The New York Times has a startling report today about an incident from way back in 2007, where Pakistani soldiers attacked a group of U.S. military officials, killing one officer and wounding three others. It is obviously a disturbing report, although not that surprising to anyone who's been paying even modest attention to the highly complicated relationship between the United States, the various factions that make up Pakistan's government, and the various groups that are contending for power in Central Asia. Juan Cole has a good quick rundown here.

I have two comments of my own. First, it is interesting that this story is coming out now, in the aftermath of Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen's recent denunciations of Pakistani collaboration with the Haqqani network. The Times story says that the incident was hushed up back in 2007 so as not to disturb overall U.S. relations with Pakistan, but its appearance in the news right now sure looks like a deliberate leak. If so, what's the larger purpose here? Is the Obama administration or the Pentagon contemplating a real rupture with Islamabad, or do they think that turning up the heat in this highly public fashion is going to convince the ISI or whoever is doing these things to change their ways?

Second, the incident also shows you the dangers that arise when governments keep lots of secrets. Suppose this story had come out back in 2007. It would have been additional evidence conveying just how little control we had over our putative allies in the region, and cast further doubt on our ability to achieve a successful outcome in the Afghan campaign. Success in Afghanistan depends on cooperation with Pakistan (and in particular, on getting rid of the safe havens for the Taliban there), and this incident from four years ago was a clear sign that it was going to be damn hard to get the requisite help. It would also have suggested that U.S. officials really didn't understand very much about the complicated dynamics in that region, thereby suggesting that maybe, just maybe, we were never going to accomplish our stated objectives.

So: if Americans had actually known about this attack, they might have had a clearer picture of our prospects in Central Asia, and the uphill fight we faced. Barack Obama's claims that he was going to get out of Iraq and focus on Afghanistan might have been viewed with greater skepticism, and his subsequent decision to escalate the war might have faced greater opposition within his administration and in the public at large.

In short, when U.S. officials swept this incident under the rug for various short-term reasons, they encouraged the American people to maintain a false picture of the actual situation in Central Asia. Unfortunately, making judgments and decisions on the basis of inaccurate information rarely works out well.

One of the things that gets in the way of conducting good national security policy is a reluctance to call things by their right names and state plainly what is really happening. If you keep describing difficult situations in misleading or inaccurate ways, plenty of people will draw the wrong conclusions about them and will continue to support policies that don't make a lot of sense.

Two cases in point: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We are constantly told that that "the surge worked" in Iraq, and President Obama has to pretend the situation there is tolerable so that he can finally bring the rest of the troops there home. Yet it is increasingly clear that the surge failed to produce meaningful political reconciliation and did not even end the insurgency, and keeping U.S. troops there for the past three years may have accomplished relatively little.

Similarly, we keep getting told that we are going to achieve some sort of "peace with honor" in Afghanistan, even though sending more troops there has not made the Afghan government more effective, has not eliminated the Taliban's ability to conduct violence, and has not increased our leverage in Pakistan. In the end, what happens in Central Asia is going to be determined by Central Asians -- for good or ill -- and not by us.

The truth is that the United States and its allies lost the war in Iraq and are going to lose the war in Afghanistan. There: I said it. By "lose," I mean we will eventually withdraw our military forces without having achieved our core political objectives, and with our overall strategic position weakened. We did get Osama bin Laden -- finally -- but that was the result of more energetic intelligence and counter-terrorism work in Pakistan itself and had nothing to do with the counterinsurgency we are fighting next door. U.S. troops have fought courageously and with dedication, and the American people have supported the effort for many years. But we will still have failed because our objectives were ill-chosen from the start, and because the national leadership (and especially the Bush administration) made some horrendous strategic judgments along the way.

Specifically: invading Iraq was never necessary, because Saddam Hussein had no genuine links to al Qaeda and no WMD, and because he could not have used any WMD that he might one day have produced without facing devastating retaliation. It was a blunder because destroying the Ba'athist state left us in charge of a deeply divided country that we had no idea how to govern. It also destroyed the balance of power in the Gulf and enhanced Iran's regional position, which was not exactly a brilliant idea from the American point of view.  Invading Iraq also diverted resources and attention from Afghanistan, which helped the Taliban to regain lost ground and derailed our early efforts to aid the Karzai government.  

President Obama inherited both of these costly wars, and his main error was not to recognize that they were not winnable at an acceptable cost. He's wisely stuck (more-or-less) to the withdrawal plan for Iraq, but he foolishly decided to escalate in Afghanistan, in the hope of creating enough stability to allow us to leave. This move might have been politically adroit, but it just meant squandering more resources in ways that won't affect the final outcome.

