America’s defense strategy: the good, the bad, and the ugly

While much of the focus on the president’s defense strategy has centered on the reduction to the Army and to the Marine Corps, the overarching strategy changes America’s defense position across several dimensions. Not all of them are uniformly negative.

I will not get into the discussion of overall military spending. Like any other federal bureaucracy, the Department of Defense can be made more efficient. Unlike many of the others, DoD has been focused on efficiencies for many years, and more to the point, cutting the wrong thing can be exceedingly dangerous. However, this should not prevent us from cutting the right thing.

So, with that in mind, let’s take a look at the good, the bad, and the ugly in the new defense strategy.

The good: One can only imagine what it feels like in Zhongnanhai, knowing that the CCP is the only force that will see more of the American military in their midst. In fact, the president has repeatedly shown an unexpected, unadvertised, and thus largely unknown determination to protect and preserve our interests in southeast Asia (in northeast Asia, he hasn’t been much better than his predecessors, but not much worse either). The greater emphasis on our allies in the Pacific received far more attention outside the U.S. than anything else (BBC, twice). For the first time, the United States is making it clear it has concern about the “peaceful rise” of the Chinese Communist regime, and it is prepared to put resources in place to address that concern. That is a change, and a good one.

The bad: Unfortunately, the concern the Administration has about the CCP is only a regional one. The idea that the regime would seek to build its power and prestige outside East Asia is surprisingly absent here. Given that Zhongnanhai has already established alliances with the mullahcracy of Iran, numerous tyrants in Africa, and the Pakistani military (and through them, the Taliban), Washington’s newfound concern for the CCP is thus dangerously limited. Or, as Nadia Schadlow put it in the Weekly Standard:

This geostrategic pivot toward Asia, accompanied by an emphasis on high technology Sino-centric warfare, fails to account for the character of conflict in most of the rest of the disordered world.

One can be certain that the CCP will not “fail to account” for the rest of the world. This leads us to . . .

The ugly: The overall weakening of the American military will make it that much harder to actually achieve the excellent goal of holding the CCP, its tyrannical allies, and its terrorist proxies in check. While Zhongnanhai may find things more difficult in Asia, the regime will likely find eroding American power easier in the rest of the world.

The question then becomes this: will America then weaken itself in Asia to face those other threats abroad? Or will she swallow hard and reverse the manpower and strength reductions that are part of the newly current strategy? This is the question the president, his would-be Republican opponents, and the American people must address – preferably this year.

Cross-posted to the China e-Lobby and Bearing Drift

Iraq will ask America’s military to stay

In what I must confess is a surprise to me, Iraq’s leading politicians have agreed to ask the American military to remain in the country past December 31, although only in a training capacity (Washington Post).

I honestly didn’t expect this. I assumed that Iraqi nationalism (which is intense to a fault but at the same time the best weapon against Tehran’s plans for the region) would preclude any American military presence in 2012 and beyond. Turns out I was wrong.

I do think this interesting turn of phrase by Admiral Mike Mullen (Head of the Joint Chiefs) had something to do with it (first WaPo link): “It is clear that Tehran seeks a weak Iraq and an Iraq more dependent upon and more beholden to a Persian worldview.”

Note that he said Persian worldview – a perfect dog-whistle word for any Iraqi that the Yanks’ concern about Iran is as deep and visceral as their own.

It also shows that the Iraqi center – currently split between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki (Shia) and Ayad Allawi (Sunni) – can hold together long enough to show the puppets of Iran and al Qaeda who’s in charge (and I say this as someone who has far less trust for Maliki than I do for Allawi).

Finally, it could force the WBK (Wahhabist-Baathist-Khomeinist) War back onto the 2012 campaign here at home. Prior to this, the assumption would be that Iraq would be “over” before the Iowa caucus and Afghanistan would be on pace for a Karzai-driven withdrawal. That is no longer so with the former.

CCP’s Iranian allies caught backing our enemies, again

Thomas Jocelyn of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies has the latest in how the mullahcracy in Tehran is training anti-American terrorists in Iraq and arming the Taliban in Afghanistan (Wall Street Journal via Weekly Standard):

The U.S. has attributed all the attacks to Shiite militias it says are [sic] are trained by the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards, rather than al Qaeda or other Sunni groups that were the most lethal forces inside Iraq a few years ago

. . .

