Words Matter Posted by Michael Cohen

As a former foreign policy speechwriter one of the first things I learned is that words really do matter - and that when the President or any other foreign policy-maker is speaking being as precise as possible in your language is critically important.

So for example, in March the President clearly laid out a mission statement for US policy in Afghanistan - it involved defeating, dismantling and disrupting Al Qaeda. Yesterday in Phoenix he expanded that mission statement to include defeating, dismantling and disrupting Al Qaeda AND its extremist allies. (And Pat's post below gets to the problem with an amorphous phrase like extremist allies. If Obama is just talking about the core Taliban he mentioned in March that's fine, but he didn't. Who precisely are these extremist allies that are now receiving the same mission focus as Al Qaeda?)

Now none of this is a surprise or even new; the mission has been expanding ever since that speech in March. But if the goal is to disrupt, dismantle and defeat "extremist allies" as well as Al Qaeda then the President should have clearly said that in March. He didn't.

He also said this in March "We are not in Afghanistan to control that country or to dictate its future.  We are in Afghanistan to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and our allies, and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan who have suffered the most at the hands of violent extremists."

The simple fact is that what Obama said yesterday in regards to the mission statement for Afghanistan is more expansive than what he said in March; unfortunately and ironically as both Pat and Spencer point out, considering what is happening on the ground, this is not new.

What is also troubling about the President's speech yesterday are these words:

But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is a -- this is fundamental to the defense of our people.

I'll turn this over to Spencer who makes the point I wanted to make but he beat me to it:

If the phrase "war of necessity" is to have any meaning, it's to mean that Country X either has to fight or die, which is not a meaningful choice. And since wars of survival are wars of limitless cost -- you fight until the existential danger expires -- Obama is exaggerating the danger emanating from Afghanistan to the public. And doing so needlessly! Wars short of existential dangers can still be justified wars. Not only is Obama misrepresenting the war, he's depriving himself of the justification for an off-ramp if it exceeds the acceptable costs.  

Right. But also, I think the President is just hyping the nature of the threat from a possible Al Qaeda safe haven in Afghanistan. Since 2002, Al Qaeda has had a safe haven. It's in Pakistan - and the United States, even with virtual benign neglect, has been more than able to contain that threat to the American people.

Perhaps it might be time to revisit the notion of a safe haven for AQ being an existential threat to the United States. It's not that we should just ignore the issue or do nothing to attempt to dismantle such a safe haven, but to fight a long drawn out counter-insurgency so that Al Qaeda won't be able to set one up in the future in Afghanistan seems like a colossal misallocation of resources. If we have been able for 7 years to contain the threat from an Al Qaeda safe haven in Pakistan couldn't we theoretically do the same thing in Afghanistan?

Juan Cole takes this argument a bit further:

The old al-Qaeda of Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri appears to have been effectively disrupted. Terrorist attacks in the West are sometimes still planned by unconnected cells who are al-Qaeda wannabes, but I don't see evidence of command and control capabilities by al-Qaeda Central. There is frankly no reason to think that if the anti-Karzai guerrillas did gain more territory in Afghanistan, they would suddenly start hosting al-Qaeda operatives who were sure to bring the West back in once they attacked it.

Two Guys With Square Glasses and Facial Hair Debate Afghanistan Posted by Michael Cohen

Yup, me and Joshua Foust have a wide-ranging discussion on bloggingheads.tv about the war in Afghanistan, mission creep, strategy vs. tactics, opium and whether America is still able to fight and win wars in an era of instant communication and changing military tactics.

Check it out here:

Precision, Presmision Posted by Patrick Barry

I think I have to go ahead and second Spencer here, and say that the President's use of the term "extremist allies" doesn't amount to anything new.  There is case for concern over a mission with a narrow counter-terrorist objective, but broad, and possibly nebulous counterinsurgency means for achieving that objective.  But the President's speech at the VFW doesn't indicate further mission creep so much as it continues the trend of leaving open the possibility for the mission creeping.

