Ten years of war

Today marks the ten-year anniversary of the first U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan.

Perhaps to commemorate the event, insurgents struck four American combat outposts along the Pakistani border with coordinated 107mm rocket attacks. Considering their proximity to the frontier, the attacks are thought to have been staged in Pakistan.

C.J. Chivers reports on the actions taken by combined, multinational forces in response:

[The attack] also highlighted the relative weakness of Afghan soldiers and police officers living and working on the American-built bases. As the attacks escalated in the morning, only the United States military possessed the firepower, communications and skills to fight back in what developed into a long-range, artillery-and-rocket duel.

While the American soldiers organized and coordinated their part of the battle on the outpost here, the Afghan soldiers did not participate. Some simply sat and watched.

The U.S. presence in Afghanistan will gradually draw down in the coming months and years. We are told this drawdown will proceed at a pace that is sensitive to the timeline on which that country's security forces grow more capable of dealing with the insurgency independently.

According to the commander of the combined U.S./NATO organization responsible for training, equipping, and advising those Afghan security forces, there are currently two (of around 180 total) Afghan National Army battalions capable of independent operations. Even those formations cannot function without what the U.S. military calls "enablers" -- logistics, maintenance, and sustainment support -- which don't exist in the ANA. The "independent" Afghan battalions still must largely be transported, tuned up, and treated by coalition assets and personnel.

Osama bin Laden is dead. al-Qaeda is presumed not to exist in numbers larger than the dozens on Afghan territory. The Taliban government that coddled and sustained them has been gone for a decade, and shows little sign of again taking up such manifestly unhealthy behavior if given the opportunity to do so.

When President Bush announced the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, he spoke for a time directly to American military personnel:

To all the men and women in our military, every sailor, every soldier, every airman, every Coast Guardsman, every Marine, I say this: Your mission is defined. The objectives are clear. Your goal is just.

Today, ten years later, American soldiers had rockets fired at them by men who had nothing to do with 9/11, men who slipped into Afghanistan from a neighboring country with which we are not at war, and who returned there after the attacks.

The tactical task those U.S. soldiers performed today -- returning fire in an effort to destroy the enemy -- was only one half of a mission, which consists of a task and a purpose.

At the strategic level, U.S. forces' mission in Afghanistan is no longer defined: the purpose of OEF is obscure and its component tasks lay beyond the reach of the American armed forces. The objectives may be clear, but they are largely inaccessible to our ways and means. The goal may be just, but such judgments are strategically irrelevant.

How many more must die or be ruined for the indefinable "success" of this insensate mission?

Grant aid to Egypt: the more things change...

On April 15 of this year, the president signed the spending bill (pdf) which kept the government from shutting down. Despite the ouster of Mubarak two months earlier, grant military assistance to Egypt remained the same as in past years: a $1.3 billion Foreign Military Financing (FMF) earmark, cash that expressly "shall be available for grants only for Egypt." That's consistent with the language of past years, and the dollar amount has held steady (pdf) since the late 1980s.

As you'll know if you pay attention to the news, we still don't have signed appropriations bills for 2012; there's another shutdown threat for the end of the week. In fact, there's not even any talk of a full-year spending bill at this stage in the game: the Congress is just trying to pass legislation to keep the lights on through the middle of November, when they'll have to take this up all over again. (The stopgap bill is currently being held up by disagreements over how to pay for something like $6 billion in disaster-relief funding, which makes perfect sense when you think about the fact that we're dealing with something like 0.2% of the damn budget.)

What we do have, though, is an FY 12 State Department and Foreign Operations spending bill (pdf) that's made it out of committee in the Senate, which is something, I guess. Language in that bill (especially where it's consistent with language in the draft of the House bill (pdf)) will probably make its way into whatever legislation ends up appropriating money for FY 2012, whenever that happens. Here's what's new:

[U]p to $1,300,000,000 shall be made available for grants only for Egypt, including for border security programs and activities in the Sinai: Provided further, That prior to the obligation of funds appropriated under this heading for assistance for Egypt, the Secretary of State shall certify to the Committees on Appropriations that the Governments of the United States and Egypt have agreed upon the specific uses of such funds, that such funds further the national interests of the United States in Egypt and the region, and that the Government of Egypt has held free and fair elections and is implementing policies to protect the rights of journalists, due process, and freedoms of expression and association [p. 49 of the pdf]

(The House draft merely states that funds will be made available "with the expectation that the Egyptian military will continue to adhere to and implement its international obligations, particularly the Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty," which is also taken up later in the Senate bill. Of course, the SecState can waive that provision if deemed "important to the national interests of the United States," so there's that.)

Beyond the requirement for democratic and liberalizing reform, the certification provision is in there to make it clear that the post-Mubarak government can't suddenly re-imagine its military priorities and redesignate funds they'd previously committed to spend on U.S.-approved goods and services. It's not much for advocates of conditioned aid to latch on to, but it's more than the basically un-caveated aid written into previous spending bills. (All grant assistance is bound by the provisions of the Foreign Assistance Act, of course, which does require adherence to certain human rights standards, &c.)

Here's the bottom line: the money is still going to flow, whatever happens in the coming months on elections or civil liberties in Egypt. The distribution of military aid to Pakistan requires a certification that Pakistani government entities are fully cooperative in the fight against anti-Afghan insurgents and terrorist groups; ADM Mullen finally admitted last week that the USG can make no such declaration in good faith, and yet the aid still flows. The bilateral relationship with Egypt is much stronger and much more institutionalized, and many of the peculiar details of Egyptian aid are premised on the understanding and assumption of stability over the long term. (Egypt and Israel, for example, are exceptional among grant aid recipients in that they aren't required to pay the full balance of their purchase costs in the year of sales agreement; in fact, unspent aid is held by the U.S. in an interest-bearing account from year to year.) The money will keep on coming unless Congress acts to expressly block it.

One more thing that's worth noting in the Senate bill, however, is Sec. 7039(a):

Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, funds appropriated by this Act under the heading ‘‘Foreign Military Financing Program’’ for assistance for Egypt may be transferred to, and merged with, funds appropriated for assistance for Egypt under the heading ‘‘Economic Support Fund’’ [p. 134 of the pdf]

This is interesting because it permits the transfer of money appropriated for military aid to an account used for economic assistance -- that is, to a fund specifically intended "for the purpose of improving the lives of the Egyptian people through education, investment in jobs and skills (including secondary and vocational education), and access to finance for small and medium enterprise with emphasis on expanding opportunities for women, as well as other appropriate market-reform and economic growth activities" (p. 135 of the pdf). It seems unlikely to happen, but the option's there.

Oh yeah, and while we're on the subject: PCCF is back! (See p. 10 of this pdf.) In the International Security Assistance section of the State budget! Instead of in the Defense budget! And with a billion dollars! That's $200 million more than the $800 million appropriated for FY 11! Foreign policy is saved from militarization! At least until somebody needs to slash a bil from the aid budget, anyway; then DoD will change the way it calculates inflation, or something, and slide that extra billion in under its catastrophically shrunken topline. Or something.

Without getting into the whole "should we cut off aid to Pakistan?" thing...

Let's talk for a second about the much-ballyhooed suspension by the U.S. of about $800M in military aid to Pakistan. The Los Angeles Times' Alex Rodriguez asked a couple of Pakistanis how these developments would impact the relationship between Washington and Islamabad, and unsurprisingly they had all sorts of dire predictions. Some folks went even further; though the aid pause is likely to have little effect on ongoing military operations,

Politically, however, it would be damaging to the relationship, said Pakistan's former ambassador to the United States, retired Major-General Mehmood Durrani said [sic], reflecting a widespread view in Pakistan that it was fighting America's war, for which Washington must reimburse it. 

"This is something that they have to pay, and if they don't then it's breach of agreement and breach of trust," he said.

