What happens when the U.S. and Pakistan split up?

How close is the U.S.-Pakistan security relationship to a break-up? Self-interest, not affection, seems to keep the partnership going. That's fine until a better arrangement for one side comes along or emotion overrides logic. An even larger U.S. military expedition in Afghanistan will be at the mercy of this fragile bond.

The reasons for cooperation are well-known. The United States could not prosecute its war in Afghanistan without access through Pakistan. Washington hopes the Pakistani government will deliver up more al Qaeda terror suspects to join Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The U.S. engages Pakistan on a variety of levels to keep Pakistan's nuclear weapons stockpile under control. Indeed, notable U.S. analysts such as Stephen Biddle and Steve Coll believe that stabilizing Pakistan is the best justification for continuing the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan.

For its part, Pakistan counts on the United States to moderate its friction with India. More recently Pakistan has exploited its intelligence and military connection to the U.S. to target the Islamists at war with Pakistan's government. But Pakistan's enduring interest in America seems mostly to be about money.

On Nov. 15 the Los Angeles Times reported on the hundreds of millions of dollars the Central Intelligence Agency has paid Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) -- Pakistan's powerful internal intelligence agency -- since 2001. The article reported that in addition to "bankrolling the ISI's budget," the CIA paid the agency $10 million for high-ranking al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah and $25 million for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. According to the article, U.S. intelligence officers delivered many more briefcases stuffed with money to ISI officials in exchange for lower-ranking al Qaeda personnel.

These sums are little more than a rounding error for the U.S. intelligence community and most Americans would consider it money well spent. But it makes one wonder what kind of an ally Pakistan really is. Would a CIA officer need to deliver a thick cash-stuffed briefcase to a British, Canadian, Australian, or South Korean intelligence officer in order to gain custody of a terror suspect?

The article also discusses another well-known aspect of the ISI, namely that there are really two such agencies. The first eagerly cooperates with the CIA when the targets are the Pakistani Taliban who are fighting the ISI and the rest of the Pakistani government. Meanwhile the other ISI, off-limits to the CIA, supports the Afghan Taliban in its fight against U.S. troops.

In spite of the mutual dependence, the countries seem one step from a divorce. In her recent visit to Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton openly said what most Americans are thinking, that it is "hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they [al Qaeda's top leaders] are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to." Is Pakistan deliberately keeping the al Qaeda issue unresolved and the Afghan Taliban in the field in order to keep the U.S. aid pipeline open? Whether valid or not, such a perception risks a relationship-ending backlash.

On the other side, the United States is intensely unpopular in Pakistan. President Asif Ali Zardari's popularity has collapsed over concerns about corruption, ineffectiveness, and the view that he cooperates too eagerly with U.S. policies. 

Despite the anger and lack of trust on both sides, the relationship struggles on. Neither side wants to end things. But neither side controls all of the emotions in play. Something to consider as more U.S. soldiers fly over Pakistan into Afghanistan.

America's Asian allies examine their options

This week the world focused on Asia as leaders from the Americas and Asia attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Singapore. President Barack Obama's three-day tour of China, plus a stop in South Korea, followed.

Obama began his trip in Japan, leaving the dispute over where to base U.S. Marine Corps helicopters on Okinawa unresolved. The dispute only worsened after Obama departed when Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama declared the working group appointed to resolve the dispute "meaningless."

Obama and Hatoyama both described the U.S.-Japan defense alliance as crucial. The arrangement has permitted Japan to spend less than 1 percent of its economic output on defense and to require a similarly trivial military manpower commitment from its population. A good deal for Japan, requiring only that its leaders occasionally tamp down grumbling from those Japanese who have to endure living next to U.S. military bases.

What would happen to Japanese defense planning if domestic politics no longer permit this arrangement? Japan would need to formulate alternative defense strategies if its relationship with the U.S. were to wither in the years ahead.

Perhaps Japanese defense planners are already thinking ahead. On Nov. 9 India's defense minister arrived in Tokyo for a three day meeting on defense cooperation. The ministers focused on maritime security and the defense of sea lines of communication. There was no mention of any input from the U.S. Navy.

In May 2009, the Australian government released a defense white paper that described its planning assumptions through the year 2030. Chapter Four of the white paper acknowledged the necessity of the U.S.-Australian defense alliance. Yet the chapter also portrayed a future with the United States diminished and distracted and China becoming "the strongest Asian military power, by a considerable margin." The white paper recommended a very costly build-up in Australia's military power and much more direct military coordination with other powers in the region.

Finally, just to make sure all of its positions are fully hedged, India just completed a two-day meeting with Iran's foreign minister to arrange joint army training, a naval patrol exercise in the Arabian Gulf, and cooperation on space satellite launches.

In the past, security planning in the Pacific region functioned on a "hub and spoke" system, with the hub being U.S. Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii and the spokes being America's defense relationships throughout the region. The United States has usually encouraged a more Europe-like multilateral security arrangement in Asia. This will very likely happen, but in ways that could leave the U.S. on the outside looking in.

The Saudi-Iranian proxy war escalates: good news for the U.S.