Read on

I don't know any more than you do about the assassination of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the well-connected and notoriously corrupt half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who was also de facto governor of Kandahar province and reportedly on the CIA payroll. In fact, I probably know less than some of you. But I'll offer a few quick reactions to the news nonetheless.

First, unless the killing was some sort of personal vendetta, it seems likely that it was politically motivated and it strikes me as plausible that it was ordered by the Taliban. The killer, a family associate named Sardar Mohammed, was a regular visitor to Karzai's home, and he must have known that shooting Karzai in his own compound was a suicide mission. 

Second, in the short run this has to be a propaganda boost for the Taliban, who have already claimed credit for the killing and called it one of the "great achievements" of the war.  From the very beginning, the Taliban's main appeal was their ability to provide order (albeit of a very brutal sort) and their lack of personal corruption. Wali Karzai, needless to say, was a vivid symbol of the latter. More importantly, the Taliban will undoubtedly use the killing to cast doubt on the Afghan government's ability to protect even top officials. In a war of perceptions, this is not good news for our side.

Third, to me it merely underscores the continued futility of trying to win a counter-insurgency war in a country where we lack a competent, committed, or fully-legitimate local partner. We're likely to get a lot of upbeat reports of progress in the months to come, as the Obama administration tries to persuade us that the "surge" worked and that we can start going home. I hope this sleight of hand works, because the war is a running sore and a distraction from more important problems. But spin and PR won't change the basic reality: Afghanistan's fate will be determined by the Afghans and not by us.  

Heck, our own political system can't even get a budget deal done without a lot of eleventh-hour hysterics, and yet we think we can reliably reshape the political order of a country of 32 million Muslims, many of them illiterate, and divided into at least five major tribes.  Can you say "hubris?" 

I did say that I was "going off the grid" for ten days or so, but reading the New York Times remains a morning ritual for the household and I still have access to my email. And yesterday they combined to make a brief post imperative.

The first item was an email announcement from the Hudson Institute, inviting me (and probably hundreds of other people) to attend a luncheon briefing on "The Political Situation in Kyrgyzstan: Implications for the United States." The first sentence of the announcement informed me that "the situation in Kyrgyzstan has a critical bearing on American national security." As my teen-aged daughter would say: "OMG!" Did you know that your safety and security depends on the political situation in.... Kyrgyztan?" Yes, I know that the air base at Manas is a critical transit point for logistics flowing into Afghanistan, but otherwise Kyrgyzstan is an impoverished country of about 5 million people without significant strategic resources, and I daresay few Americans could find it on a map (or have any reason to want to). It is only important if you think Afghanistan's fate is important, and readers here know that I think we've greatly exaggerated the real stakes there. (And if we're heading for the exits there, as President Obama has said, then Kyrgyzstan's strategic value is a stock you ought to short.)

I'm not trying to make fun of the Hudson Institute here, but the idea that we have "critical" interests in Kyrgystan just illustrates the poverty of American strategic thinking these days. Even now, in the wake of the various setbacks and mis-steps of the past decade, the central pathology of American strategic discourse is the notion that the entire friggin' world is a "vital" U.S. interest, and that we are therefore both required and entitled to interfere anywhere and anytime we want to. And Beltway briefings like this one just reinforce this mind-set, by constantly hammering home the idea that we are terribly vulnerable to events in a far-flung countries a world away. I'm not saying that events in Kyrgyzstan might not affect the safety and prosperity of American a tiny little bit, but the essence of strategy is setting priorities and distinguishing trivial stakes from the truly important. And somehow I just don't think Kyrgyzstan's fate merits words like "vital" or "critical."

And then I read David Greenberg's op-ed in yesterday's Times, on the "isolationist" roots within the Republican Party. Greenberg is a historian, and his brief account of isolationist strands within the GOP is perfectly sensible. But he uses this narrative to cast doubt on the growing number of people who believe that the United States is over-committed (a group, one might add, that includes the out-going Secretary of Defense), but who are hardly "isolationists."

In particular, Greenberg ends his piece by warning that "following the path of isolationism today won't serve America well." He may or may not be correct in that judgment, though his op-ed offers no arguments or evidence to support this particular conclusion. More importantly, Greenberg falls into the familiar trap of assuming that those who are now calling for a more restrained, selective, and above all realistic foreign policy are "isolationists." There may be a few people in contemporary foreign policy discourse who deserve that label, but it simply doesn't apply to most serious critics of today's over-extension.