Leaving aside the genuine, knee-slapping hilarity of being accused of breach of trust by representatives of the Pakistani security establishment, let's focus on exactly why this pause is happening: because the recipient is not meeting the conditions of the aid. I'm not talking generally about double-dealing, supporting anti-coalition insurgency, leaking sensitive operational information and intelligence, etc., but about the specific conditions of the aid that's being held up in this specific instance.

We're talking about two types of aid here: equipment and associated training on the one hand (the monetary value of which in this case is said to be about $500M), and reimbursement for counterinsurgency operations (totaling about $300M) on the other. When you see the $800M figure cited, that's not cash aid, but a combination of materiel and reimbursement funds.

There are two main reasons the aid is being withheld, and they're both very simple. One is that Pakistan is lately making a habit of denying visas to the U.S. military and contractor personnel that will train Pakistani security forces on the employment, maintenance, and long-term sustainment of the military equipment purchased for them with grant aid. When a country buys U.S. military equipment (or has it given to them as grant aid), it doesn't get to just sign for the crate. We're going to make sure you know how to use and maintain the damned thing correctly, that you're not going to waste our money by breaking it right after you tear off the wrapping paper, that you're not going to drive it without oil or try to fire the wrong projectile or strip it down and put on counterfeit rotor blades so you can sell the originals and pocket the difference, and so on. The USG wants reasonable assurances that its aid will actually be useful in serving its intended purpose, and this training (and associated long-term contractor logistics support) is one of the ways it gets those assurances. So it's simple: no visas, no trainers and support personnel, no stuff.

The second reason for the aid holdup is even more straightforward: Coalition Support Funds are meant to reimburse partner nations for military operations they've undertaken in support of U.S. forces*, but reimbursement is contingent on, you know, actually proving that you've conducted those operations. There's a method for the partner government to substantiate its expenses and have them validated by the Combatant Command before the USG just signs away the cash; by all accounts the Pakistanis have been resolute in their refusal to submit to the process.** So no, General Durrani, it's not "something that they have to pay" -- it's something that we've said we'll pay... just as long as you go ahead and meet your own obligations. But if that's too much trouble, ok, cool, fine with us. If you don't want to show daddy your report card, you're not gonna get your allowance.

There's a whole big-picture conversation we could have about whether or not it makes sense to provide military, development, and/or economic assistance to Pakistan, whether it advances our security aims, whether it provides us with any influence in the region, etc. But I want to make it clear that that's a whole different subject. This isn't happening because the USG is having second thoughts about the utility of the whole Pakistani aid program. The government is simply refusing to carry on with business as usual so long as the Pakistanis reject the long-standing conditions of these two types of aid.

When analysts and media talk about strained relations and the long-term prospects for cooperation, and about how aid could be resumed if Pakistan shows more aggressiveness against militancy and so on, they're just parroting the age-old talking points about the relationship and failing to explain to you just exactly what it is that this news is all about.

* Just for the record, Pakistan is the recipient of more than 80% of total CSF, and has gotten something like seven and a half billion dollars in reimbursements since FY02 (pdf).

** To be fair, the Pakistanis aren't the only ones responsible for this state of affairs: a 2008 GAO report (pdf) -- you really ought to read it in full if you care about this subject -- found that the Defense Department was not abiding by its own guidance on CSF oversight, which requires that reimbursement claims "contain quantifiable information that indicates the incremental nature of support (i.e., above and beyond normal operations), validation that the support or service was provided, and copies of invoices or documentation supporting how the costs were calculated." To put it even more bluntly, it was standard DoD practice until recently to simply write a check in response to Pakistani reimbursement claims without doing any of the analysis required to effectively steward taxpayer dollars.

Am I missing something here? (More on development and security)

In an essay on Foreign Policy's AfPak Channel, Nancy Birdsall and two colleagues from the Center for Global Development argue for a new American approach to Pakistan assistance. They argue that a focus on security, failure to articulate clear objectives, and lack of transparency about how money is being spent have doomed the U.S. aid program there to failure. Indonesia is held out as an example of what Pakistan might become with more effective U.S. engagement.

Now, that nation is mentioned in the same breath as Brazil and India as an emerging power on the world stage and a force for regional security. Fundamentally, few threats to American interests and American lives now emanate from Indonesia. That is the hope and the promise of development in Pakistan, a promise the United States has a role to play in fulfilling. [emphasis added]

To which I can only respond: uh, what? Surely Birdsall and her colleagues are familiar with Jemaah Islamiyah, right?

Development and democracy haven't solved the problem of extremist violence in Indonesia, and it seems unlikely they'll do so in Pakistan. But viewing these two countries solely through the lens of terrorism misses the point. Birdsall et al are correct to write that "Pakistan's stability and prosperity are intertwined with the United States' own," and to note that this linkage is tighter than that with other countries. This isn't about terrorism, though -- it's about Pakistan's status as a nuclear weapons state, a seriously flawed democracy, and a nexus of fundamentally revisionist (that is, anti-status quo) Islamic extremism.

Pakistan can pose a threat to the U.S. both by being too strong and too weak, something that doesn't hold for Indonesia. It's not clear that state weakness is the cause of the "threats to American interests and American lives [that] now emanate from" Pakistan; policymakers should be cognizant of that reality before they spend money trying to replicate the Indonesian model (which, lest we forget, was achieved with minimal U.S. assistance).

This is yet another example of the sort of absurdities we're driven to by the insensate state-strength-as-security paradigm: the goofy quasi-assertion that with just a bit of well-targeted aid, we can make Pakistan as unthreatening to American interests as Indonesia.

The legend of COIN as essential CT enabler: the bin Laden exemplum

Spencer wrote a thoughtful post last week on a question I'm surprised hadn't been brought up earlier: does the bin Laden raid tell us anything about the legitimacy of past claims that a large-footprint counterinsurgent force on the ground in Afghanistan is essential to collecting the kind of solid, reliable local intelligence we need to wage effective operations against al-Qaeda? Take it away, Attackerman:

So the bin Laden raid leaves us with an empirical test case for a core counterinsurgency contention.

Proposed by Dave Kilcullen and others, counterinsurgency theorists argue that theirs is the truer path to robust counterterrorism, the pursuit of which is the only reason counterinsurgency is germane in the U.S. context. Counterterrorism requires intelligence on terrorists and their environs. Intelligence requires local knowledge. Local knowledge requires the protection of vulnerable populations from reprisal, plus some incentive -- money, justice, political access, whatever -- to make cooperation with the anti-insurgent faction sensible. If you don't provide those resources and meet people where they are, then your counterterrorism hunt is fruitless. 

U.S. counterterrorism just succeeded, massively, in a place where we don't have a counterinsurgency campaign. But we clearly had sufficient local knowledge (read: informers and ground operatives) -- plus signals intelligence, plus persistant surveillance -- to meet our objective.

This seems like a pretty simple deal, right? Let's reformulate what Spencer has written in the simplest possible terms:

1. Some COIN advocates sold their operational approach by saying that it involves the collection of intelligence that enables accomplishment of the primary national objective, which is the destruction of al-Qaeda and its associated movements. 


2. A significant step towards the accomplishment of that objective was achieved in a manner that suggests that the COIN campaign in Afghanistan did not meaningfully contribute. 


3. As such, we should reconsider whether the massive expense, reduced operational readiness, and other sacrifices being made to enable that COIN campaign are actually essential to accomplishment of the fundamental goal; i.e. is the war in Afghanistan really accomplishing anything vis-a-vis the president's stated objective, which is, lest we forget, to "disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda"?

This isn't going to come as a shock to you, but I completely agree with all of that. I agree with the line of thinking. I agree with the need for re-assessment. (To be more accurate, I think the assessment -- whether or not our ways and means can meaningfully contribute to the accomplishment of our ends -- should have been done and then explained and justified to the American people before the escalation too place, because it's not as if these concerns are new (pdf)... but we all know how that went.) I agree that this should serve as a kick in the ass for policymakers to genuinely think about why we're fighting the war in Afghanistan and what benefits we're reaping in exchange for its various costs. Agree with all of that. But the original post actually requires a little bit of semantic parsing, because the COIN pitch made by escalation advocates was multi-layered, sophisticated, and not vulnerable to a single point of failure. So let's take a second to get some details straight.

