So What to Do About Those Predator Attacks? Posted by Ilan Goldenberg

Micah Zenko has a thoughtful piece about how the Obama Administration should be using Predator strikes inside Pakistan.  It's a really tough nut to crack.  At NSN we've argued that America's two primary goals in Afghanistan should be to: A.  Prevent the area from becoming a staging ground for terrorist attacks against the U.S. or other nations; and B.  Ensure that the instability in Afghanistan does not cause the collapse or further destabilization of the Pakistani state.  The predator strikes are one area where these two central imperatives at in complete opposition.

On the one hand, the predator strikes are effective as a counterterrorism tool.  As DNI, Dennis Blair recently testified.

In Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), al-Qa’ida lost significant parts of its command structure since 2008 in a succession of blows as damaging to the group as any since the fall of the Taliban in late 2001...  The loss of these and many other leaders in quick succession has made it more difficult for al-Qa’ida to identify replacements, and in some cases the group has had to promote more junior figures considerably less skilled and respected than the individuals they are replacing.

On the other hand, these same predator strikes have an incredibly negative effect on Pakistani stability.  As Dave Kilcullen recently explained

unilateral strikes against targets inside Pakistan, whatever other purpose they might serve, have an unarguably and entirely negative effect on Pakistani stability. They increase the number and radicalism of Pakistanis who support extremism, and thus undermine the key strategic program of building a willing and capable partner in Pakistan.

So, how do you square these two?  I don't really know. I would argue for limited strikes where you have very good intelligence and the target is of a high enough value that the positive counterterrorism effects outweigh the negative Pakistani destabalization effects.  Where exactly does that balance lie?  That is the $64,000 question.

Comments

[redwood]

On the other hand, these same predator strikes have an incredibly negative effect on Pakistani stability.

Put the shoe on the other foot: if Pakistan were to conduct predator strikes in the High Sierras, would that destabilize our nation or rally it?

let me give you a clue: Cuba.

It's not stability the strikes effect, it's the Pakistani perception of us as friends who respect their sovereign rights.

that point of view is the what that gets destabilized, not their nation.

indeed, few things can unify and stabilize a nation better than a foreigner aggressor.

what part of that is so complicated?

and what the is NSN?

[Peace]

Like sending more troops to Afghanistan these Predator strikes seems to be continuing the Bush policy of a military repsonse to terrorism. Trying to solve terrorism by military means has left the United States stuck two wars with a third one developing in Pakistan. These wars are bankrupting the United States and ruining the American army. Obama needs to copy from Reagan and Clinton in treating terrorism as a criminal justice issue that is akin to fighting organized crime and not treat it as a war.

[Don Bacon]

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[PrahaPartizan]

I don't see any alternative to sending more troops to Afghanistan, even if the overall strategy shifts to national redevelopment as it should have seven years ago. More troops doesn't necessarily mean more aggressive patrolling. It should mean trying to increase overall security so worthwhile projects like roads, irrigation and electrical systems can proceed with some hope of completion. Even if we all agree that a political solution must be found, security must be implemented on the ground so that the political solution will find a fertile plot in which to thrive. How do we improve security without sending more troops, even if only to train Afghans in greater numbers?

[redwood]

Even if we all agree that a political solution must be found, security must be implemented on the ground so that the political solution will find a fertile plot in which to thrive. How do we improve security without sending more troops, even if only to train Afghans in greater numbers?

what are doing on a website advocating [d]emocracy if you're going to parrot its antithesis, oh master gardener?

[David Billington]

Pakistan is apparently complicit in these strikes if it is true that they are launched from bases inside the country. The problem is that if the strikes raise the attrition rate of al-Qaida leaders, these figures will merely operate farther away from the frontier, as the Afghan Taliban leaders do (they met recently in Karachi).

The United States will make a catastrophic misjudgment if it extends the war any further into Pakistan. The situation in Afghanistan is really the key to the area. But we have to be more willing to ask hard questions about our involvement.

The Taliban do not receive advanced weapons from a superpower and most Afghans do not want the Taliban to return. The Afghan army is respected by the Afghan people. If this army can take over population security in a reasonable period of time (ie. years not decades), then an American commitment might be finite and successful. If we are going to make this commitment, then how much security we need to provide in the interim (and not just how many troops we have available) is the question we have to ask and answer right now. We also need to ask whether security requires particular qualities in an Afghan government and whether these qualities can be achieved.

