By Richard Fontaine
Best Defense directorate of long-term grand strategy

Secretary of State Clinton's swing through India points again to the tremendous potential of an Indo-American strategic partnership over the long term. But it also demonstrates how tough some of the challenges will remain over the next couple of years. 

Secretary Clinton is in India at the helm of a large, high-level government delegation for the second annual Strategic Dialogue. The first round, held in Washington last year, started to pull the bilateral relationship out of its previous doldrums and set the stage for President Obama's successful visit to India last fall. This round is aimed at sustaining last year's progress and implementing the many commitments both sides took on.

That's tough to do. Many of the big policy changes on the American side have already been made -- the United States has supported Indian access to civilian nuclear technology, a change that required amending domestic law and international agreements; it modified its export controls so that India has greater access to American technology; it now supports India's membership in the four international nonproliferation regimes; and the president endorsed Indian permanent membership on the UN Security Council. There is always more to do, to be sure, but these are serious moves.

On the Indian side, most of the expected policy changes are stuck, largely due to domestic politics. The civil nuclear deal is not operational because of a flawed liability law. Key defense agreements remain incomplete. India has granted little in the way of market access, despite repeated American hectoring. And the United States bemoaned the fact that the two American companies bidding on a major fighter jet program were knocked out of the competition.

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My CNAS colleague Amanda Pfabe wondered what was on the mind of former CIA director Michael Hayden. This is what she found.

Personally, I wish the general worried a bit more about the damage done to America by the government's embrace of torture as a policy under President Bush.

By Amanda Pfabe
Best Defense All American roving correspondent

Retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA, spoke the other day at Johns Hopkins University's Rethinking Seminar about six security concerns that would keep him up at night were he still in the government. All six, he said, have a degree of imminence to them:

No. 1: Proliferation (specifically concerning Iran)
Hayden noted that answering questions pertaining to Iranian nuclear capabilities is easier to do than articulating how the Iranian government makes decisions. No one seems to know who or what influences policy. The confusion and mixed messages coming from Tehran surrounding the detention of the three American hikers, two of whom are still being held in Iran, in 2009 underscores the fact that Iran is a fully functioning society with a fully dysfunctional government.  

His scary bottom line: Iran's quest to obtain nuclear weapons is a means to deterring the United States. Attempts to affect their nuclear capability, such as Stuxnet, will simply make them more committed to that quest.

No. 2: China
Hayden was quick to explain that China is not necessarily an enemy, as there are "logical non-heroic policies available to both sides" that can prevent conflicts. However, China's recent international behavior, such as the Chinese fishing boat's collision with Japanese coast guard vessels, can be described as triumphal and akin to that of a teenager whose strength has outstripped his judgment, experience, and wisdom. Several structural problems, including its uneven distribution of wealth, gender imbalance, and environmental disasters, promise to cause growing pains for China as it continues its ascent. Moreover, the legitimacy of the Communist Party governance is based on an unsustainable ten percent GDP growth per year. 

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My CNAS colleague Andrew XM has a good summary of his most recent vacation in Afghanistan.

I was most struck by his conclusion that counterinsurgency is being practiced well, which is encouraging, given all the chatter recently about how Petraeus had gone all CT on us. (And yes, I know that CT really is the savage heart of COIN but apparently some of youse haven't been paying attention.) Tactical intelligence also is improving, he reports, and that is more important than it may sound.

On the downside, as usual, are the performances of the Afghan and Pakistani governments. This no good. Sometimes I think we should just be done with it and cast our lot with India.

Exum's actual bottom line: "I completely agree with a CT strategy for Afghanistan. Just, you know, in 2014 -- and after setting the necessary conditions."

Meanwhile, I just caught up with this classic quote in the August issue of Army magazine, from Capt. Justin Pritchard of the 25th Infantry Division, who has been operating in Khost. I would say this is successful COIN in a nutshell:

The big breakthrough for me personally was shifting from 'I'm here to solve problems and to make it happen' to helping the Afghans solve their problems. It was a shift in mind-set, a reframing of my role and purpose. I went from hearing a report of a bomb and immediately taking action to going to the Afghan battalion commander and district governor and asking them how they wanted to handle it. You come are it almost like you are an OC [observer-controller] with combined action.

By Paula Broadwell
Best Defense guest columnist

Beyond the noise emanating from the air strikes and guns that surge forces are firing in Kandahar, another surge has occurred over the past year - a surge in the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).

Total ANSF growth, starting from November 2009 to present increased from 191,969 to 255,506, an increase of 63,537 (33 percent). The Afghan army has grown from 97,011 to 136,164, an increase of 39,153 (40 percent) and the national police from 94,958 to 117,342, an increase of 22,384 (24 percent).

