Obama’s Afghan drop-in

 don’t watch much televised news — there’s just not a lot of content per unit of time and I get bored too quickly — but I did happen to catch a report on President Obama’s whirlwind trip to Afghanistan yesterday. (As a sign of my indifference to the major networks, I couldn’t even tell you which channel I was watching). But I did see a film clip of the president giving a speech to the troops at Bagram air base, where he thanked them for their efforts, said the country was grateful, and told the troops “the American armed services does not quit, we keep at it, we persevere, and together with our partners we will prevail.”

As always, Obama looked comfortable and sounded good. And it’s possible that he meant every word of his pep talk. But I kept wondering what he meant by “prevail?” What is his definition of victory? Is it the surrender and capture of Mullah Omar and the Quetta Shura, or the military defeat of the Taliban itself? Is victory defined as the establishment of a unified Afghan central government (something that hasn’t existed for decades) in command of native security forces that can take over the battle themselves, with little or no foreign support? If special representative Richard Holbrooke thinks we’ll “know success when we see it,” what exactly are we looking for?” 

Here’s how Obama defined the strategy in his remarks:

Our broad mission is clear: We are going to disrupt and dismantle, defeat and destroy al Qaeda and its extremist allies. That is our mission. And to accomplish that goal, our objectives here in Afghanistan are also clear: We’re going to deny al Qaeda safe haven. We’re going to reverse the Taliban’s momentum. We’re going to strengthen the capacity of Afghan security forces and the Afghan government so that they can begin taking responsibility and gain confidence of the Afghan people.

And our strategy includes a military effort that takes the fight to the Taliban while creating the conditions for greater security and a transition to the Afghans; but also a civilian effort that improves the daily lives of the Afghan people, and combats corruption; and a partnership with Pakistan and its people, because we can’t uproot extremists and advance security and opportunity unless we succeed on both sides of the border. Most of you understand that.”

If that’s what the President really thinks, we are going to be there for a long, long time.  So I found myself hoping (perhaps naively) that this was all a bit of blue-smoke-and-mirrors, and that he’s actually planning to follow the same script in Afghanistan that Bush followed in Iraq.  It won’t be identical in every detail, but the basic logic would be similar.  Here’s how it goes:

First, announce an escalation of the U.S. effort (aka a “surge”), but set a rough deadline for it and quietly put new emphasis on “political reconciliation.” (Done).  Next, bombard the media with lots of evidence of progress, such as Taliban “strongholds” seized, al Qaeda leaders killed or captured, Taliban leaders arrested in Pakistan, etc., so that people think the surge is working.  (Now underway). Third, arrange a diplomatic settlement that requires the phased withdrawal of U.S./ISAF troops, even if their departure is on a rather lengthy timetable. The Iraqi equivalent was the Status of Forces agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in the fall of 2008; in Afghanistan, it would probably entail some sort of negotiation between the Karzai government, the Taliban, and various other warlords (whether by a loya jirga) or some other device (Maybe underway too?). Finally, start removing the “surged” forces more-or-less on schedule-and ahead of the 2012 election cycle-so that you can claim to have avoided the quagmire that critics warned about back in 2009 (Remains to be seen).

I have no idea if this is what Obama or his team are actually planning — or maybe just hoping for — but at this stage it is offers the best chance of avoiding an open-ended commitment there.  Part of the trick is to keep sounding resolute and determined even while you’re (quietly) looking for an exit, and as someone who remains unconvinced that the Afghan campaign is worth the costs, I’ll continue to hope that this is what is really going on.

Credit: Stephen M. Walt

China: Crunch Time

The global system is undergoing profound change. Three powers — Germany, China and Iran — face challenges forcing them to refashion the way they interact with their regions and the world. We are exploring each of these three states in detail in three geopolitical weeklies, highlighting how STRATFOR’s assessments of these states are evolving. First we examined Germany. We now examine China.

U.S.-Chinese relations have become tenser in recent months, with the United States threatening to impose tariffs unless China agrees to revalue its currency and, ideally, allow it to become convertible like the yen or euro. China now follows Japan and Germany as one of the three major economies after the United States. Unlike the other two, it controls its currency’s value, allowing it to decrease the price of its exports and giving it an advantage not only over other exporters to the United States but also over domestic American manufacturers. The same is true in other regions that receive Chinese exports, such as Europe.

