Archive for the 'Obama Administration' Category

The administration is taking a troubling stand on metrics for the campaign in Afghanistan.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton wants to keep things secret that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton found it expedient to politicize.

The Obama administration wants to keep its metrics of progress for the war in Afghanistan under wraps. Secretary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee last week that the executive branch, not Congress, should craft the Afghan benchmarks, many of which will be classified. Times certainly have changed – two years ago, then-Sen. Clinton demanded benchmarks be included in the May 2007 Iraq war supplemental appropriation.

Mr. Obama promised a benchmarked war effort in March when he announced his Afghanistan strategy. He rejected “blindly staying the course,” a tart reference to one of Mr. Bush’s pet phrases, and promised instead that there would be “clear metrics to measure progress and hold ourselves accountable.” Perhaps the president could explain how accountability can function if Congress and the public do not know what the clear metrics are.

Mrs. Clinton stated that the government is “going to be measuring from every perspective,” but more metrics are not necessarily better. Once this multitude of measures is set in place, they can calcify thinking and destroy the spirit of innovation that is critical in waging unconventional war. Benchmarks are not a substitute for strategy, but pursuit of them can wind up driving the war effort when they should be a trailing indicator. We saw that in Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara’s metric-mad approach to fighting the war in Vietnam. A clever enemy will use publicly published metrics to focus its efforts on the things the U.S. government deems to be important, seeking to shape perceptions of failure and defeat by the bureaucracy’s own definition. It is unwise to hand the enemy the ability to create meaningful strategic effects by our own criteria.

Public metrics also can create political problems, as Mrs. Clinton well knows. In September 2007, the Government Accountability Office reported that Baghdad had “met 3, partially met 4, and did not meet 11” of the 18 benchmarks Congress had established the previous May. Opponents of the surge strategy, such as Mrs. Clinton and then-Sen. Obama, seized on the report to declare the surge a failure. But the war was, in fact, being won. Had the United States been guided by congressional politics rather than sound military thinking, we would have withdrawn from Iraq last year and marked it as a defeat (editorial comment, italics mine).

Some learning has occurred over the past two years. The Obama administration does not want to face the kinds of political problems that some of its leading members created for their predecessors. We applaud the administration’s newfound respect for secrecy in warfare and only wish it had dawned on these officials sooner.

Take note of the sophisticated nuance in the editorial above, for while it maintains the appearance of patriotism and support for the campaign, it falls into the trap laid by the administration.  Mr. Obama promised clear metrics to hold ourselves accountable.  Ms. Clinton later promises that the government is going to be “measuring from every perspective.”  But be aware that handing the enemy knowledge of what you think is important tells them where to focus their energies, so many of the metrics used by the government will remain classified, or so we’re told by Ms. Clinton.

This argument is a pig in a poke.  The administration is counting on the unthinking population buying into the notion of the campaign in Afghanistan being similar to, say, the war in the South Pacific with Japan, or D-Day, or the Battle of Inchon, where troop movements, timing of operations and so forth, are operational security, and divulging them to the enemy causes loss of lives and irreparable harm to our own battle plans.

Nothing could be further from the truth.  General deployment plans such as the 10th Mountain Division to the area around Kabul in order to stabilize the ring of security around the central government are well known and laid out for us by not only open source information but official military sources as well.

Counterinsurgency has its moments (such as troop movements and intelligence-driven raids) that fall into the OPSEC category, but comprehensive battle space metrics is not one of them.  In fact, note the very specific data given to us in the most recent report on Iraq by the DoD.

Note that the title of this report is Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq: March 2009 Report to Congress.  Very specific metrics indeed, collected and collated by the executive branch and presented to the legislative branch, and for very good reason.  The legislative branch controls the money.

We have made it an obvious priority to train and stand up the Afghan forces, a strategy that the Bush administration pursued in Iraq.  It didn’t work in Iraq until force projection by the U.S. forces provided security for the population, and so concerns like drug use by the Afghan police and army are serious issues that must be tracked and communicated to planners and legislators; that rate of casualties, trust in government, and fidelity of internal governmental systems are important metrics to be studied and communicated to the voters.  The voters get the final say.

A communist system controls the flow, rate, quality, quantity and target of information.  In the free market of ideas, the U.S. stands alone as the nation most willing to let the people themselves judge the rightness or wrongness of things.

What the administration doesn’t like is not the potential operational security concerns associated with metrics in the Afghanistan campaign.  That’s a pitifully crafted argument that can be dismissed rather quickly by most thinking men and women.  They fear that there are forces out there who might use the metrics in the same dark and ill-intentioned manner that those in this current administration used them to undercut and under-resource the campaign in Iraq.

For the record, The Captain’s Journal isn’t among those detractors who would undercut the campaign because we weren’t meeting targets.  We would propose funding and resourcing the forces better so that we could meet those targets, while also analyzing the reasons for failure.  It would appear that this administration doesn’t hold to similar thinking.

The Christian Science Monitor notes that “Obama officials are playing cat-and-mouse these days with Iran’s envoys.  The new administration is eager to catch a meeting in any international forum that might lead to one-on-one talks.”  Unseemly, no, the picture of U.S. diplomats chasing Iranians around pining for someone to listen to them?

The Iranian leaders have ignored Obama’s clear overtures, saying on March 20 that “world powers had been persuaded they could not block Iran’s nuclear progress.”  The next day on March 24 “Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei … dismissed President Barack Obama’s New Year’s greeting to the country, delivering Iran’s clearest rebuke so far to Washington’s recent, diplomatic charm offensive.

