By Greg C. Reeson

If you read the reports in the mainstream media over the weekend, you’d swear that the recent announcement concerning the departure of 12,000 American military troops from Iraq was some bold new step toward the implementation of President Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw U.S. forces from that country.

Greg Miller and Usama Redha, writing in The Los Angeles Times, reported March 9 that “The U.S. will reduce its military presence in Iraq by 12,000 troops over the next six months as part of the first major drawdown since President Obama announced his plan to end combat operations [emphasis mine] in the country next year….” Similarly, The Washington Post announced that the move marked “the first step in the Obama administration’s plan [emphasis mine] to pull U.S. combat forces out of the country by August 2010.”

One should note, however, that the 12,000 forces referenced in the announcement and in the news reports were already scheduled to leave Iraq as part of the normal troop rotation. What’s notable is not that they are departing Iraq, but that they are able to do so without being replaced by another American military unit. Buried in the Los Angeles Times story is a short blurb that tells readers “…the drawdown reflects growing confidence in the security gains in Iraq over the last two years.” In other words, the success of President Bush’s surge of American forces to Baghdad and al Anbar Province, combined with other factors such as the Anbar Awakening and Moqtada al-Sadr’s stand down, set the conditions for the withdrawal of additional American military forces from Iraq. I say “additional” because this is not the first time the U.S. military has withdrawn troops from Iraq. In fact, over the past five and a half years, troop levels have regularly risen and fallen in response to changing security conditions.

The senior U.S. military general in Iraq, General Ray Odierno, is quoted as saying, “The time and conditions are right for coalition forces to reduce the number of troops in Iraq,” and that January elections “demonstrated the increased capability of the Iraqi army and police to provide security.” The growing technical and tactical competency of Iraqi forces, coupled with violence levels that are at their lowest since mid-2003, will allow the United States to reduce its troop presence to just under 130,000 by the end of this year.

In the end, not much regarding Iraq has really changed—except, of course, the guy sitting in the Oval Office. Iraq is still a dangerous place, the gains made over the past two years are still reversible, and security conditions are still dictating the number of U.S. troops on the ground.

By Greg C. Reeson

In an interview with the Washington Post published February 28, Israeli Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu offers some insight into his strategy for Israel’s future relations with the Palestinians. Netanyahu, when asked by interviewer Lally Weymouth about his belief in a two-state solution, gave this revealing answer: “Substantively, I think there is broad agreement inside Israel and outside that the Palestinians should have the ability to govern their lives but not to threaten ours.”

The phrase “ability to govern their lives” is critical here. The way ahead seems clear: Netanyahu probably plans to maintain the current rift between the Palestinians living in Hamas-controlled Gaza and those living in the Fatah-controlled West Bank. Keeping the Palestinians divided, in other words merely maintaining the status quo, allows for Palestinian self-governance in both Gaza and the West Bank, prevents the unity necessary for a Palestinian state, and weakens the ability of both Hamas and Fatah to threaten Israel.

Netanyahu also makes it clear that he intends to work to strengthen Fatah at the expense of Hamas. A proponent of toppling the Hamas government, Netanyahu can be expected to direct economic aid and support to the West Bank and Fatah while allowing only necessary humanitarian assistance to reach Gaza. This course of action makes perfect sense as long as Hamas, a terrorist organization that refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist, remains a viable political force.

What does Israel stand to gain through negotiations with Hamas? Will Hamas stop the rocket fire directed at Israeli civilians? It’s doubtful. The recent Israeli offensive into Gaza inflicted heavy losses on Hamas members, but the rockets continue to strike Israel, despite a supposed “cease fire.” What will it take for the Palestinians in Gaza to realize that their quality of life could be immeasurably improved if they ceased their support for the terrorists in Hamas?

Netanyahu is considered by many to be a hard-liner. Perhaps Tzipi Livni would have taken a different approach if she had been selected to form a new Israeli government. She is, after all, considered much more of a moderate, open to stronger diplomatic efforts aimed at securing peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But she wasn’t selected. Israel left Gaza after being told by Hamas that an end to the occupation would mean an end to Palestinian attacks against Israel. Hamas continues to hold Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and the targeting of Israeli civilians continues almost daily. No one should be surprised if Israel has decided it is done with Hamas for a while. Maybe the Palestinians in Gaza will see the benefits of Israeli efforts in the West Bank and rethink their position.

By Greg C. Reeson

The United States and its allies are in danger of losing the war in Afghanistan. A resurgent Taliban is in control of large parts of the country, the central government in Kabul is corrupt and incapable of exerting its authority beyond the capital, a flourishing drug trade is financing criminals, war lords, and terrorists, violence is spiraling out of control, and members of the U.S.-led coalition are growing weary of a stability operation-turned-full-fledged war that is eroding public opinion among the populations of Afghanistan, Europe, and the United States.

In the U.S., President Barack Obama has ordered a comprehensive strategic review of the American effort in Afghanistan, and has announced his intention to increase the number of American military forces in the country by as many as 30,000. That would bring the total U.S. commitment to about 65,000, around double the total provided by all other nations contributing assets to the fight against Taliban and al Qaeda militants. As the United States seeks a new way forward in Afghanistan, it should seriously consider leaving behind old alliances that are proving to be more of a hindrance than a help in prosecuting the Global War on Terrorism. A good place to start is with NATO.

NATO was originally formed to defend Western Europe from the threat posed by an expansionist Soviet Union. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of America’s rival superpower left the alliance without a common enemy, and in search of a new reason for its existence. That reason appeared to be made clear when al Qaeda terrorists struck the United States in New York and Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001. NATO rallied to America’s side and immediately invoked the collective defense article of its charter, affirming its founding principle that an attack against one member state was an attack against all member states. NATO’s initial display of unified determination to confront radical Islamism, however, quickly gave way to a half-hearted effort in Afghanistan that has been held back by limited troop contributions and national caveats on the employment of those troops that ultimately has limited the ability of coalition commanders in the field to effectively fight the war.

Right now the United States has more than 30,000 troops committed to Afghanistan, while the next largest troop contributor, Great Britain, has less than 9,000. Other major allies, including Germany, France, Canada, The Netherlands, Australia and Italy, are contributing even less. President Obama promised during his campaign that he would ask the United States’ NATO allies to increase their force contributions in Afghanistan, but their response thus far has been nothing short of disheartening. Great Britain announced plans to send 300 more soldiers, and Italy intends to send 800 more. France has said a small, non-combat element may be sent, and Australia, a non-NATO ally with roughly 1,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, is taking the allocation of additional troops under consideration. Germany immediately rejected the idea of sending more forces, a move quickly followed by Spain, and both The Netherlands and Canada are planning on withdrawing their contingents in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

NATO’s Western European members are in a difficult situation. Lacking domestic support for continuing operations in Afghanistan, but understanding their commitments to the alliance, many member states have imposed national caveats on their forces that severely restrict their usefulness to commanders on the ground. Some are restricted to their bases in support roles, while others are only permitted to engage in reconstruction and humanitarian operations. Some can only operate during daylight, and others are only able to fire their weapons in self defense (ruling out their use for offensive operations). The end result is that very few nations, the United States, Great Britain, and Canada, are bearing the brunt of the fighting, and the dying, in operations targeting the Taliban and al Qaeda.

NATO is not likely to get its act together in time to save Afghanistan, and a failed Afghan state is just not a realistic option. Losing in Afghanistan would not just open the door to terrorists seeking a safe haven from which to operate. It would pave the way for the failure of Pakistan, a nuclear-armed nation of nearly 200 million that is barely hanging on against Islamic radicals threatening it not only from Afghanistan, but from within its own borders as well.

The United States is running out of options, and the time has come to consider abandoning an ineffective NATO in favor of coalitions of like-minded nations that possess both the will and the ability to succeed. Some of those nations will be NATO member states; others will not. There is no escaping the reality that NATO has fallen victim to the same national divisions that have rendered the United Nations impotent. It is a basic truth of international relations that alliances come and go, but national interests are enduring. Given what is at stake in Afghanistan, for the region and for the world, the United States must acknowledge that the current NATO effort is not working. Doing so will allow Washington to finally craft a strategy for succeeding where America and its allies have thus far failed.

The Death of a Terrorist and the Prospects for Reprisal

Private geopolitical intelligence company STRATFOR published this analysis February 11, one day before the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah. It is reprinted here with permission from STRATFOR.  

By Fred Burton and Scott Stewart

Feb. 12 will mark the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Imad Mughniyah, one of Hezbollah’s top military commanders. The anniversary certainly will be met with rejoicing in Tel Aviv and Washington — in addition to all the Israelis he killed, Mughniyah also had a significant amount of American blood on his hands. But the date will be met with anger and renewed cries for revenge from Hezbollah’s militants, many of whom were recruited, trained or inspired by Mughniyah.

Because of Hezbollah’s history of conducting retaliatory attacks after the assassination of its leaders, and the frequent and very vocal calls for retribution for the Mughniyah assassination, many observers (including Stratfor) have been waiting for Hezbollah to exact its revenge. While the attack has not yet happened, threats continue. For example, in a Jan. 29 news conference, Hezbollah General Secretary Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah left no doubt about the group’s intention. “The Israelis live in fear of our revenge,” he said. “The decision to respond to the killing is still on. We decide the time and the place.”

Initially, given the force of the anger and outcry over the assassination, we anticipated that the strike would come soon after the 30-day mourning period for Mughniyah had passed. Clearly, that did not happen. Now a year has passed since the killing, but the anger and outcry have not died down. Indeed, as reflected by Nasrallah’s recent statement, the leadership of Hezbollah remains under a considerable amount of internal pressure to retaliate. Because any retaliation would likely be tempered by concerns over provoking a full-on Israeli attack against Hezbollah infrastructure (similar to the attack in the summer of 2006), any Hezbollah strike would be conducted in a manner that could provide some degree of plausible deniability.