During the debate over possible courses of action that preceded the president's announcement of an escalation, the various positions were basically boiled down to "CT," "CT-plus," and "COIN." I'm not going to rehash the details of all of that, because it's boring and you almost certainly already know the broad strokes. (If not, read this.) But!: one of many, many insidious effects of that simplification was the way that "counterterrorism" or "CT" came in the popular lexicon to mean something like targeted direct action against terrorist networks, personnel, and support infrastructure -- i.e. killing terrorists -- without what constitutes the other half of that definition in military doctrine: "action taken indirectly to influence and render global and regional environments inhospitable to terrorist networks." Now, it may be the case that the DOD definition is too broad to be meaningful, and you could certainly make that argument. But by this definition and according to the justification of the mission provided by Presidents Bush and Obama, any USG activities undertaken in Afghanistan would constitute "counterterrorism"... including COIN, FID, SFA, development assistance, economic support, etc etc ad infinitum.

Now take another look at Spencer's post in this light. "Counterinsurgency theorists argue that theirs is the truer path to robust counterterrorism, the pursuit of which is the only reason counterinsurgency is germane in the U.S. context." He goes on to explain the presumed linkage between security to governmental capacity to popular loyalty to local knowledge to actionable intelligence, which serves to clarify what he really meant by "the truer path to robust counterterrorism": COIN ops will presumably result in military forces getting more information about the environment and the enemy than they otherwise would have (without sustained on-the-ground presence), meaning you can kill more terrorists this way.

I want to vigorously dispute Spencer's characterization of this questionable (and opportunistic) corollary as "a core counterinsurgency contention." What we see here is a cunning conflation of two superficially plausible semi-truths: 1) persistent, visible, dispersed presence by counterinsurgent security forces will enable the accumulation of local knowledge that is essential to effectively targeting insurgent cadres and thus enabling the broader counterinsurgency effort, and 2) the local knowledge that's accumulated as a result of sustained presence and security will include intelligence that allows the counterinsurgent force to undertake targeted, effective offensive operations against al-Qaeda terrorists (whose numbers in the Afghan AO are infinitesimal if not zero).

It's only fair to further note that when Spencer writes "the pursuit of [counterterrorism] is the only reason counterinsurgency is germane in the U.S. context," he's engaging in a bit of selective memory (or revisionist history). Many advocates for escalation and a broad-based COIN effort in Afghanistan were proponents of a widely-held view in both liberal internationalist and neoconservative circles, one that has only recently -- with a downturn in popular support and enthusiasm for overseas adventurism -- started to recede from the public forum: faith in what we can call the "state strength" paradigm. They believe(d?) that weak states posed the greatest threat to global and national security, that poverty, disenfranchisement and lack of economic opportunity not only drove local conflicts, but threatened Americans' way of life. Here's how it's pitched (pdf):

We know where extremists thrive. In conflict zones that are incubators of resentment and anarchy. In weak states that cannot control their borders or territory, or meet the basic needs of their people. From Africa to central Asia to the Pacific Rim – nearly 60 countries stand on the brink of conflict or collapse. The extremists encourage the exploitation of these hopeless places on their hate-filled websites.

In this telling, poor economic conditions and injustice stoke disaffection and rage while weak governments are insufficiently capable of taking steps to either ameliorate these conditions or control their disaffected populations, and the whole thing ends up with pissed-off foreigners flying airplanes into office buildings. In short, they believed that failed states created terrorists, and that the best way to fix these failed states would be to build governmental capacity through a wide-ranging nation assistance and state-building effort while taking direct military action to defeat the most immediately dangerous security threats... what's been called, in the imprecise shorthand of our political narrative, "COIN."

In a defense and foreign-policy establishment where this worldview predominates, almost to the exclusion of all others, is it fair to say that "the pursuit of [robust counterterrorism] is the only reason counterinsurgency is germane in the U.S. context"? I would argue that it isn't the only reason, and that Kilcullen et al's focus on the CT-enabler angle was merely a matter of opportunistic calculation to appeal to those few "realists" who may not have fully bought into the contemporary conventional wisdom. The real challenge doesn't come from such obviously inadequate policy justifications as the narrowly-circumscribed one that Spencer seeks to highlight, but rather from the undifferentiated monolith that is the state-strength paradigm. It is close to a fact of political science that the risk of civil violence is closely correlated with low per-capita GDP/quality of life (as Jay Ulfelder points out today in a fortuitously-timed post). But it is far more difficult to establish causation, and causation is what we need to understand if we want to bring policy instruments to bear on a security problem. Consider just a few of the multivariate assumptions about the causes of conflict and violence that are embedded in the state-strength paradigm.

Violence is caused by: poverty; unequal access to or distribution of resources; unemployment; the inability of the justice system to fairly adjudicate disputes; the inability of the police to enforce the writ of the state; the inability of security forces to maintain the monopoly of violence; the inability of security forces to defend borders/sovereignty/protect against outside influence and/or infiltration of adversarial elements; the inability of security forces to undertake and/or sustain effective offensive operations against identified targets such as terrorists or insurgent groups; etc.

Some of these may be true, some specious, and some outright absurd. But the lumping of these many purported causes, drivers, or enablers of conflict under one broad rubric -- "state weakness/failure" -- has allowed for that paradigm's furtherance through unified (or at least complementary) advocacy by disparate power bases and interest groups: DoD can talk about the requirement to build capacity and capabilities in partner security forces in order to defend borders and eliminate safe havens; while State can emphasize the need to build whole-of-government capacity with a specific focus on the institutions of justice and so on; and USAID and the development community can pitch the imperative of improving the delivery of basic assistance to address human suffering, economic inequality, and other purportedly fundamental drivers of conflict.

This is how we end up with a sort of meta-COIN, a universalization of vague and arguably specious tactical principles to the level of foreign policy: a global emphasis on development, the effective provision of goods and services, and capacity-building (both in governance and security); counterterrorism in the very most literal interpretation of the definition, emphasizing both the indirect actions that influence and render global and regional environments inhospitable to terrorist networks (economic development, conflict resolution, civil governance capacity-building) plus direct action against terrorist networks... but the easier and cheaper version: direct action by partner security forces (military assistance, foreign internal defense, security force capacity-building). And then you've still got the ultimate trump card in reserve: direct military action by U.S. forces, which Kilcullen insists is basically the worst-case, avoid-at-almost-all-costs scenario.

What I'm getting at is this: while advocates of escalation in Afghanistan may have used the troop presence ---> security ---> popular confidence ---> actionable intelligence ---> direct action against terrorists rationale to help justify their preferred operational approach, it's hard to imagine they were being totally serious and/or honest with themselves. (How were COIN ops in Afghanistan going to provide actionable intelligence about terrorist networks and individuals that reside almost exclusively in Pakistan?) Most COIN advocates are (were?) also believers in the bigger idea, the state-strength paradigm; they saw COIN as a means of sanctuary denial, as an extended process through which Afghan society would be inoculated against the threat of insurgency and by extension, al Qaeda influence. And state-strengthening is/was the answer for Pakistan, and Yemen, and Somalia, and... everywhere, right?

What's wrong with all that, then? Well, the whole concept might be totally bogus, for one thing. We don't really understand the root causes of civil violence, even at the sub-national level. There are a whole bunch of different kinds of civil violence, and localized insurgency with a terrorist component is very, very different to international terrorism (even if you want to identify that as a component of "global insurgency" (pdf)). We can't say why, for example, one country's contentious social issues spark civil war, while those of a similar country do not, at least not with any real certainty... and that question isn't half as complicated as why some disaffected individuals choose to engage in international terrorism against a distant adversary, one that is almost certainly unconnected in any clear way to whatever tangible, material grievances that individual may have, while others join a political party or a local insurgency or just do a lot of drugs. And that's something we ought to think about before we decide to re-order our foreign and security policy around the imperatives of global development, state strength, and capacity-building. There may be plenty of good reasons to prioritize state strength, but it's not totally clear that counterterrorism justifies it.