Kata’ib Hezbollah, or Brigades of the Party of God, is viewed as the one most directly taking orders from Revolutionary Guard commanders in Iran. Two others, the Promise Day Brigade and Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, are offshoots of the Mahdi Army headed by the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who currently lives in Iran.

As for Afghanistan, as Jocelyn himself notes . . .

Iran’s support for the Taliban’s war against coalition forces dates to late 2001, when Iranian officials promised to supply Taliban leaders with weapons and safe transit for Arabs (al Qaeda operatives) traveling to Afghanistan to wage jihad.

If you haven’t been following this closely, this all may come as a shock. Those of us who do follow it closely are just shocked it still surprises people.

Those of us who follow this very closely might also note that the mullahs’ chief ally and military supplier – the Chinese Communist Party – has done nothing to stop them, or even distance itself from them.

There was a time when that would lead Washington to take action (and I don’t mean just military; there are several options here) against the Tehran-Zhongnanhai axis. Are any of the presidential candidates (incumbent included) interested in doing so now?

Cross-posted to Virginia Virtucon and the China e-Lobby

Afghanistan: the president threw in with the Taliban

No, not that one.

Now that I have your attention, though, I think it best to remind everyone that carping at President Obama for his announcement of an American pullout from Afghanistan by 2014 is simply a waste of time. No American president of either party would have been able to stay longer, because Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants us out and wants a deal with the Talibs.

That what is good for Karzai is terrible for his and our country matters nothing to him.

Whether we like it or not, a new phase in the battele with the Taliban is soon to begin: basically a proxy war that pits the Pakistani ISI against us. The Afghans, once again, our caught in the middle. While elitist and posers enjoy warbling about Afghanistan resisting all foreign occupiers throughout its history, they tend to ignore that, for the most part, Afghans have never been able to unite, either. Thus, while foreign troops come and go, foreign influence is eternal there.

We are headed for a 21st Century version of the Great Game, with the U.S. and India on one side (against the Talibs), Pakistan and Communist China on the other (with the Talibs and Karzai), and Russia eagerly trying to leverage both of us.

We will need to make sure the anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan triumph (simplistically, the non-Pashtuns; more accurately, the tenuous coalition that controls the Afghan Parliament), and remind everyone that the Taliban and al Qaeda are still joined at the hip (especially the Russians, who tend to let their Anti-American ADHD get in the way of maneuvering against the allies of Chechnya’s rebels).

So, rather than rip President Obama for choosing the inevitable withdrawal, we should instead rip hm for his refusal to say anything about how to help Afghanistan defeat the Taliban. He seems to think that just handing over the reigns will answer the mail – meaning he either doesn’t realize Karzai’s actual intentions, or he just doesn’t care.

That is the real problem with Obama’s policy of Afghanistan.

Cross-posted to Bearing Drift

We’re having the wrong debate on Afghanistan

One can begin to see the contours of a major debate on the future of America’s military deployment to Afghanistan. With the beginning of President Obama’s drawdown set to begin next month, and the campaign for the Republican nomination to replace him beginning to take form, candidates and voters are asking whether we should stay past 2014 or go (either then or sooner).

I think it is best that we stay, but I also think the entire argument is irrelevant. I say that for this reason: we will be out of Afghanistan militarily in 2014 whether we like it or not.

Whatever our president might want, their president has made it quite clear who his friends are: the Taliban and their Pakistani sponsors. Hamid Karzai has never been able to see past his Pashtun connections, and they have led him to believe that he can be more secure making a deal with our enemies than staying with us. Looking back, our de facto complicity in the deeply flawed presidential election of 2009 was a very large mistake.

However, the Pashtun are not the majority in Afghanistan (neither are they all friends of either Karzai or the Talibs). In fact, Afghanistan’s Parliament – elected under much fairer circumstances – is largely under opposition control (in part because, as I mentioned earlier, non-Pashtun tribes cobble together a majority in Afghanistan). So the Afghan people are less enthused with the Taliban than their president.

Add to this the pro-Taliban Pakistan, heavily anti-Taliban India, and anti-American regime in Iran (all which will probably be armed with nuclear weapons by 2014), and it’s a complex picture indeed. The question we should be asking is this: What can we do to hold the Taliban at bay – and push them to their demise – after our troops have gone?