In November 2009, only 35 percent of all soldiers met the minimum qualification standards with their personal weapon. There was an unworkable 1:79 trainers to troop ratio at the firing ranges where Afghan soldiers were attempting to learn. Ten months later, the average unit has a 97 percent qualification rate at the range and the instructor to troop ratio has decreased to 1:29, thanks to increasing support from coalition partners.

The quality of the troops may in some way be reflected through public trust. The Afghan Minister of Defense, Abdul Rahim Wardak, mentioned that the Afghan National Police (ANA) is perceived as the most trusted public institution in Afghanistan during a Rehearsal of Concept drill in Kabul in October. According to the results of an Afghan nation-wide survey (sample 6,700), 71 percent of Afghans feel a favorable impression toward the Afghan National Police (ANP) and 74 percent feel favorably towards the ANA. (By comparison, only 23 percent of Americans surveyed in a Gallup poll this month felt favorably towards the U.S. Congress.)

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Counterterrorism without counterinsurgency is alluring -- it seems cheaper and easier -- but it is usually pretty meaningless and in fact can be very counterproductive. People who advocate just doing counterterror generally don't understand that. This is one of the best explanations I've read of why the short, easy way just doesn't work, from a friend who can't be identified, but who is in a position to understand this.

If you work at the White House, please read this slowly.

By Mr. XYZ
Best Defense terrorism columnist

To avoid killing the wrong people, you need intelligence. Good intelligence demands you have very close contact with, and cooperation from, the very constituency the Terrorists are seeking to mobilize. These folks won't cooperate unless they have security of person and property AND believe you won't abandon them after the next presidential election. That means that you can't CT without COIN.

Oh you can try. Clinton made a sport of it -- firing several hundred million dollars worth of cruise missiles into the deserts of North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. Predictably, fire weapons and fire weapons alone not only did not compel the enemy to surrender, it caused them to multiply.

No serious student of strategic aerial bombardment I know of still believes that bombing a civilian population -- short of nuclear weapons -- will do anything more (or less) than awaken a sleeping giant -- Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are perfect examples, but so too are the largely failed terror-bombing campaigns of the Luftwaffe of Britain (1940-41 and ‘44-45) and the British reply to Germany (1942-1945).

The reason terror bombing does not work, is it causes predictable outrage in the survivors. Even if you use precision weapons -- no, especially if you use precision weapons -- killing anyone in my family will make of me an implacable enemy. I say this because if you use precision weapons you purportedly have the ability to avoid killing the wrong people and yet you killed one of mine. Hence, you MEANT to kill my relative. And now, I will have to return the favor -- especially if I am from a Shame Culture.

Used alone, navies and air forces cannot, therefore, win against insurgents. Why? Because they are fire weapons -- and fire weapons alone can never compel the enemy to surrender. The enemy may choose to surrender -- as happened in Serbia in 1999 and Japan in 1945, but the decision is left to the enemy. True decision in war comes from shock forces -- Marines/ infantry. Once shock forces go into action the enemy must repel the attack or leave. If they can't leave or defeat the attack they must surrender.

If you're going to employ shock forces, you are now going to be in and among the population. If you are going to have a population that is at least neutral, if not supporting you, then you will need to understand their language, culture, and aspirations, and help to provide for their needs. You must also be prepared for a long and costly war, in both money and casualties.

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By Haider Ali Hussein Mullick
Best Defense chief Pakistan correspondent

I just got back from my third trip to Pakistan this year, where I examined the scope and scale of its counterinsurgency strategy and al Qaeda's response.

The bottom line is that al Qaeda's big plans for world dominance have failed, but its ability to keep the United States and allies on high alert is increasing. There are two primary reasons for this paradoxical situation: First, al Qaeda's very successful nine-year 'train the trainer' program, which multiplies its strength without expanding its numbers. Second, the August floods that devastated Pakistan are a game changer, a godsend for al Qaeda, diverting 30,000 Pakistani counterinsurgents and key enablers (helicopters, engineers, medics, etc.) away from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to flood relief and reconstruction activities. To overstretch armies, smart insurgents always pray for the opening of multiple fronts. The damage from the floods couldn't be worse -- 1/5th of Pakistan (size of New England) inundated, seven million people lost their homes, and $30 billion in total damages. The timing was equally terrible: The Pakistani surge was finally working, and troops were holding Swat and South Waziristan since 2009.