In a speech to tens of thousands in the Iranian holy city of Masshad, Mr. Khamenei said that despite Mr. Obama’s words, the U.S. hasn’t shown any sign of “genuine” change in its “hostile” policies toward Iran, according to Iran’s state-owned Press TV.”

Michael Rubin brings us yet another instance of rejection.

Those who today recommend the Iranian nation to return to the global order are the exact people who expressed displeasure with advances of the Iranian nation in the direction of the Islamic Revolution… The recommendation to return to the global order is the same thing as capitulating to the bullying powers and accepting the unjust world order. But the Iranian nation has during the past thirty years answered no to this ignorant and illogical demand… All the pressures against the Iranian nation and the regime of the Islamic Republic have only aimed to degrade the elevated position of the spiritual demands of the revolution. Naturally, they did not succeed in this, and they will also not succeed in the future.

Even more to the point.

We tell that you know yourself that you today are in a position of weakness and you can’t achieve anything.

Does that sound like the Iranian Mullahs want to negotiate their nuclear program away?  It doesn’t matter, because the administration’s fawning over the Iranian regime has to do with presuppositions that form a worldview of advocacy.  Rightness and wrongness has nothing to do with it.

It you listen to me long enough, they think, I will be able to convince you to see my point of view and act more in accordance with what I see as reasonable at this particular moment.  But reason is in the eyes of the beholder.  The deliverance of reason, tests for truth, analysis of consistency, and so on, are fundamentally different in the thought systems of the West and the radical Mullahs, and even more different between both and the Ivy League educated elitists.  The administration will keep chasing them until they understand the fundamental flaw in their thinking, which probably means that they will not cease the unseemly displays.

Significant attention is being given to Mr. Obama and his administration’s position on engaging the Muslim world.  But little attention has been given to what may be a very important exchange over the Caucasus.  We have extensively covered Russia’s interest in its near abroad, including in Rapidly Collapsing U.S. Foreign Policy, where we observed that the ceasefire with Georgia:

… has left the strategically important Russian base in Armenia cut off with no overland military transit connections. The number of Russian soldiers in Armenia is limited to some 4000, but during 2006 and 2007 large amounts of heavy weapons and supplies were moved in under an agreement with Tbilisi from bases in Batumi and Akhalkalaki (Georgia). At present there are some 200 Russian tanks, over 300 combat armored vehicles, 250 heavy guns and lots of other military equipment in Armenia – enough to fully arm a battle force of over 20,000 (Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozrenie, August 20, 2004). Forces in Armenia can be swiftly expanded by bringing in manpower by air transport from Russia. Spares to maintain the armaments may also be shipped in by air, but if a credible overland military transit link is not established within a year or two, there will be no possibility to either replace or modernize equipment. The forces will consequently degrade, undermining Russia’s commitment to defend its ally Armenia and Moscow’s ambition to reestablish its dominance in the South Caucasus

Russia hasn’t lost interest in the Causasus in spite of the overwhelming worship of the new administration on the world wide stage.  They have a long attention span and have kept their eye on the ball, so to speak.  At The Captain’s Journal we have recommended the full engagement of the Caucasus region, including transit of logistics through Georgia to neighboring Azerbaijan; from there the supplies would transit across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, and from there South to Afghanistan.  This approach would have a dual affect.  First it would address the issue of interdiction of supplies through the Khyber region in Pakistan by the Taliban, and second, it would aid and benefit Georgia and assure the world that the West supports its sovereignty.

But perhaps Georgia shouldn’t have sent troops to Iraq to support Operation Iraqi Freedom.  The U.S. doesn’t have such a long memory when administrations change.  Russia is playing nice when it comes to logistics, in that it has “offered to discuss allowing the US to ship military cargoes across its territory to Afghanistan in a significant step seemingly aimed at building bridges twithWashington” (sic).  On another front, the Russians are hailing comrade Obama.

Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev hailed Barack Obama as “my new comrade” Thursday after their first face-to-face talks, saying the US president “can listen” — even if little progress was made on substance.

The Russian president contrasted Obama as “totally different” to his predecessor George W. Bush, whom he blamed for the “mistake” of US missile shield plans fiercely opposed by Moscow.

Obama agreed to visit Moscow in July after his talks with Medvedev on Wednesday on the sidelines of a G20 summit in London aimed at fixing the battered world economy.

“I believe that we managed to establish contact. But Moscow lies ahead. I cannot say that we made much progress on the most serious issues,” he told reporters, adding: “Let’s wait and see.”

“I liked the talks. It is easy to talk to him. He can listen. The start of this relationship is good,” he said, adding: “Today it’s a totally different situation (compared to Bush)… This suits me quite well.”

So Dmitri Medvedev is happy, something that may be a sign of trouble.  Continuing:

“Today from the United States there is at least a desire to listen to our arguments,” he said, adding that: “Such defence measures should be carried out jointly “between Washington and Moscow.”

The missile defence plan was “a mistake that the previous US administration is responsible for. Many of my European colleagues also believe this,” the Russian leader added, without specifying who.

Obama, speaking on Wednesday, admitted US-Russian ties had cooled, saying: “What we’ve seen over the last several years is drift in the US-Russian relationship.

“There are very real differences between the United States and Russia, and I have no interest in papering those over. But there are also a broad set of common interests that we can pursue,” he said.

One area of difference is Georgia — Russia sent troops and tanks deep into the ex-Soviet republic last August in response to a Georgian military attempt to retake the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

Medvedev made clear later Thursday that Moscow’s views have not changed — in particular about Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili — however he feels about Obama.