A sectarian rebellion in northern Yemen has now become an open contest between Saudi Arabia and Iran for influence over Yemen and the Gulf of Aden region. This week the Saudis brought their air and naval power to bear against Yemen's Houthi rebels -- Shiite insurgents very likely supported by Iran - after a Houthi incursion into Saudi territory. Iran responded by warning Saudi Arabia to stay out of the conflict. What remains to be seen is whether this conflict will create and harden a Sunni-Arab alliance that might someday effectively contain Iran.

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According to the New York Times, the Houthis captured a strategic mountain near the Yemen-Saudi Arabia border and clashed with a Saudi border patrol on Nov. 3. The Saudi response was a sustained air and artillery campaign against Houthi positions inside Yemen. On Nov 10 Saudi naval forces began a blockade of Yemen's coast in order to cut the Houthis off from resupply.

The Saudi and Yemeni governments believe that Iran is supplying the rebels with weapons, though Tehran denies it.

Why has Saudi Arabia felt the need to overtly intervene in what was previously an internal Yemeni dispute? According to the United Nations, the latest flare-up in the Houthi insurrection has created 175,000 refugees. Breaking the insurgency might curtail the refugee crisis and prevent it from spilling over into Saudi Arabia.

At the geostrategic level, Saudi leaders might fear the creation of a pro-Iranian Shiite enclave adjacent to the Red Sea shipping lane, similar to what Iran has achieved with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. From the Saudi perspective, it would be best to strangle that possibility immediately.

Other players are taking note of the escalation in the Houthi conflict and making their own arrangements. On Nov. 11 Yemen disclosed that it had signed a military cooperation deal with the United States; the terms of the deal were not disclosed. Separately, the growing friction between Iran on one side and Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-Arab states in the Gulf region on the other seems to be good news for arms exporters. According to Bloomberg News, major U.S. and European defense contractors expect $40 billion in sales over the next five years to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to upgrade aircraft, missile, and naval systems.

U.S. officials should be pleased by this reaction. Any real challenge Iranian ambitions will require Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states to balance Iranian power. Accomplishing that will require more resolve and teamwork than the Sunni Arab states have demonstrated so far. If the proxy war generated by the Houthi rebellion achieves this response from the gulf countries, it would greatly serve U.S. interests in the region.

Sri Lanka's civil war is not really over

When does a war really end? Last May, the Sri Lankan army overran the last holdout of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the insurgent group that for 26 years had battled for a Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka's north. The final, bloody battle seemed decisive - the Tigers' founder Vellupillai Prabhakaran, his son, and many other top leaders of the LTTE were killed. The Tigers' sanctuary was vanquished. The army herded the LTTE's remaining foot-soldiers, along with the population that supported them, into razor-wire encampments.

Six months later, the guarded refugee camps remain. Might the embryo of a new Tamil insurgency be growing inside the camps? On the one hand, Sri Lanka's leaders likely understand that the longer the refugee situation remains unresolved, the higher the probability rises for another Tamil insurgency. On the other hand, after experiencing a long, bitter, and extremely violent civil war, these leaders are in no mind to gamble with their recent victory.

In The Utility of Force, his brilliant analysis of modern war, Rupert Smith asserted that today's conflicts, especially the ethnic variety, are never actually resolved. The best a policymaker can hope for, wrote Smith, is to contain over time their intensity and consequences. This is exactly the situation Sri Lanka now faces.

Sri Lanka's leaders are apparently hoping to prove Smith wrong. According to a recent Washington Post story, the government is using its lock-down of the Tamils to sift through the population of military-aged males in search of suspected Tiger sympathizers. By separating possible insurgent organizers from the rest of the Tamil population, the government hopes to permanently end Tamil resistance.

The Sri Lankan government may need to hurry up its search for potential troublemakers. It faces the possibility of a United Nations war crimes investigation and is under increasing pressure from the European Union and the United States to explain its resettlement policies.

Sri Lanka's leaders are likely counting on diplomatic contact with the West, combined with some well-publicized initial resettlement efforts, to remove the internment camp story from the news. This would provide the Sri Lanka security services with more time to track down and isolate potential insurgents who might be lurking in the camps.

Will Sri Lanka's government show how to permanently resolve a stubborn ethnic conflict? As Smith explained, modern history provides no good examples. We should bet that the Sri Lankan Way will be no different.

Was it a mistake to send a Stryker brigade to Afghanistan?

On July 5, the U.S. Army's 5th Stryker Brigade arrived in Kandahar province for a year-long tour of duty. The brigade was equipped with 350 Stryker combat vehicles, an eight-wheeled armored infantry carrier that has proven successful in Iraq and is popular with soldiers. It was the first time the Army had deployed Strykers to Afghanistan, but the country has proven unforgiving to the brigade. Thus far they have lost 21 of their Strykers to improvised explosive devices (IEDs), at a cost of two dozen killed and more than 70 wounded. On Oct. 27, seven soldiers died during the bombing of a single Stryker vehicle.

