Undoubtedly, implementation of the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine will be done widely, as the contagion of instability continues to spread from South Asia to its east in Central Asia and to its west in the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa, and the trans-Sahel region. The ghosts of Vietnam—about not giving COIN its fair due—are very much “alive.” Besides, the successful implementation of that doctrine in Iraq remains a powerful reason why it will (and should) also be implemented elsewhere. Besides, there is no other credible alternative for now.

There is a section in the draft document on “building regional capability.” The obvious focus is on Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. But it totally misses the differences in building capabilities in those three countries. The primary focus should be on massive nation-building, which will be different for each of them. In Pakistan, democracy has emerged from within, while in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has been enforced by the American occupying forces. Despite enforcement by outsiders, democracy seems to be emerging as a successful form of government in Iraq. So, governments in Pakistan and Iraq play a crucial role in managing any external aid that flows from abroad to rebuild their respective governing capabilities, and for the evolution of a civil society therein.

But in Afghanistan, a number of member nations of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will play a lead role in nation-building. In the meantime, the most troubling aspect in Afghanistan is that the Karzai government has become the proverbial albatross around the neck of the Obama administration. The gravest mistake made by the United States was its failure to throw out the results of Karzai’s highly fraudulent reelection campaign and to organize an entirely new election.

The emphasis on building regional capabilities of the QDR 2010 draft is also a reminder of the Nixon administration’s “Vietnamization” of the Vietnam War of the late 1960s and early 1970s. That concept was also implemented in the Middle East. Consequently, the United States learned to rely on the regime of Mohammad Reza of Iran as the gendarme of ensuring America’s dominance in the Persian Gulf region. What is different now is that there is no regime in West Asia or South Asia willing to go to that extent to defend America’s interests. In fact, all friendly regimes—Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen—are increasingly coming under heavy attack by forces of instability determined to impose their own version of radical Islamic order in those countries.

A continuing emphasis of the new QDR is discussed under the section “Enhance Language, Regional and Cultural Ability.” These are also issues on which the United States remains a hapless giant, not only in the Middle East, but also elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific. Michael Schauer’s book, Imperial Hubris, establishes the fact that the United States built a large body of knowledge on Afghanistan during its proxy war to defeat the Soviet Union in the 1980s. However, while dismantling the Taliban regime in 2001, no one made use of that knowledge. Whatever happened to that body of knowledge? Why are we not able to use it to fight the Taliban-al-Qaida nexus of today?

One glaring omission in the 2010 QDR draft is, while discussing the language capabilities in the cultural education of Pakistan and Afghanistan, it neglects to mention Urdu—the predominant and the official language of Pakistan; it only lists Pushtu and Dari—the two dominant languages of Afghanistan.

Under the section, “Counterinsurgency, Stability, and Counterterrorism Operations,” the draft document mentions the U.S. challenge to forestall the fall of weak states, but it wrongly attributes the reasons for their weakness and impending fall to “humanitarian disasters.” That is akin to stating that someone’s bad cold is a result of their upset stomach. The real reasons for the impending fall of the regimes in Yemen, Afghanistan, and others are: the absence of good governance and the presence of chronic kleptocratic, highly inept, nepotistic, and, in some instances, obscurantist rule.

There is no doubt that fighting extremism and asymmetric war will preoccupy America’s powerful military well toward the end of the next decade. However, if one is looking for evidence that the United States is on top of its endeavors to tackle extremism, instability, poverty, and other reasons for the rapid spread of political instability from Asia to Africa, the draft QDR 2010 document is not very assuring. Listing the problems, but only coming up with another catalog of military platforms or operational or tactical approaches to respond to the rising tide of political instability, is not the solution. Perhaps, that is not the intent of the QDR. If true, then one might have to wait for the National Security Strategy of President Barack Obama to see whether the United States has developed a road map and applicable strategies for its long and arduous journey to stabilize the weak, weakening, or failed states.

If one watched the debates at the recently concluded World Economic Forum 2010, one was left with the definite feeling that the shift of global power is unremittingly becoming a potent trend. China’s emergence as the next superpower is already happening, more in the realm of economics and less in that of the military, for now. But that could also change within a matter of a decade or so. With an annual economic growth of 9 percent per annum, the Chinese economy is making the West envious of that phenomenon. The spillover effect of China’s economic growth is emerging in the form of its growing clout in Africa and South America, where the Chinese development model has become a new trend worth emulating, while the West is claiming “sour grapes,” by accusing China of using “checkbook diplomacy.” The African nations are also becoming increasingly envious of “China’s rise,” and are trying to figure out which aspects of China’s development they can incorporate in the not too distant future.

The European nations are also befuddled and even depressed as a result of a mounting sense of their irrelevance in the global arena. One recent example of that irrelevance was accentuated by the fact that President Barack Obama refused to attend the next U.S.-EU summit in Spain. His was reportedly unimpressed with the results of last year’s meeting held in Prague.

China’s reaction to the U.S. arms sale to Taiwan was rather harsh, in the sense that it threatened to impose sanctions on American companies involved in selling weapons platforms to Taiwan. Military contacts between Beijing and Washington are expected to come to a standstill.

At one level, China is only trying to emulate the United States when it habitually imposes economic sanctions on any country doing business with Iran. Yet, at another level, China’s threatened reaction is likely to trigger a trade war at a time when the protectionist forces inside the United States are chomping at the bit to come up with punitive measures in response to the traditionally nagging issues being discussed under the general rubric of “China’s unfair trade practices.”
An important question is why is China overacting to the U.S. weapons sale to Taiwan? After all, Beijing knew that was a leftover from the days of the Bush administration. China would have had a better reason for being annoyed, if the Obama administration had sold Taiwan the controversial F-16 C/D aircraft, which it recently requested.

The answer is that China may be feeling its oats as a rising power. After pronouncing that the chief purpose of its emergence (“rise” or “development”) is peaceful, the Chinese adopted a cooperative posture toward the lone superpower in finding solutions to the global economic meltdown in 2009.

It is possible that, after establishing an impressive record of cooperation with the lone superpower, China, as a quid pro quo, wanted the United States to show it special consideration by not selling arms to Taiwan. Such calculation, if true, ignores how serious the U.S. Congress remains in supporting a fledgling but nevertheless vibrant democracy in Taiwan. Besides, manifesting a change of mind about selling weapons to Taiwan, or even reluctance toward that option, would be harmful for the United States at a time when East Asia is undergoing palpable realignments among states in that area. So, at least from the U.S. side, not selling arms to Taiwan, or postponing it, would have been quite harmful.

