Friday, September 18, 2009
Tactical Redeployment
At first glance, giving Joe Biden the Iraq portfolio made good political sense. Long known as a transmitter, not a receiver, Biden’s energies would seem to be well consumed at such a distance. And foreign affairs have long been his personal strong suit.
But the mood in the country has changed since the early summer. President Obama finds himself in need of an attack dog at home, especially one who can speak the language of the suburbs and exurbs. He is making a mistake in taking on so much of the job himself.
It is time to let Biden be Biden.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
The Era of Responsibility
President Barack Obama has just delivered a lofty speech at the United Nations in which he urged the leaders of other countries to join the United States in making a peaceful and more equitable world. He went on to state:
Responsibility and leadership in the 21st century demand more. In an era when our destiny is shared, power is no longer a zero sum game. No one nation can or should try to dominate another nation. No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed. No balance of power among nations will hold.
Hypocrisy, we all know, is the tribute vice pays to virtue. But surely the above denunciation goes just a little too far. Power isn’t a zero sum game only when everyone is on the same side. But that has never been true in the real world. As an ideal aspiration, it’s fine, especially if you’re the leader of the world’s most powerful nation. But why denounce world order? Both Woodrow Wilson and George H.W. Bush recognized that world order, by definition, is based on a hierarchy of interests, norms and institutions. It needn’t be grossly or permanently unfair, but it exists by necessity. Surely Obama knows that. To gloss over it in the name of humanitarianism is irresponsible.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
More Unholy Thoughts on Afghanistan
George Packer’s recent profile of Richard Holbrooke in the New Yorker gives an unsettling impression of a man running fast on a treadmill. For all of his freneticism, it’s not clear what Mr. Holbrooke and his large staff is meant to be doing besides “saving” Afghanistan and pacifying nervous people in Pakistan. If so, he is being badly underutilized.
At the risk of sounding repetitious, Talleyrand is anxious to know when the pieces of the story will begin to fit together. He appreciates Obama’s caution and deliberateness. But things are moving quickly on the ground. Critical fence sitters are choosing sides. Meanwhile he also wonders if the interventionists don’t have the whole story backwards.
Namely, debating how much or how little force and influence it will take to put a good face on the situation is bound to be futile if the whole question is approached solely from the inside out. There will always be too little if one’s standard is a functioning state minus a Taliban presence. Mr. Holbrooke surely knows this and doesn’t need to show the empathetic flag in any more tiny villages to make the contrary but implausible point. Nobody believes that Afghanistan’s (or Pakistan’s) problems will be solved with perfectly targeted aid programs. It’s not America’s job to build stable order in this place from the ground up. That is asking for a whole lot of trouble. Dashed expectations are only the beginning.
Heavy hitters like Holbrooke should be used to instill order from the outside in. This means doing what he’s good at: building a coalition; manipulating rivalries; bashing heads when need be; and isolating the holdouts until they agree to play ball by the majority’s rules. So far, Holbrooke appears to be doing all of this in reverse order with little to show for it, unsurprisingly.
To be a bit more specific: the US should use its position on the ground to constitute (or re-constitute) a strong alliance of non-Pushtun forces: Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, Turkmen et al, with a few token Pushtuns thrown in, if possible. If this means getting behind Dr. Abdullah more vociferously for short term tactical reasons, then so be it. Then it could appear to defer more to Pakistan in managing its Pushtun allies in Afghanistan while giving Pakistan a greater incentive to do so seriously. Pakistan should be only too happy to assume the burden. If the beneficiaries are distasteful, so be it: so long as they don’t threaten US interests (and go on to serve them) and help to bring order to the country, then nobody ought to complain. At least nobody who isn’t willing to pay the price in bodies and treasure for the indefinitely long occupation of the country, which is the only alternative to this besides abandonment.
For the US to play referee among Pushtun contenders while at the same time putting fires out all over the place seems to be the wrong role. This squanders, dissipates and demeans American leverage. It’s time to think wholesale, not retail in Afghanistan.
