The awesome asymmetry of power between the United States and the Taliban of Afghanistan is such that it creates a spurious sense of hubris in Washington that it alone can decide the pace and intensity of the military conflict, and that it alone can set the timetable for the withdrawal of its forces from the conflict zone.  That was the major assumption of Henry Kissinger’s approach to negotiating the modalities of bringing about an end to the conflict with the North Vietnamese representatives in the 1970s.  The United States found out, to its bitter surprise, how wrong Kissinger really was then.  The North Vietnamese had a stout sense of America’s growing vulnerabilities – the public war protest movement and the intensifying refusal of the U.S. Congress to finance that war.

In Iraq, thanks to the Sahwa movement of the Sunni Iraqi insurgents, the United States did not face defeat, even though it came to the precipice of it.  It eventually succeeded in creating a false semblance of victory, when the level of violence went down in Iraq and the Bush administration brought about major troop withdrawals.  However, as we are finding out on a weekly basis, the conflict in Iraq is far from over.  Thus, only future historians will decide whether the United States won or lost in Iraq.

Things are entirely different in Afghanistan in 2011.  It is a conflict that refuses to go away.  America cannot decide whether or not it wants to implement the counterinsurgency (CI) doctrine in Afghanistan that General David Petraeus famously (and ostensibly successfully) implemented in Iraq.  President Obama’s chief objective is to create some ground realities that would convince the highly skeptical American voters that he is winning in Afghanistan.  So, he is putting all his eggs into the basket of Counterterrorism (CT) strategy, which does not require a high number of boots on the ground in Afghanistan.  There seems to be a profound conclusion in Washington that there will be a credible government in Kabul by July 2012 that would be able to govern the entire country, and that Afghanistan’s security forces will be able to replace the international security assistance forces (ISAF).  That variable became an important aspect of the “talking points” that the talking heads in Washington have been using since President Obama’s speech on June 22, 2011.

However, the ground realities in Afghanistan have a special way of making fools of all of the Washington-based (or Kabul-based for that matter) experts whose full-time indulgence is to live in a make-believe world.  The surprise attack of June 29, 2001, when the heavily guarded InterContinental Hotel was attacked by Taliban suicide attackers, jolted all the forecasters to reexamine their conclusions regarding America’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.  President Hamid Karzai described it as “the worst attack in the Afghan capital for months…”  What is important to note is that, by carrying out that attack, the insurgents are “trying to tighten their psychological grip on the capital with a two-pronged campaign to sow urban terror and extend their influence in surrounding provinces.”

So, what should the Obama administration do now?  The most obvious and vital option is to abandon all notions of withdrawal of American troops and introduce a mega-strategy to fix Afghanistan through nation-building.  I know, “nation-building” is currently a four letter word in Washington, and there is absolutely no constituency for it there.  However, the aforementioned Pottery Barn rule is just as applicable to President Obama today as it was applicable to President Bush in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  The only difference is that Iraq in 2011 continues to create a spurious sense of stability, which is eroding steadily, while political stability in Afghanistan has never existed since 1978, when it was invaded and occupied by the Former Soviet Union.

America’s post-World War II success stories – Japan and Germany – are shining examples of nation-building that lasted over several decades.  And both of those countries were “modern” polities before the war.  Afghanistan also requires nation-building.  However, unlike Germany and Japan of the post-World War II years, it will require an infinitely longer period of time to fix.  It has remained a hellish place since 1978.  It is an absolutely corrupt society with a very high degree of illiteracy, gross absence of institutions, and rules of engagement for “good governance.”  It is a place where obscurantism rules all walks of life.  It has a large expatriate community that can play a crucial role in nation-building.  However, that community is too smart to resettle in Afghanistan as long as warlordism, an opium trade, and religion-based terrorism rule the day.  But, they are likely to return to Afghanistan if the Obama administration signals its serious commitment to nation-building strategy in Afghanistan.

The option of nation-building may appear more palatable for the Obama administration if it considers the fact that it may have no intention of totally withdrawing from Afghanistan.  If it plans to keep a sizeable number of troops in country for the purpose of continuing its exercise of its counterterrorism (CT) strategy, the implementation of that strategy without elaborate  nation-building promises to sink that country deeper into chaos and instability.  Make no mistake, these are variables that both al-Qaida and the Taliban prefer, in order to escalate their own effective capabilities for carrying out deadly attacks and mayhem.

Iran refuses to close down its nuclear research program; and, despite all its assertions that it is not interested in making nuclear weapons, Washington believes that that is precisely the direction Iran is heading.