What Washington considered tolerable in a small developing economy is intolerable in one of the top five economies. The demand that Beijing raise the value of the yuan, however, poses dramatic challenges for the Chinese, as the ability to control their currency helps drive their exports. The issue is why China insists on controlling its currency, something embedded in the nature of the Chinese economy. A collision with the United States now seems inevitable. It is therefore important to understand the forces driving China, and it is time for STRATFOR to review its analysis of China.

An Inherently Unstable Economic System

China has had an extraordinary run since 1980. But like Japan and Southeast Asia before it, dramatic growth rates cannot maintain themselves in perpetuity. Japan and non-Chinese East Asia didn’t collapse and disappear, but the crises of the 1990s did change the way the region worked. The driving force behind both the 1990 Japanese Crisis and the 1997 East Asian Crisis was that the countries involved did not maintain free capital markets. Those states managed capital to keep costs artificially low, giving them tremendous advantages over countries where capital was rationally priced. Of course, one cannot maintain irrational capital prices in perpetuity (as the United States is learning after its financial crisis); doing so eventually catches up. And this is what is happening in China now.

STRATFOR thus sees the Chinese economic system as inherently unstable. The primary reason why China’s growth has been so impressive is that throughout the period of economic liberalization that has led to rising incomes, the Chinese government has maintained near-total savings capture of its households and businesses. It funnels these massive deposits via state-run banks to state-linked firms at below-market rates. It’s amazing the growth rate a country can achieve and the number of citizens it can employ with a vast supply of 0 percent, relatively consequence-free loans provided from the savings of nearly a billion workers.

It’s also amazing how unprofitable such a country can be. The Chinese system, like the Japanese system before it, works on bulk, churn, maximum employment and market share. The U.S. system of attempting to maximize return on investment through efficiency and profit stands in contrast. The American result is sufficient economic stability to be able to suffer through recessions and emerge stronger. The Chinese result is social stability that wobbles precipitously when exposed to economic hardship. The Chinese people rebel when work is not available and conditions reach extremes. It must be remembered that of China’s 1.3 billion people, more than 600 million urban citizens live on an average of about $7 a day, while 700 million rural people live on an average of $2 a day, and that is according to Beijing’s own well-scrubbed statistics.

Moreover, the Chinese system breeds a flock of other unintended side effects.

There is, of course, the issue of inefficient capital use: When you have an unlimited number of no-consequence loans, you tend to invest in a lot of no-consequence projects for political reasons or just to speculate. In addition to the overall inefficiency of the Chinese system, another result is a large number of property bubbles. Yes, China is a country with a massive need for housing for its citizens, but even so, local governments and property developers collude to build luxury dwellings instead of anything more affordable in urban areas. This puts China in the odd position of having both a glut and a shortage in housing, as well as an outright glut in commercial real estate, where vacancy rates are notoriously high.

There is also the issue of regional disparity. Most of this lending occurs in a handful of coastal regions, transforming them into global powerhouses, while most of the interior — and thereby most of the population — lives in abject poverty.

There is also the issue of consumption. Chinese statistics have always been dodgy, but according to Beijing’s own figures, China has a tiny consumer base. This base is not much larger than that of France, a country with roughly one twentieth China’s population and just over half its gross domestic product (GDP). China’s economic system is obviously geared toward exports, not expanding consumer credit.

Which brings us to the issue of dependence. Since China cannot absorb its own goods, it must export them to keep afloat. The strategy only works when there is endless demand for the goods it makes. For the most part, this demand comes from the United States. But the recent global recession cut Chinese exports by nearly one fifth, and there were no buyers elsewhere to pick up the slack. Meanwhile, to boost household consumption China provided subsidies to Chinese citizens who had little need for — and in some cases little ability to use — a number of big-ticket products. The Chinese now openly fear that exports will not make a sustainable return to previous levels until 2012. And that is a lot of production — and consumption — to subsidize in the meantime. Most countries have another word for this: waste.