It has been suggested that Obama got his appointments backwards: the big bully Holbrooke should have been unleashed on Bibi Netanyahu et al while the patient and diplomatic George Mitchell should have been sent to make nice in Pushtunistan. This is not necessarily so. But Holbrooke needs to change the rules of the game in his assigned bailiwick. His bosses need to give him the authority to do so. Or else Packer’s implied prediction -- with constant reference to Vietnam -- will likely come true: Holbrooke’s long career will end the same way it began.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Hedging Afghan Bets
Today’s New York Times article about David Petraeus makes an indirect but obvious point about perceptions: nobody should doubt that the military is obeying orders when it comes to Afghanistan. If General McChrystal continues to appear publicly at odds with others in the administration, it’s only because his commander-in-chief wants to keep several balls in the air. If not, Obama really would have sent him to Coventry in Copenhagen (although the photos of the two shaking hands really were badly reminiscent of Truman at Guam when General MacArthur thrust out his hand rather than saluted, as he most certainly should have done.) The relative silence and/or equivocations of nearly everybody else on the subject—not only Petraeus but also Clinton, Panetta, Gates… suggest that the president himself is still very much on the fence, or is buying time for something better. He is not the only cynical one in the room.
Saturday, October 17, 2009
The Purdy Moment
What ever happened to the moral & literary wunderkind, Jedediah Purdy? Some will remember his bestseller For Common Things and its brief status as the cri de coeur of his generation. The book appeared in 1999 – a fitting call to arms against the mindset of a most superficial decade.
Purdy’s moment prefigured the mood of the country a few years later, which culminated in Obama’s election. How short lived it was. The president now seems more & more detached from the people He still may achieve much. But the moment—that brief, euphoric surge of national unison—is gone. Barring another, even worse, crisis, it is unlikely to return.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Turning the Tables
Talleyrand has been thinking about American politics. Much has been made of Barack Obama’s unusual ways. He is a most counterintuitive president. His party controls both houses of Congress and he won the election with a clear mandate, yet he is so cautious and conciliatory, almost to the point of perceived weakness. His supporters grow impatient, almost nagging. His opponents are perplexed. Some on both sides have begun to see him as a cunning sphinx. Yet he hardly seems irrational or devious. There is a logic to his ways, or at least there seems to be, somewhere, yet to be discovered.
We must remember that Obama's greatest gift: to be so different yet at once so appealing. Some part of him does understand the so-called Average American. Every now and then (his timing is unusually good), he knows how and where to push the right button. Talleyrand’s hunch is that he will take some hits in the mid-term elections a year from now and then, in the exactly opposite way of Clinton and most presidents, will move back to the Left and appear ever more bold—or at least his rhetoric will. It has been his trademark to buck the received political wisdom, and it has served him well. So, loyal followers take comfort. Your leader will return to you in good time.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Momentum in Iran
The latest uprisings in Iran present familiar sights. The country is moving ever further down the path of revolution, albeit slowly, just as it all happened in 1979. There will be a tipping point of some kind, though nobody of course can predict the form it will take. But it will happen, if it hasn’t already, and it will spread. There can be no doubt.
The question to be asked is, are we prepared for the aftermath? Who among Iran’s friends and enemies have planned accordingly? What kinds of surprises are in store?
Friday, November 13, 2009
183 Days
A defense planner in Beijing observes Barack Obama’s journey this week starting in Japan with some anxiety. Obama and his Japanese hosts go through the motions of “reassurance” and productive partnership. China needs this more than anyone. The Americans want China’s reassurance on economic, especially monetary, policy. But the real reassurance is the one China needs from the U.S. vis à vis Japan. For if the United States ever has an “East of Suez” moment—that is, like the British loss of will and resources to sustain its commitments in Asia—it will be the moment that Japan becomes a “normal” world power in name as well as deed. In other words, a nuclear weapons state with a “normal” nuclear defense posture. How long would it take to be operational? Said one Japanese official, after insisting the notion was pure fantasy: “183 days.”
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Dubai Wave
We’re told now that hedge fund managers are shorting countries the way they used to short companies. If so, then the Dubai debacle will be the first of several in the next few months.
It may be more accurate to say that some countries have begun to resemble hedge funds themselves. Among the better known are Italy, Belgium and, increasingly, the UK, which are incurring massive levels of debt almost as high as their GDP. Yet some countries, in the immortal judgment of Walter Wriston, really are considered too big to fail. Dubai, perhaps not. Discounting the UK would be tantamount to discounting the US. This would not be, to say the least, a very popular move. But the populists are chomping at the bit.
