The Obama administration and European governments have set the end of the year as a deadline for the transfer of the uranium out of Iran and for progress in the overall negotiations. But the administration must consider whether it makes sense to grant the regime two more months of grace. On Tuesday, after all, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei publicly rejected the overtures he said he had received from President Obama, declaring that negotiating with the United States was “naive and perverted.” On Wednesday, the opposition protesters chanted: “Obama, Obama — either you’re with them, or with us.” Sooner rather than later, Mr. Obama ought to respond to those messages.
Sometimes “No” is, in fact, the answer and it certainly seems to me that it’s the answer that the Iranian regime has given to President Obama’s overtures.
The picture that is emerging of Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, the American-born Army psychiatrist who killed 13 people and wounded dozens of others at Fort Hood yesterday is of a deeply troubled and conflicted individual:
As authorities scrambled to figure out what happened at Fort Hood, a hazy and contradictory picture emerged of this son of Palestinian immigrants, a man who received his medical training from the military and spent his career in the Army, yet allegedly turned so violently against his uniformed colleagues.
Hasan was born in Arlington and grew up in the Roanoke Valley of southwestern Virginia, a bookish young man who, his father hoped, would go on to significant professional achievement. He spent nearly all of his Army medical career at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District, caring for the victims of trauma, yet he spoke openly of his deep opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[…]
A longtime Walter Reed colleague who referred patients to psychiatrists said co-workers avoided sending service members to Hasan because of his unusual manner and solitary work habits.
[…]
Hasan “did not make many friends” and “did not make friends fast,” his aunt said. He had no girlfriend and was not married. “He would tell us the military was his life,” she said.
The psychiatrist once said that “Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor” and that the United States shouldn’t be fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the first place, according to an interview with Col. Terry Lee, a co-worker, on Fox News.
Press releases today indicate that Maj. Hasan was shot four times, was initially believed to be dead, but is now in stable condition.
Army Col. Steven Braverman said during a morning news briefing that the alleged shooter, military psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, hadn’t been a disciplinary issue since recently being transferred to Fort Hood from Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. Col. Braverman declined to elaborate on the man at the center of the rampage, noting that a detailed probe was ongoing.
“We had no problems with job performance while he was working with us,” said Col. Braverman, one of Maj. Hasan’s superiors.
Army Col. John Rossi called Thursday’s shooting a “tragic incident” and said that investigators had spent the night carefully interviewing witnesses. Officials disclosed that one of the 13 killed in the shooting was a civilian, while the rest were members of the military.
As Col. Rossi noted, this was clearly a tragic incident all around. I certainly hope that the military takes steps to identify and head off potentially deadly problem situations such as this lonely, conflicted, probably terrified and angry man obviously (in hindsight) presented. I make no excuses for the perpetrator. He should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and, if convicted, pay the price whether being committed to a mental institution, a prison sentence for the rest of his life, or greater. As the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, and, potentially, elsewhere stretch on the strains on individuals and families will become greater rather than less and special care will need to be taken to prevent repeats of this tragedy.
Seven people are reported to have been killed and twenty injured in a shooting at Fort Hood in Texas:
At least seven people are dead and 20 wounded in a mass shooting Thursday at Fort Hood, Texas, and at least one suspect is believed to be holed up in a building and shooting at SWAT team members, NBC News and affiliate KCEN reported.
It was unknown whether the victims were all soldiers or civilians at Fort Hood, one of the largest military complexes in the world.
One gunman was reportedly in custody and another was on the loose, NBC News said. A third shooter may be involved, according to NBC News affiliate KCEN in Waco, which said the person was holed up in building 42006 on the base and had opened fire on SWAT team members. KCEN quoted a source as saying the shooter had a high-powered rifle.
Not a great deal more is known at this time. It is being said that the shooters wore military uniforms but it’s not known whether they were military personnel. Live coverage is currently saying that two shooters have been apprehended.
UPDATE
Sources on the post are being quoted as saying that the number of confirmed dead is 9 and the wounded as many as 30.
