A Second Hand Conjecture

Is there an issue equivalent to McCain’s strength in certain foreign policy areas, where Obama can be said to dominate the debate? A worried group of Democratic leaders have concluded that there isn’t, and Obama’s appeal is a kind of a general-studies phenomenon in need of greater authority on specific issues. That’s trouble, as money can buy the commercial breaks during a policy debate, but it can’t buy the authority to command the debate itself.

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Sorry for my absenteeism on this, guys, but I’ve barely had the time to write on Registan.net about the war in Georgia (seriously, go there for some really in-depth discussions about what is going on), and have simply neglected copying posts over here. I’m sorry. Since I don’t have the time to follow the play-by-play very closely thanks to work, and since in my experience that doesn’t indicate much of use anyway, I’ll summarize my writing on the conflict so far.

For starters, this was a surprise to no one. Weeks before Saakashvili struck Tskhinvali, the South Ossetians were simultaneously shelling Georgian positions while using Russian transports to evacuate thousands of women and children for “summer camp” in North Ossetia right when Russia was massing troops across the border. Coupled with the years of Russian provocations in Abkhazia, including downing of Georgian drones by Russian aircraft, and the repeated military strikes by Russian helicopters on Georgian territory, it should surprise no one that Saakashvili finally reacted.

That being said, Saakashvili obviously miscalculated the extent to which he was being baited by Russia, and his normal brinksmanship sort of telegraphed that he would take decisive action at some point.

At the same time, the ultimate result of this fight will not be the annexation of Georgia by Russia, nor will it be an immediately dramatic reordering of the energy policies of the region. Russia will not touch the BTC pipeline, nor will it occupy Tblisi. They just want Saakashvili gone—the equivalent is how we used to view Fidel Castro… and if the opportunity presented itself we would have tried (and did several times) to kick him out of office without formally occupying the territory.

It is also important to note that Russia’s financial markets are not doing well right now. They have been steadily sinking since outright hostilities broke out, and they can be expected to sink further the longer conflict continues. So don’t expect anything long term from the Russian military—war is not as profitable for them as it is for us. If they do drag this war out much longer, they lose big time—financially, militarily, and internationally. Which they might do, because one should never underestimate Russian hubris.

Believe it or not, Russia actually is responsive to global opinion. Just not in the way we like to think. A key part of Russia’s geopolitical strategy is to breed European dependence on Russia energy, a goal they have largely achieved. At the same time, that isn’t permanent, and if Russia pushes too far Europe could panic, actually bother to come up with a unified energy policy, and diversify its supplies. Russia does not want that. But they do want to dictate terms along their southern flank.

Russia also has a compelling interest in preventing Georgian ascension into NATO. It has been interesting to see how much diplomatic activity has been in Brussels, rather than Tblisi, Tskhinvali, or Moscow. They are keenly aware of their audience here, and given the fact that they’ve made their point—NATO’s stipulation that Georgia solve its “frozen conflicts” is clearly still valid—they have little reason to occupy the capital and provoke a global response.

Questions remain. Did NATO’s stipulation, along with years of American support, funding, and supply, create the conditions for this war? Right now, it looks like it did (so what culpability does the West have?). Does this war conclusively prove that Russia is politically rotten, and that Medvedev is worse than a paper tiger since it’s all been about Putin? Quite possibly. Does this mean that Caspian energy will no longer flow according to Western interests? Almost definitely. Can this mean, since Russia stands a serious chance of overstepping its bounds and provoking a counter-movement from the international community, that the U.S. might in all of this emerge the actual winner? A remote possibility.

More ominously, what happens to Georgia? Saakashvili is finished, but there is no one to replace him. As the electoral crisis last year demonstrated, even when he voluntarily resigns and holds fair and open elections, he remains the only real leader the Georgians have. Alas, he is finished now. What, or more importantly who, comes next? It will almost certainly be one of the many opposition leaders, all of whom share varying degrees of warmth toward Russia. The winner of that political fight—which will be metaphorically if not physically bloody—will determine the ultimate result of this war. So in that sense, Russia is taking just as big a gamble here as Saakashvili did.