In particular, critics of our over-committed and overly-militarized foreign policy recognize that the world is interconnected, that the United States cannot wall itself off from that world, and that defending long-term U.S. interests occasionally requires the application of the many diverse elements of American power.  People like Andrew Bacevich, Barry Posen, Paul Pillar, Lawrence Wilkerson, Chas Freeman, the late Chalmers Johnson, and many others are not reflexive doves, naïve pacifists, or fatuous one-worlders. On the contrary, they are hard-headed experts who support American engagement in the world, just not in the mindlessly hubristic fashion that has become the self-defeating norm of the past several decades and the default condition of foreign policy thinking in D.C.

What realists (and other advocates of greater "restraint") also recognize is that 5 percent of the world's population cannot dictate how the other 95 percent should live their lives. They also know that trying to impose our preferences on others by various coercive means (e.g., military force, economic sanctions, etc.) is helping sap our economic vitality and turning more and more people against us. Advocates of a more restrained foreign policy understand that other major powers will just free-ride if we insist on doing everything ourselves, and that other client states will engage in what Posen has called "reckless driving" if they know that the United States will back them now matter what they do.

In short, the isolationsists of a by-gone era have little to do with today's advocates of restraint, and it is serious error to conflate the two. In particular, applying the discredited label of "isolationist" to those who now question our present "strategy" will make it harder to formulate a grand strategy that is consistent with our present resources, less likely to provoke unnecessary resentment or resistance, cognizant of our many political advantages, and focused (as foreign policy should be) on our long-term vitality and security as a nation.

 UPDATE: In my original post, I mistakenly equated libertarians with isolationists.  This was careless, insofar as some important analysts who favor more limited government (such as Chris Preble of the CATO Institute), are clearly not "isolationist" in the proper sense of that term.  I regret the error, and have corrected the text above to eliminate the conflation.

There's a terrific piece in the National Journal today, adding up the costs of the "war on terror" and pointing out that unlike some other costly wars in American history, this one has produced almost no economic benefits. That is, unless you think people standing in TSA lines are using those idle minutes (hours?) to dream up lots of innovative new ideas that will fire up the U.S. economy. I rather doubt it.

If we had a rational discourse on this subject, it ought to provoke two questions.  First, how did we get into this mess in the first place? Specifically, what were the U.S. policies that contributed to the rise of groups like Al Qaeda, and made it difficult-to-impossible to head them off before they hit us? (You'd think the 9/11 Commission would have tackled this question head on, but of course that proved too controversial for them). This subject hasn't been wholly neglected since 9/11 (i.e., there was some discussion of the familiar "why do they hate us?" question), but even raising the question could get you accused of being someone who "blamed America first." So hardly anybody asked if maybe 9/11 was also a wake-up call, and that there were some aspects of U.S. foreign policy that needed to be rethought. Of course, raising the question doesn't necessarily mean that the policies that contributed to Al Qaeda's rise (e.g., stationing troops in Saudi Arabia, unconditional support for Israel, propping up the Mubarak regime in Egypt, etc.) were necessarily wrong, but it does suggest that these policies were more expensive than we previously believed.

The second question would be: which responses to 9/11 have worked well, and which policies have proven to be costly failures?  Ideally, the United States ought to conduct a ruthless assessment of the post-9/11 response, in order to determine -- to the extent possible -- which of the post 9/11 policy changes were effective and which were not. The purpose here isn't a witch-hunt directed at former government officials, as I assume that even the neocons who led us blindly into Iraq believed that this decision was in the best interests of the country. But now, nearly ten years later, we ought to be mature enough to recognize that some of the actions we took after 9/11 weren't that smart, while some other responses turned out to be quite effective. And both ends of the political spectrum should be open to revising their views: some policies abhorred by liberals (such as electronic eavesdropping) may actually have been a net positive, while some actions favored by hardline conservatives (such as waterboarding and other forms of torture) should be seen as misguided failures.

That is how a mature great power would deal with the vast and costly response that began on 9/11: it would try to learn the right lessons from the past decade so that it did better the next time it faced an unexpected challenge. But in the polarized, partisan, and fact-free world of contemporary policy discourse, how likely is that?

It goes without saying that the accidental killing of nine Afghan boys by an American helicopter gunship was yet another public relations setback for the U.S. war effort. But more than that, I think it may also tell us a lot about how we are really waging that war, which is somewhat at odds with the rhetorical emphasis that it tends to get back home. The incident also underscores the inherent contradictions in U.S. strategy and does not augur well for our long-term prospects.