It is important to remember that Hezbollah retains a considerable capacity to conduct terrorist attacks abroad should it choose to do so. In fact, we believe that, due to its high degree of training, vast experience and close ties to the Iranian government, Hezbollah retains a more proficient and dangerous terrorism capability than al Qaeda.

Repeated calls for revenge and Hezbollah’s capabilities have combined to ensure that the Israeli government maintains a high state of awareness. Even though a year has passed, Israelis, too, are waiting for the other shoe to drop. On Feb. 1, Elkana Harnof of the Counterterrorism Bureau in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office told The Jerusalem Post that, “Based on our information, we believe the organization is planning one large revenge attack close to the anniversary of [Mughniyah’s] death.” Harnof added, “All we can say publicly is that [Hezbollah] has gone to enormous effort to prepare various kinds of terror attacks, and the big one is likely going to take place soon.” Like Stratfor, the Israelis also believe that the attack will be directed against Israeli or Jewish targets outside of Israel.

Busy Bodies

There are a number of indications that Hezbollah has not been idle in the year since Mughniyah’s death. First, there has been a good deal of preoperational activity by Hezbollah militants in several countries, including the United States. This activity has included surveillance and other intelligence-gathering for targeting purposes. At one point last fall, the activity was so intense inside the United States that law enforcement officials believed a strike was imminent — but it never came. Additionally, there are credible reports that Hezbollah plots to strike Israeli targets in Azerbaijan and the Netherlands have been thwarted. (Although, from information we have received, it does not appear that either of these plots was at an advanced stage of the attack cycle.)

We have no reason to doubt the reports of Hezbollah preoperational activity. It is simply what they do and what they are. Even though the group has not conducted a successful attack overseas since 1994, it does maintain a robust network of operatives who stay busily engaged in operational activities. While many of these operatives are involved primarily in financial and logistical activities, we believe it is worth noting that Hezbollah has never conducted or attempted an attack in a country where it did not have such a support network in place. They use these networks to assist their militant activities in a number of ways, but perhaps the most significant way is in the conduct of preoperational surveillance.

Hezbollah, a creature of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, also has a long history of receiving aid from Iranian embassies in its overseas operations, including its terrorist strikes. Almost inevitably, Hezbollah’s overseas attack plans are found to have murky links of some sort to the Iranian embassy in the country where the attack was to occur, and to the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security or Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers stationed there.

Hezbollah utilizes an “off the shelf” method of planning its terrorist attacks. This is very similar to the way major national military commands operate, where they make contingency war plans against potential adversaries in advance and then work to keep those plans updated. This style of sophisticated, advance planning provides Hezbollah’s senior decision makers with a wide array of tactical options, and allows them to assess a number of attack plans in various parts of the world and quickly select and update a particular attack plan when they make the decision to launch it. When they do decide to pull the trigger, they can strike hard and fast.

This type of planning requires a great deal of intelligence-gathering, not only to produce the initial plans but also to keep them updated. Because it requires a lot of collection activity, this effort likely accounts for much of the operational activity that has been observed over the past year in the United States and elsewhere. These ongoing surveillance operations are not just useful for planning purposes, but they are also good for sowing confusion, creating distractions and causing complacency. If Hezbollah operatives have been seen periodically conducting surveillance around a facility and no attack has followed that activity, over time it becomes very easy for security personnel to write off all such activity as harmless — even when it might not be this time.

Not Crying Wolf

There are some who argue that the lack of an attack by Hezbollah since the Mughniyah assassination, combined with the fact that the group has not used its terrorist capability to conduct an attack for many years, signifies that Hezbollah has abandoned its terrorist ways and instead focused on developing its conventional warfare capability.

We do not buy this argument. First, it ignores the existence and purpose of Hezbollah’s Unit 1800, which, among other things, recruits Palestinians for anti-Israeli terror operations inside Israel and the occupied territories. Second, if Hezbollah had abandoned its terrorist arm, there would be no need for the preoperational planning activity noted previously, and in our opinion, reports of such surveillance activity are too frequent and too widespread to be discounted as false sightings. Granted, such activities do cause jitters and have some effectiveness as a psychological warfare tool, but we do not believe that those limited benefits justify the time and effort being put into Hezbollah’s intelligence-collection program. There is also that pesky problem of explaining the thwarted attack plots in Azerbaijan and the Netherlands. Because of this, we do not believe that the U.S. and Israeli governments (among others) are crying wolf when they provide warnings of pending Hezbollah attacks.

We continue to believe that if there is an attack by Hezbollah, it will likely come in a country where there is an existing Hezbollah support apparatus and an Iranian embassy. (Although, in a confined geographic area, operations could be supported in a third country that lacked one or both of those elements.) We also believe that such an attack is more likely in a country where there is ready access to weapons or explosives, and where there are poor law enforcement and intelligence capabilities. We wrote an analysis discussing this in some detail during the 2006 conflict between Israel and Hezbollah. In that piece, we provided a matrix of the places we believed were most likely to be the site of a Hezbollah attack against Israeli targets, and one of the important criteria we considered was the presence of both an Iranian embassy and a local Hezbollah support network. When we discuss these two elements, it is important to note that in past attacks, the attackers were brought in from the outside in order to provide plausible deniability — but they did receive important support and guidance from the network and embassy.

Since we wrote that analysis in July 2006, there has been a significant increase in Iranian influence in parts of Latin America, including Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, and Hezbollah has not been far behind. In addition to claims by the U.S. Treasury Department that Venezuelan nationals and organizations are supporting Hezbollah financially, there have been persistent rumors of Hezbollah militants and IRGC officers conducting training at camps in the Venezuelan jungles.

These reports are especially noteworthy when combined with a recent rise in anti-Semitism in Venezuela and an outright hostility toward Jews demonstrated by pro-Chavez militia groups. A pro-Chavez militia is believed to have been involved in the vandalism of the main synagogue in Caracas on the night of Jan. 30-31, 2008. We are among many who don’t buy the government’s official explanation that the vandalism was motivated by robbery. To us, the fact that the intruders remained in the building for several hours, made the effort to scrawl anti-Israeli graffiti inside the building and stole databases containing personal information on congregational members seems very unusual for a simple burglary. Our suspicion is magnified by the extensive anti-Semitic statements made on the Web sites of some of the pro-Chavez militia l eaders. All of this raises serious concerns that the Venezuelan government could turn a blind eye to Hezbollah efforts to conduct an attack on Israeli or Jewish interests in that country.

There are many who believe that the anti-Semitic attitudes of the Argentine government in the early 1990s helped embolden Mughniyah and his followers to attack Israeli and Jewish targets there. The anti-Semitic environment in Venezuela today is even more overt and hostile than it was in Argentina.

In keeping with Hezbollah’s history, if an attack is launched, we anticipate that it will have to be fairly spectacular, given the fact that Mughniyah was very important to Hezbollah and its Iranian sponsors — although the attack must not be so spectacular as to cause a full-on Israeli attack in Lebanon. Hezbollah can weather a few airstrikes, but it does not want to provoke an extended conflict — especially as Hezbollah’s political leadership is extremely focused on doing well in the upcoming elections in Lebanon.

Given Hezbollah’s proclivity toward using a hidden hand, we suspect the attack will be conducted by a stealthy and ambiguous cell or cells that will likely have no direct connection to the organization. For example, in July 1994, the group used Palestinian operatives to conduct attacks against the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish nongovernmental organization office in London. Also, as we have seen in prior attacks, if a hardened target such as an Israeli embassy or VIP is not vulnerable, a secondary soft target might be selected. The July 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in Buenos Aires is a prime example of this type of attack. It should serve as a warning to Jewish community centers and other non-Israeli government targets everywhere that even non-Israeli Jewish targets are considered fair game.

A recent analysis published by the private geopolitical firm STRATFOR made some interesting observations concerning the relative continuity between the foreign policy approaches of former President George W. Bush and current President Barack Obama.

Noting Vice President Joe Biden’s speech at the Munich Security Conference, Dr. George Friedman writes, “Most conference attendees were looking forward to a dramatic shift in U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration. What was interesting about Biden’s speech was how little change there has been in the U.S. position and how much the attendees and the media were cheered by it.”  

Friedman then begins to argue his point by focusing on Iran. President Obama has said repeatedly that he would hold direct talks with Iran, but only if Iran stopped its pursuit of nuclear weapons and stopped its state support for terrorism. The similarity with Bush resides in the fact that the former president also said he would be willing to engage Iran, as long as the same demands made now by Obama were met. Iran has repeatedly said that it is not seeking a nuclear weapons capability, and that talks must occur before there can be any give-and-take. As Friedman notes, “Apart from the emphasis on a willingness to talk, the terms Biden laid out for such talks are identical to the terms under the Bush administration.”  

Moving on to Russia, Friedman notes that Obama has not ruled the expansion of NATO, long a source of tension between Russia and the United States, and has not agreed to stop Bush’s plan to deploy ballistic missile defense assets to Central Europe. Friedman concludes, “In short, the American position on Russia hasn’t changed, and neither has the Russian position. The similarities between Bush and Obama on Russian policy, though, go beyond the two aspects mentioned by Friedman. Obama recognizes, as did Bush, that Russia is attempting to reassert itself as a global player. High oil prices funded a Russian resurgence into the Caucasus, and Russia is once again extending its influence into Central Asia and Latin America. Obama realizes, as did Bush, that Russia must be watched carefully, and held in check when and where possible.

In addressing the United States’ relationship with Europe, Friedman seizes upon Biden’s call for more NATO help in Afghanistan. One of Obama’s signature campaign pledges was a promise to work with our European allies to get more NATO troops involved in the fight against al Qaeda and Taliban remnants. However, the new President is meeting some of the same resistance encountered by his predecessor, with Germany already saying more troops are not on the table at this time, Canada proceeding with plans to withdraw its forces in 2011, the Netherlands preparing to do the same by the end of 2009, and France entertaining the idea of more forces, but not in combat roles. Given the United States’ continued commitment to combat operations in Afghanistan (including an Iraq-style “surge”), and NATO’s internal disagreement over involvement in Afghanistan, Friedman says, “… it is unclear whether NATO can continue to function.” Indeed, not only is NATO  failing the test in Afghanistan, President Obama is finding out that the differences between the United States and Europe run far deeper than who is sitting in the Oval Office.