But basically, it is all very fluid, and there are too many variables to conclusively discuss what the war will really mean. Which is a cop-out in a way, but it is all one should feel comfortable saying.

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Posted first at Registan.net, the web’s best source of news and analysis of Central Asia and the Caucasus.

My friend Jeb Koogler and I co-wrote an op-ed in Thursday’s Christian Science Monitor, titled, “Myths in Al Qaeda’s ‘home’.” This matters tremendously as we ponder what to do (if anything) about the latest round of peace talks. A brief excerpt of our argument:

Given the growing reach of FATA-affiliated militants, it is becoming clear that developments in the tribal areas are central to NATO’s success in Afghanistan, as well as an important factor in the stability of nuclear-armed Pakistan and the security of both Europe and the United States. Yet many Western policymakers and pundits misread current events, espousing views and prescribing policies that are based more on stereotypes than on a solid grasp of the region’s history and culture.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the Pakistani Taliban pose a unique and insurmountable threat, that the Pashtuns are the problem, that the tribal areas are lawless and chaotic, and that the targeted assassinations are an effective deterrent against Islamic militancy. But none of these assertions are accurate.

Although the conventional thinking holds that the Pakistani Taliban and their leader Baitullah Mehsud are a formidable and unprecedented threat to the region, the movement is neither historically unique nor overwhelmingly powerful.

And so on (read the whole thing, natch). I anticipate many will quibble with our argument over targeted assassinations; I welcome any such discussion, so long as it’s kept civil.

Update: Here is another example of how perception can matter tremendously, and how pitiful U.S. planning has been in the area. It takes nine paragraphs of Eric Schmitt quoting a press conference on the problem of foreign militants entering Pakistan until he finds anonymous officials urging caution that the problem isn’t quite as bad as it was sold to the media. He then quotes anonymous officials in Pakistan who complain that things are just harder to do without a friendly dictator to bark orders at. Finally, in the last paragraph of a two-page story, he quotes another anonymous official who complains that U.S. relations with Pakistan are “toxic.” So many anonymous people!

Why is that, do you think? Could it be because the current civilian government doesn’t like that we supported the country’s military dictator through several rounds of stolen elections, the imposition of martial law and the cancellation of the country’s civil liberties? That, after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, we supported him cancelling free press and arresting lawyers who were protesting for the reinstatement of the judicial system, instead of going after Baitullah Mehsud’s group? That, even after Pervez Musharraf’s tenure was clearly over, we insisted on bombing their territory as often as possible before they could have a chance to ask us to stop?

It should be no surprise relations with Pakistan are tense. We are dealing with a popularly elected government that is at least somewhat in tune with its generally poor and generally uneducated population, and is not a disconnected, whiskey-swilling, Oxford-educated dictator. Instead of bothering to learn how we can make U.S. policy congruous with Pakistan’s needs and problems over the past eight years, we just short-cut our way through using an autocracy… and now complain viciously when it is deposed and democracy is restored and we have to actually argue our case. Like it or not, much of the world does not view our cause as self-evidently good and just and righteous—we need to argue that it is so. That we haven’t bothered so speaks legions about how we view the people who live in the areas we invade.

In other words, we are our own worst enemies.

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Posted first to Registan.net, your one-stop shop for all things Central Asia, this is a tangent to a really excellent theme I’ve been tracking the past few weeks—the flow of press releases masquerading as journalism from Afghanistan to our largest publications. Check it out if you like this.

It appears NATO is feeling “battle fatigue” after six years of combat. I feel for them, I really do—and it would be impossible for me to criticize the stance since I have never been in combat. But why, then, is the notion that Afghans just might be too exhausted to fight any more so alien to western thinking? That some may not be as actively battling off Taliban and associated militants with sleepless fervor as they could because they’re just too exhausted?

The most battle-hardened U.S. troops in Afghanistan will have been there for a total of perhaps five years (this is an educated guess; it could be either more or less). After so much time fearing for one’s life, feeling utterly fatigued is perfectly natural. And the political desire to end the expense of such a sustained conflict is also perfectly natural and understandable.

Most Afghans, however, cannot remember a time without warfare. With a median age of only 17.6 years, the vast majority of Afghans simply were not alive during a period without active warfare in their country—warfare that will, in about 19 months, reach its 30th anniversary.

