Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch - The Leverage Version Posted by Michael Cohen

One of the elements of our national debate on Afghanistan is how occasionally constricted that debate often seems to be. Take for example Helene Cooper's article today in the New York Times about diminishing US leverage over the Karzai regime - and this quote from Ronald E. Neumann, the former ambassador to Afghanistan:

“You know that scene in the movie ‘Blazing Saddles,’ when Cleavon Little holds the gun to his own head and threatens to shoot himself?”

“The argument that we could pull out of Afghanistan if Karzai doesn’t do what we say is stupid. We couldn’t get the Pakistanis to fight if we leave Afghanistan; we couldn’t accomplish what we’ve set out to do. And Karzai knows that.”

Well frankly what's stupid is the strawman argument that the immediate response to Karzai's recalcitrance is pulling our troops out of Afghanistan - an idea that Cooper acknowledges, in this same article, the White House is not even considering. Second, can we please move past the notion that the Pakistanis have no agency when it comes to handling the threat of jihadist terror. Are the Pakistanis currently conducting a robust offensive in Waziristan because of us - or because they sense a threat to their own national security? And over the past 8 years has anything the US done or said gotten the Pakistanis to crackdown on the Afghan Taliban groups in their midst? Lets give the Pakistanis a little credit here, why don't we.

But the final fallacy here is that we have no leverage over Karzai or that we can't further US national interests without him. It's not to say Karzai is unimportant, but ultimately we clearly have more leverage over him than he has on us. We can leave!

Frankly much of the argument made in Cooper's piece seems predicated on the notion that we need Karzai because we can't do a counter-insurgency without him. Well then fine, don't do a counter-insurgency. In fact, if Karzai's recent behavior isn't the death knell of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan then it's never going to happen. The notion that any US military officer who prays at the altar of FM 3-24 (which says host country support is the sine qua non of effective COIN operations) is still supporting a COIN effort in Afghanistan is beyond me.

Stop trying to conduct nation building in Helmand Province; cede the Pashtun belt to the Taliban; re-focus the mission narrowly to containment and counter-terrorism; support provincial leaders against the Taliban; announce a timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan etc. It seems as though we have a few more options in Afghanistan than simply tying ourselves to the corrupt Karzai regime.

The notion that we are somehow hostage to Karzai's machinations is absurd. Look he has far more to lose from a Taliban takeover than we do. We can weather it; we can devise alternative policies - clearly he can't. If Karzai doesn't want to clean up his act; then make a political deal with the Taliban (we'll pull troops out of the Pashtun belt and in return no AQ safe haven in Afghanistan). Tell Karzai to go to war with Dostum and Fahim because no more American soldiers are going to die on behalf of his government. This isn't complicated.

But I'll tell you what would be complicated - and stupid to boot - sending more than 30,000 troops to Afghanistan without any clear guidance about when the US and NATO can turn over responsibility to the Afghan government; and no clear sense that it will actually further US interests.

Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch - The Karl Eikenberry, I Could Kiss You Version Posted by Michael Cohen

Earlier tonight I was preparing to come home and write a long and anguished blog post about how President Obama was on the verge of sending his presidency off a cliff by approving the dispatching of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. So you can imagine my gleeful surprise when I came home to read this:

President Barack Obama does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

After the increasingly depressing leaks of the past few days, this is just stunning news. And it gets even more interesting . . . because apparently our man in Kabul - Ambassador Karl Eikenberry -- may well be leading the charge:

The U.S. ambassador in Kabul sent two classified cables to Washington in the past week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan until President Hamid Karzai's government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban's rise, senior U.S. officials said.

What's perhaps most interesting is that Ikenberry's concern seems to pretty closely dovetail with the issue raised in today's NYT article about Obama's concern that Karzai is not a serious partner for a counter-insurgency:

Ikenberry has expressed deep reservations about Karzai's erratic behavior and corruption within his government, said U.S. officials familiar with the cables. Since Karzai was officially declared reelected last week, U.S. diplomats have seen little sign that the Afghan president plans to address the problems they have raised repeatedly with him.

