The Pakistani Conundrum Posted by Michael Cohen

Spencer Ackerman is really pissed at Pakistan:

It is very difficult to see how non-punitive measures have aided the U.S. in dealing with Pakistan. Massively generous economic assistance, military relief assistance during floods and earthquakes, literally bags full of cash to the military, nuclear-capable fighter jets -- and this is what we get.

Fuck that. No more. It's time for the U.S. to stop issuing idle threats about how Pakistan must take on the Haqqanis OR ELSE. Cut off all aid until the Pakistanis stop helping any insurgent networks and shut the safe havens down. Pull the drones from Shamsi to Jalalabad and fucking bombs-away. Let the Chinese move into Khyber-Pakhtunkwa and announce a brand new relationship with the subcontinent's real superpower, India. Watch that shit concentrate the Pakistani imagination.

Part of American leadership is not allowing client states to dick us around. If this is how Pakistan wants it, then it should get a commensurate response. 

I sympathize with Spencer's frustration; and he's of course right that our client state is dicking us around, but then ALL of our client states dick us around (think about it). Still his solution to the problem is not helpful and won't work.

First, we need Pakistan - both in the counter-terrorism fight against the remnants of al Qaeda and in transporting resources to the fight in Afghanistan. Both of these factors limit how far we can and should go in putting pressure on Pakistan. And of course the Pakistanis know this. When we've reached the point that we don't care what happens within Pakistan's borders we can get tough. But clearly that hasn't happened yet; and won't any time soon.

Second, Pakistan has interests equal to and greater than maintaining its relationship with the United States - namely protecting its interests in Afghanistan. I realize I've become a bit of broken record on this point, but the simple fact is that the Pakistani security services and likely its government have concluded that a strong, independent Karzai government backed by the India is not in Pakistan's strategic interest - at all. This is why they continue to support the various Taliban insurgent groups; so they can maximize their influence in Afghanistan and prevent what would amount to a Karzai, i.e. Indian victory. Every tool that the US has used to try and shift Pakistan away from that strategic calculus has failed, whether its the carrot or the stick (ish). I don't see any reason to believe that a stronger stick will bring better results. If anything, browbeating the Pakistanis and threatening them will almost certainly backfire and would likely work directly against our interests.

Third, Pakistan is more important than Afghanistan. This is the point that all of this flag-waving over Islamabad's behavior seems to miss. In the end, what happens in Afghanistan is of secondary importance to what happens in nuclear-armed, jihadist terrorist supporting Pakistan. At least that is the case from a narrow reading of US interests in the region. The notion that we should get in a pissing match with the Pakistanis to prop our currently losing fight in Afghanistan is the height of folly. Considering that we are already headed toward the exits in Afghanistan our focus should be on repairing relations with Islamabad not making things worse.

In the end, yes the Pakistanis are waging a proxy war in Afghanistan; yes they have the blood of US soliders on their hands; yes they are a lousy, crappy client state. But none of this was a surprise when we chose to escalate in 2009; and there was no good reason to believe that anything would change in the two years hence (and of course nothing has).

Instead of continuing to try - and failing - to convince Pakistan to act in a manner that is contrary to their perceived national interests we should be doing something we haven't really done for ten years: factoring their strategic calculus into our foreign policy decision-making. That would mean pulling back from fighting a completely pointless war in Afghanistan and rather moving forward with a serious and comprehensive strategy for political reconciliation that protects Pakistan's interests in Afghanistan.

Our problems with Pakistan are a direct result of the failed strategy that we've employed in Afghanistan. Fixing that is a heck of a lot more important and worthwhile then getting in a counter-productive pissing match with Pakistan.

Anticipating Herman Cain's Foreign Policy Posted by James Lamond

There has been great speculation and fun guessing games throughout the 2012 GOP primaries about what a Tea Party foreign policy would look like. Ideological consistency would, of course, lead to an isolationist-leaning approach. A movement claiming to have been founded out of concern over the growing role of the government and deficit issues would naturally oppose excessive defense spending, "global war on terror" policies and an overall less aggressive and expensive foreign policy. But as has been outlined before, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, that has not been the case. 