Friedman and STRATFOR seem struck by the continuity from Bush to Obama, saying “…Biden offered no new initiatives beyond expressing a willingness to talk, without indicating any policy shifts regarding the things that have blocked talks. Willingness to talk with the Iranians, the Russians, the Europeans and others shifts the atmospherics — allowing the listener to think things have changed — but does not address the question of what is to be discussed and what is to be offered and accepted.” I, for one, am not surprised at what is happening. In fact, foreign policy seldom changes radically from one president to the next, and the continuation of at least some, if not many, Bush policies was often hinted at by candidate Obama.

Friedman captures an essential driver of U.S. foreign policy when he says, “Ultimately, the issues dividing the world are not…subject to personalities, nor does goodwill (or bad will, for that matter) address the fundamental questions. Iran has strategic and ideological reasons for behaving the way it does. So does Russia. So does Germany, and so on. The tensions that exist between those countries and the United States might be mildly exacerbated by personalities, but nations are driven by interest, not personality.”

Campaign rhetoric aside, the realities of the Presidency have dictated to Mr. Obama the need to continue some of the very policies he previously assailed. This is not a bad thing. The President’s decisions to continue renditions, to allow the operation of short-term overseas CIA detention facilities, and to abandon a firm commitment to a 16-month withdrawal from Iraq, just to add a few more to the policies already listed, indicate that he is cognizant of the complexities of the international environment and that he is aware that, in the end, U.S. national interests, and not the interests of a particular subset of American society,  are the ultimate drivers of our foreign policy.

This analysis was published by STRATFOR February 5. It is reprinted here with permission, with some key points bolded and with my personal comments in brackets and italic type.

U.S. President Barack Obama signed an executive order Feb. 1 approving the continued use of renditions by the CIA. The order seems to go against Obama’s campaign promises to improve the image of the United States abroad, as renditions under the Bush administration had drawn criticism worldwide, especially from members of the European Union. The executive order does not necessarily mean that renditions and other tactics for dealing with terrorist suspects will proceed unchanged, however.

Obama came into office promising changes in the way the United States combats terrorism. One of these changes was a new emphasis on legal processes and a shift away from controversial methods of treating terrorist suspects, like rendition, harsh interrogation techniques and secret prisons. The Obama administration can and will roll back some of these tactics, as demonstrated by the president’s Jan. 22 order to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. But some will continue. [President Obama has reserved for his administration the right to use “additional” interrogation techniques beyond those stipulated in his executive order (per the Army Field Manual) if the techniques outlined prove insufficient. He has also permitted the CIA to continue operating short-term detention facilities overseas, and has approved the continued use of renditions, as noted above].

Renditions and the Legal Process

Renditions are a powerful tool for counterterrorism operations. They involve agents moving into a foreign country to execute a warrant. Once the fugitive is located, agents track, seize and transport him out of the country for interrogations, or to stand trial, as in the cases of Lebanese hijacker Fawaz Younis, CIA shooter Mir Amal Kanzi, 1993 World Trade Center bombers Abdel Basit (aka Ramzi Yousef) and Mahmud Abouhalima, and even Ilich Ramirez Sanchez (aka Carlos the Jackal).

Some of the individuals targeted for renditions have warrants out for their arrest, but are taking refuge in countries that either lack the law enforcement capability to capture them or cannot arrest and extradite them for political reasons. By contrast, the renditions where there is no indictment or warrant and where the suspect is transported to a secret prison for interrogation and detention without a public trial are far more controversial. Renditions of either kind virtually always occur with the knowledge of the host country, and usually with the host government’s express consent. (Few countries wish to shelter suspected terrorist masterminds.)

Renditions thus involve legal questions as much as they do diplomatic questions. Before renditions can be carried out, the Washington bureaucracy kicks into full swing. The U.S. State Department must consider the diplomatic ramifications. The ambassador in the host country must consider his or her position and judge the response of his or her contacts in the host country government. The U.S. Justice Department must also sign on. Finally, the agency in charge of actually nabbing the suspect must be willing to work within any restrictions imposed by any one of the many individuals who must approve the operation.

Even when the government ultimately deems a rendition operation legal, numerous factors can still stymie the effort (not least of which is that by the time all the necessary approvals have been obtained, the window of opportunity to nab the suspect might have closed). So while Obama’s executive order in theory permits renditions, it is only one part of the whole process; the appropriate members of Obama’s administration must also be on board. [It would appear, initially at least, that Leon Panetta, nominated to head the CIA, is on board with the use of renditions].

Many members of the Obama administration also served in the Clinton administration, which was widely seen as considering all legal ramifications of potential renditions before taking any action. As a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, new Attorney General Eric Holder enjoyed a reputation for deliberating on renditions to the point of inaction — effectively vetoing such operations.

While an appearance of greater attention to the law might come as a relief to many, actors in the field do not have the luxury of endless deliberation and total consensus — they have a narrow window of opportunity in which to act on perishable intelligence. Assuming that Obama’s administration acts with deliberation and pursues consensus building (as he himself has emphasized, and has demonstrated in the bipartisan nature of his Cabinet selections), the legality of renditions might become moot if they are not agreed upon in a timely manner. There is a fine line to walk between efficiency and legality in this field, with extremes on either side being detrimental to national security.

By their very nature, renditions are ad hoc and rarely fit into a nice, clean process, something that explains their controversial nature. They frequently occur in countries allied to the United States, meaning the practice falls outside the scope of war. And renditions resulting in suspects’ standing trial are far less controversial than those involving secret prisons, harsh interrogation tactics and reliance on third countries to carry out interrogations — tactics disfavored by the Obama administration.

Alternatives to Rendition

Apprehending suspects in foreign countries does not always involve controversial tactics. U.S. counterterrorism officials also use tactics abroad that are not forbidden under U.S. law, though they might be illegal if used within the United States (and could well be illegal in the country where U.S. agents employ them). In general, such tactics remain constant as administrations change. These tactics include surveillance of foreign targets, ruse operations and economic incentives and punishments to encourage cooperation in counterterrorism efforts.

Ruse operations, a less controversial way to apprehend fugitives than renditions, involve deception, obviating the need to jump through the bureaucratic hoops required for renditions. Ruse operations involve luring suspects to a location where U.S. agents can apprehend them legally. This involves persuading targets to venture into international waters, for example, or even to travel to the United States, where U.S. agents lie in wait.

While such tactics avoid the legal complexities surrounding renditions, they are extremely difficult to carry out. Suspects worth chasing around the world typically are not overly gullible, and know where it is safe to travel. So while there is no reason to believe that ruse operations will cease anytime soon, successful ones are few and far between.

Sometimes killing a terrorist target is both more efficient and less legally complex than renditions or ruse operations. [I would add that it is sometimes the preferred option]. Tactical strikes, such as the unmanned aerial vehicle-launched missile strikes against suspected al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, both remove a suspected terrorist target and avoid drawn-out legal processes. Like its predecessor, the Obama administration apparently sees striking at al Qaeda targets along the Pakistani-Afghan border as acceptable within the scope of the ongoing war in Afghanistan, despite Pakistani protests. The latest such U.S. strike came Jan. 23, just three days after Obama took office. Given the administration’s presumed hesitation based on legal reservations and an unwillingness to expand warfare beyond the Afghan theater, this tactic is unlikely to pop up in other areas of the world without a serious threat escalation.

Secret Prisons and Interrogation Issues

Obama on Jan. 22 also ordered the CIA to close its secret prisons around the world that hold detainees without adhering to U.S. legal standards. Because fewer than 100 detainees were held in these prisons, however, this is a minor point. [As already noted, however, he did caveat the order for short-term overseas detention centers].  

A different executive order also issued Jan. 22 applied the interrogation guidelines outlined in the U.S. military field handbook and the Geneva Conventions to the CIA. Obama and Holder also have made it clear that the new administration views waterboarding as torture and thus illegal, settling the debate on the matter.

Still, it is only a matter of time before new techniques used by interrogators in the field will face questions of legality and morality. No national leader can micromanage at the field level. Even though the Justice Department and senior White House officials in the Bush administration signed secret findings authorizing the CIA to conduct waterboarding in specific cases, tactical, field-level topics do not stick around at the level of national policy for very long.

With secret prisons on the way out, more restrictions on how agents act in the field and an expected decline in renditions, a greater U.S. reliance on third countries to carry out rendition operations is possible. [Outsourcing]. During the Clinton and Bush administrations, countries like Egypt and Jordan were known to cooperate with U.S. agencies in detaining and interrogating prisoners.

Critics claimed that relying on third countries exploited a loophole that allowed the United States to see that unsavory acts were committed without directly carrying them out. Obama’s emphasis on using diplomacy to improve the U.S. image in the world suggests that his administration will turn to other countries for counterterrorism assistance instead of operating unilaterally. Obama already has asked for other countries to help out more in Afghanistan (specifically European countries). Obama might also tap third countries like Portugal, Switzerland or Germany to take in detainees leaving Guantanamo who are not sent back to home countries like Yemen and Saudi Arabia after the facility’s closure. Working with these countries to ensure safe delivery of the detainees out of U.S. custody will remove a lightning rod for criticism of the United States in the Muslim world.

Delegating counterterrorism responsibilities to other countries allows the United States to avoid the legal complexities inherent in renditions, secret prisons and harsh interrogation. But ultimately, increased reliance on other countries with different interests can enhance the overall complexity of missions. [There is also the danger of degrading our capabilities because we are relying on less capable countries to execute specific tasks, a point STRATFOR gets to in the next sentence]. It is also important to remember that the United States possesses one of the most capable counterterrorism forces in the world, and that other countries simply cannot carry out the same missions that the United States does. This is not to say that pursuing U.S. interests abroad does not call for diplomacy (which is one of the administration’s main tools to fight terror), but that seeking international approval and establishing legal cover does reduce efficiency and restrain U.S. capabilities. Finding the balance between fighting terror efficiently and remaining within legal boundaries will be a key challenge for the Obama administration.