“Everything that has happened, I will tell you frankly, that the leader of Georgia is responsible for everything. That is my direct and honest and open opinion.

“A lot of people had to pay for the mistakes of one man. We love and appreciate the Georgian people. But I do not want to have any relations with President Saakashvili.”

A catchphrase to remember: “jointly between Washington and Moscow.”  So there you have it – the price for the happiness.  Georgia had best be preparing to defend itself or have a puppet dictator installed who is subservient to Moscow.  Same for the Ukraine, and other nations in the Russian near abroad.  As for any possible U.S. reaction to this potential aggression?  Well, we wouldn’t want to “cool” our new-found happy relations with Moscow.

So I spent most of the weekend with several Marines (not an uncommon occurrence), one of whom isn’t re-enlisting and has been trained extensively as Scout Sniper and Force Recon.  What are his intentions, you ask?  Military contractor.  It doesn’t matter which one, DynCorp, Aegis, or what was once Blackwater.  They’re all the same, in my estimation.  They pay more for services, they issue better body armor, they issue better weapons, and they do little to no real training of their hires.  They rely on the training done by the U.S. military.

Regardless of what one might think, the use of military contractors is still ongoing in Iraq, and increasing in Afghanistan to the point that they are being used to conduct force protection at some Forward Operating Bases.  This all raises several important observations.

The Captain’s Journal isn’t opposed to the use of military contractors for the normal reasons.  We have no moral objection to their existence, and similar to their pay scale and outfitting, we believe that the U.S. military should be given the best weapons and gear.

But the cost of recruiting and training Marines (who have deployed multiple times) is astronomical, and the military contractors get the benefit of that investment.  So the U.S. pays to recruit them, pays to train them, pays to deploy them and gain combat experience, and then pays a much higher rate to hire them as military contractors when they leave the service because we refuse to fund the U.S. military so that they can retain its own warriors because of budgetary constraints within the Congress.

It is stupid in the superlative degree, and much more costly in the long run.  It is also very destructive of morale in the U.S. military.  Is my life not worth it, they ask?  Larger pay raises are being called for in 2010, but even these pay raises are a pittance compared to what is required to retain the best, and what – in the long run – would make the U.S. military more cost effective.

The very existence of military contractors is evidence against the decision-making in Washington and in favor of larger pay increases for the military.  The bean-counters be damned, there is a better way to do things.

The administration has announced its Afghanistan strategy, parts of which are reproduced below.

Let me start by addressing the way forward in Pakistan. The United States has great respect for the Pakistani people. They have a rich history and have struggled against long odds to sustain their democracy. The people of Pakistan want the same things that we want. An end to terror, access to basic services, the opportunity to live their dreams and the security that can only come with the rule of law. The single greatest threat to that future comes from Al Qaida and their extremist allies. And that is why we must stand together …

So, today, I’m calling upon Congress to pass a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by John Kerry and Richard Lugar that authorizes $1.5 billion in direct support to the Pakistani people every year over the next five years, resources that will build schools, roads, and hospitals, and strengthen Pakistan’s democracy …

Now, we must make a commitment that can accomplish our goals. I’ve already ordered the deployment of 17,000 troops that have been requested by General McKiernan for many months. These soldiers and Marines will take the fight to the Taliban in the south and the east and give us a great capacity to partner with Afghan security forces and to go after insurgents along the border.

This push will also help provide security in advance of the important presidential elections in Afghanistan in August. At the same time, we will shift the emphasis of our mission to training and increasing the size of Afghan security forces so that they can eventually take the lead in securing their country. That’s how we will prepare Afghans to take responsibility for their security and how we will, ultimately, be able to bring our own troops home …

The additional troops that we deployed have already increased our training capacity. And later this spring, we will deploy approximately 4,000 U.S. troops to train Afghan security forces. For the first time, this will truly resource our effort to train and support the Afghan army and police.

Every American unit in Afghanistan will be partnered with an Afghan unit, and we will seek additional trainers from our NATO allies to ensure that every Afghan unit has a coalition partner. We will accelerate our efforts to build an Afghan army of 134,000 and a police for the of 82,000 so that we can meet these goals by 2011 …

At a time of economic crisis, it’s tempting to believe that we can short change the civilian effort. But make no mistake, our efforts will fail in Afghanistan and Pakistan if we don’t invest in their future. And that’s why my budget includes indispensable investments in our State Department and foreign assistance programs.

These investments relieve the burden on our troops. They contribute directly to security. They make the American people safer. And they save us an enormous amount of money in the long run because it’s far cheaper to train a policeman to secure his or her own village that to help a farmer seed a crop or to help a farmer seed a crop than it is to send our troops to fight tour after tour of duty with no transition to Afghan responsibility.

Analysis & Commentary

We fear that this strategy will be disastrous in the superlative degree.  Several points are in order prior to summary and conclusion.