Josh Rogin's peice today about Herman Cain, the current Tea Party favorite, and his foreign policy team is the latest in the trend. Cain's chief adviser, J.D. Gordon who previously worked on detainee affairs in the Bush administration and later at Frank Gaffney's neoconservative think tank, the Center for National Security, appears to be a defender of the very policies that a libertarian would likely reject. 

Last year he wrote this defense of why Guantanamo Bay prison should remain open: 

Ironically, the "mess" at Guantanamo that Mr. Obama cited was caused to a great extent by the damaging, yet disingenuous, characterizations continuously repeated by those who supported him on the campaign trail. Wildly exaggerated claims of detainee abuse, factual misrepresentations regarding conditions of confinement and interrogations (for instance, waterboarding was never used there) and false portrayals of most detainees as innocent goat herders sold for bounties helped create such an internationally controversial symbol.

As Mr. Cheney recounted in his American Enterprise Institute speech, the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11 was an extraordinarily challenging time in which the George W. Bush administration made tough choices from the bunker that kept the country safe from a repeat attack on American soil.

Some of those tough choices proved difficult to sustain over the years. Such was the case of sending al Qaeda- and Taliban-linked detainees to Guantanamo and holding them under the international-law-of-war context similar to prisoners of war - though technically without the same rights, as they were unlawful enemy combatants, along with a lack of meaningful transparency that undermined public accountability.

I admittedly do not know the details of Mr. Gordon or the rest of the team's intellectual foundations. However this combined with Mitt Romney's getting the PNAC band back together, it appears neocons and hawks are not out for the count, despite the Tea Party rhetoric. I do look forward to Herman Cain's expected foreign policy address, and how much it looks like Mitt Romney's recent speech, which was clearly influenced by the PNAC crowd, verses George W. Bush's "humble" plans for foreign policy in 2000. 

 

Tell Me Now If You Want Me to Stay; It Don't Matter, 'Cause I'd Stay Here Anyway Posted by Eric Martin

My colleague Michael Cohen wrote a piece rightly taking Republican lawmakers to task for criticizing the recent decision by President Obama to remove all troops from Iraq by year's end.  What renders the GOP critique of Obama hollow and tendentious is that it's not really Obama's decision at all.

By way of background, the Bush administration negotiated a form of a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with the sovereign Iraqi government whereby the United States agreed to withdraw all troops by the end of 2011. While many in the United States expected this SOFA to be extended, a funny thing happened along the way: The Iraqi government did not agree to extend immunity to US troops going forward, effectively scuttling any extension of the SOFA. 

Despite what our preferred policy outcomes might be, a continued US presence in Iraq is not a popular position amongst Iraqi lawmakers/voters.  Simply put, Maliki lacks the political support to push for such an agreement (assuming that he would even prefer to keep US forces in country for a longer period and would be willing to expend political capital in pursuit of such a policy).

Since Obama could not (in his right mind) agree to keep troops in Iraq without immunity, and since the Iraqi government has established its terms, Obama has no viable option other than to remove US forces as per the terms of the Bush administration's SOFA.

Nevertheless, the usually fair-minded James Joyner chides Cohen for his rebuttal to Obama's critics on this issue. 

While there are no doubt many Republicans looking for any excuse to condemn Obama for foreign policy weakness, there's an actual policy dispute here. Retired General Jack Keane...declares, "We won the war in Iraq, and we're now losing the peace." He continues, "We should be staying there to strengthen that democracy, to let them get the kind of political gains they need to get and keep the Iranians away from strangling that country. That should be our objective, and we are walking away from that objective."