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Why are Strykers seemingly more vulnerable to improvised explosive attack in Afghanistan than they were in Iraq? Iraq has a much more developed road network than Afghanistan. A denser road network provided U.S. mission planners with more routes to choose from, complicating the enemy's roadside bombing effort. In Afghanistan by contrast, U.S. forces may be lucky to have one usable road to get from an assembly area to an objective. The standard counter-IED strategy is to constantly observe such roads for insurgent bomb-planting activity. Fewer roads would mean less for the Americans to observe, in theory making it easier to find the insurgent bomb-planters. But the level of surveillance assets in the 5th Brigade's area might not be at the same density that U.S. units have enjoyed lately in Iraq. In fact, Col. Harry D. Tunnell IV, the brigade commander, has called for more surveillance help.

The best solution to the problem of IEDs is to infiltrate, attack, and destroy the insurgent organizations that plant them. While that effort progresses, coalition forces can reduce the IED threat by 1) staying off the roads and 2) dispersing by putting fewer troops in a greater number of vehicles. Obvious solutions, but often impractical to implement.

Given Afghanistan's vast distances and low population density, movement by vehicles is essential. Helicopters bypass the roads but are expensive, few in number, and have their own risks. Off-road movement by heavy vehicles laden with troops and supplies in impractical. A new all-terrain mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle (M-ATV) may be promising for Afghanistan. An M-ATV carries five soldiers compared with the Stryker's 13 and may have better off-road capability. Compared to the Stryker, M-ATV would disperse soldiers in more vehicles and avoid some of the risks of being on Afghanistan's roads. 

Watching for bomb-planters, avoiding unwatched roads, using helicopters, dispersing into more vehicles, and taking alternate routes across the country will all help with the IED problem. But the real solution lies with offensive action against the IED networks. This will require aggressive patrolling, raiding, and the interrogation of captured suspects, actions that hopefully are not yet out of fashion.

U.S. troop morale may be slipping in Afghanistan

Is the morale of U.S. combat units in Afghanistan beginning to slip? Are U.S. troops in the field, restrained by risk-averse bosses in Kabul and Washington, increasingly just going through the motions, hoping to finish up their tours in one piece? A new report from Bing West hints at this disturbing conclusion.

West was a U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer in Vietnam, severd as an assistant secretary of defense, and has written three books on the current war in Iraq. His latest report for Small Wars Journal is based on three trips he made to Afghanistan this year.

West describes U.S. conventional combat units as risk averse, passive, and not respected by the Taliban:

Our SOF [special operating forces] has high morale due to a focused kinetic mission and the warrior's satisfaction in kinetics well applied. A war in which SOF, aviation and Taliban-initiated actions result in most of the enemy losses is of concern. Although his leaders are routinely eliminated by SOF, the enemy does not perceive that he confronts a superior, implacable adversary when he encounters our conventional units. We should change that.

Our SOF is enemy-focused, while our conventional forces are population-focused. Many coalition battalions have red areas [Taliban-controlled zones] where they rarely venture.... In sum, a balance must be maintained between population-centric COIN and blows aimed against Taliban cohesiveness. This is beginning to slip in our conventional units.... Well-founded doubt about Afghan national cohesiveness and self-reliance pervades all ranks in our military. Gone is the post-9/11 zeal. There is no widely-shared view of victory or definition of what winning means. To the troops, framework ops [routine patrols and meetings with locals] are a job to be done, while getting home in one piece.

The result, West explains, is that Afghan civilians are cooperating with the Taliban rather than the coalition:

It is not self-evident how winning the hearts of village elders or linking villages to Kabul wins the war. Our Soldiers believe that Afghans accept what we give them without reciprocating by turning against the Taliban. The elders don't raise militias or recruits for the army, or drive out the Taliban.... The theory of counterinsurgency is that villagers, once given security and services, will inform on the insurgents. In reality, the Pashtun Taliban aren't oppressing the villagers, and the coalition doesn't have the troops to provide security in many areas. So villagers hedge their bets -- accepting projects from the coalition while keeping their mouths shut as the Taliban move about in small gangs.

West concludes, "An acceptably governed Afghan state can emerge, provided we continue the fight for years." But he also observes that U.S. troops in the field respond to the cues they get from their top-level leaders. If these leaders don't commit to a decisive result, don't trust the judgment of their subordinates, and cut off the troops' access to air and artillery support, the troops will respond with passivity and cynicism. These are attitudes the military cannot afford in Afghanistan.

Why would ‘American officials' expose their own intelligence source?

On Oct. 27, the New York Times reported that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai and a major power broker in Kandahar, was a paid intelligence asset of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Times's sources for this allegation included "current and former American officials" including a former CIA officer and perhaps a senior U.S. military officer in Kabul. Karzai acknowledged aiding U.S. efforts but denied receiving any payments from the CIA.

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The piece asserted that Karzai's alleged connections to Afghanistan's drug trade created deep frustrations with senior political and military officials in both the Obama and Bush administrations.