Even though the U.S. arms sale to Taiwan remains an important source of U.S.-China discord, there is no doubt that it is likely to get over its annoyance on that issue. However, it is also likely to adopt its own version of quid pro quo by refusing to cooperate with Washington’s propensity for tightening the screws of economic sanctions on Iran, something that is also quite important to the Obama administration. In addition, Washington should not expect any major Chinese overtures about pressuring North Korea to be forthcoming in future negotiations on the nuclear weapons issue with the U.S.
In the final analysis, issues of “low politics” (as defined in this essay) are likely to intensify the U.S.-China rivalry in the coming months. No favors should go unrewarded; no exercise in realpolitik should go unreciprocated. That is the thinking of China’s up and coming mandarins, who are quickly learning the behavior of the superpower of the future!

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.

It takes awhile for social movements to build momentum. However, once that momentum is built, there is no stopping them. Their strength stems from the fact that the disparate groups who have nothing in common but opposition to the existing regime, pitch in to build the strength of such movements. However, once they achieve their aim by overthrowing the existing regime, they turn against each other, thereby creating the aforementioned violence, instability, and mayhem. Political changes brought about as a result of a social movement are of a radical nature. As such, they result in a period of instability, which may last from a few months to a few years.

The Iranian revolution of 1978-1979 was the outcome of a social movement, which as a general principle, was opposed to monarchy. Ayatollah Khomeini became a leading voice of that revolution, especially during the last two-to-three years of the Shah’s rule. As that movement was developing, there was certainty that the revolution would result in the establishment of an Islamic government. When the revolution swept through Iran, the monarchy was thrown into the dustbin of history. But it was only fortuitously that the Islamic forces gained an upper hand in that social movement. That is also another idiosyncratic effect of a social movement: the ultimate outcome might not have been a planned or an anticipated one.

Since the regime of Mohammad Reza was acutely pro-Western and was accused of neglecting the Islamic heritage of Iran, the religious forces, as a vanguard of the social movement, decided to transform the country into an Islamic Republic. There is no conclusive evidence that emergence of a theocratic regime was what the majority of those who shed their blood in Iran really wanted. However, once the Islamic Republic emerged, it was hoped that some sort of moderation would eventually surface, whereby Iran would emerge as a country where there would be a reasonable balance between the forces of moderation, modernization, and Islamic identity. Alternatively, it was hoped that, once the dust of the revolutionary turbulence settled, Iran would become a democracy. There was every reason to believe that democracy—even some sort of Islamic democracy—would come to Iran. The Shia clergy, unlike their Sunni counterparts, always maintained a social distance with the powers-that-be of Iran. In that capacity, they sustained their role as an anti-regime force. The powerful tradition of quietism– whereby the religious establishment was not supposed to be part of the governance, only its silent critics—was the intellectual and theological basis for that. However, when the principle of the Vilayat-e-Faqih (rule of the cleric) took roots in Iran, all hopes of moderation and democracy dissipated.

The leaders of Islamic Republic never opted for moderation. The notion of the Vilayat-e-Faqih was more suited to the personality of the late Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, who never really manifested moderation in his thinking. Still, the notion of Vilayat itself was revolutionary for three additional reasons. First, it rejected the conventional notion of quietism among the Shia clerics. That very fact created a permanent schism within the ranks of the grand Ayatollahs or Iran and Iraq. Second, given the revolutionary aura of Khomeini, his successors were not going to enjoy the kind of legitimacy that he himself enjoyed. The chief strength of Khomeini was that he provided a kind of charismatic leadership whose basis was both religious and revolutionary. Even a grand Ayatollah or a marja-e-taqleed—which is the highest religious title assigned to a Shia cleric—could not have been as well-versed in leading a revolutionary movement as Khomeini proved himself to be when he entered triumphantly in the streets of Tehran in 1979.

His successor, Ali Khameini, was not only a religious lightweight, when compared to Khomeini, but he could never prove himself to be a deft political leader of any substance. That very fact necessitated that he disallow the forces of moderation and reform to gain an upper-hand. The hardline Islamic rule became the order of the day and the Islamic revolution continued to lose its legitimacy. Third, as the Iranian population grew younger, the revolution itself continued to grow older, archaic and outdated, not just in the fact that its leaders had gotten old, but also because their thinking about governance in an increasingly globalized world had also became similarly obsolete. In that capacity, the only way that the leaders of the Iranian government knew to respond was through increased control, and by brutally trampling on the aspirations of the young Iranian to be governed by a legitimate government. That need, while it is being suppressed by the paramilitary Basij and the Revolutionary Guards, is evolving steadily into a social movement, which promises not only to overthrow the hardline rulers of Iran, but it also threatens the very continuance of the Islamic form of government in that country. As the protest movement is being suppressed, the brutality of the suppression itself is very much a reminder of the days of the Mohammad Reza’s rule. What is even more remarkable is that Khameini and his ilk are demonstrating a collective sense of dementia. They had forgotten how the quickly the powerful the regime of Mohammad Reza collapsed under the mounting pressure of the forces of the Islamic revolution.

The Iranian social movement is operating in an era when the flow of information is unstoppable. Even the communist rulers of China are finding out the hard way that the “great firewall” of China cannot stop the spread of information and the yearning of the masses to be free sooner or later. If anything, the worldwide coverage given to the brutality committed against the forces of freedom in Iran is only further rejuvenating those forces. YouTube website and Twitter messages are working in full force, spreading the potent images of the craving for freedom. Millions of people all over the world saw the murder of Nida Soltan, a young Iranian female, at the hand of a security person. No other evidence was damning enough to make a case of what the Iranian protestors are facing in that country. Her face has become as powerful a symbol of the Iranian social movement just as the image of the lone hooded prisoner became an emblem of the brutal face of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

There appears to be a contest between the tyrannical forces of the regime to brutalize the protestors and the resolve of the latter to absorb pain, yet come back with even more force to overthrow the regime, while spreading the pictures of brutality to all corners of the world. The information revolution was in the days of its infancy helped the explosion related to the Khomeini revolution in the 1970s, when his sermons and calls for overthrowing “America’s Shah” was heard by everyone who yearned for freedom even in the remote regions of Iran. Now the shoe is on the other foot as when the same information revolution in its primacy is transmitting pictures of the brutality of Islamic regime via cell phones and YouTube to far off corners of the world.

How secure is the regime?

The uppermost question now is how secure is the Islamic regime in Iran. While its downfall does not seem imminent, even that indication should not be a source of comfort for the Supreme Leader Khameini and his ilk. The upcoming month of February might be of significant import for the government as well as for the protestors. The government forces are likely to use it to do their utmost to reestablish the legitimacy of the Revolution, as they did by orchestrating pro-government demonstration during Ashura observance. The protestors are likely to use the February occasion to make a case that the Revolution was hijacked by the Khameini, Ahmadinejad and their paramilitary thugs, who are solely concerned about regime survival and without any regard to the Iranian populace.