"The severe strain of waging two wars in faraway countries has been aggravated by undermanning and equipment shortages. More serious still is a new mood of self-doubt. The invasion of Iraq was controversial and its occupation inglorious; the campaign in Afghanistan is going badly. British commanders have belatedly realised that they have much to learn, or rather relearn, about fighting small wars in distant lands. 'We have lost our way,' says one general."

The Brits, among the staunchest of America's allies, left a lot to be desired in Basra. Restrictive rules of engagement and a premature withdrawal to an encampment outside the city allowed domination of the critical Iraqi town by militias and criminal gangs. In Afghanistan, British forces have been criticized for a lackluster performance by their American counterparts.

"Generals worry that the United States is losing confidence in Britain's military worth."

I think a loss of confidence extends beyond the British military. National caveats imposed by European governments have caused many in the American military establishment to question the worth of virtually every U.S. ally in NATO. The loss of confidence on the part of Americans is not unique to British troops.

This quote is particularly biting: "...a popular quip among Americans in Afghanistan is that ISAF, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan which prominently includes the British forces, really stands for 'I Saw Americans Fight'. After the death of 320 British soldiers in America's 'war on terror', such jokes are especially wounding."

Part of the problem is funding, which affects not only manpower levels, but training resources and equipment quality and quantity. According to the Economist, the UK spends just over 2 1/2 percent of GDP on defense. And while that figure is more than other European countries like France and Germany allocate for military expenditures, it is also less than the United States' roughly 4 percent.

The article concludes that Britain desperately needs to review its defense policy, and in doing so needs to answer two questions: "Should the British continue to aspire to a global military role? And what sort of wars is the future likely to bring?"

I think the answers are yes, and long, drawn out insurgent wars of attrition. I also think the mindset in Britain is one of wanting to maintain a premier global status. As one general was quoted in the article, "We have to prove to the Americans and the other allies that we are still a capable nation militarily. The army may like the homecoming parades, but it has no desire to stay at home for good."

 http://www.economist.com/world/britain/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=13022177

This analysis by Dr. George Friedman, founder of the private intelligence company STRATFOR, essentially argues that the United States does not need to maintain a robust military presence in Afghanistan, and that despite an initial surge of troops under President Obama, withdrawal will ultimately be the best option. The analysis is reprinted here with permission from STRATFOR.

By Dr. George Friedman

Washington’s attention is now zeroing in on Afghanistan. There is talk of doubling U.S. forces there, and preparations are being made for another supply line into Afghanistan — this one running through the former Soviet Union — as an alternative or a supplement to the current Pakistani route. To free up more resources for Afghanistan, the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq probably will be accelerated. And there is discussion about whether the Karzai government serves the purposes of the war in Afghanistan. In short, U.S. President Barack Obama’s campaign promise to focus on Afghanistan seems to be taking shape.

We have discussed many aspects of the Afghan war in the past; it is now time to focus on the central issue. What are the strategic goals of the United States in Afghanistan? What resources will be devoted to this mission? What are the intentions and capabilities of the Taliban and others fighting the United States and its NATO allies? Most important, what is the relationship between the war against the Taliban and the war against al Qaeda? If the United States encounters difficulties in the war against the Taliban, will it still be able to contain not only al Qaeda but other terrorist groups? Does the United States need to succeed against the Taliban to be successful against transnational Islamist terrorists? And assuming that U.S. forces are built up in Afghanistan and that the supply problem through Pakistan is solved, are the defeat of Taliban and the disruption of al Qaeda likely?

Al Qaeda and U.S. Goals Post-9/11

The overarching goal of the United States since Sept. 11, 2001, has been to prevent further attacks by al Qaeda in the United States. Washington has used two means toward this end. One was defensive, aimed at increasing the difficulty of al Qaeda operatives to penetrate and operate within the United States. The second was to attack and destroy al Qaeda prime, the group around Osama bin Laden that organized and executed 9/11 and other attacks in Europe. It is this group — not other groups that call themselves al Qaeda but only are able to operate in the countries where they were formed — that was the target of the United States, because this was the group that had demonstrated the ability t o launch intercontinental strikes.

Al Qaeda prime had its main headquarters in Afghanistan. It was not an Afghan group, but one drawn from multiple Islamic countries. It was in alliance with an Afghan group, the Taliban. The Taliban had won a civil war in Afghanistan, creating a coalition of support among tribes that had given the group control, direct or indirect, over most of the country. It is important to remember that al Qaeda was separate from the Taliban; the former was a multinational force, while the Taliban were an internal Afghan political power.

The United States has two strategic goals in Afghanistan. The first is to destroy the remnants of al Qaeda prime — the central command of al Qaeda — in Afghanistan. The second is to use Afghanistan as a base for destroying al Qaeda in Pakistan and to prevent the return of al Qaeda to Afghanistan.

To achieve these goals, Washington has sought to make Afghanistan inhospitable to al Qaeda. The United States forced the Taliban from Afghanistan’s main cities and into the countryside, and established a new, anti-Taliban government in Kabul under President Hamid Karzai. Washington intended to deny al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan by unseating the Taliban government, creating a new pro-American government and then using Afghanistan as a base against al Qaeda in Pakistan.

The United States succeeded in forcing the Taliban from power in the sense that in giving up the cities, the Taliban lost formal control of the country. To be more precise, early in the U.S. attack in 2001, the Taliban realized that the massed defense of Afghan cities was impossible in the face of American air power. The ability of U.S. B-52s to devastate any concentration of forces meant that the Taliban could not defend the cities, but had to withdraw, disperse and reform its units for combat on more favorable terms.

At this point, we must separate the fates of al Qaeda and the Taliban. During the Taliban retreat, al Qaeda had to retreat as well. Since the United States lacked sufficient force to destroy al Qaeda at Tora Bora, al Qaeda was able to retreat into northwestern Pakistan. There, it enjoys the advantages of terrain, superior tactical intelligence and support networks.

Even so, in nearly eight years of war, U.S. intelligence and special operations forces have maintained pressure on al Qaeda in Pakistan. The United States has imposed attrition on al Qaeda, disrupting its command, control and communications and isolating it. In the process, the United States used one of al Qaeda’s operational principles against it. To avoid penetration by hostile intelligence services, al Qaeda has not recruited new cadres for its primary unit. This makes it very difficult to develop intelligence on al Qaeda, but it also makes it impossible for al Qaeda to replace its losses. Thus, in a long war of attrition, every loss imposed on al Qaeda has been irreplaceable, and over time, al Qaeda prime declined dramatically in effectiveness — meaning it has been years since it has carried out an effective operation.

The situation was very different with the Taliban. The Taliban, it is essential to recall, won the Afghan civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal despite Russian and Iranian support for its opponents. That means the Taliban have a great deal of support and a strong infrastructure, and, above all, they are resilient. After the group withdrew from Afghanistan’s cities and lost formal power post-9/11, it still retained a great deal of informal influence — if not control — over large regions of Afghanistan and in areas across the border in Pakistan. Over the years since the U.S. invasion, the Taliban have regrouped, rearmed and increased their operations in Afghanistan. And the conflict with the Taliban has now become a conventional guerrilla war.

The Taliban and the Guerrilla Warfare Challenge

The Taliban have forged relationships among many Afghan (and Pakistani) tribes. These tribes have been alienated by Karzai and the Americans, and far more important, they do not perceive the Americans and Karzai as potential winners in the Afghan conflict. They recall the Russian and British defeats. The tribes have long memories, and they know that foreigners don’t stay very long. Betting on the United States and Karzai — when the United States has sent only 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, and is struggling with the idea of sending another 30,000 troops — does not strike them as prudent. The United States is behaving like a power not planning to win; and, in any event, they would not be much impressed if the Americans were planning to win.

The tribes therefore do not want to get on the wrong side of the Taliban. That means they aid and shelter Taliban forces, and provide them intelligence on enemy movement and intentions. With its base camps and supply lines running from Pakistan, the Taliban are thus in a position to recruit, train and arm an increasingly large force.

The Taliban have the classic advantage of guerrillas operating in known terrain with a network of supporters: superior intelligence. They know where the Americans are, what the Americans are doing and when the Americans are going to strike. The Taliban declines combat on unfavorable terms and strikes when the Americans are weakest. The Americans, on the other hand, have the classic problem of counterinsurgency: They enjoy superior force and firepower, and can defeat anyone they can locate and pin down, but they lack intelligence. As much as technical intelligence from unmanned aerial vehicles and satellites is useful, human intelligence is the only effective long-term solution to defeating an insurgency. In this, the Taliban have the advantage: They have been there longer, they are in more places and they are not going anywhere.

There is no conceivable force the United States can deploy to pacify Afghanistan. A possible alternative is moving into Pakistan to cut the supply lines and destroy the Taliban’s base camps. The problem is that if the Americans lack the troops to successfully operate in Afghanistan, it is even less likely they have the troops to operate in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The United States could use the Korean War example, taking responsibility for cutting the Taliban off from supplies and reinforcements from Pakistan, but that assumes that the Afghan government has an effective force motivated to engage and defeat the Taliban. The Afghan government doesn’t.

The obvious American solution — or at least the best available solution — is to retreat to strategic Afghan points and cities and protect the Karzai regime. The problem here is that in Afghanistan, holding the cities doesn’t give the key to the country; rather, holding the countryside gives the key to the cities. Moreover, a purely defensive posture opens the United States up to the Dien Bien Phu/Khe Sanh counterstrategy, in which guerrillas shift to positional warfare, isolate a base and try to overrun in it.

A purely defensive posture could create a stalemate, but nothing more. That stalemate could create the foundations for political negotiations, but if there is no threat to the enemy, the enemy has little reason to negotiate. Therefore, there must be strikes against Taliban concentrations. The problem is that the Taliban know that concentration is suicide, and so they work to deny the Americans valuable targets. The United States can exhaust itself attacking minor targets based on poor intelligence. It won’t get anywhere.