Did frustration and moral outrage with Karzai's illicit activities lead U.S. officials to expose him as a paid CIA asset? It would certainly be understandable, for these officials may have a low opinion of him and perhaps by association his brother the president. But this collective outburst is folly and will make a nearly impossible task for the United States in Afghanistan only that much harder.

The U.S. officials who exposed Karzai are likely hoping that with his status now public, he will no longer be useful to the CIA. Perhaps they are hoping that the CIA will be too embarrassed to continue paying him. As the Times piece discusses, some officials believe that if the U.S. really wants better governance in Afghanistan, it must begin by getting rid of types like him. They have concluded that for a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy to succeed, clean Afghan governance needs to occur concurrently, not later. By continuing to work with the president's brother, the CIA was not cooperating with this view. Those objecting to the CIA's alleged connection with Karzai appear to have used the New York Times in an attempt to resolve this interagency dispute.

Regardless of which strategy President Obama chooses for Afghanistan, executing that strategy will require extensive cooperation with all levels of Afghan society. U.S. officials have to deal with Afghanistan society as it is, not as they wish it might be. With no history of a successful strong central government, and not much prospect of establishing it anytime soon, U.S. officials have to deal with local strongmen. If, perhaps like Ahmed Wali Karzai, the local strongman is both very powerful and equally unsavory, U.S. military, State Department, and CIA field officers will have to weigh the feasible alternatives, if any can be found. If there are no alternatives, U.S. officials will have to quietly decide whether the mission is worth the moral consequences.

By contrast, the very public exposure of Ahmed Wali Karzai revealed some U.S. officials to be petulant and self-destructive. As a result of his exposure, Karzai may now provide less help to the Americans and more help for the Taliban and the drug barons. The CIA had hoped to recruit other local strongmen or Taliban leaders into its employ. The prospects for that, in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world, must now be considerably lower. In fact, any measure of American reliability, so crucial for the success of a counterinsurgency campaign, has been damaged. And if some hoped that embarrassing the Karzai family would boost Abdullah Abdullah into the presidency, such an outcome would only boost the ferocity of Pashtun resistance.

A subtext of the New York Times story was the moral complexity of Afghan culture. But it is also a story of America's culture, which simply may not be suited for military-social engineering campaigns such as that envisioned for Afghanistan.

U.S.-India military cooperation: some rare good news in Asia

Oct. 27 was the final day of Exercise Yudh Abyhas 2009, where a mechanized infantry battalion of the Indian Army hosted a similar unit from the U.S. Army for two weeks of combined training. The exercise concluded with a complex live-fire assault involving tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and helicopter-borne infantry. According to Lt. Gen. A.S. Sekhon of the Indian Army, this training exercise was the largest the Indian Army has ever done with a foreign army.

This was the fifth annual iteration of Exercise Yudh Abyhas. In previous years Indian soldiers have trained in Alaska and Hawaii while U.S. soldiers have trained at India's counterinsurgency and jungle warfare school.

It is not only the U.S. Army that is developing a relationship with India. The U.S. and Indian air forces recently completed their fourth annual installment of Exercise Cope India. Malabar 2009, an annual U.S.-India naval training exercise, occurred in April, and added Japanese naval forces to the event. Previous Malabar exercises have involved U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups and U.S. Marine Corps amphibious assault forces.

Although hardly trouble-free, the rapid expansion in the defense relationship between the United States and India contrasts sharply with the troubled security relationships the U.S. has with China and Pakistan. After much pleading, this week the Chinese government finally sent Gen. Xu Caihou, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, to meet with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. It was the first meeting at this level the U.S. has had with China since 2006. Admiral Timothy Keating, the recently departed commander of U.S. Pacific Command, fared no better engaging with his Chinese counterparts. In an interview with the Financial Times, Keating remarked, "I don't have their [senior Chinese military officials'] phone number. I can't pick up the phone and wish them happy birthday. I don't mean to be glib about it . . . [But] we don't enjoy the sort of communication that I have with almost every other military leader in Asia.

The U.S. security relationship with Pakistan has its own troubles. According to the Pew Research Center, only 16 percent of Pakistanis surveyed have a favorable view of the United States and 13 percent have confidence in President Barack Obama. On Oct. 28 U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Pakistan and received an angry reception over perceived U.S. infringements of Pakistan's sovereignty and blame for the Taliban's bombing campaign in Pakistan's cities.

With little seeming to go right with Afghanistan, Pakistan, or China, U.S. policymakers should be pleased with warming U.S.-India defense ties. It is U.S. policy to support China's peaceful and harmonious arrival as a major power. The U.S. is also trying to find a happy ending to its troubles in Afghanistan. But good intentions have little to do with good results. When pondering Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China, the U.S.-India defense relationship is something both countries will take comfort in - and may someday need.

Afghanistan and some unmentioned strategic risks

Left unmentioned in all the discussion of America's interests in Afghanistan are several risks that Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for 40,000 additional soldiers, if implemented, would create. McChrystal is asking for a permanent escalation in Afghanistan that would commit U.S. ground forces to a larger open-ended effort. Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, fears that the size and duration of this commitment could eventually break the all-volunteer Army. One strategic risk is that the United States would not have enough ready ground forces for another sustained contingency elsewhere. Finally, the funding that is diverted to sustaining ground-force intensive operations in Iraq and Afghanistan could be creating risks in the space, air, and naval dimensions that will unpleasantly appear in the next decade and beyond.

