It is India’s obsession with Pakistan that is forcing it to increase its strategic presence in Afghanistan.  India knows that, given the geographic propinquity to Afghanistan, Pakistan will always enjoy an unsurpassable strategic advantage over India.  Still, India has a number of additional advantages.  First, it is a rising economic power and can entice Afghanistan by offering huge amounts for economic development.  As a country whose economy is teetering at the edge of a calamitous precipice, Pakistan has little to offer Afghanistan in terms of developmental assistance.  Second, as a strategic partner of the United States, India is given pretty much a green light by the administration of President Barack Obama to escalate its strategic presence in its immediate
neighborhood.  As recently as only a few days ago, President Obama – who knows as much about the tortured history of South Asia as he does about the convoluted history of Afghanistan – gave Pakistan a public lecture that it should not view India as its “mortal enemy.”  Needless to say, India also believes along the same line.  However, what is more noteworthy is that Pakistan does not.  Thus, it makes a lot of sense for India to persuade Pakistan of that through its foreign policy behavior – its non-threatening posture – rather than a near-obsessive pursuit of enhancing its strategic presence in Afghanistan.

A complete picture of the reality of South Asia is that both Pakistan and India have been behaving obsessively when it comes to Afghanistan.  The darkest days of India’s foreign policy were when Pakistan succeeded in enabling the capture of power by the Taliban in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s.  After that, India, along with Russia and Iran, did its best – albeit quite unsuccessfully –
to provide military and economic assistance to the Northern Alliance of Ahmad Shah Masood in his uphill but enormously courageous military campaign to dislodge the Taliban from power.  The United States succeeded in obtaining that goal where the collective endeavors of India, Russia and Iran failed.  The Taliban regime was dismantled in November 2001 as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

Pakistan brought the Taliban to power in Afghanistan substantially in its quest for “strategic depth,” which was supposed to provide it some advantage over India in future military conflicts.  India, for its part, had every reason to be fearful of the growing power of Islamist extremism in relation to the Taliban rule of Afghanistan, which provided an enhanced strategic advantage of Pakistan.  That advantage was expressed through numerous incidents of terrorism in the Indian-administered Kashmir.

As the Islamist groups inside Pakistan turned against their own government in the first decade of the current century, and as the U.S.-Pakistan ties remain under enormous stress, the shoe is on the other foot.  India is exploiting the situation to enhance its strategic presence in Afghanistan.  The recent strategic partnership between New Delhi and Kabul, which might turn out to be not worth the paper it is written on – is a persuasive example of that reality.  There is little doubt that it is aimed at undermining the strategic advantage of Pakistan, the strong denials of India and Afghanistan to the contrary.  In that sense, those ties remain the legitimate target of Pakistan’s own future endeavors to undermine them.

One wonders how much of this egregious reality of South Asian power politics President Obama knows, understands, and internalizes, when he stood atop his soap box and started lecturing Pakistan that India is not its mortal enemy.  If the United States were not embroiled in finding a political solution to the war of Afghanistan – a war that it seems to be losing at present –  it may have played a role in bringing the two South Asian arch-rivals together.  However, upon reflection, India is not at all perturbed that the United States is too busy with the war to be playing such a role.  In fact, India is of the view that its best interest will be served while the United States plays no such role, for it is afraid of losing its strategic advantage in its negotiations with Pakistan; negotiations that are not really aimed at resolving anything.

Pakistan, for its part, knows that it does not have much of a strategic advantage over economically powerful and politically resourceful India.  So Pakistan seems to be operating on a slightly different version of the old adage: “The strong do whatever they will, and the weak suffer what they must.”  Pakistan’s version of that adage involving India seems to be “weak will do unto the strong whenever they can.”  Afghanistan serves (and will continue to serve) as an ideal place for Pakistan, regardless of whether the United States stays or leaves that country.  Since it considers that country as a legitimate part of its sphere of  influence, Pakistan regards the “encroachment” of India in that country as a serious “offense,” which deserves an appropriate response.  Thus, and sadly so, the unending Indo-Pak rivalry in Afghanistan promises to be both brutal and bloody.

Washington operates on its own logic (or the lack thereof) and its own myths about every major issues faced by any sitting president.  The current myth is that the Afghan conflict is resolvable on the U.S. terms.  And the U.S. terms include killing as many Taliban as possible, thereby persuading the remainder of the Taliban that their best option is to negotiate their continued survival with the U.S. government.  Since America’s leading politicians are driven by how best to define the American version of victory in Afghanistan, they tend to forget that the other side is equally capable of calculating the modalities of such a victory on its own terms. Therein lies the rub for several reasons.

First, the Taliban is not interested in negotiating peace with the U.S. on the terms that are best suited for the Americans.  Second, the war in Afghanistan has not reached a point when the Taliban as a group is convinced that their best option is to negotiate with the Americans.  In fact, an entirely contrary argument on the issue can be made.  The war is not going well for the Americans, and they, as usual, are watching the clock and are getting increasingly eager about a phased withdrawal from that country.  In fact, President Barak Obama’s chances of reelection in 2012 depend heavily (right behind his success in creating a high rate of employment inside the United States) on his ability to demonstrate to the American voters that he is indeed in the process of phasing out America’s continued presence from Afghanistan while winning the conflict.