1. This strategy places too large of a bet on similarities between Americans and Pakistanis.  We weighed in concerning the Pakistani elections one year ago amid the celebration among U.S. politicians that the Pakistanis had rejected religious extremism, saying that their analysis missed the point.  The elections rejected the incompetence of the official Islamic clerics who had poorly governed the tribal regions, but the party that had been put into power represented what those who were more familiar with Pakistani politics had feared – a voter rejection of the war on terror.  The Tehrik-i-Taliban (Taliban of Pakistan) and their supporters boycotted the elections and were untouched by the votes.
2. More money is exactly what the Pakistan government wants.  As one former Pakistani official told Dexter Filkins,  The reason the Pakistani security services support the Taliban, he said, is for money: after the 9/11 attacks, the Pakistani military concluded that keeping the Taliban alive was the surest way to win billions of dollars in aid that Pakistan needed to survive. The military’s complicated relationship with the Taliban is part of what the officialcalled the Pakistani military’s “strategic games.” Like other Pakistanis, this former senior officialspoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of what he was telling me.  “Pakistan is dependent on the American money that these games with the Taliban generate,” the officialtold me. “The Pakistani economy would collapse without it. This is how the game works.”As an example, he cited the Pakistan Army’s first invasion of the tribal areas — of South Waziristan in 2004. Called Operation Shakai, the offensive was ostensibly aimed at ridding the area of Taliban militants. From an American perspective, the operation was a total failure. The army invaded, fought and then made a deal with one of the militant commanders, Nek Mohammed. The agreement was capped by a dramatic meeting between Mohammed and SafdarHussein, one of the most senior officers in the Pakistan Army.“The corps commander was flown in on a helicopter,” the former official said. “They had this big ceremony, and they embraced. They called each other mujahids. ”“The army agreed to compensate the locals for collateral damage,” the officialsaid. “Where do you think that money went? It went to the Taliban. Who do you think paid the bill? The Americans. This is the way the game works. The Taliban is attacked, but it is never destroyed. “It’s a game,” the official said, wrapping up our conversation. “The U.S. is being taken for a ride.”
3. 17,000 troops have not been requested by General McKiernan.  This additional force presence meets only around 2/3 of what McKiernan had requested as of February 2009.  Furthermore, this request should be seen in the light of the fact that the U.S. Armed Forces in Afghanistan are so under-resourced that contractors are now being sought to provide Forward Operating Base (FOB) force protection.  Quite literally, contractors will be used to stand post at FOBs because there aren’t enough troops supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
4. As we have pointed out before, the Afghan National Army is the most trusted institution in Afghanistan, and so the campaign must eventually expand, empower, train and equip the Army to protect the population.  The Police aren’t far behind in the trust the population places in it, but there are extreme problems with both corruption and drug abuse (on duty) within the police.  The Afghan Army is shot through with drug abuse as well.  The campaign has lacked force projection and destruction of the enemy’s power to intimidate the population, and it simply isn’t the time or season for the effort to rely so heavily on indigenous forces.
5. We have supported efforts at reconstruction and agricultural assistance, but it must be remembered that agricultural efforts won’t rid the country of Taliban.  We’ve pointed out a clever plan to replace poppy and opium as the crop of choice with pomegranates.  Asked about the how this plan might affect the Taliban, the proponent said “In the complexity of the tribal system in Afghanistan, the Taliban are in every element of society.  When I talked at the three tribal gatherings, the Taliban were present. I believe that if we don’t communicate with every faction of this problem, we’re not going to solve it.”  So the plan to replace poppy with pomegranates redounds to fixing Afghanistan as the opium supplier of the world while it continues to strengthen the Taliban because the plan has no parallel line of effort to kill the Taliban.

In a sign of how under-resourced and poorly constructed this plan is, the administration plan was met with praise from both Presidents Zardari and Karzai – Zardari because Pakistan gets the right answer to their query to “show me the money,” and Karzai because he wants international forces to play a secondary role to Afghan forces.

It should be remembered that Karzai has aggressively sought a Status of Forces Agreement similar to the one under which the U.S. currently operates in Iraq.  Karzai also happens to be the Afghan President who said to Taliban leader Mullah Omar “My brother, my dear, come back to your homeland. Come back and work for peace, for the good of the Afghan people. Stop this business of brothers killing brothers.”

The Afghan Army and Police aren’t ready for a rapid or massive turnover of authority to them.  The government isn’t prepared to be the foundation for these institutions due to the endemic corruption, and the U.S. shouldn’t be ready to settle with any insurgents without first having a fight.

Finally, the most troubling aspect of the administration plan is its failure to address the issue of the Taliban.  Al Qaeda is mentioned, but the hosts for AQ training camps receive little attention.  In fact, while disparate and factious, the Taliban mission has steadily harmonized over the past few years: to “support the regional war and then the global war against Western hegemony; this is the concept driving the neo-Taliban.”

The globalist jihad movement of al Qaeda has been merged with the Tehrik-i-Taliban of Pakistan.  The TTP shout to passersby in Khyber “We are Taliban! We are mujahedin! We are al-Qaida!”  There is no distinction.  A Pakistan interior ministry official has even said that the TTP and al Qaeda are one and the same.

TTP chief Baitullah Mehsud has said “We want to eradicate Britain and America, and to shatter the arrogance and tyranny of the infidels. We pray that Allah will enable us to destroy the White House, New York, and London.”  Now there are even indications that the original Afghan Taliban under Mullah Omar have morphed into an organization that desires regional Islamist revolutions.

There are some indigenous poor who might be able to be stripped away from the hard core Taliban fighters, but the campaign is much more than a counterterrorism operation against some al Qaeda fighters.  It is a full blown insurgency that must be defeated with a full orbed counterinsurgency.  Anything else won’t do.  There still aren’t enough troops in the plan, and it is more likely to cause the diminishing of respect for American troops across the globe than simply withdrawing completely and going back in to topple the next problematic regime.