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The Bush administration's surge in Iraq was a strategic gamble. The increase from 15 to 20 brigades in Iraq tapped out the last of America's ground combat power. In addition, the required deployment schedule -- 15 months in combat followed by 12 months back home -- was considered a temporary, emergency measure. It was for this reason that the Iraq "surge" was a temporary measure -- it was not feasible to indefinitely sustain 20 brigades in Iraq.

In these terms, McChrystal's troop request is not a surge but an escalation. McChrystal's initial assessment does not define a discrete time period during which he would need the additional troops -- the request is open-ended.

In May, prior to the Obama administration's latest review of Afghan policy and McChrystal's report, Casey declared the current deployment practice of "12 months deployed, 12 months home" unsustainable. The Army now considers a routine of 12 months deployed, 24 months home sustainable in the long run. The Army believes it can implement this routine if it limits its commitment to Afghanistan and Iraq to no more than 10 brigades.

But according to this open-source estimate of the current U.S. order of battle in Afghanistan, one Marine and six Army brigades are currently serving in Afghanistan. These seven brigades are part of the 68,000 U.S. troops in the country. McChrystal's 40,000-soldier increase would bring the U.S. brigade count in Afghanistan to at least 11 and probably more.

Assuming the U.S. really does evacuate all of its troops from Iraq by the end of 2011, the Army and the Marine Corps would find a way to sustain the larger effort in Afghanistan while also increasing home-station time -- assuming that this would be McChrystal's final escalation of the war.

But the other strategic risks would remain. U.S. ground combat power would be unavailable for another sustained effort elsewhere, unless force generation planners were again willing to risk reducing home-station time down toward 12 months. Casey wants to stop this gamble on the Army's future.

Second, McChrystal's open-ended commitment to Afghanistan would mean that ground-force operations, paid for with either regular or supplemental budgets, would continue to divert funds away from space, air, and naval modernization. Given the very long leads times involved with these programs (along with some deteriorating trends I mentioned last week), President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates should ponder what strategic legacy they will leave to their successors and how that measures up to the current effort in Afghanistan.

Gates finds frustration in Tokyo

This week Defense Secretary Robert Gates tended to some business in East Asia. On Oct. 21, he arrived in Japan only to encounter a headache, caused by not by jet lag but by his Japanese interlocutors.

In 2006, after over a decade of negotiations, the United States and Japan reached a deal on restructuring the U.S. military presence in Japan. The deal will shift U.S. forces on Okinawa and Japan's home islands, close some bases, build new facilities, and move 8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam. Now the new government in Tokyo, led by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), wants to reopen the deal. Gates refused, adding, "It is time to move on." Just to make sure his Japanese hosts understood, Gates turned down invitations to a welcome ceremony at the Defense Ministry and dinner with Japanese officials.

The new Japanese leaders have their reasons for wanting to reopen the 2006 basing deal. Although Japan has long depended on the presence of U.S. military forces for Japan's defense, the U.S. presence has become an increasing irritant, especially on Okinawa. Second, now that they are finally in power, DPJ leaders feel they have a strong mandate to scrutinize the commitments made by their Liberal Democratic predecessors. Finally, while facing its own budget burdens, the basing deal requires Japan to pay for most of the new facilities, both on Okinawa and Guam.

From a strategic perspective, Gates and the U.S. military want to get on with a retreat from Okinawa to Guam. In the past, Okinawa, located so close to China's coast, was an important U.S. outpost, both for intelligence collection and for force projection. However, China's massive and continuing buildup in short and medium-range ballistic missiles is making it an increasingly risky place to be. The U.S. wants to retain Okinawa as an important forward base, but moving many of the Marines to Guam will reduce friction with Japan and improve the strategic flexibility of Marine forces in the Pacific. Even better for the U.S. if Japan pays for much of the move.

Japan's new leaders have decided that they do not have to play the diplomatic game with the U.S. the same way Japan played it in the past. Gates will have to develop options or leverage should Japan's leaders persist with their new-found obstinacy.

Gates may be working on this. Next stop was South Korea, where in a speech to South Korean military leaders, Gates called for the South Korea military to regularly participate in regional and global security missions. Beyond reorienting South Korea away from just the North Korean threat, the U.S. has also been reorienting its military posture in South Korea. Continuing a program begun when Donald Rumsfeld was defense secretary, U.S. ground forces are withdrawing from Korea's demilitarized zone and repositioning to central South Korea. From there, these and other U.S. forces would have the flexibility to deploy to missions elsewhere in the region. The complex of U.S. bases in central South Korea will become a supplementary option to those the United States uses in Japan.

Japan's new leaders are attempting to protect Japan's interests, as they see them. As with any negotiation, they are testing to see which side has more bargaining power. By developing his alternatives, such as those in South Korea, Gates is enhancing his bargaining power with the Japanese. Maybe that's the best cure for a Japanese headache.