Keane claims that current US commander in Iraq, General Lloyd Austin, wanted at least 15,000 troops for 2012 and preferred 25,000. [emphasis added]

But here's the thing: there isn't actually any "policy dispute" here. Regardless of what anyone thinks we "should be" doing and regardless of how many troops a military commander might "want" to remain in Iraq, the choice is not Obama's to make. Hence, no dispute.

That is, unless the policy dispute is whether Obama should usurp and/or topple the Maliki government and either keep troops in Iraq under a hostile posture vis-a-vis the Iraqi government, or install a more pliable regime in its place - one that would green light a continued US troop presence. But if that is the dispute, let's have out with a debate on the merits and parameters, instead of vague complaints about Obama's lack of omnipotence.

Joyner continues his basless critique of Cohen:

But Cohen paints with too broad a brush in applying that critique to Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, die-hard American Greatness conservatives who truly believe that Americans can reshape the region and the world if we simply give it enough time, troops, and willpower. Cohen points out that these men have been staunch advocates for the democratization of Iraq and sees hypocrisy in now chiding Obama for not working harder to defy the will of the Iraqi people. But support for democracy doesn't necessarily mean liking the policy outcomes that come from it. By that logic, McCain shouldn't express any opinions about US foreign policy at all on the basis that the American electorate preferred Obama over him in 2008. [emphasis added]

That analogy doesn't really hold, however.  To more accurately maintain the corollary, McCain can certainly continue to express opinions on US policy under the Obama administration, but he shouldn't seek to topple the US government or flagrantly disobey its sovereignty/laws. That's kind of a big difference.

In fact, the analogy would be apt if these GOP figures and military leaders were criticizing the Iraqi government's decision not to renew the SOFA. After all, support for democracy doesn't necessarily mean liking the policy outcomes that come from it.  But one should recognize which party is responsible for those policy outcomes, and which isn't.

(Photo Credit: Christian Science Monitor)

What's The Matter With (Peter Baker's Profile of) Leon Panetta? Posted by Michael Cohen

So today the New York Times has a page one profile of new Defense Secretary Leon Panetta - and well, it's a funny thing, apparently the New York Times couldn't find a single person to say a critical word about the Panetta's performance as Sec Def. 

What I find particularly strange about this is that last week I wrote 1400 words here offering a more critical assessment of Panetta's job to date and in particular his over-the-top rhetoric on defense spending. Now granted my take is the furthest thing from definitive ... but in writing that piece I was struck by how many smart observers of US national security policy had less than charitable assessments of Panetta's efforts.

Here is Winslow Wheeler with repeated critiques of Panetta's alarmist language on the impact of defense spending.

Here's Bill Hartung criticizing Panetta's claim that reducing defense spending will increase unemployment (and here's another pointing out that his criticisms of defense spending are a tad fact-free).

Here's a few posts from Ben Armbruster at Think Progress pointing out the hollowness of Panetta's claims that spending reductions in DoD's budget will result in a hollowed out military.

Here's Spencer Ackerman completely destorying Panetta's pander-ific speech at the AUSA conference.

Here's Andrew Sullivan pointing out Panetta's inclination to "go native" first at the CIA and now the Pentagon.

I could go on, but the point is that there is hardly a dearth of criticism out there of Panetta's performance. Is it too much to ask the New York Times to find a couple of them?

And one last point on this; here's the kicker of Baker's story on Panetta: 

Asked about inspirations, Mr. Panetta nodded toward portraits of Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Marshall. “These two guys were always, you know, kind of heroes of mine,” he said. “So every once in a while, I turn around in that chair and look at them and say, you know, what the hell would you do?”

He laughed. “The problem is,” he said, “they’re not talking back.”

If they did talk back, you know what they might tell him? Well Dwight D. Eisenhower would probably counsel Panetta to utilize the remainder method when determining DoD's budget (that means spending money on domestic priorities and letting the remainder go to the Pentagon). At the very least Ike would probably find Panetta's recent posturing on defense spending to be completely unseemly. Here's the thing: if you're going to cite an esteemed national figure as an inspiration you might want to know what they actually believed.