This waste can be broken down into two main categories. First, the government roughly tripled the amount of cash it normally directs the state banks to lend to sustain economic activity during the recession. The new loans added up to roughly a third of GDP in a single year. Remember, with no-consequence loans, profitability or even selling goods is not an issue; one must merely continue employing people. Even if China boasted the best loan-quality programs in history, a dramatic increase in lending of that scale is sure to generate mountains of loans that will go bad. Second, not everyone taking out those loans even intends to invest prudently: Chinese estimates indicate that about one-fourth of this lending surge was used to play China’s stock and property markets.

It is not that the Chinese are foolish; that is hardly the case. Given their history and geographical constraints, we would be hard-pressed to come up with a better plan were we to be selected as Party general secretary for a day. Beijing is well aware of all these problems and more and is attempting to mitigate the damage and repair the system. For example, it is considering legalizing portions of what it calls the shadow-lending sector. Think of this as a sort of community bank or credit union that services small businesses. In the past, China wanted total savings capture and centralization to better direct economic efforts, but Beijing is realizing that these smaller entities are more efficient lenders — and that over time they may actually employ more people without subsidization.

But the bottom line is that this sort of repair work is experimental and at the margins, and it doesn’t address the core damage that the financial model continuously inflicts. The Chinese fear their economic strategy has taken them about as far as they can go. STRATFOR used to think that these sorts of internal weaknesses would eventually doom the Chinese system as it did the Japanese system (upon which it is modeled). Now, we’re not so sure.

Since its economic opening in 1978, China has taken advantage of a remarkably friendly economic and political environment. In the 1980s, Washington didn’t obsess overmuch about China, given its focus on the “Evil Empire.” In the 1990s, it was easy for China to pass inconspicuously in global markets, as China was still a relatively small player. Moreover, with all the commodities from the former Soviet Union hitting the global market, prices for everything from oil to copper neared historic lows. No one seemed to fight against China’s booming demand for commodities or rising exports. The 2000s looked like they would be more turbulent, and early in the administration of George W. Bush the EP-3 incident landed the Chinese in Washington’s crosshairs, but then the Sept. 11 attacks happened and U.S. efforts were redirected toward the Islamic world.

Believe it or not, the above are coincidental developments. In fact, there is a structural factor in the global economy that has protected the Chinese system for the past 30 years that is a core tenet of U.S. foreign policy: Bretton Woods.

Rethinking Bretton Woods

Bretton Woods is one of the most misunderstood landmarks in modern history. Most think of it as the formation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, and the beginning of the dominance of the U.S. dollar in the international system. It is that, but it is much, much more.

In the aftermath of World War II, Germany and Japan had been crushed, and nearly all of Western Europe lay destitute. Bretton Woods at its core was an agreement between the United States and the Western allies that the allies would be able to export at near-duty-free rates to the U.S. market in order to boost their economies. In exchange, the Americans would be granted wide latitude in determining the security and foreign policy stances of the rebuilding states. In essence, the Americans took what they saw as a minor economic hit in exchange for being able to rewrite first regional, and in time global, economic and military rules of engagement. For the Europeans, Bretton Woods provided the stability, financing and security backbone Europe used first to recover, and in time to thrive. For the Americans, it provided the ability to preserve much of the World War II alliance network into the next era in order to compete with the Soviet Union.

The strategy proved so successful with the Western allies that it was quickly extended to World War II foes Germany and Japan, and shortly thereafter to Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and others. Militarily and economically, it became the bedrock of the anti-Soviet containment strategy. The United States began with substantial trade surpluses with all of these states, simply because they had no productive capacity due to the devastation of war. After a generation of favorable trade practices, surpluses turned into deficits, but the net benefits were so favorable to the Americans that the policies were continued despite the increasing economic hits. The alliance continued to hold, and one result (of many) was the eventual economic destruction of the Soviet Union.

Applying this little history lesson to the question at hand, Bretton Woods is the ultimate reason why the Chinese have succeeded economically for the last generation. As part of Bretton Woods, the United States opens its markets, eschewing protectionist policies in general and mercantilist policies in particular. Eventually the United States extended this privilege to China to turn the tables on the Soviet Union. All China has to do is produce — it doesn’t matter how — and it will have a market to sell to.