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Working the Afghan Problem
Talleyrand finds little to add to the plethora of Afghanistan-related commentary beyond what he’s already said. However, two points jump out as being unmentioned and worth considering. The first is that the president’s incredibly calculated policy—which bears more resemblance to military science than to political art—relies upon countless assumptions about realities in Afghanistan which are barely noted by anyone outside the region. The second, related, point is that he still (at least in public) seems to be relying almost entirely upon the authorities in Kabul as the primary interlocutor. But his policy will only work if the loyalties, interests and leverage of many more middle- and lower-level Afghan (and other regional) power brokers are bought and kept. The less this is reported upon, the better. But we pray it has begun to happen in earnest.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Tora Bora Redux
Theorists love their strategies and who are we to blame them. After several years of the so-called flypaper strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan we now have the glorified pincer movement. The NATO and Pakistani counterinsurgencies on either side of the Durand Line are being described as a hammer and anvil. Clearly such people have never spent much time in that part of the world nor have the slightest knowledge of the terrain.
Rumors abound that Osama bin Laden and/or a few of his henchmen will be delivered to the Americans just in time to save whatever public support is left for their Afghanistan policy. But what happens to all those who manage to escape the perfect pincer? Already we see them moving south to Baluchistan, and to the north. A widening of the Afghan civil war across the Oxus could be one of the worst imaginable unintended consequences of handing Pashtunistan back over to the Pakistanis, which is more or less inevitable at this point. The reaction among non-Pushtuns in Afghanistan, and their co-ethnics across the border, could be severe, particularly toward one another.
The Tora Bora analogy, then, may be quite relevant after all.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Brazil: Three Cheers for Non-Alignment
“You’re with us or against us” is alive and well, evidently, regarding the United States’ neighbors to the south. Brazil, the biggest of the lot, just seems to grow bigger and bolder. But Brazil has never towed the US line blindly, even when the two were fast friends in a periodic balancing act vis à vis more recalcitrant governments nearby. Its diplomacy—and its professional diplomatic corps—have long been among the world’s most independent and capable.
Brazil’s recent hosting of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is reported to have caused some heartburn up north. But it shouldn’t have been any more vexing than the Brazilians’ own refusal to allow IAEA inspections of its nuclear enrichment sites just a few years ago. In fact, Brazil could serve as a profitable “good cop” or even, in the best Oliver North tradition, as a generous purveyor of goods that don’t work exactly the way the Iranians want.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Renting Afghans Cont.
Efforts to pacify Afghanistan from the outside in by carving up the militants’ external support are proceeding apace, as suggested in this space last year.
But we wonder about the critical gap in the list of those cooking the books for the upcoming London conference: what about the Uzbeks?
Their absence bodes very ill for Afghanistan – and for Uzbekistan and Tajikistan – if it isn’t temporary and suggests deeper divisions. Who has excluded the Uzbeks? Or, why have they excluded themselves?
These are urgent questions.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
On Strength
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, upon first meeting Barack Obama made a now notorious remark to an aide, ‘is he weak?’ The American people seem to be asking the same question.
Strength comes in many varieties. Obama’s predecessor took pride in his physical strength and his decisiveness. As Harry Truman might have said, there’s no distinction to be made between a man and his posture: I am my backbone.
But people can be strong in different ways. They can find themselves strong in the wrong way, that is to say, mismatched. The president values and promotes strength of character; the people appear to want strength of temperament.
The two may coincide at critical moments, of course. A strong ruler can smell them. A wise leader may not be this lucky, and so must compensate in other ways.
Friday, January 7, 2011
Cairo Canary
Rumors out of Cairo are that recent attacks on Copts—the severest of the past few years—are the tip of an iceberg having less to do with Christians and Muslims themselves and more with the declining strength and viability of the Egyptian state. If true, it’s an ominous test case, hinting at worse to come for the region’s most important country.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Egypt
Talleyrand has never liked popular uprisings. And he is feeling sad about having had a premonition of the one now taking place in Egypt (see below). He is not surprised by the Americans’ clumsy response initially, having – as they appear to have admitted – been caught by surprise. Remarkable as that is, what is even more remarkable is the American president’s reaction, namely his stern, brusque remarks on Tuesday.