Today, the nuclear-armed Pakistani army is under great stress, and reluctant to go into North Waziristan, home to al Qaeda, the Haqqani network, and the Pakistani Taliban. The army is the police, National Guard, relief organization, reconstruction agency, and governing body in critical areas in the north and south, while the weak civilian government is perceived to be corrupt, inept, and aloof as it wrestles with the Supreme Court. Half of 180 million Pakistanis are under the age of 25 and facing high prices, unemployment and little opportunity. They watch the rich pay virtually no taxes and they find solace in U.S. and India bashing, and blissful ignorance about their actual enemies, which are the al Qaeda syndicate, corruption and poverty. Al Qaeda couldn't ask for a better home.

What's worse is that we don't have any good options in Pakistan, and President Barack Obama has made that clear again and again. But we can make our bad options better. If there were a 9/11-type attack post-marked Pakistan there would be retaliatory airstrikes against terrorist camps -- but Washington doesn't have a 'day-after plan'. We need a strategy that deals with such an attack and strives to balance terrorist interdiction (with or without Pakistani help amid imminent danger) with U.S. civil-military aid and outreach to the Pakistani people. Today we must maintain the Catch-22 of supporting nuclear-armed, comatose Pakistan, knowing that it won't wake up, walk on its own or hug us anytime soon. But we must combine that with a long-term roadmap to bring the countries together, to imagine the impossible by doing the possible. We must continue to assert our security interests, help Pakistan help itself, and make our partnership transparent to the Pakistani people. Hope is not a policy, but striving for a more effective partnership with a nuclear-armed country that is the second-largest Muslim nation, that is home to al Qaeda, and that borders Iran, China and India, is.

Read more here to learn about al Qaeda's post-9/11 metamorphosis, and how the United States can better partner with Pakistan to degrade al Qaeda and associates.

Here is a conversation with my officemate, Robert Kaplan, who has written a lot of interesting books, and has a new one out today, titled Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, about the growing political importance of the Indian Ocean basin.

If after reading this you want more, come on down the evening of Nov. 9 to his CNAS book rollout, hear him talk, buy a book, and get it signed. And if you mention "Best Defense" Bob might give you a free beer. Register here.

Best Defense: What made you turn to the Indian Ocean as a book subject?

Robert Kaplan: In 2006, I saw a few references to the Indian Ocean in military journals. So I did what I always do when hunting for a new project, I consulted an atlas. As I stared at the map, the book began to emerge in my mind: Here was the entire arc of Islam from the Sahara Desert to the Indonesian archipelago. Here was the global energy interstate, through whose waters pass the hydrocarbons from the Middle East to the middle class cities of East Asia. Here was a vehicle to get beyond Islam as strictly a phenomenon of Middle Eastern deserts and take in its green, tropical allure in the Far Eastern seas as well. Here was a way to connect the issues of Islam and China in one book. Another influence upon me was the teaching post I had at the time at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, where I met colleagues who had experience on warships in these waters, and they told me their stories.

BD: What do you think will be the biggest surprise in the book for readers of this blog?

RK: This blog has tended to concentrate, as it should, on the wars of the moment, in Iraq and Afghanistan, messy land wars where counterinsurgency is a doctrine that the U.S. military is pursuing. This book takes military issues beyond those of the day, and suggests a future where our challenges may be primarily maritime. China and its naval rise, and the possible threat it poses to the Indian Ocean and adjacent South China Sea, figure prominently in this book, while Iraq and Afghanistan figure barely at all. Central Asia figures, though, because it will one day be linked by roads and energy pipelines to the Indian Ocean. Pakistan figures heavily, but here, too, I concentrate on what the media has generally ignored: the restive provinces of Baluchistan and Sindh on the Indian Ocean. The surprise of this book is that future wars and conflicts may be vastly different than the ones of the moment. Instead of fighting neighborhood by neighborhood in Baghdad or Kandahar, we may in the future have to influence vast spaces on the map through naval maneuvers.

BD: Some of your previous books have had dark scenarios and descriptions. Is this book also pessimistic?

RK: No. This is my most optimistic and -- hopefully, that is -- nuanced work. Of course, the reader will be the judge of that! The interweaving of civilizations in the Indian Ocean is incredibly complex, and it was a real struggle for me to adequately communicate it. It was certainly the hardest book I ever wrote -- the book where I did more reading and research than any previously. As I get older, writing just gets more difficult and complicated. I did not set out to be an optimist. But my conclusion is that the Greater Indian Ocean is evolving into a vibrant, multipolar trading system reminiscent of the Muslim and Chinese trading systems that preceded Vasco da Gama in these waters. And for the United States to maintain its power it will have to listen more to the yearnings of hundreds of millions, Muslims and non-Muslims alike, who are not concerned with al-Qaeda, but with attaining a middle class standard of living. If you want to hear the authentic voice of the emerging, former third world, watch Al Jazeera, and maybe dip into my book.