Iran is quickly advancing towards becoming a nuclear state.  In troubling developments in air power, Iran can now deploy UAVs, and Russia may have supplied Iran with new air defense systems, including their long range S-300 surface to air missiles.  If they haven’t, the system is being used as a bargaining chip by Russia.  There are reports that they have refused to sell the missile system, but responding to the Israeli plan to sell weapons systems to Georgia by saying that Moscow expected Israel “to show the same responsibility.”  In the first case, Iran is armed with an air defense system that would make an attack against its nuclear assets much more difficult.  In the second case, Russia has used this potentiality to weaken Georgia and prime it for another invasion.

Pavel Felgenhauer at the The Jamestown Foundation has recently published a commentary entitled Russia’s Coming War with Georgia.  The commentary very smartly connects the isolated Russian base in Armenia – which in itself is further demonstration of Russian intentions of control over its “near abroad” – with the need to control Georgia.    Says Felgenhauer, “The ceasefire last August has left the strategically important Russian base in Armenia cut off with no overland military transit connections. The number of Russian soldiers in Armenia is limited to some 4000, but during 2006 and 2007 large amounts of heavy weapons and supplies were moved in under an agreement with Tbilisi from bases in Batumi and Akhalkalaki (Georgia). At present there are some 200 Russian tanks, over 300 combat armored vehicles, 250 heavy guns and lots of other military equipment in Armenia – enough to fully arm a battle force of over 20,000 (Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozrenie, August 20, 2004). Forces in Armenia can be swiftly expanded by bringing in manpower by air transport from Russia. Spares to maintain the armaments may also be shipped in by air, but if a credible overland military transit link is not established within a year or two, there will be no possibility to either replace or modernize equipment. The forces will consequently degrade, undermining Russia’s commitment to defend its ally Armenia and Moscow’s ambition to reestablish its dominance in the South Caucasus.”

Concerning the timing of the potential invasion, Felgenhauer observes:

While snow covers the Caucasian mountain passes until May, a renewed war with Georgia is impossible. There is hope in Moscow that the Georgian opposition may still overthrow Mikheil Saakashvili’s regime or that the Obama administration will somehow remove him. However, if by May, Saakashvili remains in power, a military push by Russia to oust him may be seriously contemplated. The constant ceasefire violations could escalate to involve Russian servicemen – constituting a public casus belli. The desire by the West to “reset” relations with Moscow, putting the Georgia issue aside, may be interpreted as a tacit recognition of Russia’s right to use military force.

With the addition of the Biden pronouncement that the U.S. would “press the reset button” with Russia, the U.S. is now in the throes of a logistical dilemma.  On the one hand, the missile defense program for NATO states is meant as a deterrent for a potential Iranian nuclear and missile based military capability.  On the other hand, the current administration is seen as likely to jettison the whole project.

The U.S. is now beholden to Russia for logistical supply lines to Afghanistan.  General David Petraeus has visited numerous European and Central Asian countries recently, including Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan.  Supplies are soon to leave Latvia bound for Afghanistan.  But the common element in all of the logistical supply lines are that they rely on Russian good will.  This good will exists as long as the missile defense doesn’t, and the missile defense was intended to be used as a deterrent for Iranian nuclear ambitions.

Alternative supply routes have been suggested, including one which wouldn’t empower Russian hegemony in the region, from the Mediterranean through the Bosporus strait, into the Black sea, and through Georgia to neighboring Azerbaijan.  From there the supplies would transit across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, and from there South to Afghanistan.  An alternative to the air route from the recently closed Manas Air base is sea transport to India, rail or truck to the Indian-controlled Kashmir region, and then air transport to Kabul.  But none of these options has been pursued.  The current administration is locked into negotiations that empower Russia.

Pakistan President Zardari has observed, and correctly so, that Pakistan is in a state of denial concerning the threat posed by the Taliban, yet rather than eliminate the threat, the strategy has been to make peace deals with the Tehrik-i-Taliban and plead for the same financial bailout being offered across America, saying that in order to defeat the Taliban Pakistan needs a “massive program,” a “Marshall Plan” to defeat the Taliban through economic development.

Certainly, some of the foreign policy problems were present with the previous administration, from the failure to plan for logistics for Afghanistan, to support for Musharraf’s duplicitous administration, assisting the Taliban by demure on the one hand while money was received with the other.  But the currents appear to be pointing towards a revised world opinion of what the U.S. is willing to sustain on behalf of “good relations,” and the current administration’s prevarications appear to be going headlong into numerous dilemmas.

We wish to use the missile program in Europe as an bargaining chip to avoid the reality of an Iranian nuclear program, while the Iranian supreme has said that “relations with the U.S. have for the time being no benefit to the Iranian nation.”  Russia, who is assisting Iran in its military buildup, is unimpressed because we have planned for no other option for logistics for Afghanistan except as dictated by Vladimir Putin.  The best that we can come up with, so far, is to forestall the planned troop reduction in the European theater, a troop reduction that is needed to help fund and staff the war against the global insurgency.

Pakistan’s Zardari figures that if the administration is willing to give away on the order of a trillion dollars, they can play the game of “show me the money” like everyone else, from Russia over logistical lines to Afghanistan to over-leveraged homeowners in the U.S.

Israel figures that all of this points to throwing their concerns under the bus, and thus they have launched a covert war against Iran, a program that is unlikely to be successful, pointing to broader regional instability in the near term.  Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, has said that they will acquire or have acquired anti-aircraft weapons.  While they have stood down over the war in Gaza, they are apparently preparing for more of the same against Israel.