Iran also has a very active ballistic missile program. And the United States is afraid that it is just a matter of time before Iran will not only put all the systems together to build a bomb, but it will also be able to integrate its nuclear weapons with its delivery system.

There is also much substance to the United States’ suggestion that Iran might have already acquired a bomb-making capability and might be waiting on an appropriate time for its “breakout” announcement — a term used, in the parlance of nuclear proliferation, to describe a surprise announcement of a country whereby it renounces the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT) and uses it capabilities to build a small nuclear weapon.

The most striking aspect of the Obama administration is that, in the past several weeks, while it was involved in issuing its nuclear posture review and signing a new nuclear arms reduction treaty and then holding a “summit” on the issue of “loose nukes,” it never interrupted its focus on Iran.

Russia, while signing the nuclear arms reduction treaty, falsely created an impression that it was willing to side with the United States in imposing sanctions on Iran. A more correct interpretation of Russia’s attitude toward Iran is that it still wants to discuss the option of negotiating with that country, and is not at all interested in imposing the kind of harsh sanctions that the pro-Israeli elements in the United States would love to see implemented.

The same thing is also true for China. In fact, after the loose nukes summit, China has made it clear that it is not as much in the corner of the United States as the American media made it out to be immediately prior to, and in the aftermath of, that summit.

The presence of the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, in the thick of policy discussions on Iran becomes important when one considers his long experience in the realm of national security, and the fact that he is very much in the forefront of developing a comprehensive strategy.

However, the role of Admiral Mike Mullen remains a source of concern when one considers the fact that one of his top “informal” advisers on the Middle East is a woman by the name of Dr. Lani Kass, a holder of Israeli and American citizenship. One is befuddled by the fact that a holder of dual citizenship is given top Department of Defense clearance, while Israel’s use of such persons as spies against us is a known fact. Dubbed as “Dr. Strangelove made in Israel,” an essay written by a former CIA agent, Philip Giraldi, describes Kass as rabidly anti-Iran and an equally staunch Islamophobe.

As reported by Giraldi, Kass told her U.S. Air Force audience that, “the long war against the Islamists will end ‘when they learn to love their children more than they hate us,’ a comment originally attributed to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.” On another occasion she said, “radical Muslims hate the western world because Europe took their dominant political position away and they want it back.” This is a diatribe that Bernard Lewis has been peddling to the Western audience in the name of his “expert analysis.”

She is also on record as being more audacious than she was in the afore-cited quotes. This time, she disposed of the nuance between Muslims and radical Muslims and included all Muslims in her fictional “expertise” on the world of Islam. Giraldi notes, “In her speech she explained that Muslims hate western culture and want to dominate the world, adding that because radical Islam has a ‘culture of death’ all those who do not submit to Islam must die, an assertion so absurd that one suspects her political analysis derives from the Free Republic website.” Not surprisingly, no one in her audience questioned the veracity of that comment or demanded any evidence.
Regarding Iran, Kass is totally sold on the use of military option. She is reported to have said, “We can defeat Iran, but are Americans willing to pay the price?” In other words, she is very much gung ho on going to war against Iran. Her comments remind one of two other women who were way ahead of even the Bush administration in their fictional belief that, between 2001 and 2003, Iraq was fully engaged in making weapons of mass destruction: Judith Miller of the New York Times and Laurie Mylroie, who coauthored a book on Iraq. A detailed narrative of the roles of these two women is provided in Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War.
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The question that is uppermost in my mind is why has Admiral Mullen decided to rely on such a highly partisan source for advice on the Middle East. Don’t we already have enough of a horrible image on being extremely one-sided when it comes to the strategic affairs of that region? More to the point, why is Admiral Mullen not getting his cue from the White House, which seems bent on pursuing policy options to take into consideration, first and foremost, American interests?

If America’s miserable record of going to war against Iraq on imaginary evidence, the cherry picking of intelligence, and in some instances even deliberately relying on highly deceptive sources (see the above-cited source), the only option that stands out in dealing with Iran is to avoid the military option at all costs. The only viable option is to negotiate, negotiate, or negotiate with that country.

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.

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

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.

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.