Ever since the publication of Field Manual 3-24, much of the rhetorical emphasis in U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine has been on "population protection," along with the necessity of building local institutions. As noted at the very beginning of FM 3-24: "A successful COIN operation meets the contested population's needs to the extent needed to win popular support while protecting the population from the insurgents." To win "hearts and minds," in short, a counterinsurgency force is supposed to provide security for the local population so that the enemy cannot win local support via intimidation or by exploiting local rivalries. Protecting the population is also supposed to earn their gratitude and convince them that the central government and its NATO allies are winning, so that local populations will tilt in our direction and provide us with additional intelligence, thereby allowing us to go after insurgents effectively.

This approach sounds great on paper, and it helps make the war more palatable to Americans back home. We all like to think that our armed forces are performing noble deeds, and protecting Afghan civilians from the likes of the Taliban certainly qualifies on that score. The problem, however, is that this is a misleading picture of what our forces are actually doing in Afghanistan. (It's also an oversimplification of what the Field Manual actually says because it also devotes plenty of space to the military operations that are also part of any serious counterinsurgency effort.)

The deaths of these nine Afghan boys remind us that this is a real war and that we're actually devoting a lot (most?) of our effort not to population protection but to killing suspected insurgents. U.S. reliance on airpower has increased dramatically, and USAF airstrikes are reportedly up by some 172 percent since General David Petraeus replaced Stanley McChrystal last year. The approach is also consistent with greater U.S. reliance on drone strikes in Pakistan and should be seen as part of an intensifying effort to kill as many insurgents as possible and especially to target key insurgent leaders.

Furthermore, "population protection" itself is not always a purely benign or politically neutral act. Protecting a local population often requires interfering with their daily lives in sometimes onerous and bothersome ways, whether through the construction of massive concrete barriers (as in Baghdad), or "strategic hamlets" (as in Vietnam), or through intrusive search missions in local villages. Even when we are in fact improving the security of the local population, that may not be how the people we are supposedly protecting perceive it. In the Pech Valley, at least, the local population mostly wanted us to get out and leave them alone.

Put all these elements together, and the central conundrum of our position becomes clearer. Heavier reliance on airpower and more aggressive military operations on the ground are bound to lead to more accidental civilian deaths, because military force is a crude weapon, humans are imperfect, and errors are bound to happen no matter how hard we try to avoid them. Yet the more we emphasize that our objective is "hearts and minds" and protecting the population, the more damage the inevitable mistakes do in the eyes of Afghans, the world at large, and to popular support here at home.

Ironically, Section E-6 of FM 3-24 makes this same point quite clearly (my emphasis):

The proper and well-executed use of aerial attack can conserve resources, increase effectiveness, and reduce risk to U.S. forces. Given timely, accurate intelligence, precisely delivered weapons with a demonstrated low failure rate, appropriate yield, and proper fuse can achieve desired effects while mitigating adverse effects. However, inappropriate or indiscriminate use of air strikes can erode popular support and fuel insurgent propaganda. For these reasons, commanders should consider the use of air strikes carefully during COIN operations, neither disregarding them outright nor employing them excessively."

But in their zeal to find some way to turn the war around (or to at least appear to have done so), have our commanders forgotten their own advice? And given all the internal contradictions in U.S. strategy, doesn't it suggest that the war simply isn't winnable (in any meaningful sense), at anything like a reasonable cost?

For more on these important issues, see BCSIA fellow Jacqueline Hazelton's paper, "Compellence in Counterinsurgency Warfare," and Amy Goodman's interview with journalist Rick Rowley here.

Rolling Stone magazine has a provocative article on the streets right now, alleging that U.S. commanders in Afghanistan ordered "information operations" specialists to use their techniques not on the Taliban or on Afghans, but to help persuade visiting U.S. politicians to keep backing the war effort. When one of the officers involved questioned the policy, he found himself under investigation in what seems to have been a spiteful act of punishment. (For additional commentary on the story, check out FP's Tom Ricks here.)

Assuming the story is accurate, it's pretty disturbing. But the issue isn't an individual general's overzealous effort to sell the war back home. The real issue is whether any of us can tell how the war is actually going, given that the people closest to the battle have obvious incentives to portray their efforts in a positive light.

Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of prominent stories suggesting -- if guardedly -- that the war effort in Afghanistan is going better than most people think. Not surprisingly, these stories emerge from people who have recently visited the theater under the auspices of the U.S. military, or from U.S. commanders themselves. Yet just today, the New York Times reports that U.S. and NATO forces are now abandoning the Pech Valley, a remote region that was once deemed vital, despite serious misgivings that it will quickly become a safe haven for the insurgency. And the Times story also contains this telling quotation:

What we figured out is that people in the Pech really aren’t anti-U.S. or anti-anything; they just want to be left alone," said one American military official familiar with the decision. "Our presence is what’s destabilizing this area."