Unfortunately for the American side, the Taliban know that fact very well.  As it becomes increasingly crucial for the Americans to get out of Afghanistan for electoral reasons, the Taliban can correctly envisage that situation as a harbinger of victory.  All they had to do is just prolong the battle and wait.

Under these circumstances, it is futile to expect a mass switching of the side by the Taliban.  Thus, stories on that topic in the American media remain anecdotal rather than portraying them as a rising trend among the Taliban, especially in the South, which is an area of strong Taliban presence and influence.

Is there any scenario when the American occupation forces of Afghanistan can bring about a successful conclusion of the conflict?  Given the intensity of the hatred, suspicion, and ill will that both sides hold toward each other, one cannot think of any such scenario.  Mullah Mohammad Omar, leader of the Afghan Taliban, who has been pursued as a “high value target” by both Bush and Obama administrations, is not expected to find any reason to negotiate with the  American side.  Besides, what makes the Americans or President Hamid Karzai to think that Omar would be interested in sharing power with the Karzai government, which has been the focal point of his contempt and anger since it came into existence?

On the basis of these factors, the successful end of the Afghan conflict has to be along the lines of a clear-cut defeat either of the Taliban or the Americans.  Given the fact that Afghanistan continues to serve as a graveyard of empire, at least the burden of history as well as the current ground realities are very much against the Americans.

Two important points should be made about the relationship between the president and the U.S. military.  First, not knowing the military culture or the military frame of mind does not imply that a president does not know when to use the military.  At the same time, the military does not go to any sitting president and advise him to wage war as a solution to a conflict.  On the contrary, the U.S. military has a record of not readily opting for the military solution to a conflict.  One recent example that comes to mind is General Colin Powell’s utter sense of shock when the then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright asked him, “What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?”  Powell’s reaction was summed up in his own words as follows: “I thought I would have an aneurysm.  American GIs were not toy soldiers to be moved around on some sort of global game board.” 

Second, just looking at recent American history, the militarization of the U.S. foreign policy has been carried out primarily by the civilian leaders who wanted to “win” the Cold War against the Soviet Union.  After the end of the Cold War, one of the foremost politico-military institutions of that era – the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – not only was allowed to exist, but it became even more relevant in seeking the membership of the former Warsaw Pact countries.  Throughout that process, the U.S. presidents – Bill Clinton as well George W. Bush – continued to assure Russia that Washington had abandoned the policy of containment of that country. Needless to say, no Russian leader believed that claim. 

While the world was waiting and wondering what major conflict would replace the discord of the Cold War era, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States caused it to “declare war” on global terrorism.  That was yet another deliberate and most ambitious decision that militarized the U.S. foreign policy for at least the next several decades.  The U.S. military did not play any significant role in that decision.

This militarization of U.S. foreign policy nullifies all warnings that Ike gave to his fellow citizens about the danger of MIC taking over the decisionmaking process.  On the contrary, the civilian authorities have become zealot champions of assigning the MIC a dominant voice in the policy process of this country.

As a general rule, whenever a sitting president decides to use the military option as a response to a conflict, he definitely becomes dependent on the military’s advice, because doing otherwise would open him up to enormous criticism from his domestic critics.  If the conflict is of major proportions – for instance, Vietnam and the Gulf War of 1991 – the most prudent option for a president is to heavily rely on what the generals and admirals want him to do.  The apocryphal catechism that only the generals know the intricacies of conducting a war takes over the calculus of the civilian leaders in the executive and legislative branches of the United States government.

That is what happened in the Gulf War of 1991.  Even in the case of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, when then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld pretty much told General Tommy Franks to wage a war with “less forces,” President George W. Bush continued to give his generals a major voice in the conduct of that war.

A very important fact in this regard is that, especially since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the fact that Bush, wittingly or unwittingly, became heavily dependent on military leaders and their roles by declaring a “war on terrorism” – a move that left him no choice other than to allow military leaders a major voice.   Bush invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq.  After Iraq became a quagmire, he had to rely on General David Petraeus’ “Surge” strategy to save his presidency from being described by future historians as responsible for a losing war.

As much as the candidate Obama criticized Bush’s war in Iraq as a war of choice, he became a victim of his own rhetoric when he depicted the war in Afghanistan as a “war of necessity” or the “right war.”