To parrot Spencer: Let's consider this, shall we?

Want to see what the quotidian militarization of foreign policy looks like?

It's simple to look back over time and recognize broad, somewhat vague policy trends like "the militarization of foreign policy." You can look at the way we budget for international affairs versus defense; you can point to the myriad wars and other interventions in which we've engaged in recent years; you can even complain, if you like, that our international humanitarian and disaster relief efforts are primarily channeled through the military. But when you think about that trend, you're not imagining a decision-maker waking up one morning, sitting down at his desk, and saying "I'm going to militarize our foreign policy today!" -- it's just the way we label a whole bunch of aggreggated effects of seemingly reasonable decisions, right?

Well, yeah. Most of the time. And sometimes it's a little less honest, and a little less accidental.

In 2009, the administration included in its emergency war supplemental a request for $400 million to assist Pakistan in the development of its counterinsurgency capabilities. Breaking with the traditional custom for military aid, whereby grant funds are appropriated to the State Department for dispersal to the partner nation, the president instead requested that this money be appropriated to the Defense Department as part of what he called the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund (PCCF).

While report language authored by House appropriators noted that "the Committee believes that the PCCF should be considered within the context of the Department of State appropriations" and expressed the sense that "such a request for training for Pakistan, or any other nation where we have a national security interest, must be considered within the context of Department of State policy guidance, applicable governing authorities and appropriations," the appropriators went one better: they not only established the $400M PCCF account within State's appropriation, but sent another $400M to DoD as the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund.

Yep, you've got that right: the 2009 supplemental (pdf) established a Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund in the Defense appropriation, satisfying the administration's exact request (but under a different name) in spite of expressed reservations about the appropriateness of DoD control over such a fund, and to soften the blow, appropriators also established a Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund in the State appropriation. That's PCF and PCCF: two different funds, two different money-owners, same general purpose.

So what's the difference? DoD's $400M was available upon passage of the bill (June 24, 2009) until the end of FY10, when the program's authority would also expire. The appropriated funds for State's PCCF would only become available on the last day of FY09, and both the funds and the program authority wouldn't expire until the end of FY11. If you're keeping score at home, that means that DoD had from June 2009 until the end of September 2010 to spend its $400M, while State had from October 2009 until the end of September 2011. Presumably this reflected Congress' desire to channel foreign military assistance through the State Department over the long term, while recognizing the Defense Department's unique ability to satisfy urgent Pakistani requirements in an expeditious fashion. What I mean by that is that the Pentagon has the capacity and the expertise to identify what the Pakistanis needed, put the equipment on contract, and deliver it to our partners ASAP -- which State simply wasn't yet suited to do.

That's sort of a funny way to look at things, though, considering how PCCF actually played out: as a simple pass-through fund from Congress to State to DoD, which executed the program. (The establishing legislation allowed for both PCF and PCCF funds to be transferred from one department to the other -- that is, combined with one another -- if the transferring Secretary saw fit.) Ironically (and hilariously), this procedure turns out to have made the State funds even more useful than the ones directly appropriated to DoD, as the State-to-Defense transfer constituted obligation of funds; once State "spent" its $400M with DoD, those funds could no longer expire, so the cash originally appropriated to PCCF (State) didn't have the same calendrical axe hanging over it as the DoD-appropriated funds. The pressure to spend that State money before it expired ceased to exist, while DoD had to scramble around getting equipment on contract with its own PCF cash before it disappeared at the end of September. But I digress...

By now you're probably wondering what the hell this has to do with the militarization of foreign policy, so let's get back to the point. Last week when the details of the shutdown-averting budget compromise started coming out, Colin Cookman noticed that there was $800M in there for PCF (Defense). This is interesting not only because of everything you've read above, Congressional intent to transfer responsibility to the State Department, expiration of PCF's program authority, etc etc, but because the White House didn't actually ask for any PCF money for FY11 -- they asked for $1.2B for PCCF, which (as CRS notes on p.18 of this pdf) "moves ongoing activities to increase the capabilities of Pakistan's security forces from DOD control to the purview of the Secretary of State."

In the words of the immortal Lee Corso: not so fast, my friends. As Josh Rogin predictably sniffed out before it had even occurred to me to look, there it is in the legislation signed last week:

For the `Pakistan Counterinsurgency Fund', $800,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2012: Provided, That such funds shall be available to the Secretary of Defense, with the concurrence of the Secretary of State, notwithstanding any other provision of law, for the purpose of allowing the Secretary of Defense, or the Secretary's designee, to provide assistance to Pakistan's security forces.

But wait, there's more! Section 2112(b):

The authorities contained under the heading `International Security Assistance, Funds Appropriated to the President, Pakistan Counterinsurgency Capability Fund' in title XI of Public Law 111-32 shall remain in effect until September 30, 2012.

So the law extends the authorization for both PCF and PCCF until the end of FY12, but only appropriates money ($800M) to PCF... the program that was supposed to go away this year. Sure, it's a $400M cut to what had been requested, but that's not the real story here. (Only $700M was appropriated across the two programs in FY10, so nearly doubling that amount for FY11 would've been a stretch in any politico-fiscal environment.) No, the real story is the way so many players in government colluded to hoodwink the taxpayer and extend the Pentagon's control of a fund that nearly everyone agrees is the legitimate prerogative of the Secretary of State.

1. Congressional Republicans cynically refused to fund through the State Department's budget an account that most of them would agree is important to national security, choosing instead to hide nearly a billion dollars under DoD's topline (notwithstanding the inarguable reality that the program constitutes foreign assistance), secure in the knowledge that such scheming will burnish their collective reputation as supporters of the troops, advocates for a strong defense, and opponents of namby-pamby hand-holding foreign aid.

2. The White House and Congressional Democrats rolled over for this deal, knowing as they did that it would continue DoD control of an element of U.S. foreign policy and increase the likelihood that training and equipping decisions would diverge from the broader context of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship, all without saving a single dollar in the overall topline.

3. The State Department, however minimal its say in the final budgetary wrangling, almost certainly breathed a sigh of relief at being able to throw Republicans a $1.2B bone without actually cutting anything. As Rogin noted, State was likely able to save several other programs under threat by satisfying 10% of its total topline cut through what amounts to a transfer to another department's budgetary bin.

4. Department of Defense senior leaders have consistently called for an increase in resources for the diplomacy and development legs of the 3D stool, but just as consistently fight against the normalization of military assistance programs currently being conducted under special Title 10 (Defense) authority and mutely accept the two-year continuance of their control over a program that should rightfully belong to those statutorily charged with the conduct of our foreign affairs.

No big deal, you might say: we need to help the Pakistanis, the money got appropriated, so who cares where program authority lands -- especially when State's been passing money and execution responsibilities through to the Pentagon anyway? Here's why it's a big deal: every single bit of institutional momentum, bureaucratic inertia, and political pressure will continue to facilitate "minor" compromises and symbolic switches like this until a forward-looking, reform-minded government takes a stand.

Next time you hear the president, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, or Congressional leaders bemoaning the militarization of U.S. foreign policy, just think back and remember how they've all got a hand in it.

The can-do kids: a Pentagon counterfactual

I want you to take a little trip with me, all the way back to 2004. The United States is at war, and nearly 70,000 American troops are on the ground in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld has some "issues w/various countries," so he fires off a memo to the Under Secretary of Defense to try to get some answers... only this time it's not know-it-all undersecretary for fiascos Doug Feith. No, we need a guy in the hot seat who understands The Coming Anarchy. Forget about idealistic neoconservatives; we need a guy who recognizes "humankind's tendency toward a kind of slipshod, gooey, utopian, and ultimately dangerous optimism." We need Bob Kaplan.

Just imagine...