UPDATE 2
Gen. Bob Cone, commanding general at Fort Hood, has just made a statement. He said that the shooter was a soldier and has been killed; and that there are also two other suspects. 12 are dead and 31 are wounded. A civilian police officer is among the dead.
UPDATE 3
ABC News is reporting that the shooter has been identified as Maj. Malik Nadal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist.
The shooter was initially reported to have been killed, but Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone told a late night news conference that the suspect was wounded and in custody. Cone would not say what Hasan’s medical condition was, but said the suspect was not in danger of dying.
Hasan is not talking to authorities, said Cone.
The officer emphasized that there was only one gunman. Two other soldiers were taken into custody, but were later released.
Hasan allegedly opened fire and killed 12 people on the post before he was shot several times. Among the wounded was a female police officer who exchanged gunfire with Hasan and shot the suspect.
The female police officer also survived the shooting, said Cone.
Today marks the 30th anniversary of the seizing of the U. S. embassy in Tehran by factions of the revolution that overthrew the shah. President Obama has issued a statement on the occasion which I will reproduce in full here:
Thirty years ago today, the American Embassy in Tehran was seized. The 444 days that began on November 4, 1979 deeply affected the lives of courageous Americans who were unjustly held hostage, and we owe these Americans and their families our gratitude for their extraordinary service and sacrifice.
This event helped set the United States and Iran on a path of sustained suspicion, mistrust, and confrontation. I have made it clear that the United States of America wants to move beyond this past, and seeks a relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran based upon mutual interests and mutual respect. We do not interfere in Iran’s internal affairs. We have condemned terrorist attacks against Iran. We have recognized Iran’s international right to peaceful nuclear power. We have demonstrated our willingness to take confidence-building steps along with others in the international community. We have accepted a proposal by the International Atomic Energy Agency to meet Iran’s request for assistance in meeting the medical needs of its people. We have made clear that if Iran lives up to the obligations that every nation has, it will have a path to a more prosperous and productive relationship with the international community.
Iran must choose. We have heard for thirty years what the Iranian government is against; the question, now, is what kind of future it is for. The American people have great respect for the people of Iran and their rich history. The world continues to bear witness to their powerful calls for justice, and their courageous pursuit of universal rights. It is time for the Iranian government to decide whether it wants to focus on the past, or whether it will make the choices that will open the door to greater opportunity, prosperity, and justice for its people.
I find the statement strangely detached. In every action and statement, including its non-responsive retort this very week to the offer to end its nuclear enrichment program made by the governments of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, the leaders of the Iranian government have demonstrated that they have already made their choice. Ray Tayekh of the Council on Foreign Relations states the situation quite plainly:
Dealing with Iran has always been a complicated enterprise with moral hazards. The persistent mistake that the West has made is to place the nuclear issue above all other concerns. The Iran problem is not limited to illicit nuclear activities, and it is somewhat incomprehensible that the United States and other nations can contemplate nuclear transactions with a regime that maintains links to a range of terrorist organizations and engages in brutal domestic repression. Western officials would be smart to disabuse Iran of the notion that its nuclear infractions are the only source of disagreement. Iran’s hard-liners need to know that should they launch their much-advertised crackdown, the price for such conduct may be termination of any dialogue with the West. Only through such a policy can the United States advance its strategic objectives while standing up for its moral values.
We should implement consequences for Iran as stern as we can make them, non-violent in nature but punitive in quality. We should muster all of the permanent members of the Security Council to participate in these measures but be prepared to proceed without them. A peaceful, prosperous, and just Iran is in Russian and Chinese interests as it is in ours and, if they elect to support tyranny in Iran, Russia and China should be made aware that this latest tyranny in Iran will eventually end and the Iranian people will know who supported the tyrants and who opposed them.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, yesterday delivered a stern warning to Iran’s hard-line leader amid signs that the west’s patience with Tehran’s prevarication on its nuclear programme was running out.
In a speech to the joint houses of the US Congress, the first by a German chancellor in more than half a century, Mrs Merkel aligned Germany closely with the US drive to tackle a range of threats such as global warming, international terrorism and climate change.