The language of the protest movement—the constant chants of “death to dictators” and even damaging the posters bearing the image of Khomeini—is already becoming dangerously anti-Islamic Republic in nature. Still, its chief weakness stems from the fact that it has not yet found an alternate leader. There is no other Khomeini to lead the masses. The late Grand Ayatollah Montazeri was perceived as such a force. However, even while alive, he was too old and frail to lead another revolutionary movement. Mir Hussein Moussavi has been too tainted for his past ties with the Islamic Republic. Besides, he has not shown the kind of risk-taking that made Khomeini such an ominous force in the eyes of the pro-monarchy forces as far back as in the early 1960s. Besides, Moussavi, like the former president Ali Khatami, wants continuity of the Islamic Republic, but with a change in leadership. The social movement might no longer be willing to be satisfied with that kind of a change.

However, the Iranian political milieu is much too fertile to allow a leadership gap for too long. Another leader of the charisma of Khomeini, but one who is armed with radically different ideas, has to emerge soon enough. Otherwise, the social movement will lose its revolutionary spirit. That is how social movements—i.e., those who carry the flames of revolutionary change—operate.

Is there a foreign hand in the internal turbulence in Iran?

As much as the Middle East is famous for its conspiracy theories, one has to wonder whether the United States or other foreign powers are indeed involved in the current protest movement. If history teaches us anything about America’s involvement in that country, one cannot cavalierly or categorically dismiss the possibility of America’s non-involvement in fomenting Iran’s social movement. After all, the democratically elected government of Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq was overthrown by a combined operation carried out by the CIA and the British spy service in 1953.

Extrapolating that tradition to contemporary politics, the United States has a lot of reasons to see the demise of the Iranian government. Iran is the only remaining “confrontational” country of the Middle East. In that capacity, it has constantly challenged the strategic dominance of the United States and its proxy, Israel. It has never accepted the proposition that the Arab-Israeli conflict can be resolved peacefully. Iran has backed up its confrontational stance against the U.S. and Israel by regularly supporting the Hamas position of “no negotiations.” In Lebanon, Iran has played a crucial role in thwarting the hegemonic designs of the Menachem Begin-Ariel Sharon axis in the 1980s by creating the Hezbollah as a paramilitary force. That party played a crucial role in the Israeli decision to finally pull out of Lebanon in 2000. That very same Hezbollah has enjoyed a new prestige in the Arab world by challenging Israel in July-August war of 2006 and surviving the intense Israeli air campaign that was aimed at destroying it. Consequently, the political clout of Hezbollah and Iran skyrocketed in the Middle East.

Iran has also played a crucial role in destabilizing Iraq between 2004 and 2008 in order to make sure that the U.S. forces do not decide to stay in that country permanently. Even as Iraq is experiencing political stability in 2010, Iran’s clout in Iraq has remained high, something that is the least welcomed reality for the U.S. occupation authorities.

In addition, by refusing to give up its nuclear research program, the Iranian government has given all the reasons for the United States to think that it aims to develop nuclear weapons. While insisting that it has no intention of developing nuclear weapons, Iran has manifested an attitude of least flexibility. However, neither U.S. nor Israel believes the Iranian assurances.

The United States, on its part, has also maintained a sustained posture of confrontation and vitriolic rhetoric of condemnation of Iran. As far back as during the Iran-Iraq war, the Reagan administration blatantly sided with the regime of Saddam Hussein. The operating rationale for such an approach was Iraq was perceived as a “lesser of the two evils.” Thus, it was the policy of the U.S. government to do all it could to ensure the defeat of Iran in that war, hoping that such a defeat would bring about an end to the Islamic Republic. When that did not happen, the United States remained a leading force of imposing economic sanctions on Iran hoping, once again, that the long-term effects of those sanctions would lead to regime change.

In view of the preceding, it is very hard to accept that the U.S. government may be a totally uninterested or an uninvolved party in the current Iranian political instability. Viewing strictly as an option, it behooves Washington that the current Iranian government is overthrown. That would remove a major thorn from the side of the lone superpower. It would also resolve the issue of Iranian commitment to nuclear research program without a military action. More to the point, Washington can live with the instability stemming in Iran stemming from the overthrow of the government through the apparent activities of a social movement than through a military action taken by a foreign power. The clandestine involvement of the U.S. or any other government can be talked about, but, as long as it cannot be proven, it is not likely to harm the U.S. interests in the Middle East, or so calculate the powers-that-be in Washington.

A potential overthrowing of the Islamic government in Iran provides no guarantee that the succeeding government will be pro-American. America’s prestige in the Middle East has remained all time low in the aftermath of its invasion and occupation of Iraq. Even the most pro-American governments of the Persian Gulf prefer not to show their support of the lone superpower either volubly or frequently. It is bad for the regime stability to be seen as a staunch supporter of the United States in the Persian Gulf region at a time when even the Saudi government is beginning to feel the rising flames ignited by the pro-al-Qaida forces in the neighboring Yemen. The speculations regarding a potential Iranian involvement in Yemen (in support of the Shia forces that are fighting the Saudis) abound. If that is true, then Iran might have found another way to sustain an upper hand over the alleged or potential American shenanigans related to support the social movement to bring about regime change in that country.

What happens if the regime falls?

The best answer to this question can be provided by examining the geographical environment of Iran. Pakistan, Afghanistan—Iran two neighbors—are already places where the Islamist forces are confronting the existing governments and the United States. Consequently, these neighbors of Iran are experiencing different degrees of instability. Two of these—Afghanistan to the East of Iran and Iraq to its West—are also occupied by the United States. That very fact continues to fuel the activities of al-Qaida and its cohorts. Across the Persian Gulf Iran is the Arabian Peninsula where al-Qaida is gathering strength in Yemen. The Islamist insurgency has already spilled over in neighboring Saudi Arabia, where Saudi Arabia, where its forces have intensified the conflict by conducting a number of bombing raids in northern Yemen, areas that is contiguous to Saudi Arabia. The southern part of Yemen is facing the secessionist forces.

Across the Gulf of Aden is the highly unstable Horn of Africa, where Somalia has emerged as the “poster child” of a failed state. Two western neighbors of Somalia, Ethiopia and Eretria, are well on their way of becoming failed states.

Given this gloomy, but a realistic description of Iran’s immediate geographical environment, the last thing the international community wishes to see is the downfall of Iranian government. However, the Middle East is famous (or infamous) for surprising the predictions and expectations of even those who reside in the region. So, one should not be surprised if the government in Iran falls. If that were to happen, the only winner will be al-Qaida and its supporters who have an established record of demonstrating their effectiveness for violence and mayhem under political turbulence and chaos.

What can the regime do to survive?

