Foreign Affairs | By Zbigniew Brzezinski | January/February 2010 Issue
From Hope to Audacity
Appraising Obama’s Foreign Policy
Article Summary: Barack Obama’s foreign policy has generated more expectations than strategic breakthroughs. Three urgent issues — the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and the Afghan-Pakistani challenge — will test his ability to significantly change policy.
[The Article starts with a brief introduction, and goes on to discuss the first two of the three issues listed in the Article Summary, before addressing the third, which is reproduced below.]
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THE AFPAK QUAGMIRE
The third urgent and politically sensitive foreign policy issue is posed by the Afghan-Pakistani predicament. Obama has moved toward abandoning some of the more ambitious, even ideological, objectives that defined the United States’ initial engagement in Afghanistan — the creation of a modern democracy, for example. But the United States must be very careful lest its engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which still has primarily and most visibly a military dimension, comes to be viewed by the Afghans and the Pakistanis as yet another case of Western colonialism and elicits from them an increasingly militant response.
Some top U.S. generals have recently stated that the United States is not winning militarily, an appraisal that ominously suggests the conflict with the Taliban could become similar to the Soviet Union’s earlier confrontation with Afghan resistance. A comprehensive strategic reassessment has thus become urgently needed. The proposal made in September by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom for an international conference on the subject was helpful and timely; the United States was wise to welcome it. But to be effective, any new strategy has to emphasize two key elements. First, the Afghan government and NATO should seek to engage locally in a limited process of accommodation with receptive elements of the Taliban. The Taliban are not a global revolutionary or terrorist movement, and although they are a broad alliance with a rather medieval vision of what Afghanistan ought to be, they do not directly threaten the West. Moreover, they are still very much a minority phenomenon that ultimately can be defeated only by other Afghans (helped economically and militarily by the United States and its NATO allies), a fact that demands a strategy that is more political than military.
Additionally, the United States needs to develop a policy for gaining the support of Pakistan, not just in denying the Taliban a sanctuary in Pakistan but also in pressuring the Taliban in Afghanistan to accommodate. Given that many Pakistanis may prefer a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan to a secular Afghanistan that leans toward Pakistan’s archrival, India, the United States needs to assuage Pakistan’s security concerns in order to gain its full cooperation in the campaign against the irreconcilable elements of the Taliban. In this regard, the support of China could be helpful, particularly considering its geopolitical stake in regional stability and its traditionally close ties with Islamabad.
It is likely that before this appraisal hits the newsstands, Obama will have announced a more comprehensive strategy for attaining a politically acceptable outcome to the ongoing conflict — and one that U.S. allies are also prepared to support. His approach so far has been deliberate. He has been careful to assess both the military and the political dimensions of the challenge and also to take into account the views of U.S. allies. Nothing would be worse for NATO than if one part of the alliance (western Europe) left the other part of the alliance (the United States) alone in Afghanistan. Such a fissure over NATO’s first campaign initially based on Article 5, the collective defense provision, would probably spell the end of the alliance.
How Obama handles these three urgent and interrelated issues — the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Iranian dilemma, and the Afghan-Pakistani conflict — will determine the United States’ global role for the foreseeable future. The consequences of a failed peace process in the Middle East, a military collision with Iran, and an intensifying military engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan all happening simultaneously could commit the United States for many years to a lonely and self-destructive conflict in a huge and volatile area. Eventually, that could spell the end of the United States’ current global preeminence.”
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The full text of the article is available at From Hope to Audacity | Foreign Affairs (requires registration), and is reproduced at Sunday Posts. For an excellent critique, especially on Israel and Iran, see Middle East Reality.
On Afghanistan and Pakistan, the assumptions and recommendations of the article apears to have been overtaken by events. Not only do Mr. Brzezinski’s three contingent antecedents — “a failed peace process in the Middle East, a military collision with Iran, and an intensifying military engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan” — all appear to be on course to happen simultaneously, but there is a growing likelihood that America’s war on Muslims will be expanded to Yemen, Somalia, and possibly, Sudan.
On present trends Mr. Brzezinski’s use of the word “quagmire” may prove prophetic:
- America will deploy more troops to Afghanistan, until the predictable rise in American casualties erodes domestic support for the occupation, in a repeat of Vietnam.