Her comments on Iran signalled Germany’s determination to press ahead with a new raft of sanctions against the Tehran regime if, as is now expected, it fails to enter into negotiations on its nuclear programme.
“Zero tolerance needs to be shown when there is a risk of weapons of mass destruction falling, for example, into the hands of Iran and threatening our security,” Mrs Merkel told Congress. “Iran needs to be aware of this, Iran knows our offer but Iran also knows where we draw a line.”
The editors of the Chicago Tribune have encouraged the United States government to support a new round of sanctions against Iran, especially a ban on exporting gasoline to Iran:
The U.S. is reported to be forming a set of much harsher sanctions against Iran, targeting the country’s energy, transportation and financial industries. Good. But Iran is already under several sets of sanctions by the U.S. and U.N. Security Council. These have pinched, but not enough to stop Iran’s nuclear program.
The best option now is a ban on gasoline imports. Even though it produces crude oil, Iran must buy about 40 percent of its gasoline. Any jolt to that supply would have an immediate effect on the streets of Tehran and on every Iranian motorist.
The Iranian people may blame their government. Or they may blame the U.S. and its allies. Either way, Iran’s leaders, already loathed at home, will come under immense new pressure to yield on their nuclear ambitions.
The U.S. and its European allies can’t make a gas embargo stick without help from Russia and China. They’re reluctant. But now’s the time to make the case that an embargo is a better strategy than a military strike on Tehran.
Most of all the members of the Security Council must decide whether their resolutions are proposals in a negotiation or not. If they are not, Iran should not be allowed to to turn them into a negotiation. If they are, clearly the UNSC will need to up the ante.
If it were me, in exchange for 10% of Iran’s enriched uranium I would lift 10% of the sanctions I’d impose on Iran which would include a ban on gasoline exports and a ban on Iranian financial transactions in international banks, in exchange for 20% of Iran’s enriched uranium, I’d lift 20%, and so on. But that’s just me.
However, we need to ask the Russians and the Chinese the question outright: are the resolutions for which they’ve voted merely bargaining points in a negotiation or not?
There’s a fascinating article in Spiegel Online (in English) on “Operation Orchard”, the operation in September 2007 in Syria in which the Israeli air force destroyed what many have termed a “nuclear plant”, what the article calls “Syria’s Al Kibar nuclear reactor”, and the Syrians have characterized as a conventional military facility. Spiegel has interviewed Syrian, Israeli, and American leaders as well as confidential Syrian and Israeli sources to compile a mosaic of espionage, intrigue, assassination, and general international shenanigans.
Was it a nuclear plant, in which scientists were on the verge of completing the bomb? Were North Korean, perhaps even Iranian experts, also working in this secret Syrian facility? When and how did the Israelis learn about the project, and why did they take such a great risk to conduct their clandestine operation? Was the destruction of the Al Kibar complex meant as a final warning to the Iranians, a trial run of sorts intended to show them what the Israelis plan to do if Tehran continues with its suspected nuclear weapons program?
In recent months, SPIEGEL has spoken with key politicians and experts about the mysterious incident in the Syrian desert, including Syrian President Bashar Assad, leading Israeli intelligence expert Ronen Bergman, International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohammed ElBaradei and influential American nuclear expert David Albright. SPIEGEL has also talked with individuals involved in the operation, who have only now agreed to reveal, under conditions of anonymity, what they know.
These efforts have led to an account that, while not solving the mystery in its entirety, at least delivers many pieces of the puzzle. It also offers an assessment of an operation that changed the Middle East and generated shock waves that are still being felt today.
The article has enough suggestions, claims, and innuendos to give nearly anyone food for thought at the very least.
The picture above is a satellite image of the facility that was destroyed.
President Karzai narrowly won a clearly fraudulent election. His main challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, has withdrawn from consideration as a candidate, ruling out a run-off election. That leaves us with an Afghan government of little or no legitimacy, unworthy of our confidence or that of the Afghan people. Classical counter-insurgency strategy requires a government with the support of the people. We don’t have such an ally in Afghanistan.