U.S. Strategy in Light of al Qaeda’s Diminution

From the beginning, the Karzai government has failed to take control of the countryside. Therefore, al Qaeda has had the option to redeploy into Afghanistan if it chose. It didn’t because it is risk-averse. That may seem like a strange thing to say about a group that flies planes into buildings, but what it means is that the group’s members are relatively few, so al Qaeda cannot risk operational failures. It thus keeps its powder dry and stays in hiding.

This then frames the U.S. strategic question. The United States has no intrinsic interest in the nature of the Afghan government. The United States is interested in making certain the Taliban do not provide sanctuary to al Qaeda prime. But it is not clear that al Qaeda prime is operational anymore. Some members remain, putting out videos now and then and trying to appear fearsome, but it would seem that U.S. operations have crippled al Qaeda.

So if the primary reason for fighting the Taliban is to keep al Qaeda prime from having a base of operations in Afghanistan, that reason might be moot now as al Qaeda appears to be wrecked. This is not to say that another Islamist terrorist group could not arise and develop the sophisticated methods and training of al Qaeda prime. But such a group could deploy many places, and in any case, obtaining the needed skills in moving money, holding covert meetings and the like is much harder than it looks — and with many intelligence services, including those in the Islamic world, on the lookout for this, recruitment would be hard.

It is therefore no longer clear that resisting the Taliban is essential for blocking al Qaeda: al Qaeda may simply no longer be there. (At this point, the burden of proof is on those who think al Qaeda remains operational.)

Two things emerge from this. First, the search for al Qaeda and other Islamist groups is an intelligence matter best left to the covert capabilities of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations Command. Defeating al Qaeda does not require tens of thousands of troops — it requires excellent intelligence and a special operations capability. That is true whether al Qaeda is in Pakistan or Afghanistan. Intelligence, covert forces and airstrikes are what is needed in this fight, and of the three, intelligence is the key.

Second, the current strategy in Afghanistan cannot secure Afghanistan, nor does it materially contribute to shutting down al Qaeda. Trying to hold some cities and strategic points with the number of troops currently under consideration is not an effective strategy to this end; the United States is already ceding large areas of Afghanistan to the Taliban that could serve as sanctuary for al Qaeda. Protecting the Karzai government and key cities is therefore not significantly contributing to the al Qaeda-suppression strategy.

In sum, the United States does not control enough of Afghanistan to deny al Qaeda sanctuary, can’t control the border with Pakistan and lacks effective intelligence and troops for defeating the Taliban.

Logic argues, therefore, for the creation of a political process for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan coupled with a recommitment to intelligence operations against al Qaeda. Ultimately, the United States must protect itself from radical Islamists, but cannot create a united, pro-American Afghanistan. That would not happen even if the United States sent 500,000 troops there, which it doesn’t have anyway.

A Tale of Two Surges

The U.S. strategy now appears to involve trying a surge, or sending in more troops and negotiating with the Taliban, mirroring the strategy used in Iraq. But the problem with that strategy is that the Taliban don’t seem inclined to make concessions to the United States. The Taliban don’t think the United States can win, and they know the United States won’t stay. The Petraeus strategy is to inflict enough pain on the Taliban to cause them to rethink their position, which worked in Iraq. But it did not work in Vietnam. So long as the Taliban have resources flowing and can survive American attacks, they will calculate that they can outlast the Americans. This has been Afghan strategy for centuries, and it worked against the British and Russians.

If it works against the Americans, too, splitting the al Qaeda strategy from the Taliban strategy will be the inevitable outcome for the United States. In that case, the CIA will become the critical war fighter in the theater, while conventional forces will be withdrawn. It follows that Obama will need to think carefully about his approach to intelligence.

This is not an argument that al Qaeda is no longer a threat, although the threat appears diminished. Nor is it an argument that dealing with terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not a priority. Instead, it is an argument that the defeat of the Taliban under rationally anticipated circumstances is unlikely and that a negotiated settlement in Afghanistan will be much more difficult and unlikely than the settlement was in Iraq — but that even so, a robust effort against Islamist terror groups must continue regardless of the outcome of the war with the Taliban.

Therefore, we expect that the United States will separate the two conflicts in response to these realities. This will mean that containing terrorists will not be dependent on defeating or holding out against the Taliban, holding Afghanistan’s cities, or preserving the Karzai regime. We expect the United States to surge troops into Afghanistan, but in due course, the counterterrorist portion will diverge from the counter-Taliban portion. The counterterrorist portion will be maintained as an intense covert operation, while the overt operation will wind down over time. The Taliban ruling Afghanistan is not a threat to the United States, so long as intense counterterrorist operations continue there.

The cost of failure in Afghanistan is simply too high and the connection to counterterrorist activities too tenuous for the two strategies to be linked. And since the counterterror war is already distinct from conventional operations in much of Afghanistan and Pakistan, our forecast is not really that radical.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama will be sworn in on Tuesday as president of the United States. Candidate Obama said much about what he would do as president; now we will see what President Obama actually does. The most important issue Obama will face will be the economy, something he did not anticipate through most of his campaign. The first hundred days of his presidency thus will revolve around getting a stimulus package passed. But Obama also is now in the great game of global competition — and in that game, presidents rarely get to set the agenda.

The major challenge he faces is not Gaza; the Israeli-Palestinian dispute is not one any U.S. president intervenes in unless he wants to experience pain. As we have explained, that is an intractable conflict to which there is no real solution. Certainly, Obama will fight being drawn into mediating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict during his first hundred days in office. He undoubtedly will send the obligatory Middle East envoy, who will spend time with all the parties, make suitable speeches and extract meaningless concessions from all sides. This envoy will establish some sort of process to which everyone will cynically commit, knowing it will go nowhere. Such a mission is not involvement — it is the alternative to involvement, and the reason presidents appoint Middle East envoys. Obama can avoid the Gaza crisis, and he will do so.

Obama’s Two Unavoidable Crises

The two crises that cannot be avoided are Afghanistan and Russia. First, the situation in Afghanistan is tenuous for a number of reasons, and it is not a crisis that Obama can avoid decisions on. Obama has said publicly that he will decrease his commitments in Iraq and increase them in Afghanistan. He thus will have more troops fighting in Afghanistan. The second crisis emerged from a decision by Russia to cut off natural gas to Ukraine, and the resulting decline in natural gas deliveries to Europe. This one obviously does not affect the United States directly, but even after flows are restored, it affects the Europeans greatly. Obama therefo re comes into office with three interlocking issues: Afghanistan, Russia and Europe. In one sense, this is a single issue — and it is not one that will wait.

Obama clearly intends to follow Gen. David Petraeus’ lead in Afghanistan. The intention is to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan, thereby intensifying pressure on the Taliban and opening the door for negotiations with the militant group or one of its factions. Ultimately, this would see the inclusion of the Taliban or Taliban elements in a coalition government. Petraeus pursued this strategy in Iraq with Sunni insurgents, and it is the likely strategy in Afghanistan.

But the situation in Afghanistan has been complicated by the situation in Pakistan. Roughly three-quarters of U.S. and NATO supplies bound for Afghanistan are delivered to the Pakistani port of Karachi and trucked over the border to Afghanistan. Most fuel used by Western forces in Afghanistan is refined in Pakistan and delivered via the same route. There are two crossing points, one near Afghanistan’s Kandahar province at Chaman, Pakistan, and the other through the Khyber Pass. The Taliban have attacked Western supply depots and convoys, and Pakistan itself closed the routes for several days, citing government operations a gainst radical Islamist forces.

Meanwhile, the situation in Pakistan has been complicated by tensions with India. The Indians have said that the individuals who carried out the Nov. 26 Mumbai attack were Pakistanis supported by elements in the Pakistani government. After Mumbai, India made demands of the Pakistanis. While the situation appears to have calmed, the future of Indo-Pakistani relations remains far from clear; anything from a change of policy in New Delhi to new terrorist attacks could see the situation escalate. The Pakistanis have made it clear that a heightened threat from India requires them to shift troops away from the Afghan border and toward the east; a small number of troops already has been shifted.

Apart from the direct impact this kind of Pakistani troop withdrawal would have on cross-border operations by the Taliban, such a move also would dramatically increase the vulnerability of NATO supply lines through Pakistan. Some supplies could be shipped in by aircraft, but the vast bulk of supplies — petroleum, ammunition, etc. — must come in via surface transit, either by truck, rail or ship. Western operations in Afghanistan simply cannot be supplied from the air alone. A cutoff of the supply lines across Pakistan would thus leave U.S. troops in Afghanistan in crisis. Because Washington can’t predict or control the future actions of Pakistan, of India or of terrorists, the United States must find an alternative to the routes through Pakistan.

When we look at a map, the two routes through Pakistan from Karachi are clearly the most logical to use. If those were closed — or even meaningfully degraded — the only other viable routes would be through the former Soviet Union.

One route, along which a light load of fuel is currently transported, crosses the Caspian Sea. Fuel refined in Armenia is ferried across the Caspian to Turkmenistan (where a small amount of fuel is also refined), then shipped across Turkmenistan directly to Afghanistan and through a small spit of land in Uzbekistan. This route could be expanded to reach either the Black Sea through Georgia or the Mediterranean through Georgia and Turkey (though the additional use of Turkey would require a rail gauge switch). It is also not clear that transports native to the Caspian have sufficient capacity for this.

Another route sidesteps the issues of both transport across the Caspian and the sensitivity of Georgia by crossing Russian territory above the Caspian. Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan (and likely at least a small corner of Turkmenistan) would connect the route to Afghanistan. There are options of connecting to the Black Sea or transiting to Europe through either Ukraine or Belarus.

Iran could provide a potential alternative, but relations between Tehran and Washington would have to improve dramatically before such discussions could even begin — and time is short.