RUMSFELD: We need to solve the Pakistan problem. Are you coming up with some proposals for me to send around?

KAPLAN: With more pressure [we] might increase Islamabad's cooperation in relatively short order.

RUMSFELD: I do think this memo on Pakistan is correct. I think we have to force the issue of Pakistan up to the Deputies and get a policy. If Pakistan goes under, we have serious problems (pdf). So, uh, thanks.

KAPLAN: America has strategic advantages and can enhance its power while extricating itself from war. But this requires leadership—not great and inspiring leadership which comes along rarely even in the healthiest of societies—but plodding competence, occasionally steely nerved and always free of illusion. So yeah, no problem, chief.

RUMSFELD: Yeah, ok, I get the point. No more emails like this. (Next time I'll ask Wolfowitz (pdf).)

fin

Dick Holbrooke, a dedicated servant of his country, dead at 69

Whatever else you want to say about the man, Dick Holbrooke gave more of his life to America than almost anyone. He entered the foreign service in 1962 and went almost immediately to Vietnam, serving in austere conditions and with little supervision as a kid just barely out of college. During the Carter administration, he became the youngest Assistant Secretary of State ever. He missed out on the Republican 80s, then performed the same role (this time for Europe; the first for East Asia) during the Clinton Administration. He was twice a special envoy -- to Cyprus and to Kosovo -- and was the chief negotiator of the accord that ended the Bosnian war. And he capped off his career as the Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the position he held until his death earlier this evening.

Five decades of service. It's a hell of a thing.

If you need a reminder of just what Holbrooke has done for this country, read this profile by George Packer in the New Yorker last September. Think about what it means to spend 48 years in that business.

So RIP to a great public servant, and may his family know peace in their difficult time.

Demanding good governance vs. meddling in internal affairs (UPDATED)

Josh Rogin has a very interesting piece up on The Cable this morning in which he reports on what seems to be a concerted message campaign by several senior officials in the Obama administration -- including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah, and senior representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Dick Holbrooke -- urging Pakistan to reform its tax system (both by raising taxes on the wealthy and improving collection and enforcement mechanisms).

"This is one of my pet peeves: Countries that will not tax their elites but expect us to come in and help them serve their people are just not going to get the kind of help from us that they have been getting," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an audience Tuesday at the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition conference.

"Pakistan cannot have a tax rate of 9 percent of GDP when land owners and all of the other elites do not pay anything or pay so little it's laughable, and then when there's a problem everybody expects the United States and others to come in and help," Clinton said to a round of applause. She noted that Pakistan's finance minister is now presenting a package of economic and tax reforms.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who was also on the same panel, drove home the message that countries who want U.S. development aid must adopt the reforms that Clinton is advocating.

"I've been doing this for a long time and I have never heard a discussion like this, where you have the secretary of state saying what she just said, which is recognizing that unless we are tougher on how we provide assistance...we should not be financing them at this level," Geithner said.

Panel moderator Frank Sesno noted that scaling back assistance to Pakistan, and countries like it, could conflict with other U.S. objectives in the region, such as bolstering the government's internal stability.

"All of these objectives are going to be in conflict at one time or another," Geithner responded. If the countries do not make the required reforms, "We're not going to be able to justify financing [them] on this scale," he said.

On Monday, Af-Pak envoy Richard Holbrooke made a similar plea while appearing on the Rachel Maddow show.

"Their maximum tax rates are much lower than ours, and there's a lot of tax evasion there, as has been well reported. And we can't ask American taxpayers to pay the burden if the Pakistanis don't raise their own revenue," Holbrooke said. "So I don't want to leave people with the impression we're going to pay for the reconstruction
phase."

In an interview, USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah told The Cable that the multi-billion reconstruction effort that Pakistan faces in the wake of the flood crisis is "going to be much more successful" if Pakistan adopts the Obama administration's suggestions to ""implement a stronger tax regime that's ... more effective."

Looks like a full-court press to me. So far as I can tell, this is really revolutionary stuff. We're less surprised in the modern global security environment by one state taking an interest in what previously might have been considered to be the sovereign internal affairs of another, what with economic interconnectedness, so-called "superempowered individuals" and sub-state actors, and so on, but isn't this even a step beyond what we're used to seeing? It's one thing to say "we'd like to see the Pakistanis using the F-16s we're selling them to prosecute counterinsurgency operations on their northwest frontier rather than to defend against an imagined Indian threat," and it's quite another to say "we wish the Pakistanis would teach more math to third-graders." Yesterday's commentary seems much closer to the latter.

But even more than all that, here's what really worries me: are we so sure that we understand Pakistan's internal politics well enough to give guidance (or make demands) about potentially inflammatory domestic issues like taxation? Most of us are prepared to acknowledge that Pakistan at least has the potential to become -- if it's not already -- the most dangerous country in the world for the U.S., right? I don't really have enough area knowledge to say this for a fact, but it seems to me that one way to accelerate that development is to contribute to the sort of socio-economic/class stratification that could imperil the government from yet another direction, piling yet another threat on to that posed by the challenge of religious extremist groups/parties and those agitating for land reform and other measures of economic equality (who are already susceptible to manipulation by Taliban-type groups mentioned latterly).

Basically what I'm asking is this: are we sure we should be asking the Pakistani government to piss off rich people at the same time they're pissing off poor people, conservative people, very religious people, Indians, Baluchis, and Pashtuns? It might be good politics in the U.S. -- fair enough that people get annoyed about pumping U.S. aid dollars into a country that can't effectively collect its own legally and morally justified receipts -- but shouldn't the priority here be maintaining the stability of the Pakistani government?

Would be very interested to have actual Pakistan experts weigh in here (as well as all you development folks).

UPDATE: Whoops, in my rundown of people the government has pissed off, I forgot to include the military.

Probably the best thing to come out of Congress this year (not that that's saying much)

Mike Allen reported this morning that Frank Wolf (R-Va.), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, has sent a letter to the president recommending the creation of an independent, bipartisan Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group (APSG). The panel would be modeled after the Iraq Study Group, bringing together former statesmen and retired senior military leaders to assess the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan holistically and present recommendations to the president.

Wolf notes declining public and political support for the war, reminding the president that such an erosion of will can imperil the country's efforts as it did in Vietnam. He also repeatedly insists that his commitment to the war is strong, quoting the president's sentiment that the war "is fundamental to the defense of our people." The APSG is essential, Wolf suggests, in order to understand the consequences of failure and presumably to redouble our efforts in light of those consequences:

We must soberly consider the implications of failure in Afghanistan. Those that we know for certain are chilling—namely an emboldened al-Qaeda, a reconstituted Taliban with an open staging ground for future worldwide attacks, and a destabilized, nuclear-armed Pakistan.

This is basically the president's rhetoric, and Wolf echoes it yet again in a curiously constructed postscript: "P.S. We as a nation must be successful in Afghanistan. We owe this to our men and women in the military serving in harm’s way and to the American people." But elsewhere in the letter, Wolf's language suggests that the proposed study group is not so much about understanding the consequences of failure or the recipe for success, but rather gaining consensus on what might constitute reasonable expectations and strategic objectives in the region:

I firmly believe that an Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group could reinvigorate national confidence in how America can be successful and move toward a shared mission in Afghanistan. This is a crucial task. On the Sunday morning news shows this past weekend, it was unsettling to hear conflicting statements from within the leadership of the administration that revealed a lack of clarity about the end game in Afghanistan. How much more so is this true for the rest of the country? An APSG is necessary for precisely that reason. We are nine years into our nation’s longest running war and the American people and their elected representatives do not have a clear sense of what we are aiming to achieve, why it is necessary and how far we are from attaining that goal. Further, an APSG could strengthen many of our NATO allies in Afghanistan who are also facing dwindling public support, as evidenced by the recent Dutch troop withdrawal, and would give them a tangible vision to which to commit.