But this may be changing. Under President Barack Obama, the United States is considering fundamental changes to the Bretton Woods arrangements. Ostensibly, this is to update the global financial system and reduce the chances of future financial crises. But out of what we have seen so far, the National Export Initiative (NEI) the White House is promulgating is much more mercantilist. It espouses doubling U.S. exports in five years, specifically by targeting additional sales to large developing states, with China at the top of the list.

STRATFOR finds that goal overoptimistic, and the NEI is maddeningly vague as to how it will achieve this goal. But this sort of rhetoric has not come out of the White House since pre-World War II days. Since then, international economic policy in Washington has served as a tool of political and military policy; it has not been a beast unto itself. In other words, the shift in tone in U.S. trade policy is itself enough to suggest big changes, beginning with the idea that the United States actually will compete with the rest of the world in exports.

If — and we must emphasize if — there will be force behind this policy shift, the Chinese are in serious trouble. As we noted before, the Chinese financial system is largely based on the Japanese model, and Japan is a wonderful case study for how this could go down. In the 1980s, the United States was unhappy with the level of Japanese imports. Washington found it quite easy to force the Japanese both to appreciate their currency and accept more exports. Opening the closed Japanese system to even limited foreign competition gutted Japanese banks’ international positions, starting a chain reaction that culminated in the 1990 collapse. Japan has not really recovered since, and as of 2010, total Japanese GDP is only marginally higher than it was 20 years ago.

China’s Limited Options

China, which unlike Japan is not a U.S. ally, would have an even harder time resisting should Washington pressure Beijing to buy more U.S. goods. Dependence upon a certain foreign market means that market can easily force changes in the exporter’s trade policies. Refusal to cooperate means losing access, shutting the exports down. To be sure, the U.S. export initiative does not explicitly call for creating more trade barriers to Chinese goods. But Washington is already brandishing this tool against China anyway, and it will certainly enter China’s calculations about whether to resist the U.S. export policy. Japan’s economy, in 1990 and now, only depended upon international trade for approximately 15 percent of its GDP. For China, that figure is 36 percent, and that is after suffering the hit to exports from the global recession. China’s only recourse would be to stop purchasing U.S. government debt (Beijing can’t simply dump the debt it already holds without taking a monumental loss, because for every seller there must be a buyer), but even this would be a hollow threat.

First, Chinese currency reserves exist because Beijing does not want to invest its income in China. Underdeveloped capital markets cannot absorb such an investment, and the reserves represent the government’s piggybank. Getting a 2 percent return on a rock-solid asset is good enough in China’s eyes. Second, those bond purchases largely fuel U.S. consumers’ ability to purchase Chinese goods. In the event the United States targets Chinese exports, the last thing China would want is to compound the damage. Third, a cold stop in bond purchases would encourage the U.S. administration — and the American economy overall — to balance its budgets. However painful such a transition may be, it would not be much as far as retaliation measures go: “forcing” a competitor to become economically efficient and financially responsible is not a winning strategy. Granted, interest rates would rise in the United States due to the reduction in available capital — the Chinese internal estimate is by 0.75 percentage points — and that could pinch a great many sectors, but that is nothing compared to the tsunami of pain that the Chinese would be feeling.

For Beijing, few alternatives exist to American consumption should Washington limit export access; the United States has more disposable income than all of China’s other markets combined. To dissuade the Americans, China could dangle the carrot of cooperation on sanctions against Iran before Washington, but the United States may already be moving beyond any use for that. Meanwhile, China would strengthen domestic security to protect against the ramifications of U.S. pressure. Beijing perceives the spat with Google and Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama as direct attacks by the United States, and it is already bracing for a rockier relationship. While such measures do not help the Chinese economy, they may be Beijing’s only options for preserving internal stability.

In China, fears of this coming storm are becoming palpable — and by no means limited to concerns over the proposed U.S. export strategy. With the Democratic Party in the United States (historically the more protectionist of the two mainstream U.S. political parties) both in charge and worried about major electoral losses, the Chinese fear that midterm U.S. elections will be all about targeting Chinese trade issues. Specifically, they are waiting for April 15, when the U.S. Treasury Department is expected to rule whether China is a currency manipulator — a ruling Beijing fears could unleash a torrent of protectionist moves by the U.S. Congress. Beijing already is deliberating on the extent to which it should seek to defuse American anger. But the Chinese probably are missing the point. If there has already been a decision in Washington to break with Bretton Woods, no number of token changes will make any difference. Such a shift in the U.S. trade posture will see the Americans going for China’s throat (no matter whether by design or unintentionally).

