Obama rings the curtain on Pax Americana
By M K Bhadrakumar
United States President Barack Obama scored a convincing "A" in the tortuous
test that he was put to on the structuring of a new Afghan strategy.
It turned out to be a tough learning process and it bears testimony to Obama's
extraordinary intellect and character that he grasped the essence of the
problem, honestly assessed what went wrong, had the clarity of mind not to be
distracted and showed the sincerity of purpose to adopt a whole new approach.
He threw out of the window altogether the entire baggage of "regional
initiatives", international conferences and "grand bargains" and zeroed in on
the heart of the matter, namely, that the Afghan people are starting to view
the Americans as
occupiers and it is time to consider an exit strategy.
Nowhere does it become clearer than in his readiness to attribute centrality in
his strategy to the government led by President Hamid Karzai. The US is
unceremoniously putting behind it the bitter harvest of the Afghan presidential
election and is finally getting down to work with Karzai, now at the beginning
of a second five-year term. This is as much a choice as a necessity.
With all the imperfections of the situation, Karzai heads a "government that is
consistent with Afghanistan's laws and constitution" - as Obama admitted - and
that's all that matters anymore.
Obama's new strategy emphasizes the strengthening of Karzai's government as
quickly as possible. It acknowledges that only Afghans themselves can solve
their problem. Hopefully, the campaign to debunk and discredit Karzai will now
come to a halt.
Obama will do well to check not only some of his impetuous fellow Americans but
also his British allies, who still seem to harbor an itch now and then to put
down Karzai.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the House of Commons that he was
determined to hold Karzai to account. He vowed that in the next nine months,
Karzai's appointment of governors of Afghanistan's 400 provinces and districts
would be entirely on "merit". This is precisely the kind of bluster that must
be avoided.
On the difficult road ahead, Karzai's coalition partners are going to be useful
associates for the US (and British) troops. Everything in the Hindu Kush has
worked from time immemorial on the basis of trust and loyalty and kinships. All
that claptrap about merit, etc falls by the wayside. That's how Afghanistan
lives, and will live for the foreseeable future.
Obama in his entire speech never once decried "warlordism". Indeed, Afghanistan
needs to be viewed in its cultural and historical context.
The US strategy implicitly assigns a major role for the so-called "warlords"
for stabilizing Afghanistan. There simply is no alternative when US forces do
not intend to maintain peace beyond weakening the current Taliban-led
insurgency.
It is an open secret that the Afghan National Army (ANA) suffers from many
infirmities, and US funding is needed for a massive expansion of the ANA, which
is not going to be easy. The additional cost of the deployment of 30,000
additional US troops is high - US$30 billion to $40 billion per year in extra
spending. The budget estimate for 2010 already stood at $65 billion for
Afghanistan (outstripping $61 billion for Iraq).
However, the most profound part of the new Obama strategy is that it signals a
conclusive farewell to the neo-conservative agenda for US foreign policy. As
Obama put it, the nation-building project in Afghanistan "sets goals that are
beyond what can be achieved at a reasonable cost, and what we need to achieve
to secure our interests". He was brutally frank in admitting that America
"can't simply afford to ignore the price of these wars".
More important, he stressed that it was time the US turned away from wars and
instead tried to "rebuild our strength here at home ... That's why our troop
commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended - because the nation that I'm
most interested in building is our own ... We'll have to use diplomacy, because
no one nation can meet the challenges of an interconnected world acting alone."
Amid the cacophony over the Afghan strategy, we should not fail to note that
the age of Obama has truly begun. On Tuesday, the president formally brought
the curtain down on Pax Americana. The global implications will be far-reaching
- be it for Iran, North Korea or Venezuela - as Obama underscored with
extraordinary frankness that America had forgotten to "appreciate the
connection between our national security and our economy ... So we can't simply
afford to ignore the price of these wars."
Obama's new approach on Afghanistan jettisons the counter-insurgency strategy
in favor of a forceful counter-terrorism strategy. No "nation-building", no
clarion calls of freedom, progress, democracy, and so forth. The objective of
the remaining portion of the war will be extremely narrow: to degrade the
Taliban and al-Qaeda in the shortest possible time within the coming 18 months
or so and to restore advantage to the hands of the Afghan government, which in
turn enables a US pullout on the pattern of Iraq within a definable timeline.
The unfolding Afghan scenario bears a striking resemblance to the second half
of the 1980s, when it became clear that the Soviet army would withdraw.
President Mohammad Najibullah surprised everyone - including Moscow - that he
was capable of initiating a national reconciliation program under his own
steam, and, more important, of holding his ground even without the Soviet army.
He ran into trouble only when the Soviets cold-shouldered him altogether.
The famous Jalalabad offensive planned by Pakistan's Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) with the combined strength of all the mujahideen groups,
including Northern Alliance leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud, still couldn't defeat
Najibullah. With a bit more help from the international community, Najibullah
would have proved more than a match for the mujahideen and the jihadis and
their foreign masters put together. Correct lessons need to be learnt from
history.
