Reading the pre-final draft of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) 2010, one is reminded of the old adage, “plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose,” in the Pentagon’s handling of asymmetric war, counterterrorism, and other related issues. The ghosts of the Vietnam War, of how not to lose another war, are also very much alive. Since the QDR is usually long on the details of weapons systems—in its making, the four Services fight the bare-knuckle war of pushing their preferred weapons platforms, notwithstanding their commitment to joint warfare—and short on the discussion of strategy, it is seldom clear whether ample attention will be paid to strategy when it becomes operational.

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Watching the developing spat between the PRC and the U.S. over the latter’s decision to sell $6.4 billion worth of arms to Taiwan, one is reminded of the reality that security affairs have remained part and parcel of “low politics,” if that type of politics can be redefined as politics where suspicion, the dark shadows of zero-sum-related competitiveness, and one-upmanship are still lurking and ready to poison the ties between these two important actors. Contrast that version of low politics with its counterpart, “high politics,” if that phrase can be redefined as a description of the new realities where China is catching up with the United States, and the latter is beginning to look like an old curmudgeon, getting grumpy about its declining economic power and the related effects.

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The Iranian protest as a social movement

The mounting protest against the Islamic Republic in Iran is in the process of becoming a social movement. Sidney Tarrow, a specialist on the subject, defines a social movement as collective challenges (to elites and authorities) by people with common purposes and solidarity in sustained interactions with elites, opponents, and authorities. He specifically distinguishes social movements from political parties and interest groups; and that is an important distinction. Social movements in the context of this essay are not known for bringing about incremental political changes in the existing political system. More often than not, they result in radical changes leading to regime change. If the Iranian government is facing a rising tide of social movement, then that can be the best news for the United States, which has always despised the Islamic Republic for humiliating it through the “Iranian hostage crisis” in 1979. The ties between these two countries have remained tense since then. Iran, under the Ayatollahs, has consistently and virulently opposed the U.S. hegemony of its region. It has viewed that strategic affair as threatening to its stability and, indeed, to its very survival. The most recent cause of conflict between the two antagonistic countries is Iran’s nuclear research program. A regime change brought about through a social movement might also be the best news for Israel, who wishes to maintain its own nuclear monopoly, which has remained an ignored reality. However, that reality has created an ostensibly permanent military asymmetry between the states of that region and Israel. The Arab states have remained silently resentful of it. Iran, on the contrary, has decided to challenge it by staring its own nuclear research program.

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The United States went through a near-miss terrorist attack during the Christmas holidays. A Muslim, this time a Nigerian Muslim, was involved. Consequently, the country is going through another silly season whereby a number of “experts” with diarrhea of the mouth are eagerly expressing their idiotic views. At the government level, there is an outcry for finding who (which bureaucrat or which bureaucracy) was sleeping on the job, or who failed to “connect the dots.” The process of condemning Muslims is on with a vengeance. One suggestion is that the United States should abandon the attitude of political correctness and racially profile every Muslim traveler. After all, they say, Israel is doing that as a matter of course. However, no one stopped to think that Israel is an island, a small and insignificant nation, compared to the lone superpower, which claims not to be at war with Islam and Muslims. Sarah Palin, who desperately tries to sound intelligent and coherent in order to peddle her book, made the news by stating that profiling Muslims is quite appropriate.

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Published in Foreign Policy in Focus (30 Dec 09) – Click on link to read entire article

The real test of President Barack Obama’s dealing with China and Russia will be whether he can persuade them to support U.S. pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear weapons aspirations. Obama is reported to have lobbied China on that issue during his recent visit. He also broached the topic with Russia in the recent past for the same purpose, but with little success. Iran denies wanting to join the nuclear club, but Washington has no faith in those denials.

Dear President Obama:

As a student of presidential decision-making, I read with utmost interest Gordon Goldstein’s book, Lessons in Disaster. My curiosity stemmed from the fact that there was a great deal of hoopla that, before making a decision about committing additional troops in Afghanistan, you, along with your advisers, read this book to ensure that right decision was made on that issue. In other words, you were reportedly resolute about avoiding the mistakes of your predecessors before committing the United States in another major conflict of our time.

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The Western predilections to know what’s best for South Asia and the Middle East are very much alive. This is 21st Century’s version of the “white man’s burden,” a frame of mind that manifested a purportedly superior wisdom on the part of white colonials about the future shape of governance in their colonies. We just heard that Peter Galbraith “proposed enlisting the White House in a plan to replace” President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. Galbraith served as the number two official of the United Nations in Afghanistan. He was appointed to that job at the insistence of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who is President Barack H. Obama’s Special Envoy for his AfPak strategy, whose face is changing on a daily basis, it seems. However, thanks to the proactivism of the top U.N. official in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, Galbraith’s plan was rejected and he was removed from his slot. (more…)

All eyes are fixed these days on Afghanistan to see how many troops are being deployed at what places in that country and how many more NATO troops will be deployed and where. In Washington, the U.S. Forces Commander, General Stanley McChrystal, and U.S. Ambassador to that country, Karl Eikenberry, are assuring the legislators that they are indeed singing from the same sheet of music. But two developments, one of which is stealthy—in the sense that its real intention may not be quite apparent—are taking place in Pakistan. Together, implications of these developments for Pakistan, maybe even for Afghanistan, promise to be momentous.

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President Barack H. Obama’s announcement of his new strategy on December 1, 2009, conclusively makes the war in Afghanistan “Obama’s war of choice.” The President spoke from one of the hallowed symbols of America’s military power–the United States Military Academy at West Point. Gone is the rhetoric of the wastefulness of Bush’s war of choice in Iraq, when candidate Obama was “speaking truth to power.”
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The real test of President Barack H. Obama’s dealing with China and Russia will emerge in his success to persuade those countries to support the U.S. in pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear weapons aspirations.  Obama has reported to have lobbied China on that issue during his recent visit. He also broached Russia in the recent past for the same purpose, but with little success. Iran denies having such aspirations, but Washington has no faith in those denials.
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