Just as was true at the time of the Iraq Study Group, I believe that Americans of all political viewpoints, liberals and conservatives alike, and varied opinions on the war will embrace this “fresh eyes” approach. Like the previous administration’s support of the Iraq Study Group, which involved taking the group’s members to Iraq and providing high-level access to policy and decision makers, I urge you to embrace an Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group. It is always in our national interest to openly assess the challenges before us and to chart a clear course to success.

At root, a study group for the Afghan war is all about instilling confidence in the Congress and the public, making people believe that the government has a reasonable, sensible idea of what's at stake and how best to achieve America's strategic goals. Whatever the language about the "fundamental" importance of the war, the necessity to deny sanctuary to terrorists and so forth, one can reasonably expect that an APSG would conclude that U.S. objectives in south Asia ought to be more narrowly circumscribed. And who could complain about a study group? Is there anyone that would rather continue muddling through, any real counter-argument to what Wolf is asking for? I can't see any -- even if you don't expect much, surely it can't hurt.

I join Wolf in hoping that the president will adopt this recommendation and commission a new Afghanistan-Pakistan Study Group. The congressman concludes his letter by telling the president that he plans to introduce legislation mandating the group's formation if it's not created by Executive Order, and I support that approach, too. To be honest with you, I'm in favor of just about anything at this point that will help us sort out what the hell it is we're trying to do in Afghanistan, and whether the things we're trying to do are really worth it. I don't expect them to conclude that sanctuary denial is a pointless mission, or that the war is unwinnable without access to Pakistani territory, or that the entire episode is strategically bankrupt -- anyone picked for the panel would likely be too invested in the conventional thinking about the war (and about counterterrorism) to propose anything so revolutionary. But the more we think and talk and write about strategy, the more it must be obvious to senior decisionmakers that the best thing for America is to extricate ourselves from the long-term, heavy-presence involvement to which we've thus far been committed.

The farce of Pakistan's counterterrorist F-16s

This past weekend, the U.S. delivered to Pakistan the first three F-16s in an 18-plane foreign military sales purchase. The deal has gotten a lot of headlines as a visible example of the U.S. government's increasing willingness to support Pakistani military modernization in exchange for Islamabad's support in fighting terrorism on its northwest frontier. Some commentary on the subject appears today in the New York Times' At War blog.

Pakistanis are fascinated, if not obsessed, with F-16 fighter jets.

It is the best fighting aircraft in the fleet of the Pakistan air force, allowed to be flown by only the country’s best pilots. Video of F-16 fighter aircraft roaring through the skies figures prominently in the air force’s inspirational anthems.

The sale of F-16s to Pakistan was suspended in the 1990s as an indication of the deteriorating relationship between the countries.

A couple of years ago, Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, who was then heading the media wing of the military, stressed in an interview that if America wanted to improve its image, it should expedite the delivery of F-16s.

It wasn’t just a simple wish of the military boys for their toys. The aircraft also serve as an effective diplomatic and public-relations tool.

The blog glosses over what really happened to interrupt the relationship: Pakistan developed a nuclear program. Pakistan already had 40 F-16s they'd purchased from the U.S., and had plans to buy a lot more. Then Islamabad's scientific adventurism not only put a halt to major planned materiel sales, but ended U.S.-Pakistan military-to-military contacts, including educational exchanges and other professional interactions.

This, of course, was kind of a problem when we showed up post-9/11 looking for pro-America senior officers in the Pakistani military. Previous generations had sent their best and brightest to study at the Command and General Staff College and senior service colleges, where they built personal relationships with their peers in the U.S. military.

What's that got to do with F-16s, you're wondering? Well, just like mil-to-mil contacts, materiel sales are a part of a broader, comprehensive relationship. These days everyone wants to talk about "building partner capacity," training and equipping our friends and allies to fight more capably so that we won't have to. But security cooperation -- that is, pretty much all the international contacts and activities executed by our Defense Department -- is bigger than capacity building: it also helps to build relationships and ensure access, and contributes to the broader goal (theoretically) of winning support for U.S. policies and actions.

Of course, that's not going to stop anyone from tossing out some lines about capacity, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and so on:

Officials say the aircraft will be used for precision strikes against militant hide-outs in the country’s tribal regions straddling the border with Afghanistan.

Sure they will!

Seriously, it's ok to talk about the other stuff, the access, the relationships, the confidence-building, the assuring of allies, the enhancement to regional security. And to be fair, Ambassador Patterson's statement pretty much covers that stuff, too:

The office of Anne W. Patterson, the United States ambassador in Islamabad, issued a statement Sunday calling the weekend induction of first three of the 18 F-16s ‘a historic milestone’ of relationship between Pakistan and the United States. It was, the statement said, “both a symbolic and tangible demonstration of our strong partnership and the U.S. intent to stand beside Pakistan over the long-term as an important ally and friend.”

Some of this stuff is just to make people feel good, and that's ok too. Now, as Madhu has noted many times, the link between intent and effect is a little bit obscure to us. We're not exactly sure how all the confidence-building and back-patting we do through exercises or materiel transfers or exchange programs really impacts state action.

But isn't it nice, when the balloon goes up, to be able to pick up the phone to the guy you sat next to at Leavenworth (the Fort, not the prison) for a year, and to be able to remind him of the close cooperative relationship your countries and militaries share?

Iranian rebel leader received U.S. backing

Oh, no, wait, that's just what he told Iranian authorities after he'd been captured and likely tortured.

Sunni Muslim rebel leader Abdul Malik Rigi, arrested Tuesday by Iran, said the United States had offered to provide him with a base, cash and weapons, according to Iranian state television, which showed him purportedly making the admissions.

Iranian authorities said Rigi's group, Jundallah, was responsible for several deadly attacks in southeastern Iran and is backed by the United States. They said he was provided with an Afghan passport and had been at a U.S. base in Afghanistan 24 hours before the arrest.

U.S. officials, of course, deny anything of the sort.

While I think this guy would probably tell his government tormentors just about anything they wanted to hear, it's fair to note that there were rumblings during the prior administration that the U.S. ought to support Jundullah. Here's what Bob Baer had to say about that in Time last October, after a suspected Jundullah bomb had killed IRGC leadership alongside a number of other people:

"American intelligence has also had contact with Jundullah. But that contact, as Iran almost certainly knows, was confined to intelligence-gathering on the country," Robert Baer, a former Middle East CIA field officer wrote on the Time.com, IRNA reported early on Saturday.

However, he noted that the US-Jundullah relationship "was never formalized, and contact was sporadic."

The news comes amid US denial of any involvement in a recent terrorist attack in Sistan-Baluchestan province in southeastern Iran, which Jundullah claimed responsibility for.

"I've been told that the Bush Administration at one point considered Jundullah as a piece in a covert-action campaign against Iran, but the idea was quickly dropped because Jundullah was judged uncontrollable and too close to al-Qaeda. There was no way to be certain that Jundullah would not throw the bombs we paid for back at us," said the former CIA agent who is a columnist in the weekly, and very probably an advisor in the Middle East.

Baer also noted that Pakistan's intelligence agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), has had relations with the Jundullah leader, Abdolmalek Rigi.

"Pakistani intelligence has indeed had contact with Jundullah over the years, but there's no good evidence that Pakistan created Jundullah from scratch. And there's certainly no evidence that Pakistan ordered the attack," Baer said in reference to the terrorist attack that took place in Iran on Sunday, October 18, which killed 42 people including the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps commanders.

There are a million good reasons why our association with Jundullah should never have progressed beyond the point where it apparently stopped (according to Baer), so this explanation has a ring of truth. That the Iranian regime would try to associate Rigi with the U.S. is about as surprising as it is compelling, which is to say not at all.

Top Taliban commander captured (UPDATED)

The New York Times is reporting that Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the most senior Taliban official after Mullah Omar, has been captured in a joint U.S.-Pakistani intelligence operation. (h/t Leah Farrall on Twitter)

Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials.