The US agenda should be to transform the war to its pre-2001 form as quickly as
possible, namely, a civil war stemming from a fratricidal strife. The
international community should incrementally confine itself to dealing with the
established Afghan government in Kabul.
Obama didn't quite reveal his mind on a political settlement in Afghanistan.
Perhaps, it was beyond the scope of his Tuesday speech. All the same, he didn't
entirely leave the subject untouched.
In carefully chosen words, he said, "We have no interest in occupying your
country. We will support efforts by the Afghan government to open the door to
those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow
citizens."
There is no doubt whatsoever that enduring peace is possible only if there is
an inclusive settlement that includes the Taliban. But, here again, the current
approach to engage the Taliban via the good offices of the Saudi or Pakistani
intelligence is extremely short-sighted and dangerous. The fact remains that
while the Saudis might be the US's allies, they also happen to have their own
Wahhabist agenda toward Afghanistan and Central Asia.
Therefore, Obama should allow Afghan reconciliation to come out of an
intra-Afghan initiative. The US must be gracious enough to give up the center
stage. The Afghans have their traditional methods of dialogue and
reconciliation. Karzai must spearhead the reconciliation process. Instead of
sniping at his idea of a loya jirga (grand council), its potential
should be explored.
Broadly peaking, the attempt should be to "liberate" the Taliban from the
Pakistani clutches. In the ultimate analysis, the "Afghan-ness" of the Taliban
is bound to surface if it is provided the opportunity. It is precisely this
"Afghan-ness" that Pakistan fears most. The Pakistani strategy has been to
develop a mystique about the Taliban and to keep it fragmented so that it
remains under the ISI's control.
Only Afghan groups can break this syndrome. The battlelines in Afghanistan have
never been clear-cut. Karzai has allies who can reach out to the Taliban. They
know who the Taliban are, where they are and who is worth talking to. They must
be given a free hand. They don't need the guidance of British, Saudi or
Pakistani intelligence to make out the identity of their countrymen.
However, all said, the success of any Afghan strategy crucially depends on the
US's capacity to compel Pakistan from supporting militant groups. Obama made
not less than 22 references to Pakistan in his speech. But he needs to
forthrightly address the issue of forcing elements in Pakistan to give up
terrorism.
He exuded optimism that there was a genuine change of heart on the part of
Pakistan. Time will show whether this optimism is warranted, especially as the
time approaches for the US troop withdrawal.
Inevitably, regional equations come into the reckoning. India and Pakistan must
be firmly dissuaded from turning Afghanistan into an arena of rivalry. But this
is easier said than done as Kabul traditionally viewed Delhi as a counterweight
to Islamabad; Delhi viewed Afghanistan as a second front against Pakistan; and
Pakistan sought strategic depth vis-a-vis India.
The vicious cycle needs to be broken and any effort in this direction must
include addressing the root causes of the Afghanistan-Pakistan antipathy. Obama
has the moral authority to take such an historic initiative.
This is not a matter of Karzai's political personality or those of the warlords
who are his partners. It must be remembered that even the Taliban regime in
Kabul failed to recognize the Durand Line that divides Afghanistan and
Pakistan, no matter its critical dependence on Pakistani goodwill.
Secondly, the US has de facto become a party to the India-Pakistan
relationship, especially during the past decade since its mediation in the
brief Kargil war in 1999, which Delhi sought despite its professed aversion
towards "third-party mediation" in India-Pakistan disputes.
Without doubt, the dynamics of the US-India strategic partnership will be
keenly watched by Islamabad. The Obama administration has done well to
"demilitarize" the US-India strategic partnership. That process must not only
continue, but should be hastened and India will get used to it.
There is plenty of scope to advance the US-India strategic partnership without
causing apprehensions in the Pakistani mind or upsetting the delicate strategic
balance in the region. What South Asia needs is not more hubris but less and
less of it, and security and stability.
The present log jam in India-Pakistan relations is dangerous. By offering a
substantial, long-term partnership to Pakistan, and by offering a more balanced
and forward-looking relationship to both India and Pakistan, Obama hopes to
alleviate the threat perceptions in the Pakistani mind.
Without doubt, unless Pakistan's threat perceptions of a "hegemonistic" India
are squarely addressed, Islamabad will continue to resort to asymmetrical
warfare.
Actually, Obama's score could have been "A+". But his Afghan strategy does not
seem to factor in one possibility that borders on probability. Will Obama's
emphasis on an exit strategy have the unexpected result of encouraging
Pakistan's military to estimate that all that is needed is to counsel the
Taliban to lie low during the forthcoming buildup of US troops and simply wait
until the troops go home?
That is to say, there is always the risk that Obama may end up emboldening the
very forces he hopes to defeat. The bottom line, therefore, is Washington's
commitment to stability in the region for years to come.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign
Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka,
Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
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