I read Roy’s first two books when they first came out.  While reading The Failure of Political Islam, I felt then, as I do now, that Roy’s conclusion about the alleged failure of that movement was premature.  Movements—especially ideological or religious-based ones—have a long duration and a variety of phases through which they pass over a long period of time before a somewhat meaningful—but still premature—judgment can be passed regarding their success or failure.  Social scientists, to the contrary, are like judges in an Olympic competition–too much in a hurry to measure the performance of the participants in order to declare winners and losers.  One of the most interesting studies of the phases of a movement is Crane Brinton’s, The Anatomy of Revolution.[1]  An interesting approach for the study of Roy’s thesis on political Islam is to examine it through an application of Brinton’s framework.

The title of Roy’s book, Globalized Islam, as Professor Hroub also notes, “contradicts…[Olivier’s] own failure thesis” of his previous book.  How can a failed movement become globalized and still be depicted as “failed”?  My own explanation is similar to the one that Hroub touches on, but is elaborately discussed in the Islamist literature under the rubric of fighting the “far enemy” (i.e., the “infidel-in-chief,” meaning the United States) versus the “near enemies” (Arab and Muslim governments) among many Islamist groups.  That debate was settled temporarily between 1999 and 2001.  As a result of which the audacious decision of attacking the lone superpower on its own homeland was taken.  As one tracks the “global” rhetoric of today’s “Jihadists,” one gets the sense that they are driven by the goals of fighting the U.S. as well as destabilizing the “near enemies.”

I lean toward the proposition that al-Qaida and other pan-Islamist groups were shocked about the scope and intensity of the U.S. response, which was also accompanied by George W. Bush’s ominous caveat that was especially aimed at the Arab leaders:  “either you are with us or you are with the terrorists.”

In the aftermath of America’s global war on terrorism (GWOT), in order to survive, al-Qaida was forced to transform itself into a movement.  There also ensued the decision of regional and sub-regional Islamist groups to develop their own campaigns of terror in agreement with Mus’ab al-Suri’s operational slogan: Nizam la Tanzim.  That, in my estimation, is the beginning of the making of global Jihad.[2]

To argue that there is such a thing called globalized Islam is belaboring the obvious.  “Islamic internationalism” is an old idea.  In today’s parlance, that very idea is repackaged as “globalized Islam.”  The notion of nationalism and citizenship has always been alien to Islam.  The global promotion of that idea, especially starting in the 1990s, was easy because it was very much in harmony with the theological concept that states: “Islam is a religion of all ages.”  The global reach of the Internet has turned out to be a perfect tool for the globalization of a notion that was intrinsically global to start with.

Political Islam’s temporary failure—temporary because, as I stated earlier, it is a premature judgment on the part of Roy—stems from two very important variables.  The first one—as only touched upon by Professor Hroub but not fully developed—is that it has failed to offer nuanced and comprehensive solutions to what ails Muslim polities.  Answers to that question are hard to develop even in a whole book.  Even Bernard Lewis, after asking the right question in his book, What Went Wrong?, desolately failed to provide  persuasive answers.[3]

Secondly, because all Muslim polities are non-democratic, there was no chance of Islamists capturing power through an election.  Even in countries where limited electoral practices existed, elections are characterized by the odious practices of ballot-stuffing by the cronies of the regimes in order to ensure that there should be no transfer of power.  We have recently witnessed this phenomenon in the elections of Iran and Afghanistan.

Islamists have long known that merely shouting, “Islam is the solution!” is never enough.  They needed to develop comprehensive programs of political and economic development.  Muslim theologists failed to become experts in contemporary economics, global trade, international politics, or other contemporary disciplines, largely because they rejected them as “failed” and “godless” disciplines, without offering alternatives.  Even now, I am unaware of any theologist who has offered alternatives.   All countries that explicitly call themselves “Islamic”—Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, the Sudan, or Iran, for instance—are failed and corrupt polities and are characterized by backward economies.  When a Muslim youngster looks for an “Islamic solution” to problems that ail his/her society, he/she finds an immense vacuum.  So, the failure of those states to emerge as stable polities or strong economies becomes a credible indicator that other Islamist groups would also fail, if or when they capture political power.

But, what are the chances of the Islamists capturing power in any country in the coming years?  With the exception of Hamas, I would say none.  Even Hamas, by remaining intransigent about changing its stance regarding Israel, has condemned itself to failure.  The United States, the EU, and other countries, by denying economic assistance to Palestine, have been serving as leading players in ensuring that Hamas does not succeed as a political entity. 

Most importantly, an unspoken aspect of the Western actors’ systematic attempts to ensure that Hamas fails is also related to their fear that, if Hamas succeeds in stabilizing Palestine, other Islamist groups will be encouraged to capture power and then hang on long enough to become victorious.  However, when Hamas’ rule comes to end in Palestine, that development will not necessarily persuade other Islamist groups to stop their endeavors to capture political power in their own countries.  