Another point I would add is that so long as we're labeling the insurgency, using a term like "extremist allies," is not entirely unjustified. What exactly is the alternative? Taliban? That classification isn't helpful either, as it obscures what is a multi-faceted, often localized extremist network.  Furthermore, a term like "extremist allies" allows for the type of distinction drawn by the administration - a distinction between reconcilables and intransigents. If you view reconciliation as critical to achieving some modicum of stability in Afghanistan, then lumping all the country's fighters into a precise-sounding term like Taliban, with all its negative connotations, would be pretty counter-productive.

Of course if you're skeptical that the U.S. should even be focusing on the insurgency in the first place, as Michael is, than it doesn't matter whether you use "Taliban," "extremist allies," or "generic central-asian insurgency." I just don't think that at the rhetorical level, we're ever going to reach a satisfactory level of precision when discussing this topic.

Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch - The President Confirms It Version Posted by Michael Cohen

President Barack Obama on March 27th, 2009:

So I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focused goal:  to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and to prevent their return to either country in the future.

President Barack Obama today at the VFW in Phoenix:

And our new strategy has a clear mission and defined goals: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies.

So back on March 27th, our goal was to disrupt, defeat and dismantle Al Qaeda. Fast forward nearly 5 months and now we're going to throw AQ's extremist allies into the mix.  I suppose on one level I should be pleased about this; the President has pretty much confirmed what I've been saying for about two months now - that a mission predicated on targeting Al Qaeda has expanded to included its "extremist allies." Oh and by the way, who exactly are these extremist allies, Mr. President. Just the Afghanistan Taliban or the Pakistan Taliban too?

I've been saying for a while now that the lack of transparency from the Obama Administration on US policy toward Afghanistan is disturbing.  The shift from counter terrorism to full-fledged counter-insurgency was the first step. Last week we had Ambassador Richard Holbrooke unable to even define what success looks like. And now we have the President saying 'oh, by the way, remember how I said the mission was disrupting, dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda? Well we're going to expand that a bit.'

If the President believes that the US needs to ramp up the mission in Afghanistan to include defeating, dismantling and disrupting the Taliban and other extremist allies of Al Qaeda that's fine, but he needs to explain it to the American people. But to sneak a fairly significant and explicit expansion of that mission into a speech in the middle of August at the VFW . . . well quite frankly, that's not change I can believe in.

Further Thoughts on Hillary Clinton's Africa Trip Posted by David Shorr

One of Jeffrey Gettleman's wrap-ups from Secretary Clinton's Africa trip (the Saturday piece) got me to thinking. In the style and substance of her itinerary, she was the very model of a wonkish Secretary of State. [At Democracy Arsenal, need it be said, we're in favor of wonkishness.] She balanced hope and concern, raised the bar for the US and African partners alike, and took the time to connect with ground realities. Beyond the question of future relations with Africans, is there a lesson here for foreign policy more broadly?

One of the things I worry about is the tremendous juggling act it will take to deal with everything that has to be dealt with. Clinton herself gave a nod to the problem in her CFR speech, when she stressed the imperative for policy makers to "deal with the urgent, the important, and long-term all at once." Sure enough, the Obama administration must tend not only to high-stakes crises (global recession, Iraq-Afghan Wars, Iran-DPRK nukes), but  also key precursors for progress (Middle East peace, stable Pakistan-Sudan, Kyoto follow-on, CTBT ratification), and long-term investments (great power relations, improved global living standards, modernized multilateralism). 

To put it another way, the daunting international agenda is one big test of foreign policy teamwork within the administration and diplomatic teamwork globally -- with the former hopefully helping build the latter. And that's what intrigues me about the Africa trip. Is there a paradigm here for hands-on and out-in-the-open diplomatic agenda setting? If so, what will the follow-through look like? Will Secretary Clinton be able to spur her diplomatic teams toward ambitious goals, track their progress, and add further high-level impetus along the way? And is there a connection here to all the special envoys? Do we need all the diplomatic starpower we can get, in order to help with the juggling? I don't really know, I was just thinking.

Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch - The Q Rating Version Posted by Michael Cohen

I’m doing my best to understand Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s big piece in the Washington Post today about the firing of Gen. David McKiernan and his replacement by Lt. Gen Stanley McChrystal. Part of the problem is that I’ve read the article a few times and I’m still not exactly clear as to why McKiernan was fired:

Gates and Mullen had been having doubts about McKiernan since the beginning of the year. They regarded him as too languid, too old-school and too removed from Washington. He lacked the charisma and political savvy that Gen. David H. Petraeus brought to the Iraq war.

Also there was this:

But back in Washington, McKiernan was increasingly seen as too deferential to NATO. By November, when it became clear that the Europeans would not be sending more troops, senior officials at the Pentagon wanted him to focus on making better use of the existing NATO forces -- getting them off bases and involved in counterinsurgency operations. "He was still doing the NATO-speak at a time when Gates and Mullen were over it," a senior military official at the Pentagon said.

From an operational standpoint it's a bit more difficult to find a huge divide between McKiernan and McChrystal's approach to the war in Afghanistan. McKiernan had recommended troop increases back in the Fall of 2008, he put in place procedures to limit civilian casualties and he had at least begin to shift the focus of the US mission in Afghanistan to counter-insurgency before his replacement arrived on the scene. It does seem as though McChrystal has acted on these measures with more of a vengeance, but operationally there isn't a great divide here.

What does come across in this piece, however, is that the predominate reason that McChrystal was the first wartime theater commander to be fired since General Douglas MacArthur in 1951 was that he didn't do a good job of playing the Washington game:

"Blame General Petraeus," a senior Defense Department official said. "He redefined during his tour in Iraq what it means to be a commanding general. He broke the mold. The traditional responsibilities were not enough anymore. You had to be adroit at international politics. You had to be a skilled diplomat. You had to be savvy with the press, and you had to be a really sophisticated leader of a large organization. When you judge McKiernan by Petraeus's standards, he looked old-school by comparison.

Now we're getting somewhere - and Chandrasekaran provides a nice example of why McChrystal is more Petraeus-like:

Before McChrystal left Washington, Gates asked him to deliver an assessment of the war in 60 days. Instead of summoning a team of military strategists to Kabul, McChrystal invited Washington think-tank experts from across the ideological spectrum.

The experts gave McChrystal a 20-page draft report that calls for expanding the Afghan army, changes in the way troops operate and an intensified military effort to root out corruption. There were few revolutionary ideas in the document, but McChrystal may have received something far more important through the process: allies in the U.S. capital, on the political left and right, to talk about the need for more troops in Afghanistan -- in advance of his assessment to Gates, which will probably be submitted this month. "He understands the need to engage Washington, and he's willing do so in a creative way," said Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, who was part of the team.

Aha! So apparently, the most important tool for a theater commander is not only how you play the Washington game, but how you sell it to a reluctant electorate. Let's call it the Schwarzkopf-ization of American generalship. Certainly, from this narrow perspective the move makes sense. There is little question that to date McChrystal has shown himself to be the much politically savvier general; better at working DC, better at working the press etc.

But does that make the war in Afghanistan any more winnable - or does it just increase the likelihood that US troops will remain there for a longer period of time in pursuit of a dubious mission? For example, McChrystal is continuing the improved training mission that McKiernan initially implemented, but it doesn't mean the ANA and ANP are going to be trained any faster. And, I'm not sure how changing generals is going to help rectify the situation of that pesky Afghan Taliban safe haven across the border in Pakistan.

Apparently I'm alone in my fear, because as we are told McKiernan's firing is "a story of the president's top military leaders, who are betting that this one personnel decision, above all others, will set in motion a process that reverses U.S. fortunes in Afghanistan."

Oy!

Gen. Eaton: Obama's VFW Speech Echoed What Every Commander Expects from the Commander in Chief Posted by Adam Blickstein

NSN Senior Adviser Gen. Paul D. Eaton (Ret.) reacted to President Obama's speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars’ National Convention today:

"As someone who served in and helped lead our military for nearly 3 decades, I understand what the men and women of America's armed forces need in order to effectively protect the nation and succeed in their personal lives. And today, President Obama laid out a comprehensive and progressive vision for how we treat America's most precious resource. He demonstrated a thorough understanding of how to integrate all elements of national power—diplomatic, economic as well as military—and echoes what every battalion and brigade commander understands and expects from their Commander in Chief.