When he became president, the die was cast.  He had no choice but to wage that war against al-Qaida and the Taliban to “liberate” Afghanistan.  Then the question became how many forces he was going to insert, since the blueprint of “victory” in Iraq was based on Petraeus’ Surge strategy, which was essentially a military solution (if one is to stretch the imagination and conclusively call Iraq a success for the United States!).  In order to further entrench himself (wittingly or not) in the military option, the next question was how many troops Obama would introduce.  That was how the whole controversy started between him and his hand-picked General, Stanley McChrystal.  That was when McChrystal differed publicly with Vice President Joe Biden’s known preference for counterterrorism, as opposed to McChrystal (and Petraeus’) predilection for a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Goodman is right in observing that the military is wielding too much influence under Obama in matters of defense spending as “the leading policy on both security and diplomatic issues.”  In this regard, President Obama is also emulating his predecessor.  Even though he buttressed  the most sacred principle of civilian supremacy in the U.S. political system by firing McChrystal when he did, the fact remains that Obama is heavily dependent on another General (Petraeus) for victory in Afghanistan, just as much as (if not more than) Bush depended on the same General in Iraq.  Another related fact is that Obama needs a victory in Afghanistan (or at least some semblance of it) around the next presidential election, as much as Bush did before his reelection in 2004.

President Obama won the presidency by harshly criticizing Bush’s very decision to wage a war in Iraq.  He is likely to be severely criticized by a Republican presidential candidate in the next presidential election, if the war in Afghanistan were to turn sour in the coming years.  One wonders how much time Obama spends thinking about the similarity of his fate as a president and the prospects of reelection with that of his predecessor, who is not exactly his idol.

An important question that comes to mind is whether Obama would have fired General McChrystal for the same interview if the war in Afghanistan was going well for the United States. Under such circumstances, replacing a winning general would have been well nigh impossible. Then, Obama could not have said, as he did after relieving McChrystal of his command, that war is bigger than any one man. He would have still chastised the general for imprudent remarks, but would have moved on by saying that “the war in Afghanistan is too important for me to be swayed by some minor irritants like this interview.” While McChrystal was presiding over a failing war, he was a readily dispensable commodity for a highly ambitious American president, whose vision is fixed on winning a second term. And even some semblance of success in Afghanistan toward the end of 2011 becomes an important factor in Obama’s reelection.

In the meantime, President Barack Obama is developing an uncanny profound commitment to a strategy in Afghanistan that does not seem to be working. There are several problems with that strategy.

The foremost one is that it is promoting Hamid Karzai’s administration, which seriously lacks legitimacy. The doctrine on Counterinsurgency, FM 3-24, outlines a number of indicators of legitimacy for a government that U.S. troops are trying to defend in a country. At least three of those indicators are worth-mentioning: the ability to provide security for the populace, selection of leaders in a manner deemed just and fair by a majority of the populace, and a high level of regime acceptance by social institutions. Needless to say, the Karzai government is decidedly ‘flunking’ on all of these three variables.

The United States can do very little to legitimize the government of Hamid Karzai. In fact, it is stuck with him. That very fact, and the regular news items about the high degree of corruption and the constant parceling out of billions of dollars from Afghanistan to foreign banks and other safe havens are providing convincing evidence that the “rats know the ship is sinking, and they have started the process of abandoning it.”

We also hear reports that President Karzai, after becoming convinced that the United States would not stay in Afghanistan for long, has already started negotiating some sort of a deal with Pakistan that would provide stability to his country in the post-American era. As much as Pakistan is maligned by Washington and other Western countries, it might be the only source on which Karzai can count for alleviating the rising power and influence of the Taliban. The United States and other Western troops have an option of leaving Afghanistan; however, Pakistan is “doomed” to stay next door to Afghanistan forever for geographical reasons!

The second significant problem with America’s strategy in Afghanistan is that, thus far, American commanders have not found a way to win the war. The campaign in Marja turned out to be a “bleeding ulcer,” as it was candidly depicted by the departing Commanding General McChrystal. The Taliban side has been watching closely, and with much glee, the mounting confusion among American commanders about implementing new tactics. As General David Petraeus takes charge of the military campaign, the most significant thing to watch is how different his tactics are going to be about the use of force, destroying the property where the insurgents are allegedly hiding, and the use of air power. These issues – referred to in military jargon as “courageous restraint” – were reportedly causing a lot of grumbling and resentment among the foot soldiers and Marines that their hands were being tied in the name of winning the hearts and minds.

General Petraeus promised, during his confirmation hearing to replace McChrystal, that he would take a closer look at the issue of courageous restraint. At least the Republican Senators will be watching closely to see whether he really means to bring about any change. McChrystal’s critics do not care to remember that, in implementing courageous restraint, he was only following what Petraeus’ COIN doctrine had advocated. However, Petraeus is also characterized as a “political general.” But does the war in Afghanistan need a political general or a general who is willing to stay loyal to tactics purely on the basis of his military judgment? The answer to this question is obvious.

If the chief reason for the alleged success of the Surge Strategy in Iraq was its capacity to exploit the resentment of al-Qaida among the Sunnis of that country, there is no evidence that something akin to that tactic has yet been found in Afghanistan. Ethnic resentment between the Pushtoons and the Tajiks might be just one reason for the acute unpopularity of the Karzai government. Even though he is a Pushtoon, he has surrounded himself with the Tajiks.