U.S. officials were particularly irritated by a interview this week in which a defiant Karzai said that the West has little interest in Afghanistan and that its troops are there only for self-serving reasons.

And the Times advances the story even further:

General Eikenberry sent his reservations to Washington in a cable last week, the officials said. In that same period, President Obama and his national security advisers have begun examining an option that would send relatively few troops to Afghanistan, about 10,000 to 15,000, with most designated as trainers for the Afghan security forces.

. . . Pentagon officials said the low-end option of 10,000 to 15,000 more troops would mean little or no significant increase in American combat forces in Afghanistan. The bulk of the additional forces would go to train the Afghan Army, with a smaller number focused on hunting and killing terrorists, the officials said.The low-end option would essentially reject the more ambitious counterinsurgency strategy envisioned by General McChrystal, which calls for a large number of forces to protect the Afghan population, work on development projects and build up the country’s civil institutions.

I'm really not sure what to make of all this; the leaking that is going on here is just ridiculous. It's very possible that this is a trial balloon meant to light a fire underKarzai . But honestly I don't think so. Instead, I think President Obama is taking charge of his Afghan policy in a significant and long overdue way - and more important, standing up to his generals and national securityadvisors who seem to want to shoot first and ask questions later. 

For what it's worth, that's change I can believe in.

Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch - The Man Alone Version Posted by Michael Cohen

Is it just me but don't you get the sense these are some lonely days for Barack Obama in the White House Situation Room.

Every day it seems comes a new "leak" that the President is on the verge of sending between 30,000 and 40,000 troops to Afghanistan. First came McClatchy over the weekend saying 34,000. Then CBS News said that McChrystal was going to get close to his request of 40,000 troops for the fight. Now the New York Times is reporting that Secretary of State Clinton, Defense Secretary Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen are all pushing for 30,000. Now perhaps this is an elaborate means of showing how tough the President is when he stands up to hisadvisors and only sends 10,000 or 20,000 troops, but it sure doesn't feel that way (but a boy can dream). Instead, it feels like the proponents of escalation in Afghanistan are doing the same thing they tried to do over the summer: using a pliant news media to force the President's hand on troop increases.

It's a crying shame, because if Elisabeth Bumiller and David Sanger are to be believed, President Obama is asking all the right question about the potential downsides of a military escalation and in particular a counter-insurgency operation:

Officials said that although the president had no doubt about what large numbers of United States troops could achieve on their own in Afghanistan, he repeatedly asked questions during recent meetings on Afghanistan about whether a sizable American force might undercut the urgency of the preparations of the Afghan forces who are learning to stand up on their own.

“He’s simply not convinced yet that you can do a lasting counterinsurgency strategy if there is no one to hand it off to,” one participant said.

Well sure there is that. And it's truly bizarre to read that the Obama White House is openly deriding Afghan President Karzai at the same time that it is considering a long-term commitment to Afghanistan that will basically prop up his corrupt regime - and seek to extend its writ across the country. The issue is far less one of when the ANA will be ready; but whether the Afghan government can lend civilian support to a counter-insurgency operation. Indeed, a chuckled mordantly the other day when I was re-reading AntonioGuistozzi's " Koran, Kalashnikov and Laptop" and he noted that in Kunar the Taliban insurgency was less potent because the lack of a government presence "was not able to antagonize local communities." Ladies and Gentlemen: your Afghan government!