Pakistan is not important to the Afghan war because the number of enemy replacements who are not from Afghanistan is very small. The US has a separate war that will continue against al-Qaida whatever the outcome in Afghanistan. The key to this war is not taking out existing leaders but driving down recruitment. A different strategy from one that emphasizes Predator strikes will be required to do that.

[redwood]

The key to this war is not taking out existing leaders but driving down recruitment. A different strategy from one that emphasizes Predator strikes will be required to do that.

If by war, you mean the Global War on Terror (GWOT), there is some truth in what you say.

But one extremely effective way of discouraging recruits is to demonstrate to potential recruits the futility of the cause.

And if the most a recruit can hope for is a suicide mission, well, a successful predator strike on a leader subverts the order before it gets out of the house.

A sensible recruit is then likely to conclude that it's best just to settle for sloppy seconds.

If this army can take over population security in a reasonable period of time (ie. years not decades), then an American commitment might be finite and successful. If we are going to make this commitment, then how much security we need to provide in the interim (and not just how many [United States] troops we have available) is the question we have to ask and answer right now.

to be sure, Barak Obama is not making a committment to the nation of Afganistan to rid them of any counter-insurgencies.

Indeed, the short answer is none: the government of Afghanistan, not the United States, is responsible for securing the nation of Afghanistan.

What we need from the Taliban is for them to cough-up al-Qaeda.

And, if they do that and promise not to harbor transnational terrorists, then in the long run US Forces are not going to prevent them from returning to power.

Our boys can come home.

[Zathras]

To the extent that the Pakistani military and intelligence services are cooperating in Predator strikes inside Pakistan, it is unlikely they are doing so in exchange for American goodwill, or even in exchange for American military aid.

It is more likely that they recognize the failure of their own repeated efforts to suppress domestic Islamists; recognizing that the Americans have capabilities they lack, they are attempting to secure American cooperation in striking against Islamist leaders like Mehsud. Many of the Pakistani Islamists have close ties to the Taliban and to al Qaeda, so it is not a big jump from striking people suspected of supporting terrorism inside Afghanistan to striking people active primarily in Pakistan itself. Moreover, the civilian leadership of Pakistan has had the closest possible exposure to Islamist terrorism, making it doubtful that anything the Pakistani military is trying to get the Americans to do is hidden from President Zardari or his senior advisers.

Nevertheless, this is a treacherous path. Naturally Pakistani public opinion is offended by missile strikes on Pakistani soil. Pakistanis are bound to insist that they do not need foreign help to deal with domestic terrorists even if this is manifestly untrue, but of greater concern is that the problem of Islamist terrorism inside Pakistan is far beyond American resources of time, men, equipment and expertise to address adequately. At best, well-aimed missile strikes could decimate the leadership of some Pakistani faction, making it more difficult for that faction to organize offensives, assassinations, or simple banditry within Pakistan for a time. The worst case is that a strike goes catastrophically wrong -- in that case, it wouldn't help us if the error were due to mistaken Pakistani intelligence. Regardless of how extensive Pakistani government cooperation in the strike was, the United States would be blamed.

Pakistan's leadership has a long history of insisting publicly on things that cannot be, while intermittently grappling honestly with the things that are in private. This is a recurrent theme in Pakistan's pointless hostility to its massive neighbor India, which long predates America's involvement in Afghanistan. That is what it is; America cannot expect to change it. What we need to be very careful of is getting our armed forces so entangled in internal Pakistani politics that we end up getting blamed for everything that goes wrong. No one intends for that to happen, but it easily could.

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Nevertheless, this is a treacherous path.

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Pakistan's leadership has a long history of insisting publicly on things that cannot be, while intermittently grappling honestly with the things that are in private. This is a recurrent theme in Pakistan's pointless hostility to its massive neighbor India, which long predates America's involvement in Afghanistan

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Pakistan's leadership has a long history of insisting publicly on things that cannot be, while intermittently grappling honestly with the things that are in private.

[timberlandboots]

I would guess that the before-majority tends to reflect a consensus opinion, the arguments in favor of which are probably more commonly encountered in everyday life. Most of the arguments and ideas that are new to the audience would then be coming from the anti-consensus side, so more weakly-decided people would break for the side bringing previously unconsidered information to the table.

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Hi. I don't see any alternative to sending more troops to Afghanistan, even if the overall strategy shifts to national redevelopment as it should have seven years ago.

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