Many of the details still need to be worked out. But they are largely variations on the two main themes of either crossing the Caspian or transiting Russian territory above it.

Though the first route is already partially established for fuel, it is not clear how much additional capacity exists. To complicate matters further, Turkmen acquiescence is unlikely without Russian authorization, and Armenia remains strongly loyal to Moscow as well. While the current Georgian government might leap at the chance, the issue is obviously an extremely sensitive one for Moscow. (And with Russian forces positioned in Azerbaijan and the Georgian breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Moscow has troops looming over both sides of the vulnerable route across Georgia.) The second option would require crossing Russian territory itself, with a number of options — from connecting to the Black Sea to transiting either Ukraine or Belarus to Europe, or connecting to the Baltic states.

Both routes involve countries of importance to Russia where Moscow has influence, regardless of whether those countries are friendly to it. This would give Russia ample opportunity to scuttle any such supply line at multiple points for reasons wholly unrelated to Afghanistan.

If the West were to opt for the first route, the Russians almost certainly would pressure Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan not to cooperate, and Turkey would find itself in a position it doesn’t want to be in — namely, caught between the United States and Russia. The diplomatic complexities of developing these routes not only involve the individual countries included, they also inevitably lead to the question of U.S.-Russian relations.

Even without crossing Russia, both of these two main options require Russian cooperation. The United States must develop the option of an alternative supply route to Pakistan, and in doing so, it must define its relationship with Russia. Seeking to work without Russian approval of a route crossing its “near abroad” will represent a challenge to Russia. But getting Russian approval will require a U.S. accommodation with the country.

The Russian Natural Gas Connection

One of Obama’s core arguments against the Bush administration was that it acted unilaterally rather than with allies. Specifically, Obama meant that the Bush administration alienated the Europeans, therefore failing to build a sustainable coalition for the war. By this logic, it follows that one of Obama’s first steps should be to reach out to Europe to help influence or pressure the Russians, given that NATO has troops in Afghanistan and Obama has said he intends to ask the Europeans for more help there.

The problem with this is that the Europeans are passing through a serious crisis with Russia, and that Germany in particular is involved in trying to manage that crisis. This problem relates to natural gas. Ukraine is dependent on Russia for about two-thirds of the natural gas it uses. The Russians traditionally have provided natural gas at a deep discount to former Soviet republics, primarily those countries Russia sees as allies, such as Belarus or Armenia. Ukraine had received discounted natural gas, too, until the 2004 Orange Revolution, when a pro-Western government came to power in Kiev. At that point, the Russians began demanding full payment. Given the subsequent rises in global energy prices, that left Ukraine in a terrible situation — which of course is exactly where Moscow wanted it.

The Russians cut off natural gas to Ukraine for a short period in January 2006, and for three weeks in 2009. Apart from leaving Ukraine desperate, the cutoff immediately affected the rest of Europe, because the natural gas that goes to Europe flows through Ukraine. This put the rest of Europe in a dangerous position, particularly in the face of bitterly cold weather in 2008-2009.

The Russians achieved several goals with this. First, they pressured Ukraine directly. Second, they forced many European states to deal with Moscow directly rather than through the European Union. Third, they created a situation in which European countries had to choose between supporting Ukraine and heating their own homes. And last, they drew Berlin in particular — since Germany is the most dependent of the major European states on Russian natural gas — into the position of working with the Russians to get Ukraine to agree to their terms. (Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited Germany last week to discuss this directly with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.)

The Germans already have made clear their opposition to expanding NATO to Ukraine and Georgia. Given their dependency on the Russians, the Germans are not going to be supporting the United States if Washington decides to challenge Russia over the supply route issue. In fact, the Germans — and many of the Europeans — are in no position to challenge Russia on anything, least of all on Afghanistan. Overall, the Europeans see themselves as having limited interests in the Afghan war, and many already are planning to reduce or withdraw troops for budgetary reasons.

It is therefore very difficult to see Obama recruiting the Europeans in any useful manner for a confrontation with Russia over access for American supplies to Afghanistan. Yet this is an issue he will have to address immediately.

The Price of Russian Cooperation

The Russians are prepared to help the Americans, however — and it is clear what they will want in return.

At minimum, Moscow will want a declaration that Washington will not press for the expansion of NATO to Georgia or Ukraine, or for the deployment of military forces in non-NATO states on the Russian periphery — specifically, Ukraine and Georgia. At this point, such a declaration would be symbolic, since Germany and other European countries would block expansion anyway.

The Russians might also demand some sort of guarantee that NATO and the United States not place any large military formations or build any major military facilities in the former Soviet republics (now NATO member states) of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. (A small rotating squadron of NATO fighters already patrols the skies over the Baltic states.) Given that there were intense anti-government riots in Latvia and Lithuania last week, the stability of these countries is in question. The Russians would certainly want to topple the pro-Western Baltic governments. And anything approaching a formal agreement between Russia and the United States on the matter could quickly destabilize the Baltics, in addition to very much weakening the NATO alliance.

Another demand the Russians probably will make — because they have in the past — is that the United States guarantee eventual withdrawal from any bases in Central Asia in return for Russian support for using those bases for the current Afghan campaign. (At present, the United States runs air logistics operations out of Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan.) The Russians do not want to see Central Asia become a U.S. sphere of influence as the result of an American military presence.

Other demands might relate to the proposed U.S. ballistic missile defense installations in the Czech Republic and Poland.

We expect the Russians to make variations on all these demands in exchange for cooperation in creating a supply line to Afghanistan. Simply put, the Russians will demand that the United States acknowledge a Russian sphere of influence in the former Soviet Union. The Americans will not want to concede this — or at least will want to make it implicit rather than explicit. But the Russians will want this explicit, because an explicit guarantee will create a crisis of confidence over U.S. guarantees in the countries that emerged from the Soviet Union, serving as a lever to draw these countries into the Russian orbit. U.S. acquiescence on the point potentially would have ripple effects in the rest of Europe, too.

Therefore, regardless of the global financial crisis, Obama has an immediate problem on his hands in Afghanistan. He has troops fighting there, and they must be supplied. The Pakistani supply line is no longer a sure thing. The only other options either directly challenge Russia (and ineffectively at that) or require Russian help. Russia’s price will be high, particularly because Washington’s European allies will not back a challenge to Russia in Georgia, and all options require Russian cooperation anyway. Obama’s plan to recruit the Europeans on behalf of American initiatives won’t work in this case. Obama does not want to start his administration with making a massive concession to Russia, but he cannot afford to leave U.S. forces in Afghanistan without supplies. He can hope that nothing happens in Pakistan, but that is up to the Taliban and other Islamist groups more than anyone else — and betting on their goodwill is not a good idea.

Whatever Obama is planning to do, he will have to deal with this problem fast, before Afghanistan becomes a crisis. And there are no good solutions. But unlike with the Israelis and Palestinians, Obama can’t solve this by sending a special envoy who appears to be doing something. He will have to make a very tough decision. Between the economy and this crisis, we will find out what kind of president Obama is.

Obama is quoted as saying, “My preference obviously would be to capture or kill him. But if we have so tightened the noose that he’s in a cave somewhere and can’t even communicate with his operatives then we will meet our goal of protecting America.”

Isn’t that essentially what we’ve done with bin Laden? Sure, we get an occasional audiotape broadcast by al-Jazeera, but what has bin Laden done since U.S. forces entered Afghanistan in late 2001? There is no evidence to support the notion that bin Laden is in command and control of anything anymore. All indications are that he and deputy al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri are indeed spending their days hiding from U.S. forces while desperately trying to maintain some semblance of relevance in the world of global jihadists.

The Times notes that less than a month before the presidential election, Obama stated: “We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaeda. That has to be our biggest priority.” Now the goal seems to be protecting America from another attack. Is it just me, or is Mr. Obama sounding an awful lot like Mr. Bush on the topic of Osama bin Laden?

I remember scores of conversations with Obama supporters who argued passionately that we had to get bin Laden. Kill him or capture him, they told me, and it will deal a blow to al-Qaeda. Mr. Obama echoed these sentiments during his frequent attacks on President Bush for the failure to capture or kill bin Laden. Now, it seems, getting the world’s most wanted terrorist is not such a big deal anymore.

Campaign rhetoric aside, the truth of the matter is that Osama bin Laden as an individual doesn’t matter. Americans would feel some sense of satisfaction with his capture or demise, but in terms of the larger global fight against Islamic extremism, it would mean little. Al-Qaeda as it existed on 9/11 is no more. Bin Laden’s global terrorist organization has become a diffuse movement of local and regional cells that pursue objectives of their own choosing, while sharing a broader ideology with bin Laden and Zawahiri. Sometimes the link between al-Qaeda affiliated groups and bin Laden’s al-Qaeda is no more than the sharing of a name.

“I think that we have to so weaken [bin Laden’s] infrastructure that, whether he is technically alive or not, he is so pinned down that he cannot function,” Mr. Obama said. I would say President Bush has already accomplished that goal.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article5520116.ece

By Greg C. Reeson

When Israel agreed to the cease-fire agreement that ended the Second Lebanon War in 2006, it suffered a strategic defeat that the Israeli government now has a chance to correct. The ongoing operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip offer an opportunity not only to restore the pre-2006 balance of power in the immediate region, but also to establish conditions conducive to a lasting Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

At the outset of the 2006 summer war with Hezbollah, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert laid out specific conditions that would have to be met before Israel would agree to end the fighting. Those non-negotiable conditions included the release of two Israeli soldiers captured by Hezbollah, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, and the elimination of Hezbollah’s capability for launching rockets into Israel. Olmert promised that all-out war on Hezbollah would continue until Israel’s demands were met. Not only were the conditions not satisfied at the time of the cease-fire agreement, but Hezbollah survived the war with an intact command structure and a still very lethal ability to strike Israel at will. Hezbollah fought the IDF to a stalemate on the battlefield, shattering the myth of Israeli invincibility that had permeated Arab societies for decades and emboldening other terrorist groups such as Hamas that were hell bent on the destruction of the Jewish State.