The rest of the world will not know for some time what was said during the thirty minute conversation between Obama and Mubarak. Whatever it was, it’s hard to know what led Obama to make a public statement soon after that used the word “now” in referring to the transfer of power.
For a man so gifted in the realm of inspiration, Obama’s limitations in the realm of persuasion – the only real source of power for American presidents—are striking. No doubt he’s found ways to compensate, notably with persistence. And of course Hosni Mubarak is not a man easily persuaded, at least by words.
But the first rule of choosing sides in a civil conflict is, don’t do it. If you must do it, then choose the side that you’re certain will win. And then stick with it with all you have. If the Americans are determined to see Mubarak go, and if they have the means to ensure it, then Obama was wise to cast his (and so many others’) lot with the “forces of history.”
If, on the other hand, he was unsure; if he was speaking in the role of spectator and well wisher and judge, which is how it appears, at least now, then this action could prove his biggest, most consequential gamble to date. It strikes Talleyrand, perhaps unjustly, as the act of a man thinking mainly of the historical record, the “narrative,” and to be on record for using the right words at the right time.
Words matter. Tremendously. But they will not decide this impasse.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Words and Actions contd.
Talleyrand is often quoted on the character of the Bourbons: they forgot nothing and learned nothing. They are not the only ones.
What on earth inspired the American director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, to state publicly today that Hosni Mubarak was on the verge of stepping down boggles the mind.
Of course it's the case that Mubarak never intends to leave; and that his army is loyal. But yet another public statement by an American official--the head of the CIA, no less--that Mubarak's days are numbered is, as Americans like to say, "not helpful." Not helpful at all.
Monday, February 21, 2011
The Coming Age of the Junta
Tunisia... Egypt... Bahrain... Iran... Libya... Yemen... Sudan... Jordan... and even Morocco... Who knows where the mania will go next? The street revolts in these places seemed initially to recall 1968. But they are now looking more like 1848. Yet today there is no Marx to make sense of them.
Those who prefer 1848 to 1968 should take heed of the past. The response to those revolutions was violent. They did not, amazingly, result in a major war among any of Europe's major powers unless we consider (as Marx might have done) 1914 to have been the logical outcome of the forces they unleashed. In their own time, however, none, with the partial exceptions of those in Denmark and Switzerland, resulted in the ideal, liberal democracy they urged so passionately. That this happened in 1989, by contrast, had as much to do with the magnetic existence of NATO and the European Union, and the bankruptcy of Soviet power as it did with the inherent, progressive convictions of the revolutionaries. None of these things, except perhaps the final one, is present in today's Maghreb and Mashrek and elsewhere nearby.
An 1848-scenario in a region as fractious as the Middle East is very worrisome. The best result, according to most informed observers, is a replacement of the region's detested despots with army juntas that will evolve gradually into civilian-led republics. But which group of revolutionaries will be satisfied with such an outcome? Probably none. Meanwhile juntas are not the most stable heads of government. A period of tremendous instability awaits.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
1973
Those who remember the October War in the Middle East will find the numerical designation of this particular UN Resolution ironic, to put it mildly. The war launched to prepare the ground for peace— so claim the defenders of the late Anwar Sadat—led to the most dangerous moment in the Cold War since 1962.
Talleyrand, like many other people, is very perplexed by this most recent action. Several European nations, the United States and a few token others have decided to intervene militarily in a civil war on the losing side, and just at the moment when these forces were on the verge of defeat.
The assumption appears to be that Col. Gaddafi and those with him will be so intimidated, demoralized or simply disrupted as to surrender in short order and cede control of the country and its resources to a capable and effective national government led presumably by those now active in Benghazi. If that assumption proves incorrect, the next assumption appears to be that he will be defeated, also in short order, by superior air power. If that assumption proves incorrect, the next assumption appears to be that his Libyan enemies will be so emboldened by outside intervention that they will finish the job themselves. If that assumption proves incorrect, the final assumption appears to be that the “coalition of the willing” will just keep bombing until something else happens. That something else is vague, but the assumption appears to be that it will be better than the state of affairs in Libya during the past four decades.