And the United States can do so with disturbing ease. The Americans don’t need a public works program or a job-training program or an export-boosting program. They don’t even have to make better — much less cheaper — goods. They just need to limit Chinese market access, something that can be done with the flick of a pen and manageable pain on the U.S. side.

STRATFOR sees a race on, but it isn’t a race between the Chinese and the Americans or even China and the world. It’s a race to see what will smash China first, its own internal imbalances or the U.S. decision to take a more mercantilist approach to international trade.

Sursa: STRATFOR

The cult of counterinsurgency

On the night of December 1, shortly after Barack Obama announced plans to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, retired Lt. Colonel John Nagl appeared on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Maddow was dismayed by Obama’s new plan, which she called “massive escalation,” but, when she introduced Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert who has long called for a greater U.S. commitment to Afghanistan–even if it means raising taxes and expanding the military–she was surprisingly friendly. And, after Nagl spent the segment praising Obama’s plan, which he said would throw back the Taliban and enable more civil and economic development, Maddow may have remained skeptical–but she was also admiring. “It’s a real pleasure to have you on the show, John,” she said.

Had someone like Bill Kristol given that same assessment of Obama’s speech, Maddow might have tarred him as a bloodthirsty proponent of endless war. Which is why Nagl is one of the administration’s most important allies as it tries to sell the United States on a renewed commitment to Afghanistan. A former tank commander in Iraq and co-author of the Army’s landmark 2006 counterinsurgency manual, Nagl has become a fixture on television and in news articles about Afghanistan; he’s even made an appearance on “The Daily Show.” With the authority of a man who has worn a uniform in combat, and the intellectual heft of a Rhodes Scholar, he has helped to persuade many liberals that pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is the only viable path to success.

Certainly, that’s what Obama and his staff are hoping. During Obama’s Afghanistan review process this fall, top White House aides like Rahm Emanuel were immersed in Lewis Sorley’s A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, which argues that counterinsurgency techniques were turning around the Vietnam war until Washington pulled the plug in exhaustion. And, by committing 30,000 troops, plus winning almost 10,000 more from nato allies, Obama has effectively endorsed General Stanley McChrystal’s written assessment of the war, the first page of which calls for “an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency campaign.” “I would say that the decision the president reached is an acknowledgement that counterinsurgency is the least bad of the options available,” Nagl says.

Another reason Nagl has sway with the left and the Obama administration–he was recently named to the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board–has to do with where he hangs his hat. Nagl is currently president of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a Washington think tank established in February 2007 by a group of former Clintonites who wanted to reassert the voice of centrist Democrats on military and foreign affairs. Since then, a full 14 former CNAShands have landed jobs inside Obama’s Pentagon and State Department. Those who remain work on a variety of issues, from China to climate change. But these days, CNAS is most visible for its policy papers and commentary on counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its Democratic roots have given CNAS cred from Capitol Hill to the White House to places like Maddow’s set. And its prominence, in turn, has effectively hitched the Democratic wagon to the ambitious ideals of counterinsurgency, with some liberals even arguing that the doctrine–with its emphasis on protecting and improving the lives of civilians–is thoughtful, humane, and, therefore, inherently progressive.

But there is risk in this approach. Washington’s current enthusiasm for counterinsurgency is based largely on its apparent success in stabilizing Iraq–even though it’s not clear that the doctrine’s sophisticated tenets deserve all or even most of the credit. Indeed, an argument is brewing in military circles about whether the doctrine’s potential has been oversold. What happens next in Afghanistan could settle it.

In early 2007, defense analyst Michèle Flournoy and Asia expert Kurt Campbell co-foundedCNAS with what they described as a mission of reclaiming the “pragmatic,” non-ideological center of the foreign policy debate. Supported with money from left-leaning foundations and defense contractors, including Boeing and Northrop Grumman, they hired a team of mostly Democratic foreign policy hands and produced policy papers with a generally hawkish bent, including one in 2008 that opposed a fixed timeline for withdrawal from Iraq.