The third problem related to the current U.S. strategy in Afghanistan involves Ambassador Carl Eikenberry and Special Envoy “Bulldozer” Richard Holbrooke. Both of these individuals publicly clashed with Karzai and McChrystal. By getting rid of McChrystal while leaving these individuals in their places, President Obama is demonstrating that he is really limited in his choice of competent personnel. The reports are that both Eikenberry and Holbrooke are on notice to get along with Petraeus. But that artificial restraint might still turn out to be problematic in the sense that it is likely to stifle honest disagreements that should still be debated in order to avoid the pathology of “group think.” These officials can still disagree without becoming disagreeable and without attempting to score points by conveniently leaking their disagreements to the press.

What President Obama ought to do is to look for another strategy right now as a fallback option. He ought to look into why Karzai and the Pakistani government are so eager to cut a deal. Perhaps the United States ought to consider becoming a party to it. Another option ought to bring Iran into the negotiating process on Afghanistan as part of the “regional influentials.” It would be a mistake to conclude that Iran would destabilize Afghanistan in the post-American era. After all, an unstable Afghanistan would be very detrimental to Iran’s interests. The same thing applies to Pakistan. A third option is to put pressure on both India and Pakistan to look for a rapprochement on Afghanistan that involves broader issues of negotiations between those two acute rivals. Fourth, for the development of his next strategy, President Obama ought to stop looking at the Brookings Institution or other think tanks in Washington to hand him over a nicely packaged – but highly flawed – strategy. He might be well advised to let the South Asian nations and Iran play a distinct role in hammering out ways to stabilize Afghanistan. The United States can still play an important role in such a process. With the passage of each week, the current strategy is looking more like a failed one. It badly needs to be replaced by a new one, if the United States wishes to find a winning way of exiting the Afghan quagmire.

Generals conduct wars by using good judgment, which also affect the lives of hundreds of thousands of young men and women. They are not allowed the luxury of demonstrating bad judgment related to war. In the final analysis, McChrystal was fired for demonstrating bad judgment.

The world of Special Operations is full of darkness, black operations that are bloody and gory. “Black operators” – as individuals of special operations are often referred to – are not trained to be diplomats, even though members of their top ranks regularly deal with top foreign officials. It should be noted, however, that Special Forces in general are a bit more familiar with foreign cultures than their counterparts in the conventional forces, but that slight knowledge does not exactly make them world-class diplomats. Still, in the realm of diplomacy, McChrystal did quite well. When President Obama, his ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, and his Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, were on the record for disagreeing or even manifesting contempt for President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, McChrystal was reported to have gotten along with him quite well. That was also why Karzai expressed deep sorrow for McChrystal’s firing.

In reality, General Stanley McChrystal had two problems from the very beginning of his tenure as Commander of the international security forces (ISAF). He did not know what to say and how to say it without offending his civilian masters in Washington. He was almost derisive toward Vice President Biden in expressing his disagreement over the overall strategy of the Afghan war when he appeared at a public meeting at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London in October 2009. Biden was promoting a counterterrorism approach to the war in Afghanistan, which would have emphasized the use of force, while McChrystal was championing the counterinsurgency (COIN) approach – a multi-dimensional approach. That disagreement should not have been publicly expressed by a military officer, and in a foreign country to boot.

Even while President Obama was considering McChrystal’s original request for 40,000 troops in Afghanistan right after he entered the White House, McChrystal, through his frequent public remarks, was appearing to be putting pressure on the president. Someone should have taken him out to the woodshed for that attitude.

McChrystal’s second problem was that the war in Afghanistan is not going well. His tactical emphasis on not using air strikes, not shooting at suspected insurgents, or not allowing American troops to enter a house from where insurgent fire was suspected to have originated were causing a lot of disgruntlement among U.S. forces. In a military that emphasizes minimal casualties, such a daredevil approach was bound to make a lot of foot soldiers very unhappy. But these were also important characteristics of the COIN doctrine that McChrystal was emphasizing.

To top it all, the military operations in Marja of last February had become a “bleeding ulcer,” to quote General McChrystal’s description of it. Consequently, operations in Kandahar were being postponed. The fact that Eikenberry and Karzai have a lot of bad blood between them, and the fact that Eikenberry and McChrystal did not get along, made effective conduct of operations that much more difficult.

McChrystal would have still survived it all, if not for that Rolling Stone interview, which turned out to be an unwitting Kamikaze act of a Special Forces warrior. Through that interview, he came across as larger than anything or anyone who represented the U.S. side, at least in his own mind and in the perception of his minions. He and his subordinates were blatantly offending the civilian authority – the cornerstone of the U.S. system of government. They forgot that they were representing the United States and not some banana republic. McChrystal might not have meant for himself or his aides to have come across that arrogantly, but that was how they were perceived in Washington. After that low level demonstration of bad judgment, the career of the “runaway” general had to be terminated.