So how can you or I tell if the war is going well or not? For that matter, how can Barack Obama be sure that he's getting the straight scoop from his commanders in the field? Even if the military was initially skeptical about a decision to go to war, once committed to the field its job is to deliver a victory. No dedicated military organization wants to admit it can't win, especially when it is facing a much smaller, less well-armed, and objectively "inferior" foe like the Taliban. Troops in the field also need to believe in the mission, and to be convinced that success is possible.

To the extent that they need to keep civilian authorities and the public on board, therefore, we can expect military commanders to tell an upbeat story, even when things aren't going especially well. I am not saying that they lie; I'm saying that they have an incentive to "accentuate the positive" in order to convince politicians, the press, and the public that success will be ours if we just persevere. Indeed, this was one of the key "lessons" that the U.S. military took from Vietnam: Success in modern war -- and especially counterinsurgency -- depends on more effective "information management" on the home front. And this tendency is not unique to the United States or even to democracies; one sees the same phenomenon in most wars, no matter who is fighting.

Regular readers here know that I think our military effort in Afghanistan is misguided and that our overall national interests would be better served by a timely withdrawal. Reasonable people can disagree about that issue, and it is bound to be debated until the day the war ends (and probably for long afterward). But my point today is a broader one: It is nearly impossible for any of us to know for certain exactly how well or badly the war is going. But when we read a story like the one in Rolling Stone, we're entitled to be more skeptical about the good news we're being fed.

It's Christmas Eve, and my brain has been deadened by hours of grading a take-home final exam. (The papers themselves aren't bad, but reading dozens of answers to the same questions can get a bit mind-numbing). I can't dull the pain with egg nog or some other suitable spirit until this evening, so I'm taking a quick break to offer this holiday post.

My own holiday shopping is finished, thank goodness, but I began wondering about what sorts of gifts I'd like to see some prominent world leaders receive. In the spirit of the season, here's a hypothetical gift list for a few people who've been on my mind over the past year or so.

1. For Barack Obama.  A copy of Machiavelli's The Prince.   President Obama is ending the year on an up note, having successfully managed to end Don't Ask Don't Tell and obtained Senate approval for the New Start Treaty. I think the former achievement is more important than the latter, but both are worthy accomplishments. The new Congress won't be nearly as friendly (and the last one was no picnic), so the president will need all of Machiavelli's wily advice to confound his opponents. Let's hope he learns that it's better to be feared than loved, at least when you're dealing with today's Grand Obstructionist Party.

2. For Hillary Rodham Clinton: a pair of reading glasses, an espresso machine, and a couple of days off.   Why?  So she can read the new Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.   I just downloaded this sucker, and it's over 200 pages of bracing bureaucratic prose.  I plan to read it myself over Xmas break, but I'll bet it takes me a few espressos to get through it too.  And I have a sneaking suspicion that it will be cited more than read, even by people at State.

3. For Julian Assange: A DVD of Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies, to enjoy while he's under house arrest, and a copy of Sexual Etiquette 101, to help him stay out of trouble in the future.

4. For Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas:  A copy of Roger Fisher and William Ury's  Getting to Yes, and Ali Abunimah's One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse. Because if we don't get to "yes" on two states, one state is what you'll end up with.

5. For Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez:  A copy of The General in His Labyrinth, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Chavez has been obsessed with Simon Bolivar -to the extent of exhuming his remains in an attempt to prove that the South American hero was poisoned-but Marquez's novel also offers a warning of the sort of fate that Chavez himself may be destined for.

6. For UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon: A copy of Albert Camus' essay "The Myth of Sisyphus." Running the United Nations must sometimes seem like a Sisyphean task, and every bit as absurd as Camus judged the fate of man to be.  But perhaps the Secretary-General can take comfort from Camus' conclusion -- "we must imagine Sisyphus happy."

7. For North Korean heir apparent Kim Jong-un: A DVD of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The question is: will he govern like Nurse Ratched, or like McMurphy?

8. For General David Petraeus: A Youtube link to Pete Seeger's "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy." There just might be a lesson in there.

9. For Chinese General Secretary Hu Jintao: A framed reproduction of Matisse's Fall of Icarus, as a reminder of what can happen when one flies too high too fast.

10. For readers of this blog: My thanks for your interest, your sometimes spirited dissents, and your generous words of support. May each of you bask in the love of family and friends this holiday season, and may we all grow a little bit wiser in the year ahead.

Happy holidays!

I keep thinking about the Wikileaks affair, and I keep seeing the double-standards multiplying. Given how frequently government officials leak classified information in order to make themselves look good, box in their bureaucratic rivals, or tie the President's hands, it seems a little disingenuous of them to be so upset by Assange's activities. 