The reasons for Israel’s failure in 2006 have been widely debated since the conflict ended. But whether it was tougher-than-expected resistance, an aversion to large numbers of Israeli casualties, a weak government struggling to find its way after losing Ariel Sharon to a massive stroke, or an inadequate war plan that relied too heavily on air power is, in the end, irrelevant. When all was said and done, Israel, which had fought to a draw on the ground, had been defeated in a strategic sense: for the first time Israel had not defeated an Arab opponent, and the Arab world took notice. The current fight with Hamas in Gaza can change the geopolitical reality that has existed in the Middle East for the past two years.

When Israel pulled its troops and settlements out of Gaza in 2005, it did so after years of being advised that the occupation was the reason for the violence. End the occupation, the assertion went, and the violence against Israel would stop. Except it didn’t. Over the past three years, Gaza has become nothing short of a safe haven for terrorists eager to attack Israel. In 2006, Hamas operatives entered Israel and kidnapped an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, who continues to be held somewhere in the Gaza Strip. Since the withdrawal, rockets have continued to pummel Israeli cities and it has become increasingly clear that the idea of trading land for peace has failed.

After being struck by hundreds of Hamas rockets fired from Gaza in just the past year, it appears that the Israeli government has finally decided that it has had enough. Defense Minister Ehud Barak has promised, as Prime Minister Olmert did two and a half years ago in the conflict with Hezbollah, an all-out war designed to eradicate the threat from Hamas militants. Air and naval strikes have inflicted serious losses on Hamas, and Israeli troops and tanks are massing along the border in preparation for a ground operation that, while potentially very costly, is probably necessary if the threat from Hamas is to be truly eliminated.

Now is not the time for weakness or indecisiveness by the Israeli government. There is an opportunity in Gaza to restore the credibility of Israel’s defense forces, shift the balance of power back in Israel’s favor, and pave the way for a lasting agreement with the Palestinians by getting rid of the main obstacle to peace: Hamas. The rejection of a recently proposed 48-hour cease-fire was without a doubt the right decision for Israel and for the region. Hamas will not be persuaded through diplomacy or dialogue to stop its attacks on Israel. But Hamas can be beaten into submission through an unrelenting military campaign designed to protect Israeli citizens and punish terrorists while fostering the conditions for future negotiations with moderate Palestinians willing to accept Israel’s existence.

Operation Cast Lead should be carried out fully and decisively, without hesitation and without reservation. Hamas could and would claim as a victory any premature cessation of hostilities that left intact the group’s ability to strike Israel with rockets or other means. Will Israel take advantage of this moment to do what it could not or would not do in the 2006 war with Hezbollah? Time will tell. But this is clearly an opportunity for fundamental change that should not be squandered.

This is a fascinating analysis published by Strategic Forecasting founder Dr. George Friedman. In this piece, Friedman uses the Watergate break-in to talk about the use of the press for political purposes. This is worth the time to read it. Reprinted with permission from STRATFOR.

By Dr. George Friedman

Mark Felt died last week at the age of 95. For those who don’t recognize that name, Felt was the “Deep Throat” of Watergate fame. It was Felt who provided Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of The Washington Post with a flow of leaks about what had happened, how it happened and where to look for further corroboration on the break-in, the cover-up, and the financing of wrongdoing in the Nixon administration. Woodward and Bernstein’s exposé of Watergate has been seen as a high point of journalism, and their unwillingness to reveal Felt’s identity until he revealed it himself three years ago has been seen as symbolic of the moral rectitude demanded of journalists.

In reality, the revelation of who Felt was raised serious questions about the accomplishments of Woodward and Bernstein, the actual price we all pay for journalistic ethics, and how for many years we did not know a critical dimension of the Watergate crisis. At a time when newspapers are in financial crisis and journalism is facing serious existential issues, Watergate always has been held up as a symbol of what journalism means for a democracy, revealing truths that others were unwilling to uncover and grapple with. There is truth to this vision of journalism, but there is also a deep ambiguity, all built around Felt’s role. This is therefore not an excursion into ancient history, but a consideration of two things. The first is how journalists become tools of various factions in political disputes. The second is the relationship between security and intelligence organizations and governments in a Democratic society.

Watergate was about the break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington. The break-in was carried out by a group of former CIA operatives controlled by individuals leading back to the White House. It was never proven that then-U.S. President Richard Nixon knew of the break-in, but we find it difficult to imagine that he didn’t. In any case, the issue went beyond the break-in. It went to the cover-up of the break-in and, more importantly, to the uses of money that financed the break-in and other activities. Numerous aides, including the attorney general of the United States, went to prison. Woodward and Bernstein, and their newspaper, The Washington Post, aggressively pursued the story from the summer of 1972 until Nixon’s resignation. The episode has been seen as one of journalism’s finest moments. It may have been, but that cannot be concluded until we consider Deep Throat more carefully.

Deep Throat Reconsidered

Mark Felt was deputy associate director of the FBI (No. 3 in bureau hierarchy) in May 1972, when longtime FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover died. Upon Hoover’s death, Felt was second to Clyde Tolson, the longtime deputy and close friend to Hoover who by then was in failing health himself. Days after Hoover’s death, Tolson left the bureau.

Felt expected to be named Hoover’s successor, but Nixon passed him over, appointing L. Patrick Gray instead. In selecting Gray, Nixon was reaching outside the FBI for the first time in the 48 years since Hoover had taken over. But while Gray was formally acting director, the Senate never confirmed him, and as an outsider, he never really took effective control of the FBI. In a practical sense, Felt was in operational control of the FBI from the break-in at the Watergate in August 1972 until June 1973.

Nixon’s motives in appointing Gray certainly involved increasing his control of the FBI, but several presidents before him had wanted this, too, including John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Both of these presidents wanted Hoover gone for the same reason they were afraid to remove him: He knew too much. In Washington, as in every capital, knowing the weaknesses of powerful people is itself power — and Hoover made it a point to know the weaknesses of everyone. He also made it a point to be useful to the powerful, increasing his overall value and his knowledge of the vulnerabilities of the powerful.

Hoover’s death achieved what Kennedy and Johnson couldn’t do. Nixon had no intention of allowing the FBI to continue as a self-enclosed organization outside the control of the presidency and everyone else. Thus, the idea that Mark Felt, a man completely loyal to Hoover and his legacy, would be selected to succeed Hoover is in retrospect the most unlikely outcome imaginable.

Felt saw Gray’s selection as an unwelcome politicization of the FBI (by placing it under direct presidential control), an assault on the traditions created by Hoover and an insult to his memory, and a massive personal disappointment. Felt was thus a disgruntled employee at the highest level. He was also a senior official in an organization that traditionally had protected its interests in predictable ways. (By then formally the No. 2 figure in FBI, Felt effectively controlled the agency given Gray’s inexperience and outsider status.) The FBI identified its enemies, then used its vast knowledge of its enemies’ wrongdoings in press leaks designed to be as devastating as possible. While carefully hiding the source of the information, it then watched the victim — who was usually guilty as sin — crumble. Felt, who himself was later convicted and pardoned for illegal wiretaps and break-ins, was not nearly as appalled by Nixon’s crimes as by Nixon’s decision to pass him over as head of the FBI. He merely set Hoover’s playbook in motion.

Woodward and Bernstein were on the city desk of The Washington Post at the time. They were young (29 and 28), inexperienced and hungry. We do not know why Felt decided to use them as his conduit for leaks, but we would guess he sought these three characteristics — as well as a newspaper with sufficient gravitas to gain notice. Felt obviously knew the two had been assigned to a local burglary, and he decided to leak what he knew to lead them where he wanted them to go. He used his knowledge to guide, and therefore control, their investigation.

Systematic Spying on the President

And now we come to the major point. For Felt to have been able to guide and control the young reporters’ investigation, he needed to know a great deal of what the White House had done, going back quite far. He could not possibly have known all this simply through his personal investigations. His knowledge covered too many people, too many operations, and too much money in too many places simply to have been the product of one of his side hobbies. The only way Felt could have the knowledge he did was if the FBI had been systematically spying on the White House, on the Committee to Re-elect the President and on all of the other elements involved in Watergate. Felt was not simply feeding information to Woodward and Bernstein; he was using the intelligence product emanating from a section of the FBI to shape The Washington Post’s coverage.

Instead of passing what he knew to professional prosecutors at the Justice Department — or if he did not trust them, to the House Judiciary Committee charged with investigating presidential wrongdoing — Felt chose to leak the information to The Washington Post. He bet, or knew, that Post editor Ben Bradlee would allow Woodward and Bernstein to play the role Felt had selected for them. Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee all knew who Deep Throat was. They worked with the operational head of the FBI to destroy Nixon, and then protected Felt and the FBI until Felt came forward.

In our view, Nixon was as guilty as sin of more things than were ever proven. Nevertheless, there is another side to this story. The FBI was carrying out espionage against the president of the United States, not for any later prosecution of Nixon for a specific crime (the spying had to have been going on well before the break-in), but to increase the FBI’s control over Nixon. Woodward, Bernstein and above all, Bradlee, knew what was going on. Woodward and Bernstein might have been young and naive, but Bradlee was an old Washington hand who knew exactly who Felt was, knew the FBI playbook and understood that Felt could not have played the role he did without a focused FBI operation against the president. Bradlee knew perfectly well that Woodward and Bernstein were not breaking the story, but were having it spoon-fed to them by a master. He knew that the president of the United States, guilty or not, was being destroyed by Hoover’s jilted heir.

This was enormously important news. The Washington Post decided not to report it. The story of Deep Throat was well-known, but what lurked behind the identity of Deep Throat was not. This was not a lone whistle-blower being protected by a courageous news organization; rather, it was a news organization being used by the FBI against the president, and a news organization that knew perfectly well that it was being used against the president. Protecting Deep Throat concealed not only an individual, but also the story of the FBI’s role in destroying Nixon.