Indeed the very questions being asked by President Obama seem to go to the heart of the problems in instituting a counter-insurgency strategy:

Mr. Obama, officials said, has expressed similar concerns about Pakistan’s willingness to attack Taliban leaders who are operating out of the Pakistani city of Quetta and commanding forces that are mounting attacks across the border in Afghanistan. While Pakistan has mounted military operations against some Taliban groups in recent weeks, one official noted, “it’s been focused on the Taliban who are targeting the Pakistani government, but not those who are running operations in Afghanistan

Perhaps someone could explain this to the Washington Post Ed Board or any other joker who continues to conflate the Pakistani Taliban with the Afghan Taliban. But clearly the continued presence of Afghan Taliban safe havens in Pakistan will undermine US efforts to defeat the Taliban - particularly in the South. It really makes one wonder why so many of the president's top advisors are so fervently recommending more troops for Afghanistan, in pursuit of a mission that seems so fraught with problems and seemingly is such a long-shot to succeed.

Of course, as Spencer notes, it would also be nice if a single person in the Administration were advocating for troop reductions - or perhaps making the case that our presence in Afghanistan actually bolsters the insurgency and harms US interests. Instead the template seems to me more troops and a counter-insurgency approach.  With the military furiously pushing both - and leaking that view to the major dailies on a daily basis - I suppose this shouldn't come as a huge surprise, but it doesn't make it any less depressing.

Stuart Bowen's Inspired Idea Posted by Michael Cohen

In a statement that may not come as a huge surprise to regular readers of DA I'm a bit of a policy wonk so when I see innovative ideas like the recent one floated by Stuart Bowen, Special Inspector General for Iraqis Reconstruction, I become quite pleased - particularly since I sort of made this recommendation in a report I did last spring. Courtesy of Spencer, here are the goods:

Bowen, acting with the institutional power of his government office, SIGIR, is circulating a draft proposal to create a new civilian office for wars like Afghanistan and Iraq that would report jointly to the Departments of State and Defense. . . Bowen believes that a single agency, which he analogizes to an “international FEMA,” ought to be the single civilian point-of-contact with the military if the United States is to avoid future wartime coordination fiascoes. He calls it, in typical Washington acronym-ese, USOCO –the U.S. Office for Contingency Operations.

Now regular readers of DA are more than familiar with my general view of future wartime fiascoes (even current ones) but in the event of future misadventures (or even current ones) this is a smart management and operational response. As we've seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military lacks the core competency to do post-conflict stabilization and reconstruction; and the civilian agencies (like State and AID) lack the basic capacity and resources to do the job. Moreover, in Iraq and Afghanistan the lack of communication between different agencies and proper allocation of responsibilities has created all sorts of problems.

But the alluring part of this proposal is not necessarily its impact on post-conflict operations; its the very idea that roles and responsibilities in the national security bureaucracy should be more effectively delineated. Back in the Spring I co-authored a report that pointed out the shambles that is our foreign assistance bureaucracy:

The continued existence of overlapping programs and agendas, as well as the failure to match actors with specific assistance responsibilities, is part of the reason that confusion so regularly defines the foreign assistance bureaucracy.

But the problem runs even deeper. Consistently - and particularly in times of war - short-term U.S. national interests take precedence over more long-term development objectives. In the 1960s and 1970s the lion’s share of development assistance funding went to Vietnam. In the last seven years, Iraq and Afghanistan have received the majority of foreign assistance. As late as 2005, 80 percent of the democracy
promotion budget for the Middle East went to Iraq.  Today, more U.S. foreign aid is going to post-conflict transitions - and other venues in the war on terrorism - than to peaceful and fledgling democracies.

Taking post-conflict stabilization responsibilities away from AID and State would hopefully allow these agencies to focus on the long-term diplomatic and development agendas that are supposed to define their policy agenda (don't get me started on the whole idea of having the civilian response corps housed at State).  If I had my way, I'd create a separate agency for humanitarian and disaster relief - separate from AID - because after all humanitarian assistance is NOT development work. I think even having separate agencies for doling out development assistance and democracy promotion wouldn't be the worst idea either.