I would say the Afghans are rather more resilient than we are. But NATO’s fecklessness certainly doesn’t help. The revelation that German special forces allowed the Baghlan bomber to escape because they were not authorized to use lethal force—they were only permitted to capture him, not kill him—drives this point further home. Many NATO countries are simply not acting as if they want to win. Only five of the 26 countries currently operating in Afghanistan—the U.S., the UK, Canada, Denmark, and Netherlands—can behave like a normal army. The rest have their operations crippled by restrictive caveats, some of which now can be shown to be actively aiding the insurgency.

The threat to the international relief workers and the ISAF soldiers stationed in the north may now be even greater than it was before. Warned of ISAF’s activities and intent on taking revenge, the man and his network are active once again. Over 2,500 Germans are stationed between Faryab and Badakhshan, along with Hungarian, Norwegian and Swedish troops.

The case has caused disquiet at the headquarters of the ISAF peacekeeping force in Kabul. The current strategy for fighting the enemy is to buy as many Taliban sympathizers as possible, to at least win them over for a while — and to “eliminate” the hardliners through targeted assassinations.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The German KSK is actually a highly respected, highly capable force. They were able to track the bomber down, observe him for weeks without him realizing it, and even close almost to capture before they were discovered. But they were just not permitted to behave like any other SOF or even police unit would: kill a dangerous man if he looks ready to escape.

And this strategy of purchasing Taliban sympathizers is the height of folly: it is precisely what the British tried during their disastrous invasion in 1838. When the money ran out some years later, those Afghans they had bribed didn’t walk home thankful to have received British gold, they rose up in murderous fury at the foreign invader who now didn’t even have money to placate their wounded pride. Refusing to fight while spreading Euros like Nutella on toast might work for a little bit. But, as Der Spiegel has documented, it will also fatally undermine what had been one of the great successes of the war.

I’m sure hanging out in Feyzabad and getting fat is really tiring, but honestly, bitte, stop undermining everyone else.

This Topic Continues:

• Germany and Afghanistan
• “The Germans Have to Learn How to Kill“
• About the Baghlan Bombing
• Disassembling the Baghlan Bombing

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Cross-posted from Registan.net, your one-stop shop for news and analysis of going on in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Thirteen months ago, I noted the problems caused by the U.S. State Department having dramatically different divisions than the military COCOMs.

The DoD considers Pakistan part of the Central Command, or CENTCOM (which includes the Middle East and Central Asia), but places India in the Pacific Command, PACOM. Meanwhile, the State Department places all of Central Asia in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, while neighboring areas like the Middle East are a part of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. How Africa policy is divided up is even more chaotic.

The end result is a confusing, bureaucratic mess, in which multiple and otherwise fairly independent military commands have to coordinate with multiple State Department bureaus to execute the President’s foreign policy goals, whatever they may be. (There is a side issue to this, which is that nearly 93% of the U.S.’s foreign policy budget is military and only 7% is diplomatic and aid, but that’s a larger post not entirely appropriate to this space.)

In that post I was lamenting the problem of considering Pakistan outside of its relationship with India, since Pakistan filters almost all of its foreign policy through the formulation of India as its primary threat.

It seems I’m not alone: Mountain Runner, an excellent blog about public diplomacy, linked to this paper on the ways the DOS needs to change to better adapt to the modern operating environment.

In order to increase American diplomatic power and improve interagency coordination, it is critical to create a diplomatic post on par with the military’s theater combatant commander, providing leadership and oversight, and coordination of regional diplomatic efforts with emphasis on crisis response, stability operations, and “soft power” projection. Placing some diplomatic expertise in the combatant commands, as is being done with USAFRICOM, appears to further the notion that the regional military commander is the “most influential USG representative” and in a “position of preeminence.” DOS must make bold moves to reorganize and revitalize its ability to project diplomatic power and lead the U.S. government’s interagency efforts overseas.

And so on. It’s a damned fine idea. Meanwhile, the State Department is gently reminding us that al Qaeda remains a threat to world security. Pity they can’t field any useful teams of agents to the region most likely to harbor future al Qaeda operatives.

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