Page 1 of 2 Afghanistan abyss awaits Obama
By M K Bhadrakumar
The struggle for influencing Barack Obama's foreign policy agenda has begun in
right earnest. The maneuvering by influential establishment figures - including
Congressional voices, Obama advisors and even military officials - who are
projecting incumbent Robert Gates as secretary of defense in the incoming
administration highlights the pressures working on the president-elect.
The focus is on the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in promoting
the basic George W Bush policies promoted since the 1990s by nationalist and
neo-conservative Republicans. These are policies animated by long-term
ambitions for US economic and military hegemony.
A Gates appointment will signal that Obama may turn his back on
his campaign pledge to withdraw US troops from Iraq in 16 months. Gates, of
course, disfavors any set timeline or timetable for a withdrawal plan.
Equally, his accent is on fighting the war in Afghanistan more efficiently
while pursuing a containment strategy toward Russia and pressing ahead with the
expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In his perspective,
Central Command chief General David Petraeus' troop "surge" policy in
Afghanistan meets the requirements.
Adjusting at the margins
To use the words of investigative historian and journalist Gareth Porter of
Inter Press Service, there is a "phalanx of determined military opposition" in
the Pentagon to Obama's withdrawal plans in Iraq, which goes all the way up to
Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee and
includes Petraeus and General Ray Odierno, the new commander in Iraq.
The Washington Post newspaper reported that a "smooth and productive" equation
between the military brass and the incoming president will be possible only "if
Obama takes the pragmatic approach that his advisers are indicating, allowing
each side to adjust at the margins". The newspaper quotes Peter D Feaver, a
former National Security Council official in the Bush administration who was a
strategic planner on the administration’s Iraq "surge" policy, to the effect
that if Obama presses ahead with his 16-month withdrawal plan, "a
civil-military crisis" might arise in Washington.
According to Porter, Obama had a battle of wits with Petraeus when they met in
Baghdad in July and the general argued for a "conditions-based" withdrawal
rather than the presidential candidate’s 16-month deadline. Porter says Obama
refused to back down and told Petraeus, "Your job is to succeed in Iraq on as
favorable terms as we can get. But my job as a potential commander-in-chief is
to view your counsel and interests through the prism of our overall national
security."
But Gates' appointment could change the equation. The smiling, silver-haired
and earnest-looking veteran who has been through it all - the Soviet Union,
Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan -
proved his awesome capacity to make himself durable in the Byzantine world of
Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinzki and William Casey. Gates is the very
antithesis of the clean break that Obama promised.
Lame duck planting mines
The Russians justifiably claim Gates may have already forced Obama's hand. They
see a distinct pattern. In August, cleverly using the Caucasus crisis and the
unfriendly public mood in the West about Russia, Gates pressed ahead with the
signing of an agreement on the deployment of elements of an American strategic
missile shield - 10 interceptor missiles at Wick Morskie between the towns of
Ustka and Darlowo on the Baltic coast in Poland and an X-radar in Brdy near
Prague, Czech Republic. Of course, Russia has concluded that the US deployments
are intended to blunt the thrust of its strategic forces in the European
theater.
Again, out of the blue, Washington imposed sanctions two weeks ago against
Rosoboronexport, Russia's only arms exporter, for allegedly violating the Iran
Proliferation Act of 2000. The sanctions have no "bite" as Rosoboronexport has
no dealings with US companies and the Russian company's functioning is not in
jeopardy. What the Bush administration has done is in essence create an
irritant in US-Russia relations.
Obama will run into resistance from the US military-industrial complex if he
attempts to lift the sanctions, as Rosoboronexport is proving to be a plucky
competitor in the world's arms market. According to US Congressional reports,
Russia is the world's second-largest arms exporter next to the US, with a
turnover of US$10.4 billion in exports in 2007, as against $8.1 billion in the
previous year, accounting for 17.4% of all weapons sold in the world market.
Russia is entering new markets in North Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia
and Latin America.
The Rosoboronexport irritant can become yet another factor hindering effective,
whole-hearted US-Russia cooperation over Iran, which Obama will seek. A Russian
commentator wrote, "The main purpose of this demonstrative move [sanctions] ...
is not so much to complicate life for Russian exporters as to saddle a new
administration with new irritants between the White House and the Kremlin,
irritants that will be difficult for Obama to remove. It is like anti-personnel
mines planted on the path toward better relations between Moscow and
Washington."
Again, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's annual address to the Duma
(parliament) on November 5 contained a statement that Russia might be compelled
to deploy short-range missiles in Kaliningrad unless a compromise was reached
on the US missile defense deployments in Central Europe. There was nothing
startlingly new in the statement. The Russians have said this before.
Medvedev's speech on the whole also contained positive elements regarding
European security and relations with the US.
Yet the US media interpreted that it was the "first serious Russian military
threat against the West since the fall of the Soviet Union [in 1991]"; that it
struck a "discordant note amid an otherwise welcoming global reaction to
Obama's election"; that the timing and "anti-American tone of the speech were
extraordinary given the widely held belief here [in Moscow] that Obama is less
ideological in his approach to Moscow than his Republican rival".
They aimed at generating an impression that Obama ought to rely on experienced
hands - such as Gates - to deal with those bad boys in the Kremlin. And all
this while the general opinion among Russian politicians and experts is one of
cautious optimism that Obama is devoid of Cold War phobias and may
incrementally opt out of the "containment strategy" toward Russia.
To be sure, Obama will find himself under great pressure to follow Russia
policies inherited from Bush, even though these are what he was elected to
change or terminate. The crunch comes in December when NATO holds a crucial
ministerial meeting to take a view on the membership of Ukraine and Georgia.
While on a visit to Estonia on Wednesday, Gates found it irresistible to taunt
Moscow: "Russia has no need to impede a sovereign country's desire to more
fully integrate with the West. Doing so is not a threat to Russia’s integrity."
A lame duck could have kept quiet.
Hard choices of peace
Meanwhile, Moscow hopes Obama will be less supportive of spending on missile
defense than the Bush administration. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said
Obama's positions "instill hope that we shall be able to more constructively
examine this theme in the upcoming period". A similar restraint is apparent in
the Russian statement read out on behalf of the member countries of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at the UN General Assembly debate on
Afghanistan on Monday. It abandoned the recent high pitch of criticism of the
US-led war.
Russia seems to weigh that the war in Afghanistan presents a dilemma of a
different kind to Obama and Moscow should not make things harder. Indeed, the
Afghan war will be the number
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