BD: What do you think you will write about next, and why?

RK: I have started writing a book about geography, about the great geographers of the past and how to incorporate their sensibilities in order to approach places like Russia, China, Iran, and Turkey in hopefully a new and original light. Whereas, Monsoon involved enormous traveling, this next book involves endless reading. I don't believe we have overcome geography, despite the jet and information age. The Hindu Kush, the Tibetan and Iranian plateaus, and the riverine wastes of Siberia, to name a few examples, still matter to international politics, as they deeply affect the behavior of nations. As Napoleon said, if you want to know a nation's foreign policy, inspect its geography. That's what I am now trying to do.

My gut feeling is that U.S. officials are beginning to give up on getting serious anti-Taliban help from the government of Pakistan. My guess is that there won't be any official change stated, but more actions that Pakistani officials haven't been consulted about. Also, if the ISI really is interfering with peace talks with the Taliban, I'd expect to see a rollup of ISI agents in Afghanistan. This would be done quietly, if possible, so the public signs would be reactions such as the kidnapping of Indian officials in Afghanistan, or bombing the Indian embassy again.

My speculation isn't based on any leaks or anything, just a reading of a series of recent newspaper articles.

Shorting Pakistan is kind of a no-brainer: In the long one, which is the better ally to have, India or Pakistan?

The papers and their websites don't make much of it, but this strikes me as pretty significant -- an overt U.S. raid across the border into Pakistan. More here.

Maybe this is a response to the FATA-lism of Pakistani officials.

Meanwhile, Iran crossed into Iraq to hit people it says were responsible for bombing a military parade in northwest Iraq the other day.

Makes me feel a bit like Rodney King.

I believe this is unprecedented -- the first double-bylined piece in the history of this blog. It is written by two of my CNAS colleagues.

By Sorina Ioana Crisan and Jessica Ramirez
Best Defense FATA bureau chiefs

When you go to hear a senior official from a troubled nation speak in Washington about his particular area of expertise, you hope to get an insider's understanding, and maybe a sense of what the light might be at the end of his particular tunnel. That's what we had in mind when we trundled over last week to Johns Hopkins' School for Advanced International Studies to hear the word from Habibullah Khan, current head of the secretariat for Northwest Pakistan's semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas, AKA one of the world's stickiest problems.

Instead we got a 50-minute soft-shoe that dodged questions and offered few answers. His talk consisted of a presentation that presented an overview of Wikipedia-ish issues as the formation of FATA, its geography, economy, and society. Khan's bottom line: The best hope for long-term change will require a "long-term U.S. commitment, not in the form of money, but in the shape of a long-term engagement." In other words, he said, the U.S. needs to fulfill the commitments it signed up for back in 2002.

Our view: Hey, Mr. Khan, this is a two-way street. What has Pakistan really done to bring security to the FATA over the last nine years? And hopes for increased military support in the region have been washed away with the latest floods. Violent religious extremists continue to maintain a strong foothold in the region, and are said to be quicker in providing humanitarian services in the flood-affected tribal areas than the government.

When asked what incentives could be offered to break up alliances between locals and bad actors such as the Pakistani Taliban, al-Qa'ida and the Haqqani network, Khan could only offer a long convoluted answer that left the audience deeply unsatisfied. The gist of his answer was to offer full protection to pro-government people and individuals who joined out of fear, while targeting the militants. Further dissatisfaction ensued when he offered a plain "no comment" when answering a question addressing the influence of the latest drone attacks on the relationship between FATA, Pakistan, and the United States. Khan also refused to address the consequences of the attacks on civilian security. He underlined that he does not have the authority to comment on these specific issues as he is only focusing on aspects linked to governance and development.

It would have been useful and refreshing to hear Khan's genuine and honest opinion on how the political, economic, and security situation in FATA could be improved or negatively affected in the short and long terms. In the end, what was delivered was a beautifully articulated yet deeply unsatisfying picture of the many obstacles that face the region, and few suggestions about how to tackle them. Perhaps the lack of clear and concise answers was a consequence of the fact that not even Khan has a clear view of how a "positive" scenario could actually look like for FATA.

Leaving this presentation we felt disappointed and desirous of a change in the status quo. It would be unfortunate if this is the best Pakistan can do. If it is, we need to consider a very different policy. As Robert De Niro would say, "These guys got nothing."

