion) Muslim, nuclear-armed country with a vigorous democratic movement, highly developed economy, a military whose leadership is finally trying to remove itself from domestic politics, and enormous urbanized population sick of extremism and violence—outweighed the pie-in-the sky hope of crushing the Taliban and creating a democratic showcase for 33 million impoverished Afghans (GDP $35 billion) riven by tribal loyalties and at the mercy of a determined and effective insurgency.
America’s stated strategic posture under both Bush and the new Obama administration is, of course, unchanged: turning around Afghanistan, cleaning up the tribal areas of western Pakistan/eastern Afghanistan, and tilting toward India.
And, given the welter of conflicting, inconvenient, and politically explosive interests surrounding any major policy change, the temptation will be great to stay the course with the same murderous muddling that has characterized America’s South Asia policy over the last years.
However, I would say that the most practical objective for Mr. Obama would be to keep the Afghan turd swirling aimlessly in the foreign policy commode for the rest of his administration, but chunk enough troops in there to make sure that, in 2012, the Republicans are not running campaign ads showing triumphant Taliban reoccupying the presidential palace in Kabul on his watch…
…while focusing some of America’s attention and energy on protecting and preserving Pakistan’s democratic government and society.
It will be an interesting test of President Obama’s pragmatism, vision, and ability to innovate to see if he decides to complement a political and security hedge on Afghanistan with an effective and far-sighted rethink of America’s Pakistan policy.
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