The answer is hardly easy, or even simple. If we do choose to aid the anti-Taliban Afghans, it could be anything from military aid (assuming Karzai doesn’t get his meat hooks into the National Army), to political backing for the Parliamentary majority akin to what we did for the anti-Communists in Italy during the late 1940s. More concrete aid (military, economic, etc.), will require precision at the provincial or even local level – not just in Afghanistan, but getting the aid through Pakistan.

There will be temptation to simply wash our hands of the whole thing . . . except that’s what led us to 9/11 in the first place. There will be another impulse to shower Afghanistan with money – never mind that it may go to the wrong place and the wrong politicians (or that non-military aid even in the hands of the right politicians, could nudge them to make severe policy mistakes).

As strange, complex, and difficult as it may sound, we have managed somewhat similar issues before: El Salvador and Nicaragua, Poland, and yes, Afghanistan, before we jumped ship in 1992). President Bush the Younger himself had authorized military and other aid to the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance one week before 9/11 - when the Taliban had over 90% of the country and complete control of whatever it called the government.  Today, the anti-Taliban forces have control of the Parliament and (or more logically, due to) enough tribal support to have a firm majority in the country.

We tend to forget that the Vietnam War continued for two years after our troops came home. What defeated South Vietnam was a lack of financial support from the United States (the South Vietnamese military literally ran out of bullets).

So . . . our military is not staying in Afghanistan, but that doesn’t mean the Taliban automatically win – far from it, in fact. We need to accept both realities before we can come up decide whether keeping the Taliban out of power is a real priority and if so, how we will do it.

None of that will happen the, however, as long as we continue to ask the wrong questions and have the wrong debate in Afghanistan.

Cross-posted to Bearing Drift

Will Iraq ask American troops to stay?

If there is any piece of conventional wisdom preserved in amber, it is that the Iraqi people would rather American troops go home – the sooner, the better. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki just cracked the amber today.

As the agreed-upon deadline for American troops to leave the country it liberated from the Ba’athist appproaches (December of 2011), al-Maliki announced that he’ll ask around to see if there is “a national consensus” to ask American troops to say (CNN):

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said Wednesday he will meet with Iraqi political leaders by the end of the month to get their opinions on whether some U.S troops should remain in the country after December, when they are slated to leave.

“This is a big national issue, and it needs a national consensus,” he told reporters at his office here.

Asked whether he would support an extension of U.S. forces in Iraq, he would not answer.

I’m not surprised that he would keep his views to himself; I doubt he even knows what he wants American troops to do. However, the mere fact that he’s looking at it – and that he’s prepared to OK it with “70% or 80%” support (meaning, everyone except al Sadr) makes a whole bunch of things fluid. To wit:

• Barack Obama’s plan to run on “he got us out of Iraq and killed bin Laden” would take a severe hit if he did the former against the wishes of the locals. By contrast, if a request is made to keep American troops in Iraq and he agrees, it may be the one thing that opens the door very wide to a challenger within his party – or even a “third-party” candidate from the left.
• On the Republican side, foreign policy has been almost completely ignored. That little rerun of the halcyon 1990s will end quickly if the withdraw from Iraq becomes conditional or non-existent. The presidential aspirants with the most credibility in international matters (Jon Huntsmann and John Bolton, for example) could become much more important as presidential candidates in 2012 if American troops are still in harm’s way there.
• If the United States military does stay in Iraq, the post-bin-Laden al Qaeda will have to follow them. Assuming Ayman al-Zawahiri succeeds his late boss, he’ll be looking to make his mark and curry greater favor with the mullahs in Tehran. The latter, who will remember al-Z from his days in Egypt, may want to steer him away from Afghanistan (where the maze of political factions makes America a mere annoyance that may or may not be more problematic than Taliban-forgiving Hamid Karzai) and toward Iraq (whose relative stability is making it much harder to justify their iron-grip on the Iranian people). Odds are Tehran will try to push the parts of al Q sympathetic to them westward no matter what American troops do. If they stay, the mullahs’ push could be a hard shove.

And that’s just the first three things that come into mind.

Now, it could be that the Iraq “consensus” is to let America finish the withdrawal, but I suspect that al-Maliki would have kept his mouth shut if he expected that to be the case. More likely, this is the first step in an August request for American troops to stay a while longer.