"The President made clear that we must live up to our obligations to the military community—whether they are in uniform in active combat, recently returned from the fields of combat, or long ago served on the front lines defending the country.

"As President Obama stated, this means providing the health care and economic support that matches the sacrifices they made while protecting America. This means ensuring they have the 21st century equipment that matches the threats we face, not the defense priorities from the last century, as well as recognizing that American strength is not secured by the military alone, but also by our diplomatic and civilian corps. And this also means that we send our troops to war only when necessary, with a defined mission, and not ill-advised wars with uncertain plans.

"He marked a clear path from his predecessor and laid the groundwork for a new vision for America's military and veteran community. By redefining American power and national security—and not recycling the failed policies of the past-President Obama empowers our armed forces and bolsters American security while also honoring our nation's servicemembers and veterans by providing them with our unequivocal support—both in war and in peace, at home and abroad.

"While the today's political debate seems so toxic, on this there should be clear, common and undivided support."

 

Me and John Nagl Down By The Schoolyard - UPDATED Posted by Michael Cohen

Today the ACMW hits the big time - radio! I'll be on All Things Considered tonight talking all things Afghanistan with John Nagl.

UPDATED: Here's the audio

Congo Mission Creep Watch Posted by Michael Cohen

So last night, I was at the gym and I happened to come across the movie Blackhawk Down - the story of the ill-fated Battle of Mogadishu that killed 18 US soldiers and ended the US involvement in Somalia. It's a somewhat interesting war movie overshadowed pretty significantly by an amazingly racist portrayal of Somalis. Later that evening I was catching up on my NYRB reading and I read Adam Hochschild's dispiriting report from Congo about the horrific civil conflict taking place there. (BTW, as you can see it's truly a laugh a minute each evening at the Cohen household).

Anyway, both the movie and the article were ample reminders about the limitations of American power and the often complex nature of civil conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa. Unfortunately, if today's op-ed in the Washington Post is any indication, Michael O'Hanlon hasn't received that memo - because apparently he thinks that we should be training a whole new crop of American servicemen to send to sub-Saharan Africa. And no, I'm not making this up:

For crises like those in Congo and Darfur, the United States should consider a radical innovation in recruiting policy. We should create a peace operations division in the Army with individuals enlisting specifically for this purpose. There would be risks in such a venture, to be sure. But they are manageable and tolerable risks, especially since most such deployments would be legitimated by the United Nations, carried out with partners such as key allies, and backstopped by the U.S. armed forces in worst-case scenarios.

I mean really, where do I start here. It's almost as if Michael O'Hanlon is making it his mission in life to feed me things to blog about. Do I even have to mention that our mission in Somalia WAS legitimized by the UN; WAS carried out in partnership with key allies and WAS backstopped by the US armed forces. How did that work out?

But there's more:

The dangers of deploying such units to missions such as the one in Congo, would be real, but the risks would be acceptable. First, those volunteering would understand the risks and accept them. Second, in most civil conflicts such as Congo's, possible adversarial forces are not sophisticated. Soldiers in the new division would not need to execute complex operations akin to those carried out during the invasion of Iraq or current operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. They would largely monitor villages and refugee camps, inspect individuals to make sure they did not have illicit weapons, and call for help if they came under concerted attack. Their jobs could be somewhat dangerous and would require discipline and reasonable knowledge of some basic infantry skills -- but they would not be extremely complex. Care would have to be taken in deciding when to deploy this force, but it generally would be, given the scars of recent difficult American experiences in places such as Somalia.

Well I'm quite sure the risks are acceptable when someone else is going on these missions, but soldiers always understand risks and accept them - that's their job. On the other hand, the job of civilian policymakers is not to send those soldiers on hare-brained missions that are not in the national interest.

But really, maybe I'm being too critical.

