The subtitle of my 2005 book Elusive Peace is How the Holy Land Defeated America. And after listening to President Obama's annual address to Congress and the nation's televisions, I can categorically say that the Holy Land defeated America again.

In his speech, Obama did not refer at all – not even a single word - to the Middle East peace process. True, he is facing huge problems and pressures at home, but not to mention the peace process which, in the past, was quite high on his agenda, is also to admit failure.  

It would not be fair to put the blame for failing to resume peace talks in the Middle East on Obama alone, as Israelis and Arabs are not easy clients to deal with; but no doubt mistakes have been made by the Obama team.  

Back in July 2009, I wrote in Words are easy and many that, "Obama is now losing momentum…" Indeed, Obama's principal mistake was his attempt to squeeze concessions from Israelis and Palestinians before bringing them together; to force the Israelis, for instance, to stop building settlements on the disputed land before the renewal of peace talks. He failed, however, to realise that in the never-ending-Middle-Eastern-souk, trying to squeeze concessions takes time and, in the meantime, you lose momentum. Instead, Obama had to take advantage of his (then) huge popularity and drag Israelis and Arabs to the negotiating table, forcing them to compromise then and there.   

So what's next? As I have already argued in He's a nice guy, I have held barbecues at the Sea of Galilee and elsewhere, the way forward is to put on ice the complicated Israeli-Palestinian peace track and focus, instead, on trying to sort out the less complex Israeli-Syrian dispute.
Ahron Bregman

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Mazel Tov to the wizard of words Barack Obama for winning the Nobel Peace prize! He is a nice guy, a good speaker, and I do like him.

But what a terrible timing to earn a Nobel Peace Prize: just a week after announcing the dispatch of extra 30,000 troops to Afghanistan (thus bringing the US total to 100,000, close to the number of Soviet troops in the country during the 1980s).

Well, I wish Obama all the best but, frankly, I think that all this Nobel Peace Prize business is, at this stage, a bit premature and, in fact, I am pretty sure that the perspective of history will regard Obama as war president. I hope, though, that the scenario I describe in This is how we'll get out of Afghanistan will never materialize.

We should also recall that the Middle East Peace Process was high on Obama's list of priorities. Do you remember "Remarks by the President on a New Beginning", which was Obama's speech at Cairo University on 4 June 2009? Well, let me just tell you that, in spite of huge efforts by Obama's special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell, thus far the verdict is: zero results.

And as I commented on Obama and the Middle East peace process in one of my previous post: "Words are easy and many, while great deeds are difficult and rare".

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On Monday, Fred Kaplan captured the sense of ambivalence many seem to feel about Afghanistan. I've been and remain a proponent of a surge there, but just barely. With that in mind, a few quick impressions from President Obama's speech:


1.    The tone itself is what we’ve come to expect – measured, lacking in hubris and suggesting an extensive cost-benefit analysis. Whether or not one agrees with the Administration, the extensive review process suggests the President means it when he says "I'm mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who -- in discussing our national security -- said, "Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs."

2.    The President reiterated his goal of "disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda and its extremist allies." I'd like to know more about how we’ll deal with actually degrading al-Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan during the next 18 months. I understand the President was constrained in what he could say, but I was looking for more about how U.S. operations in Afghanistan translated to action against AQ in Pakistan. I think there is a strong case to be made for why continued U.S. action in Afghanistan is necessary to degrade al-Qaeda. I’m not sure whether the President missed a chance to make that case last night or if he smartly avoided getting too bogged down in al-Qaeda. I wonder whether part of this was a response to the previous Administration.

3.    With his mention of Somalia and Yemen, Obama publicly recognized that whatever the U.S. does in Afghanistan, those actions alone will not defeat al-Qaeda. I don’t think, and certainly hope, that this Administration is not planning to launch a COIN-focused strategy against these or other ungoverned spaces. So why should Afghanistan be any different?

The argument has been made that because AQ is now a transnational movement we should not focus so much energy on Afghanistan. Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are AQ 1.0 and we’ve already moved on to AQ 2.0 or 3.0. In other words a decapitation strategy won’t work. Further, attacks can be planned anywhere and so there is no point in focusing so many resources on Afghanistan.

This misses a few salient points. Most jihadi groups are waging what I’d call peripheral campaigns against the West, while remaining focused primarily on their own backyards. Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership – and by that I don’t just mean the top two – is different. It prioritizes the fight against the U.S. and its allies, and most plots disrupted in the West continue to emanate from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region. That makes degrading the capabilities of actors in this region a fundamentally different objective than degrading the capabilities of all jihadi groups in other ungoverned spaces.