If so, many of the assumptions surrounding 2012 in the Middle East and the United States will go by the boards (yes, even this one).

Cross-posted to VV

The case for limited intervention against Qaddafi

I have been quiet on events transpiring in Libya, in no small part because I myself was undecided on the subject.

Contrary to most on today’s right, I am not averse to military intervention abroad. In fact, I think the role of a robust foreign policy in keeping domestic government small is highly underappreciated. Like most on the right, I hold no illusions regarding Mummuar Qaddafi (when I first heard of him, in the 1980s, it was spelled with a Q).

What held me back was a concern best stated by National Review‘s Victor Davis Hanson regarding the anti-Qaddafi forces:

We have no idea who exactly the Libyan protesters are or what they represent.

That sums up my worries quite well; there was also the fact that Qaddafi, for his virulent anti-American history, appeared chastened by the liberation of Iraq.

After some more thought, however, I came to the realization that America’s interests require that we provide some aid to the opposition. Here’s why:

• Qaddafi will certainly consider us his enemies again, thanks to President Obama’s demands that he step down. That Obama seems unwilling to do anything to back up his words will be seen as weakness, not the “real” policy (to quote a formerly iconic politician, “Don’t tell me words don’t matter”). As such, preventing Qaddafi’s triumph is critical.
• Even in the worst-case scenario (Qaddafi’s opponents are as anti-American as he is), it’s better to have them fighting each other than us. One of George W. Bush’s statements in his 9/20/01 speech to the nation on what he would do to terrorists is key here: “We will set them against one another.” History has shown the value in this. An argument between Beijing and Moscow in the 1960 led to the most dramatic Cold War switch a decade later. Saddam Hussein’s ambitions were greatly restrained while he fought Iran (the mullahs in Tehran have always been active in mischief, but far less so during their eight-year war with Saddam).
• Finally, there’s no reason the worst-case scenario must stay that way, and again, recent history points the way. In the early 1980s, the Communist regime in Ethiopia fell into disarray and civil war. At first, backing Communist rebels over a Communist regime seemed not worth the trouble, but we did it anyway, and by the time the rebels were in a position to topple the government, said rebels had left Marxism and anti-Americanism behind. Today, Ethiopia is our best ally in East Africa this side of tiny Djibuoti.

These reasons are why I have come down in favor of intervention. However, it must be the right kind of intervention, one that will minimize loss of blood and treasure while maximizing impact within my concerns (i.e., it needs to keep the opposition strong enough to hold Qaddafi in check, at least until we have a better idea of who they are).

That leads to one optimal solution: military aid, without military deployment.

I know a “no-fly zone” is all the rage, but those of us who remember the Afghan mujahedin of the 1980s know that Stinger missiles accomplished the same purpose without losing American planes or pilots. I suspect a 2010 equivalent of the Stinger will do just fine.

There are already plenty of Libyans willing to fight Qaddafi. At present, enabling them to keep up the fight is the most we need to do – i.e., the most that our interests compel us to do.

That is, however, something, making it different from the empty words flowing from the White House.

Cross-posted to BD

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan . . .

. . . President Karzai and his political opposition agree on one thing: they want a permanent American military presence (NRO - The Corner):

Defense Minister Rahim Wardak said U.S. permanent bases would serve as a guarantee for Afghanistan’s long-term security and stability. On March 4, former Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and ex-intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh told a joint press conference in Kabul that Afghanistan needed a permanent U.S. military presence to ward off the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and warned that the consequences would be dire if foreign troops left prematurely. Atta Mohammad Noor, the influential governor of northern Balkh Province, said permanent U.S. bases would discourage neighbors’ interference. On March 8, the Mishrano Jirga, Afghanistan’s upper house of parliament, declared support for the scheme, warning that “if U.S. forces leave Afghanistan, the vacuum will be filled by the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the Pakistanis.”

The Afghan opposition (repped by Atmar and Saleh) is critical here, as they were the ones who won the parlimentary elections last year and might have won the presidency but for Karzai’s . . . creativity. The opposition is also the bunch more willing to take the fight to the Taliban (Karzai at times seems more interested in striking a deal with the terrorists in order to outmanouver the political opposition).