A New Low For Republicans On Foreign Policy Posted by Michael Cohen

At this point one has to almost take for granted that Republicans are going to criticize
President Obama's foreign policy performance for the most hare-brained of reasons - he doesn't strongly support Israel when in fact he does strongly support Israel; he apologizes on behalf of the United States to other countries when in fact he's never apologized on behalf of the United States; he should intervene in Libya, oh no he shouldn't intervene in Libya (that's the Newt Gingrich version of this phenomenon). 

As regular readers of this blog are well aware I am not one to mince words when it comes to offering criticism of President Obama and his foreign policy team, but I at least try to have some, you know, actual substance to these criticisms.

In contract, Republicans have, in recent days, reached new and unimaginable depths of absurdity in criticizing the President on foreign policy. First there is the death of Muammar Gaddafi, a tyrant who ruled his country with an iron fist for more than 40 years, has the blood of Americans on his hands and in an amazing seven months after US intervention has been toppled from power and killed. Clearly this is a policy worthy of praise even from GOP partisans?

Oh no, not so fast says noted foreign policy expert Marco Rubio - the real credit belongs to the British and French not the United States, which as Rubion seems not to know took the military lead, organized an international coallition and pushed a resolution authorizing force through the Security Council. (By the way, try to imagine for a second if a leading Democrat had given credit for a US military triumph to the French?  The French! Literally you'd be seeing attack ads with that clip until the universe collapses in on itself millions of years from now).

The other critique - and it's a priceless one - is that Obama screwed up because he didn't act soon enough to topple Gaddafi. You see if Obama hadn't been sitting around the White House like a modern-day Chamberlain until Sarkozy lit a fire under his ass, Gaddafi could have been gone by the Spring and there would already have been democratic elections in Libya.  Ignoring the fact that because of the rebels disorganization in the early days of the war there is no reason to believe they could have toppled Qaddafi any sooner - is this really the best Repubilcans can do? Without the active involvement of the United States both militarily and even more important diplomatically it's highly unlikely that the "British and French" would have been able to organize a coalition to assist the rebels. Is is really that hard for them to give even grudging credit to the President for helping get rid of Gaddafi? Apparently the answer is yes.

But the criticism on Libya is relatively anodyne compared to the GOP attacks on Iraq in the wake of news that President Obama will be pulling all US troops out of Iraq by the end of the year. First you have John McCain calling troop withdrawals from Iraq a "serious mistake." Although in fairness when it comes to supporting military interventions that are serious mistakes, John McCain knows a thing or two. But my favorite was Lindsey Graham today on Fox News Sunday. Here's what he had to say: "At a time when we need troops in Iraq to secure the country, we have none. It was his job to end this right [and] they failed."

By the way, funny story, Lindsey Graham . . . voted to authorize the use of force when he was a US Senator in 2002. So apparently consistently supporting what is possibly the worst foreign policy debacle in US history = success. Ending that military debacle = failure.

The thing, however, that I find so deeply fascinating about Graham's argument is that there is actually a pretty good reason why the US is pulling all its troops out of Iraq at the end of the year - we said we would. In fact, not only did we say it; we signed an agreement committing ourselves to full withdrawal from Iraq at the end of this year. And of course, when I say "we" I mean George W. Bush - the guy who signed that deal. What's fascinating is that this "fact" never seems to be incorporated into actual discussions of US policy in Iraq. It's not as if we can decide willy-nilly that we are going to stay; even the United States needs permission to extend their visit (apparently Graham and McCain prefer that America become the worst house guest ever).

Moreover, keep US troops in Iraq past the December 31, 2011 deadline would have meant resolving what the New York Times called "an irreconcilable dispute" between the US and Iraq over the legal immunity of remaining troops. Without that immunity, those US soldiers would have been at the mercy of Iraq's legal system, a risk that the US military did not want to take; and for good reason. 