CNAS wasn’t intended to be counterinsurgency central. After Obama was elected, however, he raided the think tank to staff the State and Defense departments. (Flournoy took a job as the Pentagon’s senior policy official, and Campbell became Foggy Bottom’s top Asia hand.) Filling the void has been Nagl, who joined CNAS in January 2008 and became its president in February 2009, along with several counterinsurgency-centric colleagues who have joined since its founding. One is Andrew Exum, a former Army Ranger who has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Exum, in his early thirties, is a bearded and wry native of East Tennessee who advised McChrystal’s review team this summer. Then there’s CNAS’s 32-year-old CEO, Nate Fick, who was a Marine captain in Baghdad and has served as a civilian instructor at a counterinsurgency academy in Kabul. Last year, CNAS also signed up the ultimate counterinsurgency guru in David Kilcullen, an Australian who served as a top adviser to General David Petraeus in Iraq. Together, this quartet has churned out a raft of policy papers, opinion pieces, and quotes about counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, ranging from the best way to set benchmarks for progress to warnings about the use of aerial drone strikes. (Exum, Fick, and Kilcullen oppose heavy reliance on the tactic for fear that civilian casualties will cause blowback.)

Though CNAS is loath to be known as a one-trick pony–it recently completed a report encouraging U.S. cooperation with China and runs an energy and climate-based “natural security” program–it is effectively cornering the market on counterinsurgency thought. In addition to its staff hires, CNAS has provided fellowships to book-writing journalists like Tom Ricks, David Cloud, and Greg Jaffe, who have advanced the pro-counterinsurgency narrative. But perhaps the clearest indication of bothCNAS’s clout and its current focus came when the think tank held its third annual conference at Washington’s posh Willard Hotel. The keynote speaker was none other than Petraeus himself.

The stakes for the United States in Afghanistan are enormous. But, in a more parochial sense, so are the stakes for CNAS and what you might call the cult of counterinsurgency. Washington is already planning for a more counterinsurgency-oriented future–witness the latest Pentagon budget, which shifts billions of dollars away from high-tech weapons systems designed for fighting a great power like China, toward equipment like aerial drones and armored personnel carriers. Meanwhile, the liberal national security establishment has come to embrace a doctrine that went into vogue under the dreaded Bush regime. In an essay titled “Petraeus the Progressive” published in the journal Democracy last winter, Rachel Kleinfeld, president of the center-left Truman National Security Project, celebrated Petraeus for emphasizing the battle for Iraqi hearts and minds over “outgunning and outmanning the enemy.” Other liberals warm to the doctrine’s intellectual sheen. “Counterinsurgency is not just thinking man’s warfare–it is the graduate level of war,” states an epigraph in the Army’s counterinsurgency manual.

But some thoughtful skeptics warn that the months ahead in Afghanistan may expose the promise of counterinsurgency as a mirage. One of them is Colonel Gian Gentile, a former cavalry squadron commander in Iraq with a Stanford University Ph.D. in history. Since his 2007 return from Iraq, Gentile, who now teaches at West Point, has relentlessly challenged the arguments of counterinsurgency proponents. Advocates of the doctrine say that it has been repeatedly tested and proved in conflicts ranging from Vietnam to Iraq. Through several articles in military journals, Gentile has been fighting this “narrative,” which he says has various historical flaws. He warns, for instance, that counterinsurgency campaigns are more violent than people understand. The British victory in Malaya involved brute force and mass resettlement programs, for example, while the more recent defeat of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka involved a heavy military campaign that caused widespread civilian misery. Even the Iraq surge caused a dramatic increase in civilian casualties from airstrikes and led to a spike in the number of Iraqi detainees held by the United States, notes Michael Cohen of the New America Foundation.

Gentile is especially skeptical of the claim that counterinsurgency saved Iraq. To hear the likes of Nagl tell it, Petraeus implemented a new strategy in 2006 under which U.S. troops left the isolation of fortress-like bases and integrated themselves with Iraqi forces and the Iraqi people, improving training of the Iraqi army, winning the population’s trust, and helping to turn Sunni tribesmen in Anbar province against Al Qaeda. But some contrarian military thinkers warn that the story is far more complicated. It’s not clear that the Sunnis needed our encouragement to turn on Al Qaeda, for instance, and ethnic cleansing may have burned itself out. Celeste Ward, a Bush Pentagon official who advised Army Lt. General Peter W. Chiarelli in Iraq, says that some military units had been practicing counterinsurgency in Iraq, to little avail, before Petraeus overhauled the American strategy there. “To think that the reduction of violence was primarily the result of American military action is hubris run amuck [sic],” Gentile writes in the fall edition of the military journal Parameters.