The current administration has attempted to befriend Syria, while at the same time the USS San Antonio has interdicted Iranian weapons bound by ship to Syria, intended for Hezbollah or Hamas.  Most of this has occurred within less than two months of inauguration of the current administration in Washington.  It may prove to be a difficult four years, with unintended consequences ruling the day.

Update: Welcome to Instapundit readers and thanks to Glenn for the link.

The Obama administration is advancing a strategy of assurances of regime stability (versus regime change) and security guarantees as an incentive for jettisoning its steady but deliberate advances towards becoming a nuclear state.  Such an approach is founded upon the axiom that the Iranian Mullahs are seeking security and stability rather than regional or world hegemony.  But this is contrary to their stated views.

“We do not worship Iran.  We worship Allah.  For patriotism is another name for paganism.  I say let this land [Iran] burn.  I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world” (Khomeini, pg. 16, The Iranian Time Bomb).

So unhindered in their pursuit of nuclear weapons by either the past or the current administrations (since they both have bought into the “grand bargain” approach to Iran), the Iranian scientists and engineers under the thumb of the Mullahs have advanced their plans for nuclear weapons to the point that even the U.N. (IAEA) is now a bit surprised at their progress.

Iran has built up a stockpile of enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, United Nations officials acknowledged on Thursday.

In a development that comes as the Obama administration is drawing up its policy on negotiations with Tehran over its nuclear programme, UN officials said Iran had produced more nuclear material than previously thought.

They said Iran had accumulated more than one tonne of low enriched uranium hexafluoride at a facility in Natanz.

If such a quantity were further enriched it could produce more than 20kg of fissile material – enough for a bomb.

“It appears that Iran has walked right up to the threshold of having enough low enriched uranium to provide enough raw material for a single bomb,” said Peter Zimmerman, a former chief scientist of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency

The new figures come in a report from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, released on Thursday. This revealed that Iran’s production of low enriched uranium had previously been underestimated.

When the agency carried out an annual stocktaking of Natanz in mid-November Iran had produced 839kg of low enriched uranium hexafluoride – more than 200kg more than previously thought. Tehran produced an additional 171kg by the end of January.

“It’s sure certain that if they didn’t have it [enough] when the IAEA took these measurements, they will have it in a matter of weeks,” Mr Zimmerman said.

Iran’s success in reaching such a “breakout capacity” – a stage that would allow it to produce enough fissile material for a bomb in a matter of months – crosses a “red line” that for years Israel has said it would not accept.

While the prose is more discriminating, the headline is completely, factually incorrect.  The Financial Times article is headlined “Iran Holds Enough Uranium for Bomb.”  The Telegraph headline reads about the same.  It’s important to understand what this does – and doesn’t – mean.

The process begins with Uranium ore, which is then milled into a concentrate called “yellowcake” (U3O8).  This is then converted to Uranium Hexafluoride gas (UF6) before enrichment.  Further chemical processing converts this to UO2, and this is apparently where the Iranians are in the process.  “Low enriched Uranium.”  This means on the order of 4-5% U-235, not the 90% or greater U-235 enrichment needed for nuclear weapons.  They still have work to do.

This realistic assessment doesn’t ameliorate the threat that Iran poses, but it does mean that there is still time to prevent a nuclear Iran.  Iran needs to enrich the Uranium to weapons grade, and to date there is no indication that they have done so.

But there is every indication that they intend to do so.  The question is whether the will exists to prevent the existence of a nuclear Iran.  A survey of the scene shows that Iran can now deploy UAVs (or drones), is still assisting the Taliban, and doesn’t want any part of the grand bargain.

The Obama administration is moving full-speed ahead to prepare for U.S.-Iran talks. The reaction from Iran, though, has not been so fawning.  In the wake of President Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric holding open the possibility of talks with the United States should Obama acquiesce to Tehran’s demands on its nuclear program, apologies, and abandonment of Israel, Jomhouri-ye Eslami editorialized that, with regard to such fundamental issues as talks with Washington, it was not Ahmadinejad’s decision to make. After all, in Iran, the president is about style and the Supreme Leader about substance. The newspaper, close to the intelligence ministry and security agencies, quoted the Supreme Leader’s speech at Yazd: “Relations with the U.S. have for the time being no benefit to the Iranian nation and most certainly on the day that relations with America are beneficial for the nation, I’ll be the first person to recognize it.”

It’s important to clarify what the most recent revelations from the IAEA mean.  It’s also important to clarify where the U.S. stands with respect to a nuclear Iran.  While the U.S. investigates its policy,  the advancement of Iran proceeds apace to become nuclear.

General Petraeus doesn’t read this blog, but here at The Captain’s Journal we’re happy with his words on Afghanistan.  True enough, he has focused on many things that should help the campaign: holding areas that we have cleared, having more enablers and trainers, and a surge of civilian capacity to match the effort by the military forces.  True enough, all of it.

But there is an interesting statement in his speech before the 45th Munich Security Conference which we shouldn’t gloss over.

… we must pursue the enemy relentlessly and tenaciously.  True irreconcilables, again, must be killed, captured, or driven out of the area.  And we cannot shrink from that any more than we can shrink from being willing to support Afghan reconciliation with those elements that show a willingness to reject the insurgents and help Afghan and ISAF forces.

Exactly the point we made in Counterinsurgency: Focus on the Population or the Enemy, and several hundred other articles prior to that.  But what is even more interesting than the comment by Petraeus is Joe Klein’s take on it in the context of Euro-sensibilities.