The status quo cannot continue. Obama has yet to decide whether he will heed the call of the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, for up to 40,000 more troops, but he has said he will not walk away from the country altogether. If that’s the case, it seems Obama has no choice but to hold his nose and press on with a weakened ally. Given that, he must push for a national unity government in Kabul to broaden its base of support and, at the same time, help develop a more decentralized administration of a land that has always been a loose collection of tribes and districts. Decentralization would allow the West to spread its resources to regional leaders rather than concentrating them in the hands of Karzai and his clique. Any U.S. strategy for stabilizing Afghanistan and drawing support away from the Taliban depends on a political leadership perceived as legitimate and a government that serves its people.
1. Strongly encourage him [i.e. Karzai] to form a new “unity government” that includes Mr. Abdullah, who on Sunday graciously removed himself from the runoff race. Karzai needs a government with wider appeal and greater credibility if he is to effectively influence the entire country.
Abdullah, who was formerly Karzai’s foreign minister, contributes on both of those counts. He ran the race (and quit it) on an anticorruption message. He hails from the Northern Alliance that helped topple the Taliban (Karzai comes from the dominant southern Pashtun ethnic group).
2. Apply quiet behind-the-scenes pressure on Karzai. The tough-love public criticism of Karzai has worked mostly to ostracise the Afghan president. Sen. John Kerry’s more subdued, but still firm, weekend of persuasion last month produced the desired effect – Karzai’s agreement to a runoff.
3. Washington should move quickly to influence selection of the Kabul government’s new cabinet. Certainly America’s contribution of troops and treasure gives it that right.
Karzai will be tempted to reward friends with high-profile posts, but what matters is competency in governance, especially in three key jobs: defense, interior, and finance. The US has successfully urged competency before – for instance, in backing the current finance minister (and prime minister) of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad.
4. Shift aid and relationships to local and regional leaders. This point counts as much as the first three combined – probably more. Insurgents do their courting outside Kabul, and the US should, too.
For 1,000 years Afghanistan has been ruled with tribal, decentralized government. Experts suggest a constitutional change that takes some powers from the president and gives them to the parliament (one idea even considers the Swiss model of semi-sovereign cantons).
But the US shouldn’t wait for such a formal change. If insurgents are to be won over (or bought), if aid is to be turned into roads and schools, if trust and a justice system are to be regained – that must happen at the local and regional level. This strategy has the added benefit of a certain independence from Karzai – but it has to be managed carefully so as not to openly insult him.
5. Finally, the US and its allies need to provide the resources and commitment to support good governance and security at the national, provincial, and local levels. For instance, it does no good to train police if the Taliban lures them away with many more times the pay. And once Afghan security forces have been trained, they need their foreign “teachers” to follow up with them on patrol. That’s a people-intensive effort.
While I think that many Americans are tired of the war in Afghanistan and skeptical both of the support of our NATO allies and the confidence of the Obama Administration in the effort, I also think that withdrawing from Afghanistan presents tactical, strategic, legal, and moral problems. I would rather that we had never invaded Afghanistan. I would rather that we would have completed our objectives there by now. However, having invaded and not achieved our objectives I think that we need to find a set of objectives and a strategy for which the American people will at least tolerate a continuing involvement with the country.
If, alternatively, the Obama Administration is insistent on pursuing the old objectives and the stated strategy, it should be fully resourced and engaged in with confidence. It certainly won’t be a classic counter-insurgency strategy.
Columnist Thomas Friedman has put in his vote for what we should do in Afghanistan: Don’t Build Up
It is crunch time on Afghanistan, so here’s my vote: We need to be thinking about how to reduce our footprint and our goals there in a responsible way, not dig in deeper. We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interests to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan.
His view is founded in three principles:
Whatever happens in Afghanistan must come from the Afghans themselves. We can’t force anything on the Afghans (or Iraqis) that they don’t want themselves.
Be patient.
The world needs us.