An obvious answer to this question is that the regime should think about compromising with Moussavi. However, that compromise can only be meaningful if the results of the June 2009 elections are nullified. No one expects that to happen. Besides, Iran is also known for one more brutal tradition: if an existing regime starts to offer concessions to the forces of change, that measure is seen by the opposition as a sign of weakness and a perfect opportunity to ratchet up violence and turbulence with a view to ousting the regime. That was precisely what happened to the regime of Mohammad Reza in the last few months it was in power. Given that reality, the Ali Khameini is not likely to offer any concessions along the lines suggested above. Another option for it to sit tight and show some willingness for reform on its own and hope that such a measure would not create a tsunami for regime change. In fact, Iran seems to have already adopted that option.

In the meantime, the United States and its Western allies would continue to increase pressure on Iran by slapping harsh economic sanctions. Iran’s best hope is that Russia and/or China would come to its rescue. That is a possibility; however, those two countries are also busy studying the situation and calculating how far they should go in supporting Iran’s intransigence related to the conflict with the United States involving its nuclear research program.

By conducting a fraudulent election, the current government in Iran has dealt a very severe blow to its own already shaky legitimacy. If it were to plummet—even with alleged support for the social movement from abroad—it, first and foremost, should blame itself. After all, it has been doing everything to make itself vulnerable to foreign shenanigans and plots for its overthrow.

1. Sidney Tarrow,

Power in Movement: Social Movement, Collective Action, and Politics

, (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
2. James A. Bill,

The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations

(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988)
3. Vali Nasr,

The Shia Revival:
How Conflicts within Islam will Shape the Future

President Barack Obama decided to show his “outrage,” since some so-called pundits were upset that he was not showing the kind of passion that George W. Bush had shown after the 9/11 attacks. But, Bush’s record in his so-called “war on terrorism” has been a miserable failure. During his regime, the United States became an occupier of two Muslim countries. That might be one reason why the lone superpower under Obama is facing such an uphill battle in dealing with “violent extremism.” If Obama were to follow Bush’s example, then the United States is likely to face future quagmires and inertias.

Another dim-witted statement that was uttered by one of the “pundits” is when he wondered out loud why Muslims are not condemning what the young Nigerian tried to do. Statements of that nature imply that all Muslims, until every one of them yells at the top of his/her lungs condemning such action over and over again, are condoning terrorism. At no time in the history of human kind was such a reckless notion deemed worthy of air time.

What happened to America’s dealing with terrorism is that, under a new president, another country (Afghanistan) became the focus of it, as if by “winning” in that country the current administration would defeat terrorism once and for all. What the United States is not considering is that there cannot be any victory against the terrorist forces unless it develops comprehensive anti-terrorism policies. Firing cruise missiles or using UAVs to shoot a group of terrorists here and there, or sending Special Forces to take out a few terrorists is not the solution. Actions of that nature only intensify feelings of hatred and revenge against U.S. personnel all over the world. If the United States’ invasion of Iraq taught anything to America, it is that the use of military power (“hard” power) alone is no guarantee of victory.

As President Obama is busy developing some sort of blueprint (I will not call it a strategy, because there is no such thing up to this time), Pakistan and Afghanistan look increasingly precarious places. In both those countries, Islamist forces are on the offensive. Iran, totally unrelated to the latest episode of terrorism, is getting increasingly unstable. The Iranophobes in America are eagerly waiting for the Islamic regime to fall, hoping that the next government will be pro-Western. No one is considering that the alternative to the Islamic Republic might be chaos, which might have its own deleterious spillover effects in Iraq.

Across the Persian Gulf, Yemen is boiling over as another failed state. Northern Yemen and areas of Saudi Arabia contiguous to it have become the new battleground between forces of those two countries and al-Qaida, with the United States increasing its pressure on both of those countries to let loose their hard power on them. America’s answer to problems of al-Qaida is: kill, kill, kill, never mind what happens to Yemen or Saudi Arabia in the process. Farther East to the Arabian Peninsula is the Horn of Africa, which contains Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eretria. Somalia is already the poster child candidate for a failed state, while Ethiopia and Eretria are right behind it.

The question of the hour—indeed, of the decade—is what should be done about all these countries that are steadily becoming havens for al-Qaida. Does the United States have enough cruise missiles to shoot at all of them, ensuring the eradication of all supporters of al-Qaida? Does it have enough drones to fly them on a 7/24 basis on all the aforementioned countries?

In the last presidential election, there was no debate about how to win against the terrorists worldwide. Terrorism as an issue had already fallen way down on the list of American voters’ concerns during that presidential campaign. Candidate Obama made his electoral fortune by banging the drum of the failed policies of Bush, and then insisting that he would go after al-Qaida and would do everything to eradicate it in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. Who could have argued against that without having his/her patriotism questioned? What bears repeating here is that the 2008 presidential election campaign was totally devoid of any debate regarding how to be victorious over global terrorist forces because, by then, the 9/11 attacks were fading in American memories.

That fading process would have continued if not for the fact that Obama remained true to his promise and started the use of hard power in Afghanistan and Pakistan, assuming that he would win where his predecessor had failed.

The widening popularity of al-Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula and on the Horn of Africa, and its sustaining capacity in Afghanistan and in Pakistan, should intensify the feeling in the U.S. that the need of the hour is to develop comprehensive anti-terrorism policies, and not to solely rely on killing (counterterrorism emphasis) and hope that such a measure would also eradicate terrorism. But right now, examining the public debate, one gets the feeling that the American government is in the process of reinventing the wheel. There is the usual blame game that various agencies are still not cooperating; or the process of terrorist monitoring has become so cumbersome that it does not work even when a young man’s father reports to the American embassy that his son might have joined the ranks of the terrorists, yet that young man is allowed to travel to the United States.

Watching the process of recrimination, looking for fall guys, the blame game that is currently in progress in Washington, one wonders whether the lone superpower would ever become invulnerable to the actions of those who attach no value to life, neither of their own nor of others.
If there is a fall guy inside the United States in this whole process of countering terrorism, it is the cumbersomeness related to securing America that has become the chief culprit of making America unsafe. The strength of the terrorists stems from the fact that they operate on the basis of simplicity: one person or a few persons specialize in or invent new ways of creating death and mayhem. All they have to do is to find just one or more loopholes in the cumbersome security processes. At least in incidents of this nature, the culprit is the incompetence of the intricate bureaucracies, which promise to become even more intricate and, in all likelihood, more incompetent in the coming months.

The recommendations of the 9/11 Commission of creating an intelligence czar was a wise one. Instead, Congress diluted most of the recommendations of that Commission by playing politics. Today, we have eight or more intelligence agencies. All of them are busy fighting budget and turf battles and performing the redundant tasks of collecting intelligence. Those types of redundancies are also contributing further to the aforementioned cumbersomeness. As the co-Chairs of the 9/11 Commission observed in their OpEd of January 11, 2010, “The DNI [Director of National Intelligence] has been hobbled by disputes over its size, mission and authority, but forcing information-sharing and enabling the NCTC’s [National Counterterrorism Center] best analysts to do their work should not be subject to dispute.”