Gentile is convinced that Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan can’t work–at least not in a time frame that Obama or his country will accept. “I think history shows that if a nation is going to try this kind of military method–population-centric counterinsurgency, which is also nation building–it doesn’t happen in a couple of years. It’s a generational commitment.” And, if Afghanistan doesn’t turn around soon, the Democrats who founded and support CNAS, and who have come to embrace the Petraeus-Nagl view of modern warfare, may find themselves wondering whether it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Michael Crowley is a senior editor of The New Republic

Credit: The New Republic

Agenda: With George Friedman

Al Qaeda’s Yemen Connection, America and the Global Islamic Jihad

The attempt to destroy Northwest Airlines flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day underscores the growing ambition of al Qaeda’s Yemen franchise, which has grown from a largely Yemeni agenda to become a player in the global Islamic jihad in the last year. Since merging with the al Qaeda franchise in Saudi Arabia last January and renaming itself Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), it has stepped up operations in Yemen itself, struck into Saudi Arabia, and now operates on the global stage. The weak Yemeni government of President Ali Abdallah Salih, which has never fully controlled the country and now faces a host of growing problems, will need significant American support to defeat AQAP.

Al Qaeda has long been active in Yemen, the original homeland of Osama bin Laden’s family, and one of its first major terror attacks was conducted in Aden in 2000, when an al Qaeda cell nearly sank the USS Cole. A year ago, the al Qaeda franchises in Saudi Arabia and Yemen merged after the Saudi branch had been effectively repressed by the Saudi authorities under the leadership of Deputy Interior Minister Prince Muhammad bin Nayif. The new AQAP showed its claws last August, when it almost assassinated the prince with a suicide bomber who had passed through at least two airports on the way to his attempt on Nayif.

The same bombmakers who produced that device probably also manufactured the bomb that Omar al Farooq Abdulmutallab used on Flight 253. In claiming credit for the Detroit attack, AQAP highlighted how they had built a bomb that “all the advanced, new machines and technologies and the security boundaries of the world’s airports” had failed to detect. They praised their “mujahedin brothers in the manufacturing sector” for building such a “highly advanced device,” and promised that more such attacks will follow.

Yemen has sought to repress al Qaeda off and on for the last decade, with little success. The Saleh government has other more immediate problems on its plate, in particular a rebellion among Shia Zaydi tribes known as Houthis in the north that has escalated in the last two months with attacks by the rebels into Saudi territory. The southern part of the country, which only merged with the north in 1990 and fought a bitter civil war in 1994 when it tried to break away, is hostile to the Saleh government and is looking for a chance to split off again. The economy is weak and heavily dependent on dwindling oil reserves, and the majority of the 23 million Yemenis are illiterate and poor.

The Obama administration has offered Saleh additional military assistance, and has encouraged the government to strike hard at al Qaeda hideouts in the last few weeks. The attacks have killed some AQAP leaders, but it is unclear exactly how serious a blow these attacks have inflicted on the group as a whole. AQAP has vowed revenge for the strikes, which it blames on an alliance between America, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Saleh government.

AQAP has also provided refuge for the Yemeni-American cleric Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki was in contact with U.S. Army Major Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas on November 5, 2009. In an interview with Al Jazeera released on December 23, Awlaki said he had encouraged Nidal to kill his fellow soldiers because they were preparing to go to Afghanistan and were part of the Zionist-Crusader alliance that al Qaeda says it is fighting. The next day, December 24, Awlaki was reported to be among those killed in a Yemeni-American strike on the AQAP leadership, but that is still unconfirmed. In claiming credit for the Christmas Day airline attack, AQAP also lauded the Fort Hood massacre and urged other American Muslims to emulate Nidal Hassan.