My last guiding principle: We are the world. A strong, healthy and self-confident America is what holds the world together and on a decent path. A weak America would be a disaster for us and the world. China, Russia and Al Qaeda all love the idea of America doing a long, slow bleed in Afghanistan. I don’t.
The short version of my reaction is that I agree.
The longer version of my reaction is that we have a much more difficult challenge ahead in Afghanistan than many seem to be crediting. We need to find a way to continue to provide support to Afghanistan over a long period of time as we did Germany, Japan, and South Korea. I believe that experience suggests that support will only continue as long as we have troops in Afghanistan. Consequently, I believe that we need to find a way to maintain some troops in Afghanistan, albeit fewer than we have now and with a significantly more limited mission than our current forces have.
I welcome my fellow OTB contributors updating this post with their own views on this subject.
Month to date there have been four U. S. casualties in Iraq. Each death remains a tragedy but that’s a far cry from a year ago or two years ago. Fatalities in the Iraqi security forces have declined, too, each month of this year seeing fewer casualties than in the corresponding month of last year. Things are far from quiet in Iraq but are clealry much better than they were and than they might have been. As U. S. casualties ratchet up in Afghanistan, largely proportional to the increasing U. S. forces in Afghanistan, we seem to hear less and less coverage of Iraq.
In today’s column, lest we forget about Iraq entirely, Tom Friedman warns of Iraq’s continuing significance and its strategic importance relative to Afghanistan:
Watching Iraqi politics is like watching a tightrope artist crossing a dangerous cavern. At every step it looks as though he is going to fall into the abyss, and yet, somehow, he continues to wobble forward. Nothing is easy when trying to transform a country brutalized by three decades of cruel dictatorship. It is one step, one election, one new law, at a time. Each is a struggle. Each is crucial.
This next step is particularly important, which is why we cannot let Afghanistan distract U.S. diplomats from Iraq. Remember: Transform Iraq and it will impact the whole Arab-Muslim world. Change Afghanistan and you just change Afghanistan.
I think he’s simultaneously right and wrong. Real change in Iraq in the direction of liberal democracy would have enormous significance. I’m not entirely sure whether that’s what’s happening or whether we’re merely seeing the emergence of Saddam Lite.
And I think that he’s largely wrong about Afghanistan through oversimplification. It is impossible to change Afghanistan at all in isolation. Afghanistan and Pakistan are the Corsican Brothers, each feeling the other’s pain, and their fates are inextricably entwined. I seriously doubt that we can prevail militarily in Afghanistan in the absence of a legitimate, decent government there and that will be impossible without a legitimate, decent government in control of the territory it claims in Pakistan, too. And that, in turn, would have tremendous implications for the entirety of south and central Asia.
And can whatever we see as the desired end state in each of Iraq and Afghanistan be maintained without an ongoing commitment to both countries?
Over at The Glittering Eye I muse in a related vein over the interrelationship between our military and our grand strategy. Is there an intrinsic conflict between nation-building and having the biggest, toughest military in the world? How should we be using our military and what are our interests?
Stephen Coll, president of the New America Foundation, has an article in Foreign Policy making the case for more humble objectives in Afghanistan. In the article he criticizes both the counter-insurgency strategy advocated by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U. S. forces in Afghanistan:
To succeed, counterinsurgency approaches require deep, supple, and adaptive understanding of local conditions. And yet, as General McChrystal pointed out in his assessment, since 2001, international forces operating in Afghanistan have “not sufficiently studied Afghanistan’s peoples, whose needs, identities and grievances vary from province to province and from valley to valley.” To succeed, the United States must “redouble efforts to understand the social and political dynamics of…all regions of the country and take action that meets the needs of the people, and insist that [Afghan government] officials do the same.”
and the counter-terrorism strategy advocated recently by Vice President Joe Biden:
There are narrower objections that should be registered about the “counterterrorism-only” or “counterterrorism-mainly” argument. It is probably impractical over a long period of time to wage an intelligence-derived counterterrorism campaign along the Pakistan-Afghan border if a cooperating Afghan government does not have access to the local population; if American forces are not present; and if the Pakistani state has no incentive to cooperate. This is exactly the narrative that unfolded during the 1990s and led to failure on Sept. 11 for the United States.