What America needs is an anti-terrorism strategy that is geared toward homeland security, but a strategy that also deals with causes of global terrorism that is focused on Africa, the Middle East, and South, Central, and Southeast Asia. Of these regions, Africa—the Horn and the trans-Sahel region, North and West Africa—is where terrorism is likely to run rampant during the next decade. South Asia and the Middle East will remain hotbeds of terrorism from now until at least the middle of the next decade. Central Asia appears calm; however, we know so little about that region because countries of that area are governed by autocrats who want absolutely no outside scrutiny of their tyrannical rule. So, it is a safe bet that one or more countries of Central Asia is likely to experience internal turbulence or even violent regime change. In all likelihood, such change would not result because of terrorist groups, but such groups are most likely to take every advantage of the resultant political turbulence.

If the prognostications of increased transnational turbulence are correct, then it behooves the United States to have trans-regional strategies to counter such events. Merely appointing “czars” and “special envoys” is not enough. However, considering how unprepared the United States has shown itself to be about dealing with terrorism last December, one has little reason to remain optimistic.

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.

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.

That book is a fine piece of scholarship, and, indeed, a must read for policymakers. Since you are America’s top policymaker, I was very curious as to what lessons you might have drawn from it. If I could have interviewed you, I would have asked you point blank: What exactly did you learn from that book, and what steps you have taken to avoid making disastrous mistakes? Since I do not have access to you, let me make several observations about what I think your rationale may have been and to think out loud about the aspects of that book to which you may have (or should have) paid attention and the facets you seem to have missed.

I will start from the very last chapter of Goldstein’s book, “Intervention is a Presidential Choice,” since you have already made the war in Afghanistan “your war.” You made that choice very clear even as a presidential candidate, when you depicted the Afghanistan war as the “right” war. However, for some strange reason, your supporters thought that you would not demonstrate the same kind of commitment to another war as President Lyndon Johnson did to Vietnam, or as George W. Bush did to Iraq. It was not your fault, Mr. President; it was the fault of your supporters for holding on to the wrong assumption. Goldstein’s narrative in his last chapter makes it clear how a large group of supporters of a different president (President John Kennedy) still believe that he would have disentangled America from Vietnam. No one will ever know whether that was a correct assumption, but the fact is that supporters always give their icons the benefit of the doubt. They look for parallels—as Kennedy’s supporters did by drawing parallels about how quickly he abandoned a failed mission in the case of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, thereby concluding that he would have done just that in the case of Vietnam after his reelection—and hold on to a belief that their hero would not have faltered.

It seems, Mr. President, that while you were so anxious to read history and to look for similarities and differences between Vietnam and Afghanistan, you might have been swept away more by the differences between the two than the similarities, and made the decision to commit 30,000 additional troops, thereby putting a personal stamp on the war in Afghanistan.

In the days of President Johnson, the domino theory was too sacrosanct to be dismissed. The human and economic costs related to that decision was agonizing for him. However, in the final analysis he swallowed the bitter pill and committed America to a cause that ultimately led to its failure. In your tenure, al-Qaida is too evil not to be confronted, never mind the price. You are similarly agonized before committing additional troops. But I wonder whether you really pondered long and hard about the last sentence of Goldstein’s book: “…intervention is a presidential choice, not an inevitability.” Observing you from a distance, you appeared to have treated the option of America’s additional troop commitment in Afghanistan as an inevitability right after your election. After that decision, the unseen hand of history was already busy writing the narrative for the rest of your administration.

McGeorge Bundy, who served as Special Assistant on national security to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, and who is the chief subject of Goldstein’s book, also faced the issue of drawing parallels of his own era. The author writes, “Bundy’s core conviction about Vietnam in 1964 left him only one path to follow. Inclined to accept the Cold War parallels to the Korean War, unwilling to question the primacy of the domino theory, and repelled by the premise of withdrawal or diplomatic extrication through neutralization, the only option left was military escalation (p. 140).” What seems to have burdened you is the two parallels of the Vietnam era. First, you insisted that all of your advisors thoroughly discuss with you all assumptions related to additional commitment of troops in Afghanistan. You did not want any of your major advisors to nurture even private doubts regarding that option. Secondly, you became highly sensitive about having an exit strategy. Your predecessor, George W. Bush, did not have one when he decided to invade Iraq. Only the Iraqi insurgency imposed one on him, especially in the aftermath of the Iraq Study Groups’ recommendation that the U.S. should cut its losses and leave Iraq.

You tried to be proactive on that subject and, in a highly unusual fashion, you imposed an exit strategy on yourself. You are working under the historical burden of avoiding another defeat (a la Vietnam). You might also be placating your critics by signaling them that you do not intend to stay in Afghanistan indefinitely. Everyone inside the U.S. knows how artificial that deadline really is.

At the same time, I wonder whether you have paid ample attention to another powerful parallel that is working against America’s involvement in Afghanistan. When Soviet troops ignominiously pulled out of that country in 1989, the United States also left Afghanistan. As you were debating and holding endless meetings before announcing your decision to commit additional troops to Afghanistan, the Afghan people and the Taliban-al-Qaida nexus were becoming fully apprised of the fact that America would leave Afghanistan once again. From the point of the Afghan populace, the declaration that America intends to leave within a year or so is bad news. Why should they stick their necks out for the U.S., a country with a notorious tradition of using its friends and then leaving them to become prey to forces of destruction and mayhem long after America’s exit? The insurgents and terrorists in Afghanistan, on the contrary, could not be happier knowing that they only have to wait out the lone superpower.

One of the legacies of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam is that the military leaders started emphasizing the necessity for having an exit strategy before sending our troops to the next battlefield. But exit strategy also creates an artificial sense of urgency that the enemy forces do not share. In fact, the knowledge that the clock starts to tick for the redeployment of American forces soon after they are deployed tends to work against us and for the enemy forces. I am only reminded of the famous observation that is generally related to Mullah Omar, when he reported to have stated, “You have the watches, but we have the time.” So, while you are poised to win in Afghanistan, America’s adversaries in that country are watching the ticking clock that is bringing its hour of withdrawal closer by the minute. For them, that hour will bring anything but the triumphant calls of victory on the U.S. side.

One more troubling parallel is the controversy related to America’s support of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam, and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan. In both instances, the United States faced unpopular presidents, thereby making its own presence in those countries highly unpopular. Consider the following passage: “There is a distressing absence of positive commitment to any serious social or political purpose. Outside observers are ready to write the patient off. All of this tends to bring latent anti-Americanism dangerously near to the surface (p. 157).” This passage, even though written by McGeorge Bundy in the 1960s, is entirely applicable to Afghanistan today.