What the Administration will do is anyone’s guess, but an agreement for permanent military bases in Afghanistan would serve three purposes: (1) wipe out the damage caused by the summer 2011 draw-down date by making it clear the Taliban can’t “run out the clock,” (2) re-affirm to the American people that the Afghans are just as determined to be rid of this bunch as we are, and (3) minimize the damage from a slowly disinitegrating Pakistan and/or the adventurous Pakistani military.

Afghanistan is not Iraq: Karzai is far more incompetent and corrupt than al-Maliki; and the terrorists have been unable to exploit ethnic divisions in Iraq (even the political religious divisions there are proving less-than-helpful for al Q). On the flip side, the Afghan people are clearly more comfortable with America’s presence in the long-term (probably because, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan saw al Q and the Talibs actually try to govern), and the political divisions are much more clearly defined (i.e., the opposition is a full-time opposition), meaning Karzai et al will be held much more accountable than al-Maliki under Iraq’s consensus government model.

In short, I’m hoping that a permanent military presence can be established. Odds are it will have more staying power among the Afghan people than, say, our installations in Qatar and Bahrain.

Cross-posted to VV

There he goes again

It had been quite some time since Mike Huckabee had insulted, crossed, and otherwise annoyed limited-government conservatives. As one of the very few high-profile Republicans to openly oppose TARP, he had a tremendous opportunity to rebuild bridges.

Today, at King’s College (NYC), Huckabee not only refused to rebuild those bridges, but he set fire to a few more (Brian Stewart – NRO: The Corner):

Huckabee flatly denied being a “pro-life liberal,” an accusation often made in certain quarters on the right. Not a trace of defensiveness could be detected on this point. To the contrary, the governor gave an all-out defense of his tax hikes while governor of Arkansas on the grounds that they were the only responsible course of action to repair state roads. He snorted with derision at “libertarians” who fail to recognize that “we don’t have a health care crisis in this country, but a health crisis.” He spoke with passion and knowledge on the need for preventative care to bring down exorbitant costs. And then, without the least amount of prompting, he mustered a vigorous defense of Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign against childhood obesity. This was the “art of governing,” he argued, rather than the cheap “science of campaigning.”

Where to begin!

For starters, the tax-hikes-for-roads nonsense is a common feature here in Virginia, at least until Speaker Bill Howell and his fellow Republicans in the House of Delegates finally got over their HB3202-induced tax-fever. The rest was just Huckabee’s typical drivel. In fact, his last line about the “art of governing” - citing a First Lady campaign – would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragically ignorant.

He then digs himself even deeper with this:

Invited to plea for cuts in defense spending, he delicately declined, but noted that combat operations in Afghanistan were futile and therefore constituted government “waste.”

Let that sink in for just a minute: fighting the Taliban is now government waste to Mike Huckabee.

Stewart called Huckabee “The Face of Conservative Populism.” That Huckabee can still manage to get “conservative” attached to himself is all the more reason I call myself a right-wing liberal.

Cross-posted to Virginia Virtucon and Virginia Bloggers Against Mike Huckabee

On the president’s speech last night

I must confess, I missed the president’s speech – and not by accident.  I didn’t think the “end of combat operations in Iraq” was worth a speech anyhow, what with 50,000 troops still there.  Moreover, the question of whether Obama would ignore Bush’s “surge” (I put it in quotes because it was more than just that) or try to take credit for it was answered as I expected: he attempted both and accomplished neither.

What mattered to me were his comments on Afghanistan, and once again, he disappointed (speech reprinted in NRO - The Corner):

And, next July, we will begin a transition to Afghan responsibility. The pace of our troop reductions will be determined by conditions on the ground, and our support for Afghanistan will endure. But make no mistake: this transition will begin – because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people’s.

It all sounds so reasonable, until we remember that the enemy also has something to say about the length and breadth of a war.

Keep in mind, the current timetable on Iraq comes from an agreeement between the two countries last year.  It sent a message that Iraq was, at best, ready to take the burden on its own and, at worst, confident that it could do so by the end of 2011.

The July 2011 date for the beginning of the end in Afghanistan was imposed on the Afghan people from Washington (much to their dismay).  It sends no message of confidence, but rather one of exhaustion.  It sends the message that the Taliban can run out the clock on the Afghan people (government and anti-Taliban political opposition) – the same Taliban that welcomed, embraced, and all-but-merged with al Qaeda prior to 9/11/01.

The president doesn’t seem to understand this, which is why his speech was yet another disappointment.

Cross-posted to VV