Now, to the most important question related to Afghanistan. Is the war in that country more or less winnable without McChrystal? The short answer is that it does not matter. At least this point in the history of that country, it is as much impossible to create an effective central government as it was anytime before. The COIN, even if it were to emerge as an effective way of minimizing violence in Afghanistan, is still far short of resolving the most ancient and obdurate conflicts in that country. In that sense, the war in Afghanistan remains quite “unwinnable” for the United States.

Every new president’s approach to major unresolved issues is entirely different from those of his immediate predecessor, simply because the predecessor’s approach is regarded as inept or even wrong-headed. So, the successor proceeds to ‘reinvent the wheel’ on those issues by approaching it entirely differently. Since Barack Obama entered office criticizing Bush’s involvement in and his handling of the Iraq war, his own war – the one in Afghanistan – was going to have his ‘superior’ mark on it.

Bush invaded Iraq on the pretext of freeing the regime of Saddam Hussein of weapons of mass destruction, which did not even exist. There were no plans to create a viable post-conflict government in Iraq, a reality that is largely responsible for immersing that country in a near-civil war situation.

Obama was to develop his rationale of enhancing his country’s involvement in Afghanistan by developing a strategy and even by establishing an “exit date.” He read in Gordon Goldstein’s Lessons in Disaster of the Vietnamese imbroglio, in order to create a blueprint of how to avoid future disasters in Afghanistan; he put together an AfPak strategy before inserting more troops into Afghanistan; and held numerous brainstorming sessions with his own team of the “best and the brightest” to avoid potential political landmines and blinders related to conflict in that country. He insisted on holding clean elections in Afghanistan, and maintained a highly palpable ambivalence toward the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, whose reelection was allegedly based on a lot of fraudulent practices, including stuffing of ballot boxes. The frequent teleconferencing between the White House and Karzai’s presidential palace during the Bush administration instantly disappeared when Obama entered the White House. Karzai was left with no doubt that the new administration was symbolically holding its nose while dealing with him. News dispatches on the corrupt practices of the Karzai government became regular items.

The U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, dispatched two cables to the White House in November 2009, which were promptly leaked to the press, about Karzai not being an adequate strategic partner. In those cables, Eikenberry also opposed further increases in American troops in Afghanistan. There were reports that Richard Holbrook, Obama’s Special Envoy to South Asia, did not get along with Karzai. Another U.S. official, Peter Galbraith, even went to extent of stating that Karzai is unbalanced and an opium addict.

The general public’s manifestations of an overall condescending and disdainful attitude toward Hamid Karzai by prominent U.S. officials created an intense response from the Afghan president. He turned the tables on the Obama administration by accusing the “West” – which was his euphemism for the Obama administration – for conducting a fraudulent election. He insisted on being treated as an elected head of a sovereign state. Karzai did not take kindly to reports that U.S. forces were threatening to put his half-brother, Wali Karzai, on the military’s “Joint Prioritized Engagement List,” a euphemism for “kill or capture” list. Wali Karzai has been regularly mentioned as one of the chief symptoms of the problems of corruption and nepotism afflicted on his brother’s administration. The most publicized anger incident of Hamid Karzai toward the United States was when he threatened to join the Taliban, a statement that stunned the Obama administration.

Another prominent U.S. official in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, has an entirely different approach toward Karzai. McChrystal, Commander of the NATO forces, not only treated the Afghan president with abundant respect, but worked with him closely, an attitude that caused ample friction between him and Eikenberry. McChrystal is totally immersed in implementing the American military’s COIN doctrine. That doctrine gives primacy to politics – hence on cooperating with the top political representative of that country, Hamid Karzai – and to winning the hearts and minds of the populace, not merely through the use of rhetorical hyperbolas, but through implementing nation-building. In this approach, gaining the support of the local civilian authorities and the Afghan populace is so intricate and pursued so single-mindedly that its practitioners (McChrystal and his staff) strongly disagreed with those who frequently insisted on inserting priorities decided in Washington (Ambassador Eikenberry, Holbrook, and their staffs).

In this constant tug-and-pull between McChrystal’s ‘nativist’ and Eikenberry’s Washington-centric approaches, President Obama – without publicly saying so – has thus far sided with Eikenberry. This type of bickering and Washington’s messy way of managing its occupation of Afghanistan – which also happened in the case of Vietnam and Iraq – was music to the ears of the Taliban and al-Qaida. That reality also perfectly suited their argument that Karzai is merely a puppet, and that Afghanistan is an occupied country, which needs to be liberated.

However, before these disagreements between Karzai and U.S. officials became irresolvable, a brazen sense of realism seems to be dawning in Washington recently. President Obama is reported to have instructed that Karzai should be treated with “more respect” by his national security team, and that he should be regarded as a “partner,” which means as a legitimate chief executive of Afghanistan.