There were reports that Richard Holbrooke’s favored former American official on the U.N. team in Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, as a demonstration of his revulsion about the corrupt nature of the government of Hamid Karzai, recommended his ouster. But, quite wisely, you rejected that recommendation, which was blatantly unconstitutional. Still, the fact remains that your administration is backing a highly corrupt head of state. In that capacity, Karzai is likely to subscribe, no matter how unwittingly, to America’s potential failure in Afghanistan. The absence of governmental legitimacy was a major problem in South Vietnam. That problem continues to haunt the Karzai government in view of the sham elections of August 2009.

Two more chapters of Goldstein’s book that struck me were “Never Trust the Bureaucracy to Get It right,” and “Never Deploy Military Means in Pursuit of Indeterminate Ends.” The massive national security bureaucracy of the United States is legendary about making mistakes of colossus proportion. Kennedy was so badly burned by the CIA’s wrong-headed plot that led to the Bay of Pigs fiasco that he never again trusted it during another major crisis of his short-lived presidency, the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, as well as his brief handling of the Vietnam conflict. The CIA could not predict the implosion of the Soviet Union. And one can never forget that agency’s discreditable role in promoting “Bush’s war” in Iraq. You also knew only too well the role of the Department of Defense under Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz in creating the Iraqi quagmire.

Since you added more troops in Afghanistan, I wondered whether you had one of the aforementioned lessons of Goldstein’s book in mind, “never deploy military means in pursuit of indeterminate ends.” Johnson did not have indeterminate ends in mind. His ultimate objective was to win in Vietnam. But he was faced with the most inordinate task of establishing a government in South Vietnam that could govern well and sustain itself, while the North Vietnamese did everything to stop the emergence of such a government. As an ultimate alternative, he used the awesome power of the American military to keep North Vietnam from winning, but failed. What crippled Johnson was the absence of an indefinite commitment to stay put and to absorb human losses in South Vietnam. George W. Bush almost encountered the same fate in Iraq for the same reason, if not for the timely confluence of the Iraqi Sahwa movement and America’s counterinsurgency strategy, which deescalated violence and saved a devastating defeat for America.

Your challenge is even more awesome than that of your aforementioned predecessors for three reasons. First, your objectives in Afghanistan appear as indeterminate as those of Johnson’s. If that is not true, then perhaps you have not amply clarified it. To say that U.S. troops will leave when Afghanistan becomes a stable country is very similar to what LBJ emphasized regarding the government of South Vietnam. Second, the Afghan war remains highly unpopular inside the United States even before you announced your decision to send 30,000 additional troops. Third, most NATO allies do not share your resolve and commitment to continue the fight in Afghanistan.

One more historical parallel between Vietnam and Afghanistan, Mr. President, is the resolve of those peoples never to allow foreign occupation of their countries. I know, America’s machinery of public diplomacy continues to emphasize that we are not in Afghanistan as an occupying force. What is important to note, however, is that most Pushtoons (who formulate 42 percent of the population of that country) do not believe that; and they formulate the backbone of support of the Taliban in Afghanistan. So, for a majority of the people there, they are fighting foreign occupation forces led by the United States. I wonder whether you have missed that fact.

As the title of one of the chapters of Goldstein’s book states, “Politics Is the Enemy of Strategy.” And, Mr. President, I am afraid that we might be in the process of watching a mistake of an equally massive proportion in Afghanistan. I say that because nation-building in Afghanistan is not your focus, where just that type of approach might be most pertinent and compelling one.

In Pakistan, your preferred approach is counterterrorism (CT), an important aspect of which is the use of drone attacks. That tactic, to be sure, is killing some members of al-Qaida, but many Pakistani civilians are also dying in the process. The Pew Research Center opinion polls are documenting the massive amount of anti-Americanism stemming from your CT-related tactics. The good news in Pakistan is massive American assistance under the Kerry-Lugar Bill (the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act). That ought to be identified as the single most successful achievement of your presidency thus far.

Mr. President, I am sure you have made the right judgment regarding America’s commitment to Afghanistan. But the criterion of rightness or wrongness of a decision is only determined by the historians much later, when such decisions lead to victory or defeat. I am sure LBJ did not think he was making any “wrong” judgments when he made them. Ultimately, he relied heavily on the use of America’s military power to extract victory out of Ho Chi Minh, but still failed.

By using our military power, we can convert that country (and Pakistan) into parking lots. However, following the current counterinsurgency doctrine, the United States will not do that. On this issue, you have not made a mistake. Your choice is purely a pragmatic one. However, pragmatic choices do not necessarily lead to victory. More importantly, wars are known for “wrong” as well as for “right” decisions, a number of which are made accidentally. So, I hope that an historical accident stemming from an inadvertent mistake in Afghanistan is not waiting to happen that would result in another defeat for the United States.

As a retrospective analysis of America’s involvement in the Vietnam quagmire, Lessons in Disaster informs current and future decision-makers what went wrong during the Vietnam imbroglio. However, it does not advise what specific decision of America’s contemporary involvement in Afghanistan is a sure way of winning or avoiding a defeat. Regarding this point, Mr. President, I am sure you have spent a lot of time reflecting. But like LBJ, you cannot be sure of anything until history tells the tale.

Galbraith and Holbrooke belong to the category of American officials who run around thinking that they know what is best for South Asia and the Middle East. Actually, Holbrooke draws his fame from the Dayton Accord that was concluded under his leadership during the administration of President Bill Clinton. But he was installed in the American lobbies of power and influence as one of the protégés of Ambassador Averell Harriman way back in days of the U.S. entanglement and “political engineering” in South Vietnam. So, he is an old hand at the United States’ aborted attempts at rebuilding “broken” nations. In his current post, Holbrooke is reported to be regularly feuding with Hamid Karzai. There is no doubt that Karzai is presiding over a highly inept government. But there is nothing new about that. What is different is that he is an Afghan politician whose star is declining since George W. Bush departed the White House.

Peter Galbraith has a similar career of serving as an ambassador in Croatia and East Timor. He fancies himself an expert on Kurdish problems and has presented a decidedly wrong-headed proposal for an independent Kurdistan. He “also came under scrutiny recently for his stake in an oil field in the Kurdish region of Iraq.”

The corrupt nature of the Karzai government has been a very well-known factor. In fact, corruption remains one of the scourges of all South Asian countries. What should be kept in mind is that a process has been installed in Afghanistan to establish democracy, and its uninterrupted evolution is most vital so that it could eradicate corruption, along with numerous other social ills. The Taliban are attempting to overthrow Karzai through murder and mayhem. How can one explain Galbraith’s suggestion or plan for replacing Karzai through an extra-constitutional, if not an outright unconstitutional, process. In fact, the New York Times dispatch on the subject reports the Mr. Kai Eide told Galbraith that his “plan was ‘unconstitutional, it represented interference of the worst sort, and if pursued it would provoke not only a strong international reaction’ but also civil insurrection.”