The larger assumption, of course, is that this action, in addition to being the “right” thing to do, will keep the Arab democratic revolution alive and its well-wishers in good favor with the judges of History, their earlier actions and policies, and residual guilt, notwithstanding. And of course, that assumption is based paradoxically on another assumption: the immediate effects of this action will remain confined to Libya.
Talleyrand does not know if any of these assumptions is realistic. Unlike those making them, presumably, he knows very little about Libya and Libyans. But he is reasonably confident that one particular assumption will prove true: Colonel Gaddafi will be the last ruler ever to surrender his WMD, for any reason or at any price.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Libyans to the Slaughter
Talleyrand hears the same siren calls for armed intervention again and again from all those well meaning Americans who, for some curious reason, seem genuinely to enjoy the sight and sound of warplanes in the sky.
They call now for a “no-fly zone” [sic] over Libya. They do with great passion and conviction. Woe to the poor Libyan freedom fighters!
Ann Marie Slaughter, the distinguished lawyer and professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, summarises the arguments against so valiant an action. She picks them apart, one by one, to explain that intervening against the Libyan regime with force is the only moral option overriding all other considerations, including a near total ignorance of the country, its people, its geography and its politics, not to mention any assumptions that run counter to her own.
She is an unfortunate spokesperson, alas. Perhaps the idea of overthrowing Colonel Gaddafi by force occurred to her when she visited the country as his guest. Or perhaps whilst she served as head of planning [sic] in the American State Department. We must praise Providence that she didn’t have the same job in the Pentagon.
America’s honorable tradition of liberal internationalism has done many good things for the world. But when it has come to defend the armed intervention against weak, poor countries, especially those embroiled in civil war, it has almost always resulted in disappointment, even disaster. Professor Slaughter ought to study the record in Mexico and elsewhere of Professor Woodrow Wilson.
Yes, let us all strive to make the world safe for democracy and to teach the barbaric, backward peoples of the world to elect good men. But let us also remember: it is not so much what we do, but how we do it, that matters most in the end.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Black Mischief
Three days into the transatlantic Libyan adventure, Talleyrand finds himself even more perplexed by it.
The governments leading this intervention have yet to state a clear set of aims upon which they can agree; contradictory statements have even been made by officials from the same government, And now, after hundreds of bombs and missiles have been fired, there is -- remarkably -- no agreement on who will be in command of the operation in the coming days, weeks, and/or months.
It has taken the American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over two years to launch her first serious diplomatic initiative. She might have taken just a bit longer to prepare.
Colonel Gaddafi, alas, isn’t the only actor in an opera buffa of his own making.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Raising the Stakes
Liberal interventionists should listen carefully to the speech given today by Bashar al Assad in Damascus. It amounted to a declaration of war on the so-called Arab revolution. If the counter-revolution is to happen in earnest, he suggested, it will happen here. His emphasis on enemies of the state, both domestic and foreign, is portentous. To date – apart from Saudi Arabia’s incursion into Bahrain, which was barely reported upon in Europe and America – not one of these domestic revolts/revolutions has led to conflict, let alone war, across national borders, the current interventionist sideshow in Libya notwithstanding. A “Srebrenica on steroids” in Syria could change that. Bashar is said to be less brutal-minded than his infamous father. But he does not rule Syria alone. Anything can happen. Will Libya’s cadre of foreign well-wishers have the courage of their convictions in Syria? Or will their “historic” bluff be called then and there?
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Primakov's Revenge
Everyone speaks now of the Arab revolution. Isn’t it curious that so many of the region’s overthrown (or threatened) despots have a Soviet entry in their curricula vitae? Saddam, Mubarak, Gaddafi and Assad (once removed) all would not be where they are today without the USSR, despite their later defections (and re-defections) to the West. Ben Ali and Saleh are partial exceptions; each might have been a Soviet ally just as well. These first or second generation strong men are now objectionable to the modern world, just as the Shah or Nasser once was. Seizing power and living by the sword in this region would seem to guarantee a sad end; worse if you manage to install a son as your successor. Only if you manage to extend your family’s rule beyond two generations under Western patronage do you seem to have a chance at immortality. Thus the Gulf monarchies, the Hashemites and the Alaouites all seem to be likely survivors.