The article is chock-full of intriguing observations about the situation in Afghanistan and is well worth your attention. I certainly agree with him that we should focus our energies in Afghanistan on objectives we can actually accomplish and that further real American interests. In the light of this I wonder if the bar has not been set too low for Gen. McChrystal? I read Gen. McChrystal’s report as a recommendation for averting defeat. Are they the same as the requirements for achieving success? Or will that require significantly more resources? Gen. McChrystal does say that both more resources and a definite change in strategy are necessary for success:
Success is achievable, but it will not be attained simply by trying harder or “doubling down” on the previous strategy. Additional resources are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely. The key take away from this assessment is the urgent need for a significant change to our strategy and the way that we think and operate.
and
Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it. Resourcing communicates commitment, but we must also balance force levels to enable effective ANSF partnering and provide population security, while avoiding perceptions of coalition dominance. Ideally, the ANSF must lead this fight, but they will not have enough capability in the near-term given the insurgency’s growth rate. In the interim, coalition forces must provide a bridge capability to protect critical segments of the population. The status quo will lead to failure if we wait for the ANSF to grow.
However, I don’t see a commitment in the report that if the general receives what he’s requested that it will achieve the desired outcome. Am I being too critical? Or, as Stephen Coll proposes, should we be seeking more humble objectives in Afghanistan?
Pay particular attention to Joseph Cirincione’s op-ed in the Washington Post, characterized as “Five Myths About Iran’s Nuclear Program”. I think a better word than “myth” would be “misconception”. In the op-ed Mr. Cirincione lays out five misconceptions about Iran’s nuclear program and explains why they’re misconceptions. Here they are:
Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon.
A military strike would knock out Iran’s program.
We can cripple Iran with sanctions.
A new government in Iran would abandon the nuclear program.
Iran is the main nuclear threat in the Middle East.
His last two interconnected points are very important. A nuclear race is now on in the Middle East and in all likelihood it will continue regardless of what we do. The challenge we should be entertaining is how to manage a nuclear-armed Middle East and mitigate its effects.
Rather than debating items 1-3, just for the sake of argument let’s assume that Mr. Cirincione’s assertions are all correct, namely that Iran’s nuclear weapon (if it, indeed, is producing one) is one to three years away, that the most we can achieve via military strikes is delaying Iran’s nuclear weapons program, and that, even if an enhanced sanctions regime could be put in place against Iran, it wouldn’t prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Under those circumstances what is our most prudent course of action?
For a long time now I’ve been saying that the biggest problem facing our forces in Afghanistan isn’t the absence of a viable partner in the Afghan government or whether we should be pursuing a strategy of counter-terrorism or counter-insurgency or the tactics we’re employing there. It’s the logistics. Here’s another example of that. Would you believe that the fully burdened cost of gasoline in Afghanistan is $400 a gallon?
The Pentagon pays an average of $400 to put a gallon of fuel into a combat vehicle or aircraft in Afghanistan.
The statistic is likely to play into the escalating debate in Congress over the cost of a war that entered its ninth year last week.
Pentagon officials have told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee a gallon of fuel costs the military about $400 by the time it arrives in the remote locations in Afghanistan where U.S. troops operate.
Our way of waging war is fuel intensive and the more soldiers we have in Afghanistan the more fuel we’ll need there.
The fully burdened cost of fuel accounts for the cost of transporting it to where it is needed, said Kevin Geiss, program director for energy security in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations and Environment.
And moving fuel by convoy or even airlift is expensive, according to the Army news release from July 16, which quoted Geiss. In some places, Geiss said, analysts have estimated the fully burdened cost of fuel might even be as high as $1,000 per gallon.
As I pointed out some time ago in a lengthy post at my blog (which I’m too lazy to find the link for right now), we’re spending significantly more per soldier in Afghanistan than we have in Iraq and, essentially, there are no economies of scale. The more soldiers we have in Afghanistan the more it will cost. The fully burdened cost of fuel is a good part of that.
