November 2010 Archives

It sounds like the plot of a bad spy movie: The U.S. and its closest allies hold extensive negotiations with a putative terrorist leader only to discover that he's an imposter whose true identity -- and true loyalties -- remains unknown. Yet that's exactly what appears to have taken place in Afghanistan. The U.S.-led military alliance flew a man that it believed was Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour to Kabul on a NATO aircraft, shepherded him into meetings with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and paid him significant sums of money. But after months of on-again, off-again talks, embarrassed NATO and Afghan officials were forced to admit recently that the man wasn't Mansour or even a member of the Taliban. Instead, he appears to have been a shopkeeper from Quetta, the Pakistani city that is thought to be home to the senior Taliban leadership, including the group's paramount leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar.

The situation has all of the elements of a farce, but it's no laughing matter. For months, top NATO officials like Gen. David Petraeus have argued that the stepped-up military campaign in Afghanistan was beginning to persuade some fighters to lay down their weapons and take part in preliminary peace talks with the Afghan government. Karzai has signaled he would be willing to share power with the Taliban if the armed group cut its ties to al-Qaida and agreed to abide by the Afghan constitution.

Do peace talks with the Taliban have any chance of succeeding? How can the U.S. and Afghan governments convince Taliban leaders that they can get a better deal at the negotiating table than they could get on the battlefield? Do the Taliban have any reason to talk while they still feel like they're winning militarily? And should the U.S. trust that the Taliban, chastened by the last nine years of fighting, would actually be willing to cut its ties to al-Qaida if it returned to power in Afghanistan?

3 responses: Paul Sullivan, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., Michael Brenner

Pro-defense Republicans already are looking ahead to the next Congress to use their party's newfound legislative power to boost the Pentagon budget, pointing to the wear and tear on the military after nearly a decade of war and the need to hedge against a multitude of future threats. But fiscal hawks within the party are focusing like a laser on reducing the deficit, and they insist nothing should be off the table - not even the defense budget, which makes up half of all federal discretionary spending.

Underscoring the need to reduce the deficit is President Obama's own bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, whose chairmen released a proposal last week that called for slashing $100 billion out of the Pentagon's budget in 2015. This includes a 15 percent cut in procurement, a 10 percent cut in research and development, a freeze on noncombat military and civilian pay and closure of one-third of overseas bases. The proposal also would use $28 billion in Pentagon overhead cost savings projected for 2015 to pay down the deficit, rather than reinvesting that money in modernization and other priorities as Defense Secretary Robert Gates prefers. The total trimmed from force structure and modernization accounts alone would come to $55 billion.

How feasible would it be for lawmakers to make these kinds of cuts to defense? Is it easier politically for Republicans, with their strong support of the military, to slash Pentagon budgets? What kind of sway will fiscal hawks have in the next Congress - and will it be enough to push through sweeping defense cuts over the objections from pro-defense members of their party? And what role will progress made in Iraq and Afghanistan play in making defense cuts more palatable to lawmakers and the public?

10 responses: Col. W. Patrick Lang, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., Gordon Adams, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., Christopher Preble, Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., Paul Sullivan, Wayne White, Michael Brenner, Ron Marks

For many years, analysts have argued that the center of gravity in geopolitics was shifting inexorably from West to East, from Old Europe to New Asia. Certainly the Obama administration's travel schedule would seem to indicate a shift in strategic focus to Asia. On Friday, President Obama left for the longest foreign trip of his presidency, a 10-day, four-country swing through Asia and the subcontinent. That comes on the heels of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's own seven-nation tour of the Asia-Pacific region, which followed a recent trip to the region by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who will be retuning soon. All of them are carrying a similar message: The United States plans to remain a major military and economic power in Asia, but is not intent on trying to "contain" China's rapid rise.

The question for bloggers this week: Is this what an Asian-centric world starts to look like? Has the global financial crisis hastened the shift from aging, heavily indebted Western societies to younger, more economically vibrant Asian counterparts? Will the Western alliance emerge from the Iraq and Afghan wars bruised and weakened? Will China's rise in the East make it a more responsible stakeholder in the global order, or does it signal the emergence of a regional hegemon intent on transforming that order to its advantage at a time of perceived U.S. decline? If this long-anticipated shift in geopolitics is becoming a reality, how should the United States adjust its strategies and priorities, and how might that affect its relationships with other important regional actors such as India, Indonesia, Japan, and South Korea? What steps must it take to ensure that the international order isn't destabilized in the process?

9 responses: Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., Paul Sullivan, David Krieger, James Jay Carafano, Loren Thompson, Kori Schake, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Ron Marks, Michael Brenner

Updated at 1:50 p.m.

With Tuesday's midterm elections putting Democrats' control of the House in jeopardy and likely adding several Republican seats in the Senate, the outcome could have long-lasting repercussions on how Capitol Hill addresses national security issues.

The election comes just one month before the White House will formally review its Afghanistan strategy -- and President Obama has made it clear that he wants to start reducing the size of the U.S. force there in July. At the same time, the Pentagon has launched an "efficiencies initiative" to trim more than $100 billion from its budget over the next five years and redirect that money to higher-priority items.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is trying to sell the New START arms-reduction treaty with Russia to the Senate, which is yet to bring the historic agreement to the floor for approval. It has long been unclear whether the Senate has the 67 votes necessary to approve the treaty. Also unclear is whether the treaty would come to the floor during a lame-duck session. If Republicans pick up several Senate seats, as is expected, punting the treaty to the next Congress could further complicate the treaty's approval.

What will change after Tuesday? Would GOP control of the House and an influx of new Republican senators line up a battle with the administration on national security? If Democrats do manage to keep control of the House, will they tweak their rhetoric on national security issues? Will moderate Democrats get more air time, pushing the more liberal members of the party into a back-seat role?

5 responses: Eric Farnsworth, Col. W. Patrick Lang, Joseph J. Collins, Wayne White, Michael Brenner