A huge leak of U.S. reports and this is all they get? I know of more stuff leaked at one good dinner on background. I mean, when Mother Jones yawns, that's an indication that you might not have the Pentagon Papers on your hands.  If anything, the thousands of documents remind me of what it is like to be a reporter: Lots of different people telling you different things. It takes awhile to learn how to distinguish the junk from the gold.

You know how Robert DeNiro used to shout once in every film, "You got nothin' on me, nothin'"? (I think it was in his contract.) This data dump reminded me of that.

Here's Abu Mook's very good summary, cited by MoJo.  

India's home secretary says flatly that the Pakistani government controlled and ran the Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people in November 2008.

So does this mean the two countries are at war?

Travels with Shiloh, a good blog new to me, covers a recent conference on counterinsurgency at Fort Leavenworth and comes away with the interesting conclusion that the U.S. military is not gonna get out of Afghanistan anytime soon:

While, current U.S. policy states that we'll begin withdrawing our forces in 2011 there was a universal recognition that any real effort to apply COIN in Afghanistan would take a very long time. While the subject wasn't addressed (except for one question at the final Q&A roundtable) my impression was that all of the speakers (British, Canadian and U.S.) were operating under the assumption that forces would be in place well beyond 2011. I heard no discussion about how to conduct any sort of hand off to the Afghans within 18 months, alterations to COIN theory or doctrine or trains of thought about alternate ways militaries could support/conduct COIN without significant numbers of forces on the ground. I would interpret that to mean that the military has been given the word (explicitly or implicitly) that that 2011 deadline is NOT set in stone. I would, in fact, go further and predict that barring some unforeseen change in the operating environment we will almost definitely have a significant presence in Afghanistan for some time.

I agree with this, and feel worse about it than I do about Iraq. I never thought invading Iraq was a good idea, but I thought (and still think) that invading Afghanistan was a correct response to 9/11.

He also offers this worrisome report:

We most definitely do NOT own the night. Just because we have night vision goggles doesn't mean that much. We're not generally active at night and initiative goes to those who move at night.

Part II of his report, about the Soviet experience in Afghanistan, is here.

(HT to CC)

Speaking of Afghanistan, I was sorry to see that the bombing near SW Kabul's Darulaman Palace the other day killed one Canadian colonel, one U.S. Army colonel and two U.S. lieutenant colonels. A Canadian general survived the attack.

It is axiomatic that good strategy can tell you what are good tactics, but that good tactics can't compensate for a bad strategy, or compensate for the absence of one.

That is Andrew "Abu Muqawama" Exum's point of departure in his new essay on the need for a political strategy in Afghanistan. Interestingly, for a COIN-carrying down-home CNASty, Exum begins with a hard pop at the Army's counterinsurgency manual, calling it politically naïve:

When United States wages counterinsurgency campaigns, it almost always does so as a third party acting on behalf of a host nation. And implicit in the manu­al's assumptions is the idea that U.S. interests will be aligned with those of the host nation.

They almost never are, though.

This is, as he notes, a major problem for the United States' effort in Afghanistan.

A second big obstacle, Ex notes, is that the Americans don't have their shit together:

The NATO commander, the U.S. ambas­sador, the NATO senior civilian representative, the U.N. senior civilian representative and President Obama's senior representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan all command the attention of Afghan decision-makers. And while relations between the men are reportedly professional, tensions between their organizations have at times proven poisonous. This is not a recipe for success.

Exum is being polite here: Ambassador Eikenberry and General McChrystal are at odds, and one of them should go. I fault the Obama Administration for not doing something to sort this out. Exum also basically says Holbrooke should butt out: "Trying to forge a working relationship with President Karzai from Washington, as Amb. Richard Holbrooke has attempted to do, is difficult if not impossible." (Tom: I am guessing that Holbrooke will move on by Labor Day.)

Exum also cites a quote from an Afghan student who would make Bernard Fall smile:

If there is a good district chief in an area, there won't be any bomb blasts or suicide bomb­ings... If you get the right people in place, there won't be any need for military operations.

That's one of the best expressions I've ever seen of the thought that politics is always primary in counterinsurgency campaigns -- and indeed is the way to end them.

Meantime, David Brooks codifies the American COIN narrative in a column today about how the Army changed from 2004 to 2007. I think his account is largely correct (if you see errors, please do let me know), but I can see how it seeing it all smoothly summarized in a few hundred words might strike some as a bit too facile. And having it appear in the New York Times all but carves the thing in stone for a big chunk of America's elites.

That said, I don't have a problem with producing a "narrative." That is basically how human beings understand events: This happened, then that happened, etc. People who complain about "the narrative" are being imprecise. What they are upset by is "the dominant narrative," with which they disagree and wish to impose their own "counter-narrative."