Still, specialization - even at risk of fostering nasty turf battles - is a course worthy of consideration. To be sure the proposal is not perfect. For example, the idea of giving the agency dual loyalty to State and DoD seems like a bad idea - not only potentially unworkable but almost certainly destined to be either undermined or usurped by the Pentagon.

Not surprisingly, however, the biggest criticism of the idea comes from those who believe that there isn't much "appetite for creating a new organization.” Of course, they're right. But look, America's civilian agencies are screwed up beyond all recognition; they were created for a different world, a different America and a different set of challenges. They are not pigs on which to apply lipstick. Serious, institutional change is long overdue.  I wouldn't define USOCO as all that radical, but it's a step in the right direction.

Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch - The Barack "Baines" Obama Version Posted by Michael Cohen

If the New York Times is to be believed things don't look good on the Afghanistan front:

Advisers to President Obama are preparing three options for escalating the war effort in Afghanistan, all of them calling for more American troops, as he moves closer to a decision on the way forward in the eight-year-old war, officials said Saturday. The options include Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for roughly another 40,000 troops; a middle scenario sending about 30,000 more troops; and a lower alternative involving 20,000 to 25,000 reinforcements, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Officials hope to present the options to Mr. Obama this week before he leaves on a trip to Asia. While some civilian and military officials believe Mr. Obama is seeking a middle ground in the debate over Afghanistan, aides denied he has made any decision or is leaning toward any of the options.

There are a lot of things to chew over here. First, let's discard the silly notion that 40,000 troops, or even 30,000 troops, entails a "middle ground" option. The high end on troop levels appears to be 80,000 - but that was never a realistic option, from either a military or political standpoint. So 40,000 was always the high end: and now it looks like McChrystal may get as many as 34,000 - if McClatchy is to be believed. Let's not be fooled on this: if the President sends between 30,000 and 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan it's the high end, not some amorphous middle ground.

The second problem is that troop level decisions are not like ordering off of a Chinese menu; they have to be twinned with a political and military strategy that has a hope of success. But instead to read today's Times article is to see a "strategy" that seems to be a combination of half-baked COIN tactics that seem destined for failure:

Troop levels would hinge, for instance, on the administration’s assessment of how many former Taliban fighters can be peacefully reintegrated into Afghan society and to what extent improved governance at various levels could prevent disaffected Afghans from siding with insurgents.

Officials are focusing on an approach predicated on the belief that the Taliban cannot be entirely eradicated in Afghanistan and that Al Qaeda is the real threat to American interests. The main goal for American forces, then, would be to protect the 10 most important population centers in Afghanistan and keep the Taliban isolated long enough to train Afghan security forces to take over the fight.

This reads to me like a dangerous mismatch. The main goal of US forces will be to protect population centers, which I have to assume means a lighter military footprint in engaging with the Taliban. This is very much at pace with General McChystal's "hearts and minds" strategy of protecting the population and reducing civilian casualties. But how exactly are we going to convince Taliban fighters to integrate themselves into Afghan society when they are feeling diminished military pressure from the United States? What's their incentive to switch sides?

And why do we believe that improved governance alone - devoid of any sort of coercive techniques - will convince the population to side with the government, particularly if ISAF is basically abandoning the rural population to protect Afghan cities?  After all the Taliban has been a largely rural insurgency - wouldn't minimizing foot patrols and focusing instead on protecting the cities actually give the Taliban more breathing space?

Finally, where in a counter-insurgency fight has the application of good governance alone diminished the potency of an insurgency? It hasn't. I think Bing West sums this up well in his recent Afghanistan Trip Report: "A rural population - no matter how content with the government - cannot stand up to a tough enemy." What works in a counter-insurgency - in cleaving the population away from an insurgent force - are generally policies that feature a healthy level of coercion and violence. Check out Malaya, Kenya, Algeria, Iraq and Vietnam is you don't believe me. I'm not advocating such an approach, but at the very least we should be honest about the potential success of a carrot-based approach.