Or consider the case of the most famous of all "insider" journalists: Bob Woodward. Over the past several decades, he's built a highly-lucrative career on his ability to get Washington insiders to talk to him. Less charitably, you could say he's gotten rich giving politicos a vehicle to make their case in print. Just think about how many insiders spill their guts to Woodward, and even provide him with key memos, which are sometimes published as appendices in his opuses. It is apparently entirely acceptable for Woodward to publish remarkably detailed stuff on the most sensitive deliberations of the U.S. government, including the nasty things our officials say about one another and about foreign officials. This well-established practice warrants no adverse comment whatsoever; instead, the usual result is a front page review in the New York Times Sunday Book Review and a #1 position on the best-seller list.  

Has anybody proposed arresting Bob Woodward? Has anyone looked into applying the 1917 Espionage Act to his revelations of the most secret deliberations of the national security establishment? Is the State Department telling employees not to buy or read his books, the same way they are telling employees not to look at any of the Wikileaks materials? And remember: Woodward isn't writing about minor issues or even the trivialities of diplomacy; his books deal directly with core issues of war and peace. One could argue that what Woodward digs up and displays-information drawn from the highest and innermost counsels of the U.S. government-is more important and more potentially damaging than zillions of often-trivial memcons by mid-level bureaucrats in overseas embassies. How can these leaks be more sensitive or troublesome than a detailed, blow-by-blow account of Obama's secret Afghanistan decision-making?

I'm not for a minute suggesting that somebody ought to threaten Woodward with prosecution, ban his books, or try to hack his laptop and destroy his hard drive. But the contrast between the reflexive praise with which his books are received-and to be fair, some of them make for pretty interesting reading -- and the "sky is falling" witch-hunt surrounding Julian Assange, is striking.

And I suspect it mostly comes down to this. Elites like the idea of being in charge, and they don't really trust "the people" in whose name they govern, even though it is the latter that pays their salaries, and fights their wars. Elites like the sense of power and status that being "on the inside" conveys: it's a turn-on to know things that other people don't, and it can be so darn inconvenient when the public gets wind of what the current "best and brightest" are actually doing. The idea that ruling elites are in fact "public servants" who serve at our behest is not a big part of their mental make-up, except that some of them do have to get re-elected every few years, and not every seat is safe.

Their view of the public's right to information is akin to the view expressed by Col. Nathan Jessep (memorably played by Jack Nicholson) in the film A Few Good Men. When defense attorney Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) says "I want the truth!," Jessep retorts: "You can't handle the truth!" Unless, of course, it is filtered by establishment journalists like Woodward, and not by some unsympathetic upstart like Assange.

UPDATE:  My colleague and friend Jack Goldsmith from Harvard Law School has two good pieces on this issue, both well worth reading.  He also noted the double-standard being applied to Woodward and Assange, and suggests that this case actually suggests that the entire system of security classification ought to be re-thought.   You can his two pieces here and here.  

So far, the big news from the NATO Summit in Lisbon is that the United States is trying to change the "sell by" date in Afghanistan. Instead of July 2011, the new deadline for victory is going to be sometime in 2014. Right.

In policy terms, this is called "kicking the can down the road." At that point, I'm betting we'll declare victory and get out, via the same sort of blue-smoke-and-mirrors ("the surge worked") that we used in Iraq. Except that as with Iraq,  there will still be thousands of U.S. troops there and we will still be spending billions of dollars trying to create a workable Afghan state. This is good news for corrupt Afghans, but not the U.S. taxpayer or, in the longer term, the U.S. military. 

McClatchy news service reports that the Obama administration is starting to back away from the president's July 2011 timeline for a de-escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Instead, "the administration hopes to introduce a timeline that calls for the withdrawal of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan by 2014."

Assuming the report is accurate, it shouldn't be a surprise. I don't know anyone who thought the U.S. could turn things around in eighteen months, and that particular deadline was little more than a piece of political sleight-of-hand designed to make escalation look like a temporary step. Reasonable people can disagree about whether Obama's decision to escalate in Afghanistan was the right one (I think it wasn't), but Obama's straddle on this issue is one reason why some of his most enthusiastic supporters have become disenchanted.

Of course, there's a long tradition of presidents telling the American people that some new military mission won't take long and won't cost that much. Nixon told us he has a "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War (he didn't) and Bill Clinton said U.S. troops would only be in Bosnia for 12 months (it was more like nine years). President George W. Bush and his advisors said that the occupation of Iraq would be brief and pay for itself yet we are still there today. And now Obama has done essentially same thing: selling an increased committed by suggesting that it is only temporary, and then backing away from his own self-imposed deadline.