It was unclear whether he was talking, but the officials said his capture had provided a window into the Taliban and could lead to other senior officials. Most immediately, they hope he will provide the whereabouts of Mullah Omar, the one-eyed cleric who is the group’s spiritual leader.

Disclosure of Mullah Baradar’s capture came as American and Afghan forces were in the midst of a major offensive in southern Afghanistan.

His capture could cripple the Taliban’s military operations, at least in the short term, said Bruce O. Riedel, a C.I.A. veteran who last spring led the Obama administration’s Afghanistan and Pakistan policy review.

Details of the raid remain murky, but officials said that it had been carried out by Pakistan’s military spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and that C.I.A. operatives had accompanied the Pakistanis.

This is undeniably good news, particularly in light of what looks like extensive cooperation from Pakistan. I'm not sure I'm ready to say that the ISI has turned the page here, but it's certainly a step in the right direction. In related news, for the first time ever, Michael Cohen is more optimistic about Afghanistan than me.

Not only is this enormous as far as the US war in Afghanistan, but it suggests for perhaps the first time that the Pakistan government is willing to cooperate with the US in going after the Afghan Taliban. One can only imagine the impact on Taliban feelings of security and reliance on Pakistani support: that safe haven ain't feeling so safe anymore. One has to think this will affect the drive toward political reconciliation in a dramatic way - because if you're the Taliban this news suggests that time is no longer necessarily on your side.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say this may be the most important to thing to happen to the US war in Afghanistan - as Leah Farrell suggests this might be the more significant US capture since 9/11. This has the potential to change the entire complexion of the war in Afghanistan - and for the better. For the first time in a very long time, there is reason for optimism.

Let's cross our fingers that he's right. I don't see how it changes a lot of foundational dynamics of the war (including the cost-benefit analysis that underlies American involvement in Afghanistan), but if we're gonna be there, we may as well be shutting down the bad guys.

UPDATE: Here's a good backgrounder on Baradar from Newsweek last summer.

Attempts to address lack of continuity and expertise hampered by lack of continuity, expertise

Apparently the Af-Pak Hands program, designed to create from scratch a pool of language-trained area experts to help fill critical billets related to the Afghan war, is having some trouble getting going. As it turns out, one of the big problems is a.... lack of language-trained area experts. And some other stuff, like the significant disincentive to volunteerism that comes from a career-killing five-year commitment to a program that no one understands well enough to fit service there into the context of a competitive rating system.

The military’s effort to build a seasoned corps of expert officers for the Afghan war, one of the highest priorities of top commanders, is off to a slow start, with too few volunteers and a high-level warning to the armed services to steer better candidates into the program, according to some senior officers and participants.

The groundbreaking program is meant to address concerns that the fight in Afghanistan has been hampered by a lack of continuity and expertise in the region among military personnel. But some officers have been reluctant to sign up for an unconventional career path because they fear it will hurt their advancement — a perception that top military leaders are trying to dispel as they tailor new policies for the complex task of taking on resilient insurgencies in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Perhaps most disappointingly, Admiral Mullen just put out a letter to the services in which he expressed concerns over the quality and/or appropriateness of many of the volunteers. So not only are we short of willing candidates, but many of those who have signed up probably aren't suited for duty in a program of this type, and we're faced with the reality that there probably just aren't enough of those people around. (Sort of reminds me of the argument that "unnamed captain in the Pentagon" made on Ricks' blog a few weeks ago: we need more Special Forces! Like, 700,000 of them! And they need to be special!)

A question for those who think the Afghan war is essential to maintaining stability in Pakistan

The argument about the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons tends to be nested into a multi-pronged rationale for why escalation in Afghanistan is necessary -- very few people will say "the one and only reason we need to be in Afghanistan is to keep Pakistani nukes out of al-Qaeda's hands." But a lot of people (including John Nagl and Dave Kilcullen, unfortunately) will tack this on to whatever other justifications they've got, toss this one in there ominously. And why not? They probably think that even the slightest risk of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of terrorists is just about the most terrifying thing most Americans can imagine, and they're probably right.

I guess I should also make it clear that I agree about Pakistani stability being important. In fact, I think it's probably the most important feature of the entire war, and I have no qualms saying that regional stability in south Asia ought to be a bigger priority for America than the utter annihilation of al-Qaeda (which, like Rid, I think is probably impossible and possibly unnecessary) or the vaunted denial of the much-talked-about terrorist safe haven.

But lemme come to the point already: if you think that keeping Pakistani nuclear weapons safe is an important reason for us to stay in Afghanistan in significant numbers, then I want you to answer a question. Ready?

Why do we imagine that a third-party counterinsurgency campaign in the country without the nuclear weapons will be more effective in guaranteeing their security than small-footprint, foreign internal defense (FID)-oriented backing for the government that actually possesses WMD?

Can't we do more to prevent weapons from getting to AQ by engaging with the Pakistani government and military than by running around Helmand shooting at opium smugglers?

The limits of cooperation

Apparently we've found them. Or at least, found them more explicitly than before. Not-so-suprisingly, the Pakistanis have come out and said what we all knew they were thinking: that they're hedging for the day the West pulls out of Afghanistan, and want to preserve their 'strategic assets,' namely those militant groups based in Pakistan that aren't allies of the TTP.

So, no, Mr. Obama, we won't be going after the Haqqani network, or other elements of the Quetta Shura that don't seek our overthrow. Because in our grand delusions, we still believe that we can control and direct the chaos on the other side of the border to our own advantage. And dammit, we will have 'strategic depth'!

Apparently this is "part of a mounting grievance in Pakistan that the alliance with the United States is too costly to bear." Umm, and what do you think the costs of abandoning that alliance will be?

Seriously, if Pakistan is concerned that it will be surrounded by Indians (or pro-Indian regimes) on all sides, why can't they see that the surest way to make that happen is to become the West's opponent? If it becomes an explicit proxy war between Pakistani and US-backed groups, why wouldn't the West align more closely with India?

Granted China may align with Pakistan against India again if the surge fails and there's a scramble in Central Asia, but isn't it just as likely to have second thoughts rooted in concerns about militants in Xianjang? Moreover, the Pakistani military still seem to think they can manage and control their militant clients. That strikes me as a deeply dangerous game to play between nuclear powers that seem at times to be itching to step into the street and settle 60 year old scores.

Perhaps more to the point, this brings into pretty sharp focus the unanswered questions about our Pakistan strategy. Even if the NYT story reflects attitudes in the military rather than civilian leadership, how do we simultaneously strengthen the civilian government's grip on its military (while not appearing to do so and thereby delegitimizing it (further) amongst the Pakistani electorate) while at the same time putting Hellfires into Waziri hillsides...or maybe the suburbs of Quetta?

Here's a question for all the Pakistan experts out there: in the eyes of the Pakistani military, what is the relative value of US military aid compared to taking out Haqqani? Would the threat of cutting off the former change the calculus, or simply reinforce the paranoia?

Stupid question, unbelievable answer

Have you ever heard of a media interview with a public official being embargoed until after the announcement of some major policy decision? Me neither, but that's apparently what happened after Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Trudy Rubin spent two hours with GEN McChrystal last month.

Our interview was off the record, because President Obama hadn't yet laid out his Afghan strategy.

But now that the strategy is unveiled, and McChrystal has testified before Congress, I'm free to use some of the conversation.

Uh, ok. Anyway, the part that's interesting is what COMISAF actually said:

What will happen if we don't try to stabilize Afghanistan, I ask? His sober answer: "Civil war that kills . . . one million? No side can win. Al-Qaeda will come back. If Afghanistan implodes, I'm not sure Pakistan would survive."

Why in the hell would you ask what will happen "if we don't try"? Who gives a damn about trying?? Have you considered the possibility that we may try and still fail, and that precisely the same conditions will obtain afterwards, only we'll have wasted $100 billion and 1,000 or so American lives? Is trying going to prevent civil war, or the return of al-Qaeda, or the much-feared collapse of Pakistan?