It appears that Holbrooke and Galbraith have their own preferred candidates who should replace Karzai. It has been reported that unnamed American officials favor Ashraf Ghani, a former Interior Minister, or Ali A. Jalali. Both of them are fine men, but neither of them was a choice of the Afghan people.

Galbraith has an established record of coming up with his hairbrained schemes, as he did in the case of the Kurdish issue by advocating for an independent Kurdistan. Thereby, he demonstrated how little he really understands the history or politics of that area about which he claims expertise.

Afghanistan has a constitutional process in place. If it were to eventually emerge as a stable democracy, it has to fully implement that process uninterruptedly and on a prolonged basis. Hamid Karzai is an elected president. If his election was an outcome of a corrupt process, then that process has to be corrected next time. If he continues to prove himself as an incompetent leader, as he has in the past, a constitutional means has to be found to replace him. His removal should not be carried out on the whims and fancies of a few self-styled “smart” white men who are running around pretending to be experts on that country. In reality, these “experts” are suffering from the age-old ailment of the colonial era when their forbearers used to think that only they know what is good for brown and black people.

One such development is the Kerry-Lugar Bill which has annoyed a lot of Pakistanis in its insistence that billions of dollars of the U.S. assistance to Pakistan will be for economic development and for ensuring that its notoriously politicized military stays in the barracks forever to allow the blooming of democracy in that country. The economic assistance part of that bill is a matter of public record; its ulterior motive (of keeping the army out of politics) is considerably stealthy.

Many Pakistanis were reported to be upset by the so-called “imperial” aspects of that bill; however, it plays the proverbial role of “belling the cat.” As a matter of history, Pakistani dictators took special pride in telling their countrymen that the reason they overthrew a civilian government was that it was headed by corrupt and inept civilians and how much more able they (the generals) themselves will be in ruling the country. But no dictator could rule the country well. As a matter of fact, the dictators not only created a mess in Pakistan, but its eastern wing was dismantled under the dictatorship of Yahya Khan. Another dictator, Zia ul-Haq, was largely responsible for Islamizing Pakistan–the long-term implications of which emerge in the form of current internal strife, sectarian violence, and suicide bombings in that country today.

It was only under the dictatorship of Pervez Musharraf that the Pakistani nation showed its anger towards the mess that his rule was creating in their country. Even though the international media did not call it any type of “color revolution,” the people of Pakistan revolted for democracy.

The duplicitous games of Musharraf—when he was told President George W. Bush how hard he was fighting the Islamists, while still remaining in cahoots with them—finally came to end. The enlightened part of that country’s population showed a lot of backbone in signaling to Washington that the days of Musharraf’s rule were over, circa July-August 2008. And it was America’s backing that really persuaded that dictator to go on a permanent sabbatical to London, from where he might still be planning a comeback in the distant future. Even if he succeeds, the Kerry-Lugar Bill has ensured that he would have to return to Pakistan as a reincarnated avatar of democracy.

So, for the first time in the entire history of Pakistan, the world can breathe easy, because that country’s military seems to have been locked within a golden cage (aka the continued American mega-economic assistance to Pakistan).

The second development is an unequivocal insistence of the Obama administration that the Pakistani military must go after al-Qaida and the Taliban, especially in North Waziristan. Until now, the Pakistani military has been quite coy about not smashing the al-Qaida-Taliban nexus, which was only interested in attacking the international security (ISAF) forces in Afghanistan. It was fighting the Tarik-e-Tulaba-e-Pakistan (TTP) only because the latter has targeted the Pakistani security establishment, especially in the aftermath of Musharraf’s decision to bring an end to a year-long takeover of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in July 2007. Actual numbers of the dead are not available, but a general understanding is that scores of them were massacred.

The United States’ message to the Pakistani government is reported to be quite unmistakable: either you eradicate the al-Qaida-Taliban nexus in North Waziristan and its contiguous areas, or we will expand the scope of our own operations through the use of the UAVs and even Special Forces.

The Kerry-Lugar aspect of the United States’ role in Pakistan is indeed welcoming in the sense that, left to its own devices, that country’s Army would have never allowed the evolution of democracy. Considering how badly Pakistan needs economic assistance, and considering how badly the fighting capabilities of the Pakistani military have been damaged because of the near-bankrupt nature of its economy, the present and future generals of that country’s army will be forced to abandon the dreams of carrying out future coups d’état that have been proven so disastrous for that country in the past.

The U.S. insistence on the Pakistani Army to go after the al-Qaida-Taliban nexus might be the beginning a new chapter, if the Army were to take the American warnings seriously. Usama Bin Laden and Aiman al-Zawahari are likely to start sweating soon, if they haven’t already. It appears that the days of the Pakistani Army’s strategic gamesmanship in the Pak-Afghan border area might be coming to an end.
Both these developments, if they were to start producing their intended outcomes, are likely to push Pakistan toward becoming a stable democracy.

There is one important difference, however. By including a general outline of his exit strategy in his speech, Obama signaled, albeit unwittingly, to the Afghans that his country is not going to hang around in that neighborhood. They long suspected the United States of doing just that.

While the necessity of having an exit strategy may soothe Obama’s democratic base on the left, it only confirms the Afghan doubts about the earnestness of America’s staying power in their country. The Taliban-al-Qaida might have roundly applauded those lines from Obama’s speech.

President Obama’s chief problem in Afghanistan is that there is no winning in that country without permanently occupying it. And all the past occupiers were defeated in attempting to do so. Afghans are legendary in their abilities to unite to fight outsiders, but then turn against each other when they succeed in ousting the foreign occupiers to wage equally bloody battles. No wonder their country has the ominous moniker of “the graveyard of empires.”

His second problem is that there has not been a tradition of a strong central government in that country. So, creating one now is out of the question in the sense that it would take a long time for an occupying force to achieve that goal. Even the achievability of that goal is a highly dubious proposition. An alternative is to create a federal type of government, with strong provinces and a weak center. However, it is difficult to function with that type of arrangement, even in countries with a strong tradition of democracy, a high rate of literacy, and a powerful legacy of political compromise. Those traditions are totally alien to Afghanistan.

The third serious challenge for the Obama administration in Afghanistan is that Islam has a powerful presence there. In the post-Soviet Afghanistan, that Islamic presence became acutely political, with overarching features of Wahhabi Puritanism, militant Jihad, and suicide bombings. Even the old style Afghan politicians-and there are not too many of them left in that country–are befuddled about how to eliminate those characteristics that are so alien to their polity.