First of all, it's really hard to think of anything that could wrong in sending lightly armed US troops, without proper training, into the midst of a complex civil war. Easy, peasy. Second, there clearly is nothing complex about the civil war in Congo, the fighters there are just a bunch of dead-enders and of course American troops are well-versed in the cross-cutting tribal and ethnic rivalries that exist in Congo. Third, there is a clear national interest in having the United States become immersed in a civil war in sub-Saharan Africa; look how well it worked out in Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia etc.  Fourth, it does seem like a really good idea to further militarize American foreign policy by ramping up our military involvement in failed states like Congo; I mean why would Congolese look askance at that (we have the best intentions) and I'm quite sure the AID, Peace Corps and NGO workers there wouldn't suddenly be viewed with suspicion. No, no, the entry of armed Americans into an active civil conflict always makes things better.

I know it's hard to express a new idea in a 750-word op-ed, but really is Michael O'Hanlon blind to all the things that could go wrong with sending US ground forces into Congo; and by what possible measure of the national interest does it make sense? The last paragraph provides a hint:

Problems like Congo, Darfur and Somalia tend to get solved only with U.S. leadership. And the United States cannot truly lead on this issue while resisting any role for its own ground forces. It is time to recognize the contradiction of pretending otherwise and get on with a solution.

Right, right, the only way for the US to lead is by sending in the armed forces. (Oh and just out of curiosity how did Darfur and Somalia "get solved" by US leadership?) One would think that after the experience of the past 6 1/2 years and the most disastrous military intervention in US foreign policy history, people would think more critically about the efficacy of utilizing American military force overseas. One would think that other non-military measures of America power might receive greater consideration in foreign policy discussions. One might even think that advocates of US military intervention would be humbled by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and what they tell us about the limitations of American military force.

Apparently not.

Human Rights, "Reset," Russia, terrorism and the Caucasus -- you need to read this Posted by Heather Hurlburt

Sarah Mendelson of CSIS has a terrific piece over at Foreign Policy that:

• gives a simple overview of what's going on in the North Caucasus (Chechnya and its neighbors);

• puts the recent killings of Russian human rights defenders into a broader context; and

• gives a terrific explanation of how the new Obama Administration approach could work to lever real progress inside Russia on civili society issues, but also what it will take to do so, from the Administration but also from other governments and our own media and non-governmental groups.

The two money graphs:

[Obama's] new approach is one I heartily applauded as one of the conveners of the Civil Society Summit, the Moscow forum where Obama delivered that message. Over two days of discussion, I heard a multitude of Russian policy thinkers and activists articulate a deep desire to alter the dynamic of U.S.-Russian engagement, after years of one-way American lectures about the rule of law and democracy. Across the Russian political spectrum, they want peer-to-peer engagement. But the long-time trend within policy communities of either not acknowledging, or not knowing what to do about the disastrous human rights situation in the North Caucasus, poses a major challenge to the new approach. At the summit, my colleagues and I acknowledged what we referred to with purposeful vagueness as the "asymmetries" in Russian and American civil societies. We gingerly tip-toed around the bare, brutal fact: These two countries cannot engage as equals while our peers are routinely disappeared and murdered, their killers free on the streets and the government indifferent about, if not, as some believe, involved in their deaths.

And:

Clearly, the burden to end impunity in the North Caucasus needs to shift away from the activists, lawyers, and journalists who gather each victim's story in painstaking detail, and away from overworked and underfunded organizations like Memorial, Human Rights Watch, the Danish Refugee Council, and Caucasian Knot. They have already provided a plethora of information on the abuses. Tens of thousands of cases have reached the European Court of Human Rights. Several Russian lawyers recently published a 1,200 page book making the case for an international tribunal for crimes committed in Chechnya. (The book has an English summary section starting on page 559.) But I have yet to see one Western news outlet report on its publication.  The situation where activist after activist essentially walks into a hail of bullets demands a new strategy. The burden ought to shift to policymakers and diplomats, to the Obama administration and European governments. It ought to shift to Germany, which has a special relationship with Russia, to Sweden, which holds the current EU presidency, and, most of all, to the Kremlin.