The phrasing of the question is telling, really -- it's revelatory of the way that we tend to think about asymmetric wars, about conflicts with seemingly disorganized armed bands in what we like to think of as backwater countries: we couldn't possibly lose if we're just trying hard enough.

Maybe I'm making too much out of this. And I haven't even really addressed GEN McChrystal's scaremongering. (Why would al-Qaeda return when the absolute best-case scenario they could hope for in Afghanistan is to replicate the conditions that presently exist in Pakistan?) But really, shouldn't we be asking the question "what is going to happen if we can't achieve our objectives?", rather than "what happens if we don't try?" And then, better yet: how much can we hope to accomplish even if we are trying?

Hitchens going off the deep end?

I know that a lot of people are going to say "you mean he hasn't already?", but I've always quite enjoyed Christopher Hitchens' writing. I won't say that I always agree with him, but there's usually something to appreciate in the way that Hitchens expresses himself, both in his technical execution and in the confidence with which he eviscerates his rhetorical foes.

But lately it seems like the politics are getting the better of him, that he's taken to a sort of Mark Steyn-esque ranting against anything and everything associated with Islam. You'll be unsurprised, then, to find that today's column in Slate is mostly about how dumb it is for the U.S. to be playing nice-nice with Pakistan while jilted India longingly awaits our well-deserved affections.

The visit of Prime Minister Singh should have been the occasion for a vigorous public debate on whether this growing tendency—the Pakistanization of U.S. policy in the region—is the wise or correct one.

India was supporting the Northern Alliance against the Taliban long before the events of 9/11, and it has been providing a great deal of reconstruction aid since the Taliban were removed. It has excellent sources of intelligence in the region and is itself a frequent target of the very same forces against which we are committed to fight.

Its national parliament, the multifariously pluralistic and democratic Lok Sabha, was the target of a massive car bomb attack in the fall of 2001, its large embassy in Kabul has been singled out for special attention from the Taliban/al-Qaida alliance, and of course we must never forget Mumbai. Nor ought we to forget that India's massive economic and military power on the subcontinent is accompanied by a system of regular elections, a free press, a secular constitution under which almost as many Muslims live as live in Pakistan, and a business class that extends all the way to Silicon Valley and uses the English language.

Of Pakistan, a state that has flirted with the word failure ever since its inception, it is not possible to speak in the same terms. Only with the greatest reluctance does it withdraw its troops from the front with India in Kashmir, the confrontation that is the main obsession of its overmighty and Punjabi-dominated officer corps. This same corps makes no secret of its second obsession, which is the attainment of a pro-Pakistani regime in Kabul. (This objective, too, is determined by the desire to acquire Afghanistan for the purpose of "strategic depth" in the fight with India.) The original Talibanization of Afghanistan was itself an official project of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and the CIA has spent the last eight years admitting, or in some cases discovering, what everyone else already knew: that the Taliban still enjoy barely concealed support from the same highly placed Pakistani institutions.

The enormous subventions given to the Pakistani elite in the "war on terror" are thus partly a subsidy to the very forces we claim to be fighting and partly a bribe to make them at least pretend to stop. Meanwhile, Pakistan's press and the remnant of its education system are virtual machines for the mass production of anti-American and anti-Semitic propaganda aimed at persuading people that the real enemy is the democratic secular West. And on top of all this, the country's "national hero" A.Q. Khan for many years enjoyed state collaboration in the running of a nuclear black market that shared fissile materials with countries like Libya and North Korea. Yet the Obama administration, phrasing its strategy for the crisis, cannot get beyond the silly and limited abbreviation Af-Pak. By excluding India from the equation, the political and military planners impose a tunnel vision upon themselves and dishearten the country that should be our major ally in the region (for other purposes, too, such as forming a counterweight to the increasingly promiscuous power of China).

All of which is well and good, but so far as I can tell, sort of misses the point. For one thing, who cares that India supported the Northern Alliance? So too did Iran, and you won't see Hitchens clamoring for rapprochement with the "mullahcracy."

And what of Pakistani concern with Kashmir? Is not India similarly preoccupied?

(My favorite part is that latter bit when Hitchens criticizes the Obama administration for excluding India from the "Af-Pak" construction, apparently alienating and "dishearten[ing] the country that should be our major ally in the region." Except when they're not. Hitchens should know that India vociferously resisted inclusion in Dick Holbrooke's portfolio; there were even rumblings that he'd be declared persona non grata before visiting the country.)

The simple fact of the matter is that Pakistan is the key to a meaningful solution in Afghanistan, a fact that Hitchens well knows. But he'd rather daydream about the cataclysmic struggle between secular, multicultural good -- India and the West, in this instance -- and backwards, monotheistic evil -- here as Pakistan and the Taliban, obviously -- than deal with the real, tangible security threat as it presently exists. I'm a little put off by Hitchens seeming enthusiasm for the day when the with-us-or-against-us lines are drawn rather more boldly. It reminds me a bit of Reuel Marc Gerecht's pathetic justification for continued U.S. involvement in Afghanistan: because -- according to him -- if we leave, there will be a civil war, and we'll be forced to side with non-Pashtun Afghans (from afar) against the Pashtuns, and thus (obviously!) against the Pakistanis. Which would be bad because then the Pakistanis would stop helping us against al-Qaeda and other transnational terrorists. Of course, in order to follow this logical chain, you have to forget that Gerecht and Hitchens basically insist that Pakistan has nothing to offer us, anyway.

The absurdity of this position is summed up in Hitchens' closing:

But if the United States was to upgrade and cement an economic, military, and political alliance with the emerging giant in New Delhi, we could guarantee without any boasting that our presence in the area was enduring and unbudgeable. It would also be based more on mutual friendship and common values and less on the humiliating practice of bribery and cajolery. And the Pakistani elite would have to decide which was its true enemy: the Taliban/al-Qaida alliance or the Indo-American one.

Well, you're right about that. And how do you think that one is going to turn out for us? All of which is why it's difficult for me to conclude that Hitchens isn't just itching for the fight.

Let's make Pakistan pick sides! Who cares which one they take; at least if it's not us, we can fight 'em!

The soundtrack to the descent into chaos?

To complement Londonstani's excellent reporting over at Abu Muqawama on what's happening the other side of the Durand Line, this New York Times video feature on how Pakistani pop stars and the educated youth regard the TTP and the West is worth 9 minutes of your time.

Money line at about 3:40:

You talk to a musician over here and you ask him what's the problem, he won't come out with the most fantastic insightful answer for you. He'll come out with the most rhetorical, most cliched crap.

If only that was limited to Pakistani pop stars. Or musicians.

Brave new world, same as the meek old world

Two news stories posted without comment.

Amos Harel, "Most advanced, expensive fighter jet headed to Israel," Ha'aretz.

The largest defense deal in Israeli history, for the purchase of the F-35 stealth fighter aircraft, is advancing, slowly but surely.

The rounds of talks among the defense establishment, the Pentagon and manufacturer Lockheed-Martin have significantly narrowed the gaps between the parties.

The United States is scheduled to respond next week to Israel's express request for 25 of the jets.

Jerusalem is to reach a final decision by early 2010, and there's a good chance a deal will be signed by the middle of the year.

Assuming Lockheed maintains its original production timetable the first fighters will be delivered in 2014.

Two years later, Israel will have its first operational squadron of F-35s, consisting of 25 fighter aircraft representing the cutting edge of U.S. technology (Israel's too, it is hoped), capable of any mission.

Farhan Bokhari, "Pakistan in Chinese fighter jet deal," Financial Times.

China has agreed to sell Pakistan at least 36 advanced fighter jets in a landmark deal worth as much as $1.4 billion, according to Pakistani and western officials.

Beijing will supply two squadrons of the J-10 fighter jet in a preliminary agreement that could lead to more sales to Pakistan in the future, said a Pakistani official.

The official said Pakistan might buy “larger numbers” of the multi-role aircraft in the future, but dismissed reports that Pakistan had inked a deal to buy as many as 150 of the fighter jets.