Obama knows that his administration would sink or swim with Karzai in the driver’s seat in Afghanistan. Consequently, his treatment of Karzai during his upcoming Washington trip will be warmer and more respectful, which is a marked departure from the American president’s publicized surprise trip to Afghanistan in May 2010 during which he is reportedly lectured Karzai to clean up his government. Needless to say, no other action of the U.S. government underscored the potency of the Taliban propaganda regarding the puppet nature of the Karzai government more than the international media’s report on Obama’s trip.

The United States almost lost in Iraq by not remembering an important lesson of the Vietnam quagmire, which states that foreign wars are not won by substantially relying on military power. Rather, they are won through a healthy comprehension of the intricate role of politics, and then incorporating political variables into developing a winning comprehensive strategy.

Even though America has not yet fully secured Iraq, the concept of giving primacy to politics in that country – of which the COIN-related Surge strategy was a good example – has emerged as an approach that should be rigorously emulated in Afghanistan. When or if victory comes to the American forces in Afghanistan, McChrystal’s notion of working closely with Karzai (while privately emphasizing good governance and working unstintingly to develop policies to enhance it) is likely to play a crucial role. In the final analysis, it is only through establishing the legitimacy of his government, and by adopting a slew of policies aimed at enhancement of good governance that Hamid Karzai will win against the Taliban-al-Qaida nexus in Afghanistan.

American Muslims – a great number of them – do not seem to have gone through the kind of socialization process that other Americans have about developing a strong sense of belonging to this country. I am not questioning their patriotism; and I am certainly not stating that there is any sympathy among them toward any terror groups. What I am saying is that Muslims anywhere in the world grow up with an overarching love for, and commitment to, Islam, which overrides all other sentiment. That issue does not cause any problem with their loyalty to a nation, or steadfastness to a secular idea, as long as there is no tension – or worse yet – contradiction between their commitment to a nation or to a secular idea and their religion. That has never been the case until al-Qaida and other Islamist groups started to emphasize in the post/911 era that Islam is under attack. The United States’ invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq made that argument for some American Muslims, if not necessarily credible, at least not as contentious as it is generally thought in the West.

However, no equally powerful voices emerged in the world of Islam to counter the claims of the Islamists. The Sunni Muslim regimes – who always suffered from a lack of domestic legitimacy for their rule, and who persistently exploited Islam to seek that legitimacy by co-opting Sunni Islamic scholars to endorse their autocratic and illegitimate rule – were not going to stick their necks out by countering al-Qaida’s Islam-related argument. That is not to say that they agree with that terrorist entity.
For Sunni Muslim regimes, to defend the United States – which remains the chief occupying force of two Muslim countries, and which is waging a “global war on terrorism” – has become a highly risky proposition in the world of Islam.

Besides, the Bush administration, as part of its confused strategy of intimidation in the Middle East between 2003 and 2006, waged a public campaign of vilifying major Sunni Arab governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt for not being democratic, as if Washington had discovered that fact only after it was attacked on September 11, 2001 by the 19 young Arab hijackers of three U.S. airplanes. The lone superpower was being swept away by its then newly-found logic that terrorism in the non-democratic states of the Middle East was growing, and that the autocratic regimes were tacitly encouraging the terrorists to terrorize the outside world so that they would not focus their energy on destabilizing or overthrowing those governments.

Another major Muslim country, Pakistan, once again became a “frontline” state in another of America’s major wars within a span of a little over ten years. As a frontline state, Pakistan was gradually being pushed toward an era when its own Islamist forces would become a major threat. Thus, the major focus of Pakistan’s dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, was to make sure that his country remained a faithful player in America’s war against terrorism, which was increasingly viewed inside both Afghanistan and Pakistan as a war against Islam.

So, different Muslim regimes were involved in their own struggle to survive and were not interested in becoming chief defenders of the United States against the rhetorical barrages of al-Qaida and other Islamist groups which stated that the lone superpower was waging a war against Islam. Even if one or more Muslim regimes were to make an audacious stand to defend America’s global war, they would not have made a convincing case in the eyes of the Muslim masses. It is the nature of Sunni Islam that allows no monolithic authority—a la the Catholic Pope or even an Ayatollah of Shia Islam—to become the chief interpreter of Islamic theology. Those who criticize Muslim leaders for not authoritatively condemning terrorism and becoming a convincing “voice” of Islam are either uninformed of this reality, or choose to ignore it.

In the meantime, two aspects of the United States’ handling of terrorism are emerging as its chief sources of resentment among Muslims. First, the continued U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq is adding further fuel to the Islamist argument that the lone superpower is determined to establish its firm grip on Muslim countries and to make sure that they remain subservient to its policies and its resolve to maintain the supremacy of Israel in the Middle East. The second source of anti-Americanism is President Barack Obama’s determined approach to heavily rely on counterterrorism (CT) – which has been symbolized by the heightened use of UAVs to kill al-Qaida forces in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or in any other Muslim country where Islamic forces are gathering momentum. On the contrary, in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal’s application of the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, developed by General David Petraeus, emphasizes nation-building on a mini-scale (the “clear-hold-build” approach that was proved effective in Iraq). The United States hopes to remain popular among the masses in Afghanistan by applying the COIN approach to dealing with the Taliban, yet it is so insistent upon applying the CT approach in Pakistan. The inherent contradictions between the two approaches are becoming obvious to people of those two countries, and to Muslims at large, on a daily basis.