Along these lines, I was struck by something National Security Advisor Jim Jones said in a recent interview with Der Spiegel:

What's really important in Afghanistan is that with this new administration we insist on good governance, that it be coordinated with economic development and security, and that we have much, much better success at handing over responsibility for these three things to the Afghans.

Sure limiting corruption and improving governance is important, but what possible leverage does the Obama Administration and NATO have over President Karzai to act on this agenda if we're about to announce a decision to send 30-40,000 more troops to his country? To be completely honest, I don't care all that much if Karzai is corrupt, so long as he is supporting the US mission and improving the Kabul government's basic capacity. He appears as incapable of doing the latter as he is at ending the former.

Everything I read coming out of this White House review seems to be more and more confusing; there are lots of tactical discussion, lots of questions about troop levels, but I'm seeing a lot less on putting in place a strategy that makes sense, furthers US interests and has a good shot of actually succeeding. Why does this whole review make me feel like the White House is simply muddling through, looking for a "strategy" that will move the ball forward, but won't take the mission any closer to resolution?

Let's be very clear on one point: sending 30-40,000 troops is not a half measure. It represents a serious and ramped-up commitment to Afghanistan that will almost certainly mean the maintenance of a US troop presence there through much of Obama's presidency. It will take months to get that many troops on the ground - and then military commanders will almost certainly demand 12-18 months to test the effectiveness of the new "strategy." That bring us into 2011, even 2012 and a potential re-election campaign.  In short, a commitment like the one that Obama is considering will come to dominate his presidency - and in time directly impact the domestic and foreign policy agenda he was actually elected to put in place. And that impact will not be positive. Making that sort of commitment without a clear strategy for success, without a partner on the ground that can be relied upon and without an exit strategy only increases the risk.

Think long and hard about this Mr. President. Once you take this genie out of the bottle, it ain't gonna be so easy to put it back.

Strategery for Israel, Iran, Af-Pakistan, and the Test Ban Posted by David Shorr

[With apologies for the truly awful rhymes in the title.]

I wanted to offer a compendium of pieces that have caught my eye in the past couple months, all with the common theme of offering strategic approaches to a number of the knottiest problems on the current agenda.

Speaking of knotty challenges, let's start with Israel and Palestine. This Daniel Levy piece from Foreign Policy portrayed Obama as being quite canny in facing down Netanyahu over settlements. The argument is that making a stand on settlements undercut Netanyahu's game of offering bite-sized confidence building measures. Made a lot of sense to me when I read it; don't know if the theory still holds after recent events.

[UPDATE: I found Levy's update on Obama's Mideast peace strategy just after posting this. He acknowledges the damage done by the administration's recently softened stance, and faults them especially for not plotting their next more more carefully. Levy doesn't see all hope as lost, however, and believes it will still be possible for Obama to seize the initiative.]

On AfPak, Christian Brose & Daniel Twining had an interesting article in the Weekly Standard. Their analysis focuses on the Pakistan Army as the region's pivotal player. Pressuring Taliban forces militarily and politically from the Afgah side of the border would change the Pakistan Army's regional geopolitical calculations, the argument goes. Tracing back to Bosnia and Kosovo and the importance of driving a wedge between Russia and Milosevic, I tend to think these calculations are important.

And then on Iran, Meir Javedanfar gave a very clear explanation over on Real Clear World of the fragile and endangered deal with Iran over its enriched uranium. His bottom line is that the Obama Administration should reject proposed Iranian revisions to the deal, just as Hillary Clinton ended up doing the other day. As a general matter, I'd note that the idea of mutual bargains such as this deal is fundamental to the Obama approach to foreign policy. My Stanley Foundation colleague Mike Kraig refers to these kinds of solutions as the "balance of interests" rather than a balance of power.

Last but not least we have the vital matter of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. A recent NYTimes op-ed by Carnegie Endowment President Jessica Mathews walked through the international politics of the treaty (particularly its ratification) and its importance for preserving the nuclear nonproliferation norm.
 