Yevgeny Primakov, the long serving dean of Soviet Arabist operatives must be asking himself, “what did we get wrong?” Primakov, reportedly born with the name “Finkelstein” and a canny post-revolutionary survivor in his own right, knew these men well. If they are skilled at one thing, it’s how to hold on to power. So why are they failing? Is there possibly a wider, or longer term, plot that involves their successors and altered relationships with a West that can’t seem to resist becoming deeply entangled in this part of the world?
We needn’t be specialists in Marxist dialectics to know the answer. We just need to wait and see.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
On Combustibility
A humble Tunisian fruit seller sets himself alight and regimes fall across North Africa and the Middle East. A lunatic preacher in Florida burns a Koran and murderous hordes pour into the streets in South Asia. Where, how, will it all end?
Such wildfires spread – like Gavrilo Princip’s shot that killed four grand empires – because of their liberating quality and their timing. The passions they release, so to speak, are always there, burning deep through the angry hearts of millions. It just takes a small gesture to set them free in the absence of a countervailing force; and far too much blood to seal them back up again.
Liberation comes in direct proportion to the crisis of authority. That absence now appears to be global. There may be no hordes marching in the streets of China, USA, EU, Saudi Arabia, Russia and many other places; but these powers so far have lacked the collective capacity and authority to bring order to what appears to be a growing trend of popular chaos still in early days. They are not speaking from the same page, although they should be. Wildfires sometimes burn themselves out when well contained. But not often.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Spectre of Syria
The alliances of great powers are supposed to buy and sell wholesale, not retail. They exist to deter or to fight big wars. NATO has not been in that business for some time: it promotes itself—accurately, though somewhat ambivalently—as a security alliance, not a defense alliance. Its Article V still remains in effect but for all practical purposes NATO counts pennies, not pounds.
This matters now because of the tremendous volatility in the Middle East. NATO (and much of the Western media) is busy tracking drones over Tripoli and struggling to tell which color the trucks of fighters are painted in the roads near Misrata. This has served to divert—albeit only partially and ineffectively—Western attention from the real crisis underway, which no Western leader wants to talk about, namely Syria. If events in Syria follow their logical course, we could see the Lebanonization of that country. A proxy war there between Iran and Saudi Arabia would most likely draw in Lebanon and Iraq and probably Israel. About the only force that could prevent or deter it would be a serious, collective threat of Western intervention, the vehicle for which would most surely have to be NATO.
Alas, NATO isn’t looking so mighty right now in this part of the world. Preventing a regional, sectarian war in the Middle East? Sorry. Too busy cataloguing tribes west of Cyrenaica. The West, if such a thing still exists, no longer does politics or strategy wholesale. No matter that, by some estimates, more Libyan civilians have already been killed or displaced throughout Libya than Barack Obama promised to save in Benghazi. Far higher numbers of casualties await further east. And Western credibility—thanks to its hasty and ill planned diversion against Col. Gaddafi—is much lower than it needs to be. Let us pray that the winds shift soon in the other direction.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Bogeymen
The Americans deserve much credit for finally tracking down Enemy No. 1. Less for the fact of doing it than for how it was done -- so deliberately, competently. The world likes this from Americans.
The biggest question now concerns America's fraught relations with Pakistan. But the signs are encouraging, despite all appearances. The Pakistani powers that be may or may not be embarrassed by the actions so close to home, but they will have to act embarrassed, and contrite.
More importantly, the odd case of Mr. Raymond Davis now makes a good deal more sense. His bizarre incident and the uproar it caused, we now know, happened after the Americans became aware of bin Laden's purported location. Rather than a merely unlucky idiot, or just an idiot, he now appears to have been a rather useful one. For if the ostensible ISI-CIA relationship had not broken down entirely as a consequence, it's hard to expect that bin Laden's backers in Pakistan would not have had opportunity to tip him off ahead. Or perhaps it was the other way round: if anything, the Davis case gives the ISI plausible deniability.
Nicely done, on all counts.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Envoys Extraordinaire
These are not the best of times for Barack Obama’s once vaulted special envoys: George Mitchell, who nobody has heard from for months, has finally had the good grace to resign. Richard Holbrooke, adding insult to mortal injury, never lived to see his country’s brief moment of triumph, nor is he around to take the Pakistanis to Coventry, something he almost certainly would have relished doing.