- Given the numbers required, the Americans will fail to build a reliable Afghan army and police force, not least because they will both be infilterated by the Afghan resistance (led by, and not consisting exclusively of, the Afghan-Taleban), to whom they can handover security.
- The Anbar (Iraq) experience will not be repeated in Afghanistan, consistent with the findings of the recent U.S. Marine Corps report, which concludes: “In Iraq to a very large degree, we — the U.S. military and civilians — were the source of the insurgency. Honest men and women can argue the whys, what-ifs, and what-might-have-beens, but ultimately, it was mostly about unfulfilled promises and the heavy-handed military approach taken by some over the summer of 2003 that caused events to spiral out of control.” (The report goes on to question both the role of Gen. Petraeus and his Counterinsurgency Manual.)
- Not only security, but even a “good enough” governance — to use Senator Kerry’s qualified term — is unlikely to emerge in Afghanistan.
- While greater options to avert disaster remain in Pakistan — an entirely different proposition from Afghanistan, a fact obscured by American thinking in terms of the “Af/Pak” military theatre, rather than the sovereign nation — the Americans will have to make their control more and more transparent, leading to progressive deterioration of governance and governability.
- When American withdraws, Russia and India, will succeed in reviving the status quo ante; Iran and Pakistan are less likely to be successful.
- America’s indifference to, if not active covert promotion of, the Balkanization of Pakistan may well prove successful.
Related Posts:
- Critical Notes on Obama’s Cairo Speech: Imperialism with a Human Face
- A Short History of the “Af/Pak” War: A Folly Built on Lies More Outrageous than Iraq
- An “Af/Pak” View of Obama’s Afghanistan-Pakistan Speech
- Full Transcript of Obama’s 60 Minutes Interview on Afghanistan and Pakistan
- In 2010 the “Yem/Som” War: America Prepares to Encircle Saudi Arabia, While Securing the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea
- Al-Qaeda, Sanctuaries, and the Coming American Invasion of Yemen
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AMERICA’S WAR CRIMES QUAGMIRE, FROM BUSH TO OBAMA
Michael Haas’s “George W. Bush, War Criminal? The Bush Administration’s Liability for 269 War Crimes” was published a few days before Barack Obama took the oath of office. Torture, murder, illegal war, the slaughter of thousands of innocents, abuse of child prisoners—these are only a few of 269 war crimes committed during the Bush administration, which rolled over to the Obama administration on January 20, 2009, to haunt his presidency. The book has the distinction of having inspired a protest in front of the New York Times building because the venerable newspaper refused to publish a review soon after its release.
Although President Obama signed executive orders to stop torture and close Guantánamo, the war crimes have continued virtually unabated ever since. Indeed, the Times Square bomber specifically cited American war crimes as the reason for his action on May 1, 2010.
Newly published “America’s War Crimes Quagmire, From Bush to Obama” identifies how the war crimes of the Bush administration have continued to be documented by the press while politicians and pundits have withheld criticisms. The book consists of forty-seven essays that were originally blogs on the website http://www.USwarcrimes.com. Essays are edited appropriately, with occasional postscripts to bring the narrative up to date.
America’s War Crimes Quagmire, From Bush to Obama concludes that war crimes continue because American leaders have only focused on torture, thereby allowing thousands of victims of more than two hundred other war crimes to suffer. Instead, the term “war crimes” is taboo in the United States. And although some Americans have called for prosecution of war criminals, cries from overseas victims have been muffled. Yet the rest of the world, in contrast, is fully aware of American lawlessness.
The book also identifies how the Georgian republic, Russia, and other countries have copied American post-9/11 war crimes. As a result, there is a new era of international barbarism that serves to aid anti-American terrorist recruitment while repudiating the advances achieved in humanizing warfare by President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, by the Red Cross, at the Hague Conventions, at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, and by the Geneva Conventions.
The author, Michael Haas, is a Nobel Peace Prize nominee for his work on behalf of human rights. An academic political scientist, he has taught at Northwestern University, Loyola Marymount University, Occidental College, Purdue University, Stanford University, the University of California (Riverside), the University of Hawai‘i, the University of London, and six campuses of California State University, most recently California Polytechnic University (Pomona).