The United States has never shown even a slight evidence of having any capabilities of working with Islamist groups anywhere in the world, including in Iraq. George W. Bush was shocked to see the election of Islamists, when elections were held in Iraq in 2005. After that, the Iraqi quagmire left little hope for the United States to stay put and to develop a Western-style democracy. So, as a matter of last resort, it learned to live with Islamist democracy in Iraq, while hoping to extricate itself from that country in the next few years.

President Obama’s speech barely touched on the geopolitical intricacies of the Afghan war, which have made any realistic solution of that problem so elusive. He has decided to work closely with Pakistan, but has said nothing about the Indo-Pak rivalry, which is complicating that conflict. India has a huge supposedly diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, which Pakistan regards as a major challenge to its security. The United States not only has to reexamine that issue closely, but also must do everything to soothe Pakistani anxieties. Unless that happens, Pakistan is not likely to emerge as a serious partner of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Finally, President Obama has shown a lack of interest in nation-building in Afghanistan. Given the enormous expenditures that the United States is faced with in Iraq, and given his noble endeavors to come up with a national healthcare policy in the United States, one can fully understand his refusal to get involved in a mega-billion-dollar commitment of nation-building in Afghanistan. However, that is precisely what that country needs, once political stability starts to emerge there.

Afghanistan will serve as a crucial laboratory for this President to learn how to conduct foreign policy in a highly complex place. It will also become a country where he is not likely to encounter victory. However, the fact that he has decided to commit a large number of forces and to tie the fate of his presidency to stabilization of that country speaks volumes about the audacity of his courage.

By the same token, the United States has to think long and hard about taking military action again Iran while it is about to increase its troop deployment in Afghanistan. At the present time, American forces can become easy targets of Iranian asymmetric-war-related activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, at a time when the political tide in Afghanistan is already heavily favoring the Taliban, and when internal violence in Iraq appears to be escalating.  For a predominantly Shia country, Iran has shown remarkable pragmatism in cooperating with intensely anti-American Sunni Islamist groups in the past to make matters worse for American forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Under these circumstances, a potentially effective option for the U.S. is to heavily lobby China and Russia to support U.N. sanctions on Iran. However, in this regard, both of those countries have major strategic agendas of their own related to Iran. First, Iran is a major source of energy supplies for China. Second, it serves as a major source of hard currency for Russian nuclear technology and other military weapons at a time when Russia’s economy remains heavily reliant on income from energy sources. Third, Iran looms large in both Chinese and Russian maneuvers for the evolution of a multipolar global order. As a state that has never accepted America’s dominant role in the Middle East, and as a country that retains major clout in Iraq and Lebanon and high popularity in Gaza for its support of Hamas, Iran has been indirectly promoting the Sino-Russian agenda of challenging America’s dominance in the Arab world and multipolarity.

At least for now, the Obama administration has scored a victory when it received the backing of Beijing and Moscow for an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) resolution that censured Iran and ordered it to halt construction of a secret uranium enrichment plant near the city of Qom. China’s support for this resolution was the result of Iran’s backtracking on a deal with the five-plus-one countries (Perm-5 of the UNSC plus Germany) for removing most of its nuclear fuel stocks abroad for the import of material needed for its medical research reactor.

The vote also came at a time when the American President, during his recent trip, was more than forthcoming in assuring China that the lone superpower has no intention of containing China. On the contrary, Obama stated that his administration is fully focused on engaging it. The overall tone of the global coverage of President Obama’s trip to China had all the ingredients to boost the self-confidence of the Chinese leadership that their country has indeed arrived on the global platform as the next candidate for superpowerdom.

Under these circumstances, China has no intention of ruining its moment of glory by refusing to cooperate with the United States just to please Iran. The most understated fact of Sino-Iranian relations is that Iran needs China more than the other way around. As much as China is in need of foreign energy sources, it also knows that, given the international sanction-ridden environment, Iran is quite eager to sell its oil and gas to China. Iran has also become an observer in the Sino-Russian-dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is steadily acquiring a heightened global visibility. So, China can afford to play the seesaw version of first siding with Iran, then with the United States, and then calculating the ebb-and-flow of events before decding its next move.

The support of the aforementioned IAEA resolution by the dual-headed leadership in Russia—between President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin—was somewhat surprising, because, while Medvedev appears flexible in dealing with the United States, Putin is not. The latter is more resolute in asserting Russia’s role as a wannabe superpower. In a recent speech during the United Russia Party’s 11^th Congress, Medvedev criticized its “conservative” stance on a number of issues faced by Russia, and accentuated the urgent need for political modernization. He also stated that the United Russia “needs to step up and reform itself and put a halt to ‘administrative excesses’ within.” Those comments were given global coverage because Putin is the Chairman of that party. At least for now, there have been reports of evident friction between Medvedev and Putin.

It is hard to conclude whether Russia’s support of the IAEA resolution was an outcome of the split between Medvedev and Putin (who is known for his strong support of providing assistance to Iran as an integral aspect of his policy of Russia’s assertiveness), or whether that country is merely signaling Iran to be more forthcoming on the nuclear issue toward Perm-5-plus-one countries.

Iran’s behavior regarding the nuclear issue has become even more complicated as a result of its June 2009 presidential election, which has raised serious questions about the current nature of domestic support for that issue.

It is a well-known fact that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not the “decider” on that issue, the Supreme Leader Ali Khameini is. But why is it that the Iranian representative was authorized to negotiate with the representatives of the Perm-5 plus one, and then Iran decided to backtrack on the deal that he made at the conclusion of those negotiations? The Janus-faced foreign policy of the Islamic Republic has always been a confusing variable for Western diplomats. It has become even more confusing as Iran is facing rising domestic tensions and the usual slogans of “death to America” are increasingly interspersed with slogans of “death to dictators” (the latter being Khameini and Ahmadinejad).  The Iranian leadership may very well be afraid to offer concessions to the Perm-5-plus-one countries that might be misconstrued, both inside and outside of Iran, as a sign of its wobbliness.

To add further perplexity to an already confused situation, the world is told that Iranian authorities confiscated the Nobel medal from its Nobel Laureate, Shirin Ebadi, one of the very faces of Iran that are recognized as reasons for hope and moderation in that country. Her husband was reportedly arrested and severely beaten by Iranian authorities. Iran has denied the report about the medal, but not about Ebadi’s husband.

As Iran is steadily heading on the road to even more confusion and chaos, President Obama’s task of negotiating with that country is becoming progressively more difficult. His strategy of developing a great power consensus on denuclearizing Iran emerges as a highly thoughtful and potentially most constructive one. However, what is not clear at this point is how far China and Russia are willing to go to cooperate with the United States regarding Iran, which remains a major actor in the strategic maneuvers of both Beijing and Moscow in the evolution of a multipolar global power arrangement.