Learning to share the oceans with China

On Sept. 22, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) released a report, China's Arrival: A Strategic Framework for a Global Relationship. Journalist and CNAS senior fellow Robert Kaplan, wrote a chapter in the report called "China's Two-Ocean Strategy" (see page 45).

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Kaplan asserts, "China is in the midst of a shipbuilding and acquisition craze that will result in the People's Liberation Army Navy having more ships than the U.S. Navy sometime in the next decade." Since 1945, U.S. diplomatic and political strategies in Asia have been predicated on U.S. naval domination in the western Pacific and Indian oceans. The U.S. Navy's control of seagoing lines of commerce from the Middle East to all points in Asia has been a major component of America's alliance system in the region and its relations with potential adversaries. Kaplan's essay reminds us that over the next decade or so, the rise of China's naval power will scrap the assumptions underlying the United States' Asian diplomacy.

According to Kaplan, the collapse of the Soviet Army in the 1990s removed China's most significant land-based threat. With its territorial security established, China's leaders could afford to spend money on naval forces. This shift coincided with the massive expansion of China's international trade. Kaplan reminds us that China's energy imports from the Middle East -- which travel across the Indian Ocean, through the Strait of Malacca, and up the western Pacific -- will double over the next decade or two. China's ocean-going commerce currently receives protection from the U.S. Navy and its allies in the region. But as an arriving global power, China's leaders are not likely to tolerate this vulnerability to potential U.S. leverage. China's naval shipbuilding program indicates China's response.

According to Kaplan, by 2015 China will surpass South Korea and Japan to become the world's most prolific shipbuilder. China will achieve this position because its growing shipbuilding expertise will combine with its labor and capital cost advantages to make it the preferred shipbuilding vendor. China's cost advantages in "metal-bending" industries will compare very favorably against U.S. naval shipbuilders who are best known for gross cost overruns, long delays, and problem-ridden deliveries. U.S. military acquisition officials have hoped that U.S. technological advantages will offset an adversary's numbers. But such a focus on technology might be part of the problem, rather than the solution. Looking out over the next two decades, military shipbuilding trends do not favor the United States.

The solution is expanded diplomacy. Kaplan discusses how the United States and China will find common interests protecting shipping from piracy, terrorism, and natural disasters. In addition, China and the United States share an interest in keeping open the ocean's lines of communication -- both countries are highly dependent on trade and energy imports from the Middle East. With many common interests, China's arrival as a naval power need not result in conflict.

But will the United States be able to maintain its Asian alliance system if its naval hegemony comes under challenge? Will America's friends in Asia drift into China's orbit if the U.S. military cannot maintain its investment in naval power? This decade's land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have absorbed huge sums that might have otherwise gone into naval recapitalization. The looming fragility in America's position in the western Pacific might be the best reason for it to wind up its affairs in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pakistan under siege

Over the past 11 days, Islamist militants have conducted six major attacks in urban areas of Pakistan, killing scores of security personnel and civilians. On Oct. 16, militants conducted a suicide attack on a police station in Peshawar, killing at least 11 people. Just one day earlier, militants attacked three police facilities in Lahore, in Pakistan's Punjab heartland. These events followed an Oct. 10 attack on the Army's headquarters building in Islamabad, which resulted in a 20-hour hostage siege.

For almost two months, the Pakistani government has promised a large ground offensive against suspected Taliban support areas in South Waziristan. If the government was actually serious about such an offensive, it remains a mystery why it would choose to forfeit the element of surprise. Even if the military carries out the attack, we can be sure that it will now yield little.

Instead it is the militants who are on the offensive, and not just in the frontier and Pashtun areas of the country. The Islamists are in no position to seize control of the national government; indeed, the latest string of attacks has very likely energized the urban middle class to demand harsh action against the Pakistani Taliban and al Qaeda. Assuming that militant leaders anticipated this reaction, what is the objective of this latest urban terror offensive?

First, they may hope to boost the morale of their supporters in South Waziristan and elsewhere, hoping to steel their resolve before the looming Army offensive. Second, the militants might be hoping to deter the offensive, or at least persuade the government to make it a halfhearted affair. Finally, they may hope that the attacks sap the morale of the government's soldiers, reducing their performance on the battlefield.

Pakistan's deteriorating internal security is an extremely unwelcome development for U.S. policymakers. Some smart analysts have argued that one of the best reasons for the United States to make a large commitment to Afghanistan's stability is to prevent a possible collapse in Pakistan, a far more strategically significant country. Yet it seems that the more the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan escalates, the worse things get inside Pakistan.

Correlation is obviously not causation. Should the United States dramatically scale back its effort in Afghanistan, it is hard to imagine that this would have any significant influence on Pakistan's problems. The solutions to Pakistan's internal security lie within Pakistan and not Afghanistan. Perhaps the latest wave of attacks will motivate Pakistani society to now face these problems head-on.