From America’s point of view, the CT approach is most effective and least damaging. It is also popular inside the United States, because it requires no troops on the ground, no casualties, and no body bags. If in the process of using the UAVs there are civilian casualties, the United States government issues the usual statement of regrets or apologies, or worse yet, it calls it “collateral damage.” But the fact that, more often than not, the UAV attacks also result in the loss of innocent civilian lives creates ample resentment among Muslims toward the lone superpower.

America’s global war on terrorism – even though it is no longer labeled thus by the Obama administration – has created an environment where a number of Muslims, even inside the United States, are having a hard time developing a sense of shared rationale for its related military actions, violence, death, and mayhem.

However, alternatives to America’s current approach to fighting terrorism are easy to proffer; they are hard to implement. Despite that fact, I will offer a few suggestions.

The foremost suggestion is to end America’s occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. However, that is not going to happen anytime soon, because the conventional wisdom among Washington officials is that both countries would descend into chaos. It may be that the U.S. occupation of those countries might create the same result over the long run. But no serious examination of that proposition is taking place inside the United States. There are, to be sure, a number of stated deadlines regarding the redeployent of American forces from Iraq and Afghanistan; but no one really believes that they should be taken as serious commitments. The Obama administration, like the preceding one, wants no part of becoming responsible for “losing” in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The second alternative for Washington is to fully focus on nation-building both in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the United States has introduced nation-building through the Kerry-Lugar legislation. However, the use of a CT approach in that country is overshadowing the good will that should stem from the Kerry-Lugar Bill. President Obama has ruled out an ambitious commitment to nation-building in Afghanistan, regardless of the fact that it holds promise for stabilizing that country.

As the mid-term congressional election gets closer, the Obama administration, in an attempt to minimize electoral losses of Democratic candidates, is likely to be focused on making populist choices regarding its dealings with terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That means there is going to be an increased emphasis on CT tactics over implementing a comprehensive nation-building strategy. However, in order to win against terrorist forces in South Asia, the need for now is to make realistic choices, which means earnestly thinking about conducting nation-building campaigns in both of those countries. The growing popularity of the al-Qaida mentality of creating chaos and mayhem in Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan is proof that killing terrorists does not equal defeating terrorism.

The third approach is to consider developing Joseph Nye’s concept of “smart power” into complex policies aimed at nullifying al-Qaida’s potent argument that Islam is under attack. Nye has defined it as follows: “Smart power is about tapping into diverse sources of American power, including our soft power, to attract others. It is about how we can get other countries to share our goals without resorting to coercion, which is limited and inevitably costly.”

As promising as the notion of smart power is, it still requires considerable tweaking to deal with the complex strategic realities of South Asia and elsewhere. For instance, the goal of the United States in Pakistan and in Afghanistan is to enhance stability and democracy and to defeat and minimize, if not eradicate, the Islamist influence. The first two goals are laudable. Washington is not likely to have any problem persuading either of those countries to pursue it. However, on the issue of minimizing the influence of the Islamists, the Obama administration faces a major problem. It is relying heavily on the use of military power (or in the words of Nye, “hard power”).

There are additional problems inside Pakistan that are coming into conflict with America’s objectives related to that country and neighboring Afghanistan. India’s increased presence in Afghanistan has become a major problem from Pakistan’s perspective. When the United States asks India to train the Afghan police or military forces, Pakistan views that development with considerable alarm. The Indian-trained Afghan security forces are likely to be anti-Pakistan. That is just a perverse reality of South Asia that has yet to be taken into consideration. Despite its long-term involvement in South Asia, the United States either does not understand the overarching nature of regional rivalry between India and Pakistan, or is choosing to ignore it at its own peril.

Using Nye’s notion of smart power, the Obama administration must find a way of minimizing Pakistan’s strategic concerns over heightened interest and the presence of India in Afghanistan. Otherwise, Pakistan is not likely to cooperate with the United States wholeheartedly as long it remains wary about India’s enhanced presence in Afghanistan. It has shown its displeasure allegedly by conniving about, if not directly supporting, two terrorist attacks on India’s Consulate in Afghanistan.

At this time, India, after getting encouragement from the United States about its involvement in stabilizing Afghanistan, has even approached Russia to seek avenues of cooperation with that country. India is also conducting a separate dialogue with Iran on the subject. The Obama administration may be too overwhelmed with its domestic politics to fully study the implications of Indian overtures toward Iran and Russia in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s reactions to them.