Afghanistan is landlocked and the only practical choices for bringing supplies into the country are overland through Pakistan which has become increasingly dangerous or by air which is fabulously expensive. Overland through Iran seems to be out.
I was rather surprised at the uproar in some corners of the blogosphere following the publication in Izvestiya of an interview with Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin’s security council. In the interview Mr. Patrushev mentioned a new doctrine regarding the Russian Federation’s use of nuclear weapons (hat tip: Nathan Hodge). Meteor Blades notes that the old Soviet Union had renounced nuclear first strikes during the Cold War. He continues:
Current Russian doctrine says nuclear weapons can only be used in response to a nuclear attack or large-scale war against Russia.
I don’t believe that’s completely accurate. I believe that the Russian Federation abandoned the Soviet doctrine more than fifteen years ago and, to the best of my knowledge, has not re-adopted it. I would welcome a correction on this. As I understand the doctrine that the Russian Federation adopted it is, shall we say, somewhat permissive:
In the document of November 1993, alongside pledges of allegiance to international law and disarmament agreements, the substantive part had a number of peculiar points. The main points were: an emphasis on rapid deployment of interventionist forces, to be used on post-Soviet territory; a renewal of the traditional accent on offensive conventional operations; legalization of stationing Russian forces abroad (in the CIS) and – what was most striking – of their potential employment in domestic situations. Not a single word mentioned civilian or Parliamentary control over the armed forces and military policy (the President is the sole chief), military reform, or further reductions of force levels(2).
The nuclear part included several notable innovations. First, the document states unequivocally: “The goal of Russian Federation policy regarding nuclear weapons is to remove the threat of nuclear war by deterring its initiation against the Russian Federation and its allies.”(3) After several years of utopian concepts about substituting deterrence with something different, this was a positive and realistic point, clearing the issue and theoretically allowing a focus on real problems without confusion or wishful thinking. Nonetheless, the concrete formula of deterrence was much more dubious and controversial.
In particular, and this was the second point, the 1982 non-first-use (NFU) pledge was officially revoked. The PGMD elaborately states that the Russian Federation would not employ nuclear weapons against any other state-party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) which (1) is not a nuclear power, (2) is not an ally of a nuclear power, (3) is not engaged in joint operations together with a nuclear power in aggression against the Russian Federation, its territory, its allies or its forces. To put it in a different way, Russia would feel free to use nuclear weapons against any nuclear power; any non-nuclear ally of a nuclear power; any non-nuclear non-aligned state, acting militarily together with a nuclear power; and any non-nuclear, non-aligned state, not acting together with a nuclear power, if that state is not a party to the NPT Treaty of 1968.
Third, there was more confusion, because from the text of the PGMD it did not follow whether this highly permissive formula meant first use/strike or second/retaliatory strike. However, further elaborations from the highest officials of the Ministry of Defense and Security Council made it clear that it was exactly a first strike (not first use), that was the subject of this doctrinal part.(4)
The emphasis is mine. I haven’t sat down and made a checklist but it doesn’t appear to me that very many countries actually qualify as exempt from nuclear first strike under that doctrine.
What is the U. S. policy on first strike? I would say it is one of deliberate ambiguity. The U. S. has never specifically renounced the possibility that it would resort to a first strike with nuclear weapons but it hasn’t said that it would resort to such a strike, either. That doesn’t seem terribly different from the Russian position to me.
Just how this new doctrine differs from the old doctrine isn’t completely clear to me, either. It may never be clear or we may see some clarifications emerge which will help us make a determination. At the very least Mr. Patrushev’s comment would appear to be a caution to Georgia or other former Soviet republics not to get too cozy with the United States or its allies.
Obama needs to get behind his chosen general as soon as possible and put this spectacle of indecisiveness behind him. Gen. McChrystal must become the face of a policy that is supported at every level of the Administration, just as Army Gen. David Petraeus was the face of the surge in Iraq during Bush’s last two years of his presidency. Obama must capture the toughness and competence that Bush displayed as a war leader at the end of his term. Otherwise, in the coming months, the Democrats may be seen as having lost a war.