Interests, Responsibilities, and Persuasion Posted by David Shorr

I really liked Scot Wilson's WaPo piece yesterday on President Obama's foreign policy worldview. The article highlights what I consider the United States' central foreign policy challenge: getting other nations moving in the direction we desire. As NSC communications strategist Ben Rhodes put it, if nations were already inclined to live up to their responsibilities, "this would be easy."

Wilson collected comments from a good variety of foreign policy mandarins, but I have to quibble with part of a quote from someone I admire tremendously, Lee Hamilton. I don't agree with a description he gave of Obama's approach -- that the president is putting "a lot of faith in his persuasiveness." The narrative of persuasion is one of the great misconceptions of this debate.

The diplomacy of shared interests and responsibilities isn't an attempt to overcome skepticism via mesmerizing rhetoric and the force of our arguments. The administration isn't waiting for the Iranian government to tell us "you're right, our uranium enrichment is bad for global security." In a case like Iran, the real objective of tough-minded diplomacy is to offer a stark choice between cooperation and continued pressure from a unified front of powerful nations, as Secretary Clinton stressed in rejecting Iran's attempt to reopening the nuclear deal (via Politico).
 
With respect to gaining the cooperation of others more broadly (including to maintain pressure on Iran), my own tack is to ask what the alternative is. If the only hope for international cooperation lies in those areas where traditional national self-interests converge, this would all be easy. More to the point, international politics as usual would leave many problems -- nuclear proliferation, global warming, poverty, Israel-Palestine -- on a very negative trajectory.

It shouldn't take a lot of enlightenment to see the enlightened self-interests on these issues. A little statesmanship is all we're asking. After all, that's why they're called world leaders.

Irony of the Day: Burma Edition Posted by David Shorr

Just heard on NPR this morning about plans for a "general election" in Myanmar.

Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch - The Hyman Roth Version Posted by Michael Cohen

Hamid Karzai is a gangster.

What else can you say about the guy? He goes and basically tries to steal the first round of the Afghanistan presidential election - the UN, NATO and the US freaks out and demands he stand for a runoff with Abdullah Abdullah (precisely how far do you think John Kerry had to twist that arm to get Karzai to agree to this) so that he will seem like a legitimate and credible leader.

Karzai agrees, but makes perfectly clear that he is simply going to steal the runoff (the announcement last week by the election commission that they would open more polling locations, which the UN had adamantly asked him them not to do was a pretty clear indication). Abdullah seeing the handwriting on the wall, backs out, the Election Commission plays along (stranding yours truly - who was on his way to Kabul - in Dubai) and now every Western leader is falling over themselves to label Karzai the "legitimate" president of Afghanistan.

Karzai played this beautifully. To make matters even better for him the United States expended what little political leverage they have over the guy in getting him to agree to a run-off. How'd that work out?

In fact, you really have to love this quote from today's New York Times story:

President Obama on Monday admonished President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that he must take on what American officials have said he avoided during his first term: the rampant corruption and drug trade that have fueled the resurgence of the Taliban.

As Mr. Karzai was officially declared the winner of the much-disputed presidential election, Mr. Obama placed a congratulatory call in which he asked for a “new chapter” in the legitimacy of the Afghan government.

What he is seeking, Mr. Obama told reporters afterward, is “a sense on the part of President Karzai that, after some difficult years in which there has been some drift, that in fact he’s going to move boldly and forcefully forward and take advantage of the international community’s interest in his country to initiate reforms internally. That has to be one of our highest priorities.”

I'm sure Hamid will get right on that. We Americans are just adorable - adorable I tell you! Along these lines, an additional shout out to Spencer for finding this precious quote from an administration official in another Times story:

“We’re going to know in the next three to six months whether he’s doing anything differently — whether he can seriously address the corruption, whether he can raise an army that ultimately can take over from us and that doesn’t lose troops as fast as we train them."