The 278-page book is available from the Publishinghouse for Scholars (P.O. Box 461267, Los Angeles, CA 90046) for $25 (including postage and handling) per domestic copy and $30 for international purchase payable to “Publishinghouse for Scholars.” The book has an extensive set of references, and a comprehensive index. The index contains page numbers that apply to each war crime cited in the book. The 2009 hard-cover book George W. Bush, War Criminal? The Bush Administration’s Liability for 269 War Crimes (published by Praeger) can also be purchased with a simple mouse-click on the website http://www.USwarcrimes.com with a PayPal payment option.
Chapter titles of this timely and unique book:
• Book on the War Crimes of the Bush Administration
• Bogus “War Crimes Trial” Characterization at Guantánamo
• Women Terrorists Are Criminals, Men Are “Detainees”
• Georgian and Russian War Crimes Ape the Superpower
• A Trial That Was on Trial: Who Were the Real War Criminals at Guantánamo?
• Georgia Copies Guantánamo
• Members of the Bush Administration Fear Prosecution
• The Long Arm of the Lawless Outside Afghanistan and Iraq
• War Crimes Displayed in Amnesty International’s Guantánamo Exhibit
• Accounting for War Crimes of the Bush Administration Through a Truth Commission
• War Crimes Trials in Cambodia Await Accusations
• Hypocrisy at Guantánamo Under the Radar of the Presidential Election
• Guantánamo’s Villains and Hogan’s Heroes
• Twelve Myths in Bush’s “War on Terror”
• Children as Unlamented Victims of Bush’s War Crimes
• Did Barack Obama Become a War Criminal When He Became President?
• Obama’s Executive Orders Fall Short of Stopping War Crimes
• Military Action in Afghanistan and Pakistan Needs Clarification
• Pentagon Defies Obama on Guantánamo
• War in Afghanistan Haunted by Bush’s War Crimes
• Refugees at Guantánamo Await Resettlement
• Bush’s War Crimes Legacy Confronts Obama as a Public Health Nightmare
• The Documentary Inside Guantánamo Is Blind to War Crimes
• Memo Implicates Judge Bybee as a War Criminal
• Repudiated Bradbury Memos Ignored the Geneva Conventions
• New Executive Orders Must Be Issued to Comply with the Geneva Conventions
• The Focus on Torture: A Diversion from War Crimes Against Children and Unjustified Murder
• Are the Words “War Crimes” Taboo Today?
• Guantánamo and Bagram Prisoners Should Be Treated Lawfully
• Obama Impairs Guantánamo Closure by Reviving Military Commissions
• How to Close Guantánamo Without Using Makeshift Tribunals
• Worse than Waterboarding: Looking Forward Requires Looking Backward
• The Unauthorized Afghan War Continues
• Washington’s Hypocrisy About Displaying Prisoners
• Bush’s Justice Department: Machiavellian or Mengelian?
• An Illegal War Fought Illegally—In Afghanistan
• Truth Commission Hearing in Malaysia Ignored by the American Press
• Obama Tries to Rewrite History
• Obama’s Guantánamo “Progress” in 2009
• Rethinking Robert Greenwald’s Rethink Afghanistan Documentary
• When Will the Afghan War End?
• Obama’s Plan Regarding Bush Era War Crimes
• A Nation of Cowards
• Bush’s “Poodle Dog” Tony Blair Is Accused of War Crimes in The Ghost Writer
• Rumsfeld Charged with War Crimes in a Chicago Court
• Why Did a Pakistani-Born American Citizen Want to Kill Americans?
• Conclusion: Ignoring the Victims
If Robert Jackson, prosecutor at Nuremberg, were alive today, here is doubtless what he would say about America’s War Crimes Quagmire, From Bush to Obama: “The real complaining party is Civilization. International law, a struggling and imperfect force, points to the sequence of aggressions and war crimes and to the greater potentialities for destruction elsewhere in the days to come. It is not necessary to argue the proposition that to start or wage an aggressive war has the moral qualities of the worst of crimes. The refuge of the defendants can be only their hope that international law will lag so far behind the moral sense of mankind that conduct which is crime in the moral sense must be regarded as innocent in law.” Time will tell. America’s War Crimes Quagmire, From Bush to Obama promises to serve as the most recent clarion call of our time.
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