Blame James Jones for fraying civil-military relations

A series of articles in the Washington Post this past week has revealed more than just a contentious White House debate over Afghanistan strategy. These reports have also exposed confusion and misunderstandings among top policymakers which have led to fraying relations between civilian and military officials. These misunderstandings, are symptomatic of inadequate staff work within the White House. And that staff work is the responsibility of James Jones, the national security adviser.

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In the Oct. 8 Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran chronicled the history of the Obama team's deliberations on Afghan strategy, starting from last winter. According to Chandrasekaran, Gen. Stanley McChrystal's call for up to 40,000 additional U.S. soldiers inflicted "sticker shock" on some at the White House. This quote from Chandrasekaran's piece sums up the feeling:

"It was easy to say, 'Hey, I support COIN,' because nobody had done the assessment of what it would really take, and nobody had thought through whether we want to do what it takes," said one senior civilian administration official who participated in the review, using the shorthand for counterinsurgency.

According to the article, McChrystal and his staff prepared their assessment with the assumption that President Barack Obama and his team at the White House had agreed to a counterinsurgency campaign. The "sticker shock" felt by the Obama team resulted in at least one anonymous verbal attack in the Washington Post on McChrystal's "assumptions - and I don't want to say myths ..." This then led Army officers gathered at a convention in Washington to rally to the general's defense.

Chandrasekaran's account of the White House staff's Afghanistan policy reviews portrays senior officials seemingly unaware of the costs, implications, and risks of the policy choices under consideration. The White House staff and McChrystal's staff then compounded this error when they apparently failed to confirm with each other the assumptions under which McChrystal would prepare his assessment. If many at the White House suffered from "sticker shock," it is only because they didn't first understand some basics about counterinsurgency and didn't establish adequate communications with McChrystal from the start.

Who is to blame for this string of foul-ups? The official responsible for national security staff work in the White House is the national security advisor. Jones and his staff should have ensured that all participants were well briefed on the options and that communications between civilian and military officials were clear. As a former NATO commander, commandant of the Marine Corps, and political liaison officer in Washington, it is hard to imagine someone more qualified for organizing the policy reviews.

It's possible that Jones and his staff did actually prepare the briefing books and establish communications with the field only to find those efforts unused. If Jones and his staff ever start feeling the heat for Afghanistan, I'm sure we'll read an anonymous defense someday in the Washington Post.

A Pakistani officer recommends an archipelago for Afghanistan

As Obama and his advisers debate U.S. policy for Afghanistan, it is worth a moment to consider the recommendation of a Pakistani army officer who may soon find himself in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province leading soldiers against the Pakistani Taliban.

Maj. Mehar Omar Khan is currently a student at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Kansas and is a graduate of Pakistan's Command and Staff College. Writing at Small Wars Journal, Khan pleads for the United States to not give up in Afghanistan. But he also advises U.S. policymakers to give up on the notion of reforming all of Afghanistan. Instead, he recommends an international strategy that would build up an archipelago of secure and prosperous model districts inside Afghanistan. In addition to improving the well-being of their inhabitants, these model districts would provide convincing evidence of the international community's good intentions. Most important, they would contrast favorably with the Taliban's mismanagement and cruelty, helping to win the battle of ideas.

But before the United States and its allies can build the model district archipelago, Khan asserts that the Coalition needs to accept certain unalterable characteristics about Afghanistan:

Afghanistan cannot be governed, at least not in the Western sense of that term.

Coalition and Afghan security forces cannot hope to protect all Afghans.

Afghanistan has always suffered from some level of civil war.

Afghanistan's poverty is so deep it has stunted the development of any national aspirations.

Whether there is a Taliban movement or not, Afghanistan's Pashtuns will fight until they gain the country's leadership positions.

Khan proceeds to describe his archipelago proposal, which would be the focus of coalition security and development efforts. What does Khan believe this project would achieve?

A few examples of model districts would unmistakably mean this: that the USA means good and only good; that Islam is not the sole monopoly of Mullah Omar; that Islam and Quran can co-exist with banks and schools and hospitals and businesses; that life without bloodshed is a good life and that what Americans do is better than what Taliban do or plan to do. The approach will give Pashtuns an irresistibly attractive reason to ditch the message and manipulation of the Taliban in addition to stripping Mullah Omar and his al Qaeda cohorts off their narrative and their manifesto.

There was a time when U.S. policymakers hoped to implement this vision for all of Afghanistan. But even if he gets his requested reinforcements, Gen. Stanley McChrystal intends to withdraw U.S. military forces from rural areas in order to provide security for populated areas. Khan's plan would concentrate efforts on even fewer areas, abandoning large sections of the country to Taliban control, at least over the medium term.

Afghan leaders in Kabul and the provinces have understandably resisted this "ink blot" strategy. Once informed of their abandonment by U.S. and NATO forces, villages outside the "ink blots" would have three choices: self-organized defense with whatever weapons they can scrape together; displacement as refugees into an "ink blot" area; or submission to the Taliban.

Major Khan's model district strategy hopes to win the battle of ideas over the long term. In the short term however, it will give the Taliban a significant propaganda victory as they capture significant portions of the countryside. Are Afghans and the coalition strong enough to weather that storm?