Richard Holbrooke and David Petraeus–appearing onstage together for the first time–emphasized the difficulty of the Af/Pak situation. Although Petraeus, a human power-point presentation, used phrases like “we must pursue the enemy tenaciously,” which clearly make the peacable Euros uncomfortable.

Indeed, the contrast between the British and German defense ministers said it all. The German, Franz Josef Jung, was archetypically skittish when it came to any mention of kinetics in Afghanistan, except to criticize the scourge of civilian casualties. His assessment of the situation was so ridiculously upbeat that the Afghan President Hamid Karzai praised it.

Joe Biden also used phrases like “pushing the reset button” on the U.S.-Russian relationship, an idea which seemed to suit and sooth the audience.

Our allies in Afghanistan.  Welcome to the old Europe – and the old Europe in Washington.

This is cross-posted as a comment at the Small Wars Journal Blog, since some of my readers don’t frequent that site.

Thanks to Mark, Gian, Ken, Rob and the SWJ Editors for learned and interesting responses.  I have taken the time to study fully the comments at AM by “Looking Glass” and Gian.  I would like some feedback concerning this exchange.  With respect but frankly, it doesn’t impress me as particularly useful.  To keep reiterating the belief that such-and-such an organization “just doesn’t get it” is no replacement for specifics.

It appears to me that Gian’s points at AM are more to the point.  His gripes, whether from perceived or real inadequacies, seem like they should be more directed at a particular chain of command rather than the entire organization.  Some in the Army surely must “get it.”

I cannot speak with knowledge on these issues, as readers know.  But I am aware of many things that occurred in support of operations in Fallujah in 2007.  I am amazed at the extent of latitude and the degree of empowerment that obtained in order to be successful with operations from April to October, and this, all the way down to the infantry boots on the ground, from Lance Corporal to Gunny.

More helpful that constantly repeating the mantra that some people “just don’t get it,” the better and more effective option would seem to be to propose concrete remedies and means of institutionalizing the lessons learned – and hence, my original article which Dave kindly linked (leading to very much undeserved attention on me, but not so for the issue).

I am not so sanguine as Mark that we are achieving a balance in our perspective.  I wish it was so, but very much doubt it.  I agree with Gian that balance can mean just about anything depending on the wishes and biases of the hearer.  I agree with balance too, and the link that Ken gave us concerning the reasons for wanting more F-22s makes me sick to my stomach.  But the fact remains that it outperforms the F-35 at every point.  Secretary Gates had that right balance, sticking to his guns that production is to be halted after 183.  The Air Force can get my with less than they want.  Gates also has the right balance concerning the need to plan and train for a full range of exigencies.  We were all happy with the renewal of his charge under the new administration.

But where is all of this going?  We want to avoid the notion of Gnostic secrecy an reading tea leaves, but some things have been made clear.  Admiral Mullen has fairly directly said that more money should go to State (diverted from the military, of course) for the conduct of the softer side of COIN and nation building in lieu of the military pulling this duty.  The new administration has also made no secret of its support of the notion of the civilian national security force, and State Department employees deployed abroad in support of our international efforts.  How this might come to pass is an enigma at this point, since the recent threat by Condi Rice to do the same thing lead just about to riots in the streets.

Now for the really important question.  When is the last time you heard any branch of the U.S. military say that they could do with less money?  My initial post was more a call to jettison the theory and pick up the red pen.  Prepare to find the programs that you wish to cut – military programs, that is.  Money simply doesn’t exist to fund a civilian national security force, send State employees abroad, pump more money into our reconstruction efforts, and yet fund the Army future combat system (which is in danger), the Marine Corps expeditionary fighting vehicle, the Navy littoral combat program, and so on the list goes.

Organization, titles, promotion boards and such, are all interesting topics for professional military to engage.  But I feel that soon, very soon, the discussions will become much more pragmatic.  The conversations must get very particular, focused on the nuts and bolts of things rather than the theory.

Dr. Nagl’s (who sent links to some of his work on the subject) discussions about attendance at town council meetings and other approaches to community involvement are interesting and insightful, but the evolution and adaptation has occurred, at least in the Marines.  By 2007 the tactics had evolved to direct involvement by officers (rather than mere attendance) at council meetings, gated communities, biometrics, payment to the SOI, combined COP/IP precincts, and so the list goes.  The evolution was rapid, and COPs was used in Ramadi and throughout Anbar prior to implementation in the balance of Iraq anyway.

In a time of scarcity of funding and even Admiral Mullen saying that he supports the redirection of funds to State, the question of how to institutionalize lessons and yet prepare for future exigencies is a “getting your hands dirty” question.  What programs do we wish to cut?  What programs do we promulgate?  What courses should be offered, which ones cut?  What focus does the war college pursue in the next few years?  What weapons systems are cut?  Which ones promulgated?  Does the Navy pursue the big ship focus, or do we allow them to go off on their own mission of littoral combat (perhaps in support of failed states as the COIN proponents would like)?  And if we allow the Navy to go off and do their own thing, what happens when China crosses the Taiwan strait?

If we kill the F-22 program, are we prepared to invest half of what we would have in the refurbishment of the existing fighters to repair the stress corrosion cracking and fatigue wearing?  Down in the trenches, it’s fairly easy to say that we should be good at raids and room clearing, but further, do we focus on squad rushes or language training?  I might say some of both, but the difficulty is that the existing language training is awful.  It’s a compilation of simplistic phonetics with grunts, sounds and noises (focused on sentences such as “where is the man of the house?”).  It would be better if we did nothing if we cannot do it right.