Adorable! Meanwhile before those 3-6 months are up this Administration will have likely decided to send even more troops to Afghanistan (i.e. exactly what Karzai wants us to do) basically erasing whatever leverage we have left over the guy to "seriously address" corruption. Why does anyone in this Administration - after watching Karzai steal an election and play the US and NATO like a fiddle - think he will do anything seriously different going forward, especially when we've offered no indication that we intend to cut him or Afghanistan loose?

Perhaps this should lead to  a recognition that we simply don't have the host country support to do an actual counter-insurgency. I mean if this isn't an indication that those feverish dreams of COIN dancing in the heads of policymakers are have little basis in reality then I give up. How can you fight an counter-insurgency when not only is the Afghan government illegitimate, and incompetent, but seemingly impervious to real NATO and US persuasion?

In the end, It seems to me that if you want to get Karzai's attention the best place to start would be to show him you're actually serious about changing course if change isn't forthcoming.  And along those lines we have one piece of leverage that we can use - the number of American soldiers that we are willing to throw into the fire on behalf of this government. It's about time we used it. It's about the only card we have left.

Ret. STRATCOM Commander Supports Obama's Nonpro Agenda Posted by James Lamond

Retired General Eugene Habiger (USAF) has a great op-ed in The Hill. Gen. Habiger is one of the military's most experienced nuclear experts.  He was, among other impressive posts, Commander in Chief of United States Strategic Command, where he was responsible for the military strategic nuclear weapons and supporting the national security strategy of strategic deterrence.

Some highlights from his op-ed:

President Obama took some bold steps when he spoke at the United Nations last month.  Like every president since Truman, he understands the consequences of miscalculation and complacency in the nuclear age.  He warned, “If we fail to act, we will invite nuclear arms races in every region, and the prospect of wars and acts of terror on a scale that we can hardly imagine.”

I could not agree with him more. For most of my military career, I worked in the nuclear weapons arena, first as a crew member on a B-52 bomber as bomb squadron commander, then as a commander of two nuclear bomb wings; the Inspector General of the Strategic US Air Command and finally the Strategic Command.  As commander-in-chief of STRATCOM, I was responsible for all U.S. nuclear forces supporting our nation’s security through strategic deterrence, and was the president’s top military advisor on these issues.

 

I know from my unique experience that in order to keep our military strong and our country safe, we need to rethink the role nuclear weapons play in our national security and defense strategies in the radically different post-Cold War environment of the 21st century. 

 

This is not a partisan issue.  This is about keeping the American people safe, and it is long overdue.  While we have made some progress in the twenty years since the end of the Cold War, over 20,000 nuclear weapons remain in the possession of nine nations around the world.  While numbers like these brought comfort to some at an earlier time, in our post-9/11 world they have the potential to bring grave danger to all.  Aggressive steps to reduce these weapons will help prevent them from falling into the hands of terrorists.   While we have a long road ahead of us, I am cautiously optimistic that we can achieve this goal.    

Another important point that he makes, that often gets ignored by those who do not closely follow the debate, is that nonproliferation efforts are in keeping with traditional American foreign policy.  

To some President Obama’s remarks at the United Nations on arms control and nonproliferation may have seemed new.  Yet the drive towards a nuclear weapons-free world is almost as old as the bombs themselves.  And as threats have evolved and the strategic landscape has shifted, a growing sentiment in the national security establishment has made possible a new approach for the 21st century. 

And he rightly calls on congress to pass on a the both the START follow-on and CTBT:

A critical part of moving forward will be support from home.  With the very security of our nation at stake, the time for partisan games is over.  The recommendations of the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review should reflect the operational necessities of today’s military.  And the Congress should prepare to work with the President on the follow-on to START and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. 

NOTE: I have been unable to find the original article on The Hill website.  Will update with a link as soon as I find it.