Lately, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Pakistan’s Army Chief, has been quite candid about his country’s strategic interests in Afghanistan and India’s heightened presence therein. He has resurrected the concept of “strategic depth” that was first mentioned by General Zia ul-Huq in his interview with the American Journalist, Selig Harrison, in the mid-1980s. The upside of Kayani’s candor is that the Obama administration is receiving an earful of what Pakistan really wants in Afghanistan as a price for its cooperation with the United States. The downside is the fact that the Pakistani Army, once again, is proving that democratically-elected leaders in that country continue to play second fiddle to the Army. In any event, it is up to Washington to decide what policy to develop by fully utilizing the concept of smart power.

America’s involvement in Afghanistan and its ties with Pakistan have to be properly advertised, once again through the use of smart power, both in the world of Islam and inside the United States. The purpose of such a strategy is to consciously develop “Muslim stakes,” both domestically and internationally, regarding America’s fight with the Islamist forces. The congruities between American strategic and Muslim interests have to be acutely and incessantly developed by the U.S. government using the blueprint of the congruity between American and Israeli interests.

The recent fatwa of a leading Pakistani Muslim scholar, Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri, condemning terrorism is the second revolutionary development in the Sunni world; a similar fatwa issued by India’s Deoband Madrassa in June 2008 being the first one. Even considering the highly independent nature of Sunni Islam, these fatwas are eminently better than any official statements issues by any U.S. or Western agencies condemning terrorism. Even though they do not instantly become a source of Muslim consensus, the legitimacy of condemnation by Dr. Qadri and the Deoband Madrassa are incontrovertible. They already have been given ample publicity by the world media. As an important aspect of the use of its smart power, the United States ought to incessantly publicize it to condemn terrorism.

America’s efforts to defeat the Islamist extremists will only succeed when they become comprehensive and dynamic in the sense of ever-changing to suit altering circumstances. For this purpose, the U.S. should use smart power ingeniously, and launch a highly visible campaign (i.e., public diplomacy) to publicize all Muslim condemnations generated in different corners of the world of Islam. In the final analysis, the best way to use smart power is to fight the Islamists’ attempt to legitimize terror in the name of Islam with the endeavors of highly credible Muslim sources to condemn it as inherently anti-Islamic.

Such an approach is direly needed, not just in South Asia, but in a number of failing and near-failing Muslim countries and also for educating American Muslims about America’s approach to the Muslim world. That is the best way to curtail the long reach of al-Qaida.

First and foremost, it unwittingly underscores the fact that most of the world of Islam is on fire. Just look at the trans-Sahel region and the Horn of Africa. To the east of that continent, the Arabian Peninsula has been experiencing increased amounts of turbulence in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Across the Persian Gulf, Iran does not look too stable; its two neighboring states, Pakistan and Afghanistan, are where the United States is fighting its war against religious extremism. That phrase is President Barack Obama’s euphemism for George W. Bush’s GWOT.

If you continue travelling east of Afghanistan to Central Asia, it appears serene. But don’t be fooled by that palpable serenity, and certainly don’t tell the Chinese that their neighboring states are likely to remain stable. Leaders in Beijing (with the full cooperation of the brutal regimes in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) are being proactive in suppressing the Muslim Uighurs, who are yearning to secede from China in its Western province of Xinjiang. Continued turbulence in the Muslim republics of the Russian Federation is also making the Chinese leader very nervous.

The second aspect of the current FP issue that I noted (but remained totally unimpressed about) is what type of strategy the US government should use in its ongoing wars in Muslim lands. The Surge strategy, which has been given credit for stabilizing Iraq (even though that credit remains only partially correct), is being applied in Afghanistan. Edward Luttwak, a U.S. military strategist and historian, argues for the use of strategic bombing in Afghanistan as the best way to deal with the Taliban. He wants the United States to arm the Afghan anti-Taliban militias to the teeth, and to let them do the fighting and dying instead of U.S. soldiers. That worked in the 1980s against the Soviet Union because it was occupying Afghanistan. However, the United States is envisaged now by the Afghans as the occupying force. So, arming the Afghans to the teeth might also result in increased U.S. deaths if or when they were to turn their guns against their American masters. He has completely glossed over that fact. Regarding Luttwak’s suggestion of the use of strategic bombing, I am amazed at how callous some Western strategic thinkers remain about the insignificance of the so-called huge collateral damage that will surely stem from that measure in any part of Afghanistan. While advocating strategic bombing, he has nothing to say whether the US should continue to use the Surge strategy or completely abandon it. Obviously, arming the anti-Taliban Afghan will defeat the very rationale of General Stanley McChrystal’s Surge strategy. Bad suggestion, Ed! My advice to you is that you need to clean your foggy strategic lenses!

The mega-conflict of the 21st Century – how to deal with Islamist insurgency and how to “cure” the failing and failed Muslim states – defies any consensus on the modalities of a comprehensive solution. In the absence of that consensus, the use of “kinetic” force remains the sole tactic to fight it. However, relying on this tactic alone will not guarantee any victory for the United States.

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.

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.