Al Qaeda has always found weak and failing states like Yemen to be its best staging bases and sanctuaries. Along with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia, Yemen offers an ideal location to operate with little outside interference. The president has been right to focus additional resources on combating AQAP, but the battle has just begun. If the Yemeni state becomes further destabilized, bin Laden’s cadre in the Arabian Peninsula will have more room to operate.

The attack on the Amsterdam-Detroit flight also shows that al Qaeda remains obsessed with striking the American airline industry, a target it has gone after repeatedly since 1999. If AQAP has now been told by the al Qaeda core leadership to take on the job, we can probably assume that other al Qaeda franchises in North Africa, Iraq, Southeast Asia and elsewhere have also been pressed to attack.

Credit: Brookings Institution

Obama must not rush into retaliation

American officials are still unravelling the failed terrorist bombing of a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. While details remain unclear, it appears that Abdulmutallab received operational guidance and training in Yemen from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

The revelation of the Yemeni-based group’s involvement has predictably brought pressure from congressional leaders and policy analysts to “do something” in response, including what is described by one administration official as “visible retaliatory military action“.

An overt and immediate US military strike in Yemen in response to the failed bomb plot may look increasingly likely, but it would be a bad short-term solution. As recent history demonstrates, counterterrorist strikes in retaliation for specific terrorist plots or operations have often proven to be militarily ineffective, and unsuccessful in deterring the targeted group from pursuing additional terrorist attacks. Consider three well-known examples:

• In April 1986, the US president Ronald Reagan decided to retaliate against Libya for its involvement in the bombing of a Berlin disco that killed two American servicemen. US aircraft bombed a range of targets associated with the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, including the Aziziyah Barracks compound in Tripoli, where it was believed the Libyan leader lived.

The results of the attacks were meagre: Libya’s infrastructure was not significantly damaged and Gaddafi survived, becoming more defiant than ever. Moreover, Libya’s support for international terrorism increased in direct response, with British and American hostages in Lebanon assassinated by Libyan-controlled terrorist groups, and most significantly, the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people.

• In June 1993, after Iraqi intelligence agents allegedly plotted anassassination attempt on the former US president George HW Bush during a trip to Kuwait, President Clinton ordered the launching of 23 cruise missiles against one wing of the Iraqi intelligence agency headquarters in Baghdad.

The results of this retaliatory strike were a success, though it remains unclear if the cruise missiles played any role. The leadership wing of the Iraqi intelligence headquarters was destroyed, and according to Richard Clarke, counterterrorism tsar to presidents Clinton and Bush: “Subsequent to that June 1993 retaliation, the US intelligence and law enforcement communities never developed any evidence of further Iraqi support for terrorism directed against Americans.”

• In August 1998, in retaliation for the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the US launched 13 Tomahawk cruise missiles against a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, suspected of producing nerve gas, and 60-70 Tomahawks against three al-Qaida training camps in southern Afghanistan with the intention of killing Osama Bin Laden and other terrorist leaders.

While the pharmaceutical plant was destroyed during Operation Infinite Reach, the evidence supporting its connections to either al-Qaida or nerve gas production quickly evaporated. In addition, the attacks against the al-Qaida leadership killed a few dozen people, including Pakistani intelligence officers training militants to fight in Kashmir. Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohammed Atta – ringleader of the 9/11 attacks – and other key al-Qaida leaders survived, and were certainly not deterred.

These examples show that a more prudent immediate response to terrorist plots or operations is to understand why the existing counterterrorism plans and programmes failed, and how they should be adjusted and enhanced. While military force is undoubtedly an essential tool against individuals directly responsible for terrorist plots and operations, responding too quickly allows US adversaries to dictate the terms of US policy, and elevates and emboldens them in the eyes of the world.

In October 2000, the USS Cole was bombed while refuelling in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39 others. Four months later, the intelligence community provided conclusive evidence to the Bush White House of al-Qaida’s direct involvement. Twenty-one months after that, after significantly increasing US counterterrorism co-operation with Yemen and methodically developing sources within the country, in November 2002, a CIA-controlled Predator drone killed Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, the al-Qaida operative responsible with overseeing the Cole bombing.

In this instance, military retaliation succeeded. But as the Northwest Airlines plot demonstrates, without a long-term and comprehensive programme to enhance Yemeni security and governance capacity, there is little that the US can do to prevent terrorists from operating there.

Credit: The Guardian (UK)