I will not go on, but hopefully you get the picture.  I am not advocating that the military set policy.  But if internecine warfare continues between the branches, and even within the branches, and the new administration cannot be presented with a coherent, practical and affordable vision for the future, you’d better believe that it will be done by someone else.

Ken White has said that “Either the Armed Forces present a viable proposition to the new administration or the politicians will provide their own proposition.”  Just so.  You should listen to him, and the need to get pragmatic very soon is upon the professional military community.  Even beginning to build a consensus means turning aside from the theory and embracing the fact that time has run out, and that the details of the vision are needed tomorrow.

Richard Fernandez writing for Pajamas Media latches onto a significant report about the thinking of President-elect Obama and his team of advisers concerning Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

President-elect Barack Obama will offer Israel a strategic pact designed to fend off any nuclear attack on the Jewish state by Iran, an Israeli newspaper reported on Thursday.

Haaretz, quoting an unnamed source, said the Obama administration would pledge under the proposed “nuclear umbrella” to respond to any Iranian strike on Israel with a “devastating U.S. nuclear response.”

Granting Israel a nuclear guarantee would essentially suggest the U.S. is willing to come to terms with a nuclear Iran, the paper reported.

According to the paper’s source, Obama’s nuclear guarantee would be backed by a new and improved Israeli anti-ballistic missile system. The Bush administration took the first step by deploying an early-warning radar system, which enhances the ability to detect Iranian ballistic missiles.

No immediate comment from Israeli officials or the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv was offered.

Iran denies its nuclear program has military designs. But tough anti-Israel rhetoric from Tehran has spread fears that the Israelis, who are believed to have the Middle East’s only atomic arsenal, could attack their arch-foe pre-emptively.

The source, according to Haaretz, noted that the discussion of the possibility of a nuclear Iran undermines efforts to prevent Tehran from acquiring such arms.

A senior Bush administration source reportedly said the nuclear umbrella was ridiculous and lacked credibility.

“Who will convince the citizen in Kansas that the U.S. needs to get mixed up in a nuclear war because Haifa was bombed? And what is the point of an American response, after Israel’s cities are destroyed in an Iranian nuclear strike?,” he said.

Richard then goes on to consider a possible U.S. response to an Iranian strike, and then concludes:

A combination of tacitly accepting an nuclear-armed Iran and reposing deterrence in Washington could make the Ayatollahs more willing to run the risk. What are the odds that the West can bring itself to enter into a nuclear exchange with Iran if it could not muster the will to prevent Teheran’s acquisition of those weapons in the first place?

Michael Ledeen also weighs in with his always educational and interesting prose.  I agree with both Richard and Michael, but would add a significant forecast to the discussion.  It won’t happen this way.

Iran will not entrust the deployment of a nuclear warhead to an air delivery system (since achieving enrichment doesn’t mean achieving miniturization of nuclear weapons to decrease overall mass) – nor will it be that overt.  Instead, acceptance of a nuclear Iran will mean the turnover of a nuclear weapon to Hezbollah or some allied group, and detonation somewhere around Tel Aviv (with its metropolitan population of more than three million people).

Since IAEA inspectors have been effectively booted from Iran for months, it won’t be possible early on to ascertain, even with gamma spectrographic analysis, the fission product and actinide composition and thus the initial mixture of high enriched Uranium.  Another way of saying it is that we have no “signature” for Iranian weapons.

By the time it has been determined through intelligence that the weapon came from Iran, the spin machine will have been active for weeks convincing the world community that the weapon fell into the hands of rogue elements, and that any attack on Iran would mean the deaths of innocent civilians.  World pressure will build for Israel to refuse to retaliate.  Even if Israel retaliates, the military forces and authorities will have relocated to unknown locations.

Hundreds of thousands of Israelis will be dead and much of the surrounding land will be uninhabitable for years.  The toll on the medical care system will be so enormous that it won’t be able to keep up, and the seat of power – the government – will effectively cease to exist.  At this time Hezbollah will attack from the North and Hamas and allied groups will attack from Gaza.

Given this scenario, i.e., the delivery of a weapon by means other than air delivery, the notion of a “nuclear umbrella” is ridiculous and irrelevant.  Team Obama is naive to the point of childish if this is their level of analysis of the situation.

Further, acquiescence to a nuclear Iran will mean a certain nuclear arms race in the Middle East.  Just recently Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak explained how most if not all Middle Easterners see Iran.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak spoke out against Iran during a meeting with members of the Egyptian ruling party, according to a report in the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida on Thursday, cited by Israel Radio.

Mubarak accused the Islamic Republic of trying to subsume its Muslim neighbors, telling the forum that “the Persians are trying to devour the Arab states.”

Mubarak’s comments came after the Egyptian leader recalled the country’s diplomatic envoy from the Iranian capital earlier this week following an increase in tension between the two countries.

Recent strain between Cairo and Teheran has grown as several demonstrations in Iran called for the hanging of the Egyptian leader. The Iranian FARS news service reported that participants in recent student demonstrations outside the Egyptian diplomatic mission in Teheran also chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” and burned an Israeli flag.

On Wednesday the Egyptian ministry was quoted as criticizing some Iranian newspapers that have repeatedly insulted Egyptian policies and leadership recently. Teheran media, for example, broadcast incitement against Cairo’s policy allegedly preventing aid from reaching Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

Democratic revolution and regime change remain the best options, but the State Department effectively killed the last such remaining program and no politician has shown any interest in the easy solution.  They are all seeking the hard ones.

For team-Obama, it’s three strikes and an out the first time at bat.