4.    Not much was said about Pakistan, but what was said mattered. First, the President made clear that the U.S. relationship with Pakistan would extend – in terms of time and scope – beyond America’s activities in Afghanistan. Second, he made it clear that the U.S. “cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known and whose intentions are clear.” Getting Pakistan to actually go after all of the militant outfits inside its borders will be no easy task. Building capacity there is a must have, but that alone will not be enough. I’ve often wondered whether the U.S. has more or less leverage over Pakistan when it is fighting next door.

5.    The time horizon is clearly what many people will focus onIt’s almost trite to note by this point, but people in the U.S. don’t believe there will be a drawdown in 2011 and people in Afghanistan don’t believe the U.S. will stay. I don’t really think there was a better option – an open-ended commitment was not politically feasible on the home front. That said, it is somewhat unfortunate that the 18-month time horizon just happens to coincide with the official start of the general election season for the 2012 elections. And that the start of the general election season coincides with the traditional summer season surge of fighting by the Taliban.

On the one hand, I do think that putting out a time horizon is necessary to pressure political actors in Afghanistan. On the other, the Taliban can simply melt away and wait things out. Of course, there is no guarantee that a drawdown will actually begin in 18 months or what that will look like. Also missing was a description of what a withdrawal would look like.

6.    There was a clear commitment to facets of the COIN model – strengthening the ANA and ANP as well as providing security for the populace – but no real details about how this will work. That’s understandable. But given some of the other acknowledgements of past failures and current counter-arguments, I’d like to have seen the President acknowledge the challenge posed here. I assume he did not for fear of undercutting morale in Afghanistan. The U.S. is gambling a lot on the ability to build an Afghan army and Afghan police force in the next 18 months. What happens if [or when, depending on your degree of pessimism] this does not come together?

 

You can have a look at the transcript here.

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I disagree with David Kilcullen on several matters, but I agree 100% with what he said recently at Georgetown, as reported by Bellum. Some highlights:

•    We've suffered from only incrementally increasing the number of troops over the years. The Taliban has proven itself capable of absorbing the impact from an additional 10-30 thousand troops. We need to either "overmatch" them with a substantially larger deployment  or not send any at all (or possibly draw down).
•    Whenever we send more troops, violence will spike almost by definition.
…
•    There is "not much point" to negotiating with the Taliban right now. This is because the Taliban believe they are winning and so have no reason to bargain. Our goal should be to fight first and hard, to convince them that they should talk.
…
•    Successful counterinsurgencies take 15-20 years. Unsuccessful ones take 9-11 years.

It is refreshing to have a president that is deliberative and doesn't just follow his 'gut', but this is getting a little ridiculous. It is decision time.

Mr. Gates said a central focus in Mr. Obama's deliberations was "how do we signal resolve, and at the same time signal to the Afghans, as well as the American people, that this is not an open-ended commitment?"

The latest clues about the president's thinking, as provided by Mr. Gates, came a day after it was disclosed that the United States ambassador to Afghanistan, who once served as the top American military commander there, has expressed in writing his reservations about deploying additional troops to the country.

The position of the ambassador, Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general, puts him in stark opposition to the current American and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who has asked for 40,000 more troops.

General Eikenberry sent his reservations to Washington in a cable last week, three senior American officials said on Wednesday. In that same period, President Obama and his national security advisers have begun examining an option that would send relatively few troops to Afghanistan, about 10,000 to 15,000, with most designated as trainers for the Afghan security forces.

This low-end option was one of four alternatives under consideration by Mr. Obama and his war council at a meeting in the White House Situation Room on Wednesday afternoon. The other three options call for troop levels of around 20,000, 30,000 and 40,000, the three officials said.

    ...

A central focus of Mr. Obama's questions, officials said, was how long it would take to see results and be able to withdraw.

"He wants to know where the off-ramps are," one official said.

The president pushed for revisions in the options to clarify how — and when — American troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government. He raised questions, officials said, about the exit strategy for American troops and sought to make clear that the commitment by the Untied [sic] States would not be open-ended.

I am all for an exit strategy, but President Obama should understand that there is a whole spectrum between a timetabled exit strategy and an open ended commitment. The nature of fighting insurgencies is more art than science. Conditions on the ground are constantly changing and strategy needs to be constantly reassessed in concert with policymakers.  The outcome of these deliberations should be setting the best course – not a decision to pick up and leave if this isn't turned around within x number of years (x is likely to be 2 years or less, if we are to believe the leaks coming out of the White House and DoD).

As Kilcullen reminds us: that is not how these things we call insurgencies work.

I will also add these questions for you all to chew on:

Does the United States have a moral obligation to defeat the Taliban? Do we owe anything to the Afghan people, especially in the south and east of the country, who would have to live under continued Taliban governance if the so-called Biden strategy (minimal counterterrorism/special ops effort) is followed?

Speak up in the comments.

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