Team Obama faces quite a dilemma. McChrystal’s plan to stave off defeat by asking for substantial immediate reinforcements — a request that is still far short of what is needed to “win” in Afghanistan — is a sure sign that long-term intense fighting and high casualties lie ahead. The United States’ latest Nobel Prize winner now has a choice: He must act quickly on the advice of McChrystal and the U.S. intelligence community to save a marooned U.S. Army, or dither behind the harebrained split-al-Qaeda-from-the-Taliban strategizing and let more overmatched U.S. soldiers and Marines die amid the ego-building praise of effete Americans, pacifist NGOs, and the Nobelistas.
[…]
This issue merits debate, but that must wait until McChrystal gets the troops needed to delay defeat. Afterward, only the all-out use of large, conventional U.S. military forces can be expected to have a shot at winning in Afghanistan. Since 1996, the United States has definitively proven that clandestine operations, covert action, Special Forces actions, and aerial drone attacks cannot defeat al Qaeda. It has likewise proven beyond doubt that nation-building in Afghanistan is a fool’s errand.
His conclusion is bleak:
Overall, then, we are well along the road to self-imposed defeat in Afghanistan, and about the best we can do is give McChrystal the troops he needs to slow defeat. After doing that, we can figure out how to get out of Afghanistan in an orderly manner, while preparing to absorb more al Qaeda attacks in North America.
After eight years of fighting, two things seem clear: First, the insurgency does not have the capability to defeat U.S. forces or depose Afghanistan’s central government; and, second, U.S. forces do not have the ability to vanquish the insurgency. It’s true that the Taliban has gained ground in recent months, but, absent a full and immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops, it cannot retake sovereign control. This is not to say that Afghanistan isn’t unstable; it clearly is. That has been the case for eight years, however, and, in the absence of some shocking, unforeseen development, it could be true for another eight or 18 or 80 years. An increase of tens of thousands of troops will not change that fact, nor will subtle tactical changes. Rather than teetering on the edge of some imagined precipice, the situation in Afghanistan is at a virtual stalemate. Only by appropriately characterizing the current situation in Afghanistan can we begin to determine the best way to achieve our stated goals there.
That last sentence bears consideration. I think we need to identify our actual objectives in Afghanistan very clearly, distinguishing between the “needs” and the “wants”. We need to keep Al Qaeda from re-establishing itself in Afghanistan. We want to be able to leave in the foreseeable future with a legitimate Afghan government in place that’s capable of holding its own against the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies.
We might be able to achieve both our needs and our wants by following Gen. McChrystal’s plan and increasing our forces in Afghanistan substantially, protecting the Afghan people, and playing a long game there, hoping for an Afghan government capable of being a partner emerges. We can achieve our need and part of our wants by increasing our forces in Afghansitan substantially and carrying the battle into Pakistan, where the Afghan Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies continue to find refuge. This approach bears the risk of turning the Pakistanis against us.
Or we can abandon our wants and focus on our needs.
In this morning’s Washington Post Prince Turki al-Faisal of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, former director general of their intelligence service and also their former ambassador to the United States offers President Obama some advice on how to proceed in Afghanistan with which I find I am in almost complete agreement. His advice consists of six action items:
There is no viable opposition to Karzai in Afghanistan. He is a fact. Deal with it.
Concentrate on fighting foreign terrorists and build bridges with the Taliban.
Fix the Durand Line.
Meet with the security and intelligence departments of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, China, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to devise ways of eliminating Al Qaeda’s leadership. Nobody has more on the line than the Saudis in that battle and Russia and China are at greater risk than we are from them.
Exert influence to induce Pakistan and India to resolve the matter of Kashmir.
Use measures similar to those used in Turkey (in which the U. S. bought the entire crop directly from farmers, something I’ve been suggesting, and allowed them to plant alternative crops).
Read the whole thing. I’m hoping that John Burgess will weigh in on this. John, are you there?