Holbrooke’s successor, Marc Grossman, is a fine diplomat. He’s about as good as the US can get these days. Whether he can master and produce Holbrooke’s dream of a web of leverage and influence in order to put a good face on the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the achievement of something resembling a stable balance of power in Central and South Asia remains to be seen, however.
Even if he does pull that off, it may not matter as much as placating domestic opinion back home. In truth, most Americans really aren’t so angry with Pakistan, tending to pity it more than hating it. But this could change by events, or if enough members of the US Congress sense a strong electoral issue. Therefore, and in spite of the decline and fall of the presidential envoy, it would seem that President Obama still needs a big name for this country and its many problems.
Talleyrand nominates General Colin L. Powell, USA (retired). He gets on famously well with Pakistani generals and, judging by his public appearances, still seems keen to serve his country. Unlike his hero, General George Marshall, he was not, alas, named Secretary of Defense, but a mission of this sort could be attractive to him. More to the point, it could help stave off – or at least deflect, as special envoys are meant to do – an almost certain series of crises with Pakistan down the road.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Look out for Leon
Talleyrand wishes the new American Secretary of Defence, Mr Leon Panetta, much success in his new job. It won’t be easy – though not just for all the usual reasons of running one of the world’s largest bureaucracies with so many vested interests and being charged with responsibility for the lives (and sadly, the deaths) of so many thousands.
Mr Panetta faces an additional challenge relating to character. He is widely seen – with some justification – as one of Washington’s premier wise men… street-smart from the start and a survivor of many bureaucratic and political battles. Most of all, he has been considered a “can-do” man – from his work to save Monterey Bay to his salvaging of the Clinton White House to, most recently, his popular and successful stewardship of CIA.
We should remember, however, that one of the reasons Mr Panetta’s predecessor in the Pentagon, Robert Gates, was so highly regarded was for his caution, even cynicism. More often than not, he was the hesitant voice in the room, saying Mr President, hang on, maybe you should consider this, or have you thought about that? From early days in the Nixon, Carter and Reagan administrations, Mr Gates learned well the perils of policy enthusiasm. Ultimately, as has been pointed out already by a few people, he may go down in history more for what he did not do as Secretary of Defence, or for what the USA did not do on his watch, than for what he did.
“Can-do’ism” is the credo of the American military. But, when budgets are shrinking along with the will of the American people and America’s allies for forward military policies, it poses some risk. Mr Panetta has been quoted in his last post to the effect of, if it hadn’t been for us, this or that never would have got done (who better, in fact, than a son of Calabria to master the CIA!). But we already know what the American military can do when it sets it sets its mind to it. Its problems come when political masters demand that it do too much, especially too much of the wrong thing. Doing more with less can lead to big and very costly mistakes.
Friday, August 5, 2011
The Primacy of Confidence
Barack Obama missed a good opportunity this week in persuading Timothy Geithner to stay on as Treasury Secretary. By most public accounts, Geithner had planned to resign after seeing him through the debt imbroglio; no doubt the man must be exhausted. And no doubt the last thing Obama needs now is a tough confirmation fight over a successor in so sensitive an area.
It’s no accident that nearly all of Obama’s economic team has left, save Geithner. He is capable, shrewd and diligent. Unfortunately these virtues, such as they are, do not make themselves evident in public. That would be fine if there were one or two others in the administration who did inspire strength and confidence; but there are not.
For his part, Obama really must stop bashing the rich; he must stop chastising companies for hoarding cash instead of hiring workers; he must stop telling the American people and the rest of the world to grin and bear it, that we’re all on the sinking ship together; he must figure out how to project optimism and confidence; he must stop telling and start showing.
A new face at Treasury would help: Someone like Robert Zoellick, who is doing solid work on the margins at the World Bank; or someone similar like Robert Kimmitt who speaks the pragmatic language of confidence and good sense that Obama and Geithner lack. That both men have served mainly in Republican adminstrations would do Obama credit, just as Robert Gates made his life much easier at the Pentagon.
For there are more dire times to come when perception, like it or not, is reality.