I was once of the view that, perhaps, the Islamists should be given a chance to come to power through elections, and be allowed to fail.  However, after watching the performance of Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, I have changed my mind.  In the absence of comprehensive programs to stabilize their polities and to strengthen their economies, their chances of success are none. 

A few words about the Islamic Republic of Iran:  that country could have been an example of the success of an Islamic government; Iran has had a reasonable amount of democracy and ample oil and gas reserves to introduce ambitious programs of modernization;  and the Iranian leaders encountered serious problems from the United States in the 1980s, when the US sided with Iraq in the bloody war between the two neighbors. 

Undoubtedly, the United States wanted Iraq to do America’s dirty work by getting rid of the Ayatollahs through that war.  However, both Washington and Baghdad failed miserably in fulfilling their objective of terminating the Islamic government in Iran.  From Iran’s point of view, it was correct to state that their revolution was not given a chance to succeed. 

The Iranian fraudulent election of last June does not bode well for the Islamic Republic.  Iran seems to be steadily edging toward chaos for which the hardline Islamists of that country are substantially responsible.

What does the continuing saga of the Islamic Republic say about the future of political Islam in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world of Islam?[4]  It has not found its niche as a movement, largely because it has not yet developed a comprehensive framework for governance.  However, the concept of eternity that is related to Islam as a religion is one reason why the Islamists (or political Islamists) will continue to try and fail, but will not stop until they have a successful recipe for governance.  When will they succeed?  An answer to that question is not within the realm of Social Science.

What is missing from all these metaphors and depictions is what should be our strategy in Afghanistan.  If the United States is committed to remain in Afghanistan for the next twenty years, we need to add more troops.  Even as we do that, our focus ought to be nation-building, not the in the sense of how this phrase is used among the U.S. Special Forces.  What I mean by nation-building is a massive process of institution building for the purpose of establishing democracy in Afghanistan, along with a huge campaign against counter-drug operations, crop substitution, educational reforms, a colossal campaign of building civilian infrastructures, etc.  What I have in mind as a suggestion for the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan has no precedent (no, not even Japan or West Germany, for they were advanced polities before the war, while Afghanistan has never been one).  That is the only way of winning in Afghanistan.

What most Western observers are missing when they offer their expert advice regarding Afghanistan is an absence of a strong sense of history and an understanding of the culture of that country.  Stewart is an exception to that observation.  The decision to add more troops in Afghanistan cannot be made purely by couching it in the requirements of American domestic politics, and by viewing it from the perspective of what is appropriate and acceptable inside the United States.  I say that because, as more troops are inserted in Afghanistan, that will be seen as an evidence of commitment by outsiders, but not necessarily by the Afghans.  They need more persuading than mere escalation troops for now.  The abruptness by which the United States left Afghanistan after the redeployment of the Soviet troops in 1989 leaves them no reason to believe that we are likely to stay there.  This time there is no much difference.  All they have to do is to watch the current debate regarding Afghanistan inside the United States.

Mind you, I am not questioning the legitimacy of these debates.  They are quite genuine in the sense that, before more U.S. young men and women are sent there and before more money is invested, we need to debate the nature of our commitment.  However, that is precisely why the Afghans are skeptical that we mean to stay there for a long while this time.   In fact, my gut feeling is that we have no intention of making a long-term commitment to that tormented country.  I am especially flabbergasted by suggestions-even Vice President Joe Biden is part of this-that we need to wage counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan.  That is an entirely silly notion that was first proposed by the Conservative Columnist George Will, and it is popular among some senior military officials.

What President Obama must do, first and foremost, is to elucidate his strategy and then commit this country’s resources accordingly.  If General McChrystal is asking for 40,000 troops (or whatever other numbers that are being floated), we need to look at the strategy first.  Obama’s proclamation of strategy will tell the Afghans and the Taliban how long we intend to stay.  No other rhetorical assurances are required.  So, when Mr. Obama announces his decision to the American public and the world,  that will be the ultimate litmus test of the earnestness of America’s commitment.  Otherwise, he should listen to his own advice when he said about Bush’s war in Iraq: “Once we had driven the bus into the ditch, there were only so many ways we could get out.  The question is, who’s making the decision initially to drive the bus into the ditch?”

If we have no intention of making a long-term commitment for building Afghanistan into a stable polity, we need not increase the level of our troops.  Obama should think about listening to his own advice of not driving the country into a ditch or off a cliff.