Again, Nixon’s guilt is not in question. And the argument can be made that given John Mitchell’s control of the Justice Department, Felt thought that going through channels was impossible (although the FBI was more intimidating to Mitchell than the other way around). But the fact remains that Deep Throat was the heir apparent to Hoover — a man not averse to breaking the law in covert operations — and Deep Throat clearly was drawing on broader resources in the FBI, resources that had to have been in place before Hoover’s death and continued operating afterward.

Burying a Story to Get a Story

Until Felt came forward in 2005, not only were these things unknown, but The Washington Post was protecting them. Admittedly, the Post was in a difficult position. Without Felt’s help, it would not have gotten the story. But the terms Felt set required that a huge piece of the story not be told. The Washington Post created a morality play about an out-of-control government brought to heel by two young, enterprising journalists and a courageous newspaper. That simply wasn’t what happened. Instead, it was about the FBI using The Washington Post to leak information to destroy the president, and The Washington Post willingly serving as the conduit for that information while withholding an essential dimension of the story by concealing Deep Throat’s identity.

Journalists have celebrated the Post’s role in bringing down the president for a generation. Even after the revelation of Deep Throat’s identity in 2005, there was no serious soul-searching on the omission from the historical record. Without understanding the role played by Felt and the FBI in bringing Nixon down, Watergate cannot be understood completely. Woodward, Bernstein and Bradlee were willingly used by Felt to destroy Nixon. The three acknowledged a secret source, but they did not reveal that the secret source was in operational control of the FBI. They did not reveal that the FBI was passing on the fruits of surveillance of the White House. They did not reveal the genesis of the fall of Nixon. They accepted the accolades while withholding an extraordinarily important fact, elevating their own role in the episode while distorting the actual dynamic of Nixon’s fall.

Absent any widespread reconsideration of the Post’s actions during Watergate in the three years since Felt’s identity became known, the press in Washington continues to serve as a conduit for leaks of secret information. They publish this information while protecting the leakers, and therefore the leakers’ motives. Rather than being a venue for the neutral reporting of events, journalism thus becomes the arena in which political power plays are executed. What appears to be enterprising journalism is in fact a symbiotic relationship between journalists and government factions. It may be the best path journalists have for acquiring secrets, but it creates a very partial record of events — especially since the origin of a leak frequently is much more important to the public than the leak itself.

The Felt experience is part of an ongoing story in which journalists’ guarantees of anonymity to sources allow leakers to control the news process. Protecting Deep Throat’s identity kept us from understanding the full dynamic of Watergate. We did not know that Deep Throat was running the FBI, we did not know the FBI was conducting surveillance on the White House, and we did not know that the Watergate scandal emerged not by dint of enterprising journalism, but because Felt had selected Woodward and Bernstein as his vehicle to bring Nixon down. And we did not know that the editor of The Washington Post allowed this to happen. We had a profoundly defective picture of the situation, as defective as the idea that Bob Woodward looks like Robert Redford.

Finding the truth of events containing secrets is always difficult, as we know all too well. There is no simple solution to this quandary. In intelligence, we dream of the well-placed source who will reveal important things to us. But we also are aware that the information provided is only the beginning of the story. The rest of the story involves the source’s motivation, and frequently that motivation is more important than the information provided. Understanding a source’s motivation is essential both to good intelligence and to journalism. In this case, keeping secret the source kept an entire — and critical — dimension of Watergate hidden for a generation. Whatever crimes Nixon committed, the FBI had spied on the president and leaked what it knew to The Washington Post in order to destroy him. The editor of The Washington Post knew that, as did Woodward and Bernstein. We do not begrudge them their prizes and accolades, but it would have been useful to know who handed them the story. In many ways, that story is as interesting as the one about all the president’s men.

By Greg C. Reeson

With security gains made over the past 18 months holding and slow-but-steady political accommodation taking root in Baghdad, it appears the United States is growing closer to the end of its active combat role in Iraq. President-elect Barack Obama, who has consistently expressed his opposition to the Iraq War and his desire to end it, has promised to refocus America’s attention on Afghanistan, a conflict he likes to refer to as the “right” war.

In Afghanistan, Obama is inheriting a war that we are, by every measure available, losing. Violence has been increasing at alarming rates since 2004, with nearly 300 U.S. and NATO fatalities this year alone. Significant portions of the country are under insurgent control, and a complex, evolving enemy is becoming more effective and more deadly. And it’s not just the enemy in Afghanistan that’s the problem. A lack of Afghan confidence in a weak and corrupt Karzai government, a flourishing drug trade that finances insurgent attacks, safe havens across the border in Pakistan that facilitate enemy operations, and an inadequate international commitment that has provided too few troops and too little economic assistance likely mean that the situation in Afghanistan will continue to deteriorate over the next few years.

Everyone is frustrated. The Afghan people are discouraged by the lack of progress that has been made over the past seven years. Our NATO allies are struggling to maintain domestic support for a peacekeeping and reconstruction operation that has evolved into a full-blown war. The Pakistanis are increasingly upset over violations of their sovereignty and the destabilizing effect on Pakistan of U.S. actions in Afghanistan. And the United States is finding it more and more difficult to muster the resources required to take on a growing share of the Afghanistan burden. Obama has vowed to take a new approach. Here is what we can expect.

The centerpiece of Obama’s plan is an infusion of additional U.S. forces in Afghanistan coupled with a request to NATO members for an increase in their military commitments. Commanders on the ground have asked for up to 25,000 more troops to supplement the approximately 60,000 coalition forces currently in Afghanistan, as well as additional helicopters, engineers, intelligence and reconnaissance assets, and military police forces. Obama has vowed to send 7,000 to 8,000 U.S. troops, while Canada has reiterated its commitment to withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan by 2011. Germany offered President Bush about 1,000 more soldiers, although national caveats on their use severely restrict their usefulness in fighting insurgent forces. Great Britain has said additional troop requests will be given a “hard look,” and the rest of NATO has remained largely silent on the issue.

It is unclear where the forces necessary to meet the requests of coalition commanders will come from. There simply are not enough assets available. Despite the recent progress in Iraq, American troops will be tied up there for the foreseeable future. It will take considerable time to draw down our forces in Iraq responsibly and in a manner that preserves recent progress, and those forces that are withdrawn will need time to rest and reconstitute before being sent back into battle. In addition, Obama has promised to leave a “residual force” of unspecified size in Iraq to train domestic security forces, target al Qaeda, and protect U.S. personnel. Some analysts have estimated that this force could number anywhere from 30,000 to 75,000, depending on the amount of support required by the Iraqi government. Any residual force in Iraq reduces the amount of resources available for deployment to Afghanistan.

Other parts of Obama’s plan include a new effort to find Osama bin Laden, talks with the Taliban, and more support to the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Getting bin Laden would provide some satisfaction that justice had finally been served for the 9/11 attacks, but would mean little to the larger struggle. Bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, have essentially been marginalized. They command and control little to nothing and likely spend the majority of their time avoiding capture or death at the hands of U.S. forces. Negotiating with the Taliban might yield some results, but any benefits we realize are likely to be limited. The Taliban are not the only enemy in Afghanistan. Coalition forces also face drug traffickers, warlords, remnants of al Qaeda, and various criminal elements spread throughout the country. Some of these groups may be willing to strike a deal, while others will not. There will be no clear-cut diplomatic solution to the insurgency in Afghanistan.

Here it is useful to recall for a moment that the goal of our action in Afghanistan was to eliminate a base of operations for terrorists with global reach. We have done that, and now is the time to consolidate our gains and cut our losses. We will not transform Afghanistan into a functioning democracy, and we will not, in all likelihood, be able to establish a strong central government in Kabul or elsewhere that is capable of exercising control over the entire Afghan nation. The terrain, culture, tradition, and ethnic differences in Afghanistan are all working against us.

A continued focus on a Western defeat of insurgent forces is going to result in a bloody stalemate that will endure for years to come. Additional U.S. or NATO forces will undoubtedly produce some short-term security gains. But Afghanistan is not Iraq, and a “surge” of combat power will not produce the results seen in Baghdad and Anbar Province. The operating environment in Afghanistan is just too different. In the end, all the enemy has to do to win in Afghanistan is survive. If we fight a war of attrition, we lose. The New York Times recently quoted Ali Jalali, a former interior minister in Afghanistan, as saying it would take another 10 years to bring stability to the country. It is doubtful that America, or NATO, is prepared for another decade of bleeding and dying in a country of little strategic value.

That brings us to support for the governments in Kabul and Islamabad.

In Afghanistan, Obama should work within the traditional tribal power structure to reduce the fighting to a manageable level. It is unlikely that the central government is going survive, at least in the long-term, and a decentralized effort with focused assistance to key Afghan players seems to be the approach with the greatest potential benefit. Shifting the burden of Afghanistan to the Afghan people allows the United States and NATO to refocus their energy on the real threat from South Asia: Pakistan.

Pakistan is the center of gravity in the region, and it is where the President-elect should concentrate his efforts. A weak government, a failing economy, an intelligence service allied with terrorists, and an Islamist insurgency spreading from the tribal areas to the cities all threaten to bring Pakistan down. The chaos resulting from a failed, nuclear-armed Pakistani state would pose a grave danger to the region and to the West.

Obama should undertake efforts to strengthen the government of President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani by working behind the scenes to avoid the “puppet master” label applied to the U.S. when Musharraf was in power. Focused military assistance that improves the counterinsurgency capabilities of the Pakistani Army and targeted economic aid that builds infrastructure and improves the quality of life in the Northwest Frontier Province and Federally Administered Tribal Area will do more to reduce the appeal of radical Islamists than will cross-border raids and air strikes conducted by U.S. forces.

Obama should direct an approach to Pakistan that relies on the soft elements of national power favored by our allies, but backed by the hard elements that will sometimes be necessary to employ to ensure the survival of the Pakistani government, the protection of U.S. personnel, and the safeguarding of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. If our strategic goals in South Asia are stability and preventing the emergence of another terrorist safe haven, then Pakistan must be our target.