This report also suggests that the war is not going as well as we're being told. We may be achieving some successes on the battlefield, but as with Iraq, the real challenge is political. Success requires building some sort of effective and legitimate governing authority in Afghanistan, and achieving some sort of political reconciliation among various contending groups. If this goal means building a strong, centralized Afghan state (something that has never existed before) then we are talking about an effort that will take years, costs tens of billions of additional dollars, and could still fail. It also requires rooting out corruption in the Karzai government, but the news on that front is hardly encouraging. Al Qaeda's leaders are no longer in Afghanistan and they don't need safe havens there in order to threaten the U.S., so it is no longer even clear why we are engaged in a massive effort at social engineering in this country. Or as I've said before: if the situation in Afghanistan were exactly what it is today, but no U.S. forces were present, would Obama have ordered 100,000-plus troops to go there?

I don't think so, but he'll keep them there for the rest of his presidency (whether he gets one or two terms), and he or his successor could end up facing essentially the same choice in 2014 that he is facing today. Barring a new approach from the United States, does anyone think it will be any easier to change course then?

I'm sure you political junkies out there are busy chewing over last night's election results, and I admit I spent a bit too much time last night reading 538.com and monitoring what was happening in various races. I like a three-ring circus as much as anyone, and it's hard to take one's eyes off a train-wreck too.   

Of course, the really critical race to watch was for the County Board of DeKalb County, Illinois. The race in District 6 pitted incumbent Republican Steve Walt against Democrat Bob Brown, but somehow this important contest escaped the attention of CNN, the New York Times, and hot-shot election analysts like Nate Silver. So I can't confirm that my namesake won, but surely the outcome of that race must mean something.

But I digress. Truth be told, I'm with all of those people -- such as FP colleague Dan Drezner -- who said this election is neither about foreign policy nor likely to affect foreign policy very much. A few points to keep in mind as you digest the final tallies.

1. As Dan notes, the Executive Branch has primary authority over foreign policy, and especially at this stage in the evolution (if that is the right word) of the American republic. Obama is still commander-in-chief, his appointees are in charge at Defense, State, Treasury, and the intelligence agencies. Given that the Senate remains in Democratic hands, Congress cannot force President Obama to do anything he really doesn't want to do, although they may refuse to fund initiatives that the White House might favor. (But how often does that really happen?) On the vast majority of foreign policy issues, in short, the initiative will remain in the White House. So if you're thinking the election makes war with Iran more likely, or anything crazy like that, think again. We might do something that stupid, but if so it will be Obama's mistake, not John Boehner's.
2. As I've repeated ad nauseum over the past few months, there just aren't a lot of low-hanging fruit in the international arena, and that would be true even if the mid-term elections had gone completely the other way. Democratic control of the House and a supermajority in the Senate wouldn't make Iran more compliant, wouldn't make the Taliban run up the white flag, wouldn't make Hamid Karzai shun corruption, and wouldn't make Beijing more inclined to revalue its currency. The composition of Congress isn't going to have the slightest effect on the drug wars in Mexico, the dysfunctional politics of Pakistan, or the hostility of Al Qaeda and its various clones. It's not even going to make a difference on climate change, because Obama couldn't get an energy and climate bill passed back when the Dems had both houses of Congress in their grasp.
3. Unlike Aaron Miller, I don't think this situation means Obama should just put foreign policy on the back burner, but the fact of the matter is that it is the nature of these international problems that makes them hard to solve, not the balance of power on Capitol Hill. And on Israel-Palestine, the one big issue where domestic politics does loom large, both parties are still in thrall to the Israel lobby so last night's vote makes little difference. 
4. What will determine our foreign policy prospects over the next couple of years are various external circumstances and broad structural forces, and not the outcome of last night's assorted horse races.  

First and foremost is America's parlous economic condition: if the economy doesn't improve, we'll be pinching pennies across the board and our international clout will decline accordingly. As other great powers have discovered to their sorrow, it is damn hard to run the world when you owe lots of people money and your debts keep piling up and you're stuck in costly wars. Is divided government means gridlock then this problem could get worse-- as Paul Krugman has warned -- but the midterm results didn't create it.

Second, does Obama have the will and/or skill to extricate us from the war in Afghanistan, and does he have to keep a lot of U.S. troops in Iraq to keep it from spiraling back into large-scale sectarian violence? If he can't get out of these costly quagmires, then his ability to make bold initiatives elsewhere will be limited. 