The CIA finds job security in Afghanistan

On Sept. 30, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell made it clear that the objective of President Barack Obama's Afghanistan policy -- "to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy al Qaeda" -- remains unchanged. According to Morrell, what is open for discussion among Obama senior advisors is "whether or not counterinsurgency is still the preferred means of achieving that end."

As I discussed last week, Gen. Stanley McChrystal thinks counterinsurgency is the right course and has asked for at least 40,000 additional U.S. soldiers to implement this approach. It is now up to Obama to assess the risk of McChrystal's strategy and weigh whether the costs measure up to the promised benefits.

While Obama and his team deliberate, other developments are underway that will either support McChrystal's request or perhaps create alternatives. On Sept. 20, the Los Angeles Times reported on another "surge" into Afghanistan, this one by the Central Intelligence Agency. According to the article, the CIA's head count in Afghanistan will increase to 700, led by increases in paramilitary officers, intelligence analysts, and operatives tracking the behavior of Afghan government officials.

The piece discussed how McChrystal, while in charge of special operating forces in Iraq, formed teams composed of CIA paramilitary officers and special operations personnel from the U.S. military. This fusion of capabilities is credited with improving intelligence collection and direct action operations against insurgent networks. McChrystal may now be using this same technique in Afghanistan.

But raising the CIA's presence in Afghanistan to a higher plateau might set the stage for alternative approaches to U.S. strategy. Popular discussions of U.S. alternatives for Afghanistan focus on three options: McChrystal's beefed-up counterinsurgency campaign; a counterterror campaign using special operations raids and drone strikes; and abandonment. In reality, there is an entire continuum of options formulated by U.S. planners to achieve Obama's stated objective. Some of these options would focus on training, equipping, and advising Afghanistan's official security forces. Others might focus on enhancing security at the local level through village and tribal militias. Still others might attempt to turn the clock back to 2001 and 2002, when the CIA and special operations forces essentially hired Afghan warlords to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda. And there are many more options, all with varying degrees of plausibility.

One thing all of these options have in common is a requirement for greater CIA participation. Options that have fewer U.S. military forces directly providing security imply more Afghans providing security. This will require greater employment of U.S. liaison officers and advisors from both the U.S. military and the CIA's clandestine service.

If Obama chooses McChrystal's most military-intensive recommendation, it seems as if the CIA's role in Afghanistan will still increase both now and in the future. A successful military surge in Afghanistan will eventually be followed by a drawdown and a handoff to Afghan security forces. In the wake of this scenario, U.S. military advisors and CIA officers would maintain contact with Afghan security forces and keep watch on the residual al Qaeda threat.

Afghanistan seems bound to provide job security for the CIA.

Can Israel get MAD with Iran?

One option, perhaps the most likely option, for dealing with a nuclear-armed Iran is the tried-and-true Cold War model: containment, deterrence, and the related doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD). The United States and Soviet Union deterred a nuclear first strike against their territories and forces when they were able to convince the other side that a devastating second-strike force would always survive to retaliate after a first strike.

U.S. and Soviet submarine-based nuclear forces guaranteed MAD and stabilized nuclear deterrence for the duration of the Cold War. Even if land-based missiles and bombers were wiped out in a surprise attack, the submarines lurking in the deep would survive and be ready to retaliate.

While publicly vowing to prevent the development of an Iranian nuclear weapon, Israel might also be developing its own submarine-based nuclear force in an attempt to achieve a MAD deterrent in the event that prevention efforts fail. The Sept. 29 edition of Defense News noted that Israel took delivery of two German-built submarines, adding to the three it already operates. According to the article, Israel's submarines are capable of launching cruise missiles, which could possibly be fitted with nuclear warheads.

Israel cannot rely on land-based missiles and aircraft for nuclear deterrence. In fact, relying solely on land-based forces would end up being highly destabilizing. Israel's land area is tiny and it has few places to disperse these forces. They will someday become vulnerable to Iran's advancing ballistic missile threat. With missile flight times from Iran measuring just a few minutes, Israel would have to adopt a highly dangerous launch-on-warning doctrine for its land-based forces. The possibility of nuclear war starting by accident would be greater than it was during the Cold War.

As with the Cold War, a submarine-based deterrent force would add stability to the Israel-Iran nuclear competition. If Israel could maintain at least one submarine on patrol at all times and in contact with Israel's leadership (no small challenge), there would be a greatly reduced need for a hair-trigger alert.

Of course, the arms race between Israel and Iran was never supposed to happen. However, Israel never signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and is widely assumed to be a nuclear weapons state. The NPT has hardly lived up to its promises among its signatories; the U.N. Security Council has been unable to enforce the resolutions it passed when it concluded that North Korea and Iran violated the treaty.

With the NPT shown to be either ignored or unenforceable, the international community may have to resort to managing rather than preventing such arms races. Germany's decision to sell cruise-missile-capable submarines to Israel will make one such arms race safer. If outside powers cannot stop the nuclear arms race between Israel and Iran, they will have to consider what other steps they can take to reduce its risks.