Third, does he write off the Middle East peace process as a lost cause, does he try a "new" (?!) team, or does he finally bite the bullet and say what he thinks a final status agreement ought to look like? Does he commit himself to ramming a peace deal through, even at the risk of being a one-term president like Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush? (It is no accident, by the way, that former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami once wrote that Carter and the elder Bush had done more to help the cause of peace than any other U.S. presidents, and incurred the wrath of the lobby in the process). And do any of the local leaders show a little daring and imagination, and actually do something that might make peace more likely?

Fourth, now's the time when initial appointees start jumping ship, and it will be interesting to see who follows former National Security Advisor James Jones out the door. Pay special attention to appointees from academia, because most universities don't allow faculty to be on leave for more than two years, and the clock is ticking. Given how little Obama has accomplished in foreign policy so far, a fresh team might be just what he needs.

Finally, do real or potential rivals make things easier by committing some blunders of their own (as China did by overplaying its recent dispute with Japan), or are other states able to take advantage of our current discomfiture in smart ways? If the former, so much the better for us; if the latter, look out.

Those are the sort of things that will determine how U.S. foreign policy gets conducted over the next two years, and not which party gets to wield the gavel in all those committee meetings in Congress.

UPDATE #1:  Through the magic of Google, I can now report that Dekalb County defied national trends, and Democrat Bob Brown has defeated Steve Walt for the District 6 seat on the Dekalb Country board.  I can only hope this result does not herald a national trend against people who are interested in politics and happen to be named Steve Walt.

UPDATE #2:  The most depressing analysis of last night's events that I've seen thus far is from John Judis here (h/t Andrew Sullivan), and I am sorry to say that I also find it quite convincing.  It dovetails with my point about our economic condition being the single most critical element shaping our foreign policy, and really does make me wonder about the future.  

The Council on Foreign Relations is not the first place I look for outside-the-box thinking, but can be a useful weather-vane marking shifting attitudes within the establishment. And on that score, two articles in the upcoming issue of Foreign Affairs merit your attention.

The first article, entitled "American Profligacy and American Power," is by former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman and Council President Richard Haass. It is telling indictment of past policy errors that have undermined American power, and it is refreshing that Altman and Haass outline the strategic implications clearly. Some money quotations, with my emphasis added:

One way or the other, by action or reaction, there will be a profound shift in U.S. fiscal policy if the U.S. government continues to overspend. Deficits will be cut sharply through a combination of big spending cuts, tax increases, and, quite possibly, re-imposed budget rules. No category of spending or taxpayers will be spared."

But the impact of the United States' skyrocketing debt will not be limited to the behavior of markets or central bankers. Federal spending will decrease once the inevitable fiscal adjustment occurs, and defense spending will go down with it. …

Read on

Well, well, well. What are we to make of the revelations that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been receiving "bagfuls" of money from Iran, reportedly to the tune of $1 million a year? The go-between for this operation, Karzai aide Umar Daudzai, seems to be doing pretty well these days too, reportedly owning six houses in the UAE, Dubai, and British Columbia. Hmmmm… nice work, if you can get it.

This situation shouldn't surprise us, and I hardly think it's evidence of some dastardly Iranian plot to control Afghanistan. Given that the two states share a lengthy border, Iran has a considerable interest in Afghanistan's future course. In fact, it would be surprising if they weren't trying to buy a little influence in Kabul. (What do we think we are trying to do with all the aid money we provide?) And if you're one of those people who are really worried about Iran, you might be glad that they are sending all that money to Karzai instead of using it to buy more weapons to ship to Hezbollah.

These reports also remind us that Karzai and his associates have their own interests, and they aren't identical to ours. Given how the war has been going, the swirling array of political forces inside Afghanistan, and its own geographic location, it's easy to understand why Karzai would accept some slush funds from just about anyone. I assume that he knows more about what it takes to hold power in Afghanistan than we do, and everything I've read suggests that having a lot of cash on hand is a pretty useful asset when you're bargaining with warlords, buying off potential rivals, and making sure you have somewhere to escape to if it all goes south. If this report helps dispel the illusion that we have an effective and loyal ally in the Karzai government, so much the better.

Third, and perhaps most important, it's not clear that Tehran is going to get much for its money. Bribing foreign leaders is a dubious strategy because there's no guarantee that the recipients will stay bought if their own interests shift. Moreover, as great powers have discovered on countless occasions, giving a lot of aid to a foreign government may even backfire, because the donor's prestige gets committed and the client becomes "too important to fail." That's more-or-less what has happened to us in both Afghanistan (and Pakistan): We don't want Karzai to fall, so he can defy us without fearing that we will just cut him off or go home.

Iran hasn't really committed much prestige to this operation -- even in this context, $1 million a year is really chump change -- but they'd be fools to think that this is buying them lasting influence there. Remember the old adage: You can't buy a foreign politician; you can only rent them.