To be fair, this is a bit of a complicated issue and I suppose one can excuse Lindsay Graham for not fully understanding. It's not as if, for example, Lindsey Graham is a Judge Advocate General with the US Air Force, a position that would give an individual a unique insight and level of expertise about the various laws governing armed conflict and the status of US forces operating in foreign locales. 

Oh wait, as it turns out Lindsey Graham is a Judge Advocate General with the US Air Force and in 2007 he did his reserve duty in Iraq.

Beyond the legal issues involved in maintaining a US presence in Iraq, abrogating the status of forces agreement would be akin to undermining Iraq's nascent democracy, something which the 2007 version of Lindsay Graham thought was really, really important when he used it as a justification for surging 30,000 troops in Iraq:

We're going to stand with the forces of moderation, as imperfect as they are, and we're going to try to get this right by making up for past mistakes. We cannot have a democracy with militias roaming the country out of control. You can't have a democracy with 40 percent unemployment in Baghdad.

But apparently you can have a democracy when a foreign power violates their sovereignty and national will.

What is perhaps so maddening about this entire line of argument from the GOP that Obama has "failed" in Iraq is that it was Republicans like McCain and Graham who were the loudest advocates of the 2007 surge on the grounds that escalation would help a sovereign, democratic government (as well as political reconciliation) take root in Iraq. Now that we're seeing progress on that front and the Iraqi government feels sufficiently emboldened -- and more important accountable to their people -- that they are willing to stand up to the United States and demand US troops stay not a day longer Republicans are throwing a fit over it. Isn't this what the surge was supposed to bring; the surge they practically unanimously supported?

Republicans can't have this both ways: they can't on the one hand extol the virtues of democracy in Iraq and then get indignant when that country's democratically-elected government tells the United States they need to leave.

Actually let me rephrase that; Republicans like Graham can say whatever they want - even if their statements are completely contradictory. None of this means, however, that such criticisms should be taken seriously.

To be sure there are legitimate and substantive critiques to be made of the President's foreign policy performance (and ironically on Libya Tea Partiers who have argued that the war represents imperial overstretch and might actually be illegal is a relatively fair critique). But these aren't them. Rather these are nakedly partisan talking points masquerading as policy disputes. If there was ever any question that the GOP's fundamental critique of President Obama's foreign policy is basically "whatever he does we will argue the opposite" this past week should erase any doubts.

Tunisian Election By the Numbers Posted by Heather Hurlburt

It'd be a shame if Tunisian elections for a body to write a new Constitution were overlooked; just nine months after the country's revolution ignited the Arab Spring, the vote looks set to go off smoothly and tell us quite a bit about the possibilities and limitations of progress around the Arab world.  Below, a few numbers that may surprise or enlighten:

Percentage unemployment, already high, has risen since the Revolution:  143%.

Position of employment in public concerns going into the election:  first.

Number of political parties competing: 110, plus coalitions and independent lists.

Number with candidates in all 33 districts:  four.

Proportion of candidates on each party list that must be female:  50%.

Number of rulers Tunisia had between independence in 1956 and the revolution in February 2011:  two.

How the leading Islamic party, Renaissance, is expected to perform:  25-30%.

What does it all mean?  The mandate of the new constituent assembly is unclear; does it name a new government, and if so, how quickly?  How long does it have to do its job?  How it answers these questions, and how well Tunisia's political parties, secular and religious, work together will tell much more than tomorrow's raw numbers.

Saving The Responsibility To Protect From Future Libya Wars Posted by Jacob Stokes

Spencer skewers the DC foreign policy commentariat:

1. Why Gadhafi's Death Vindicates "Leading From Behind" (Tom Friedman)

2. Gadhafi's Death Shows The U.S. Was Never Really "Leading From Behind" (Anne-Marie Slaughter)

3. There Is Still More To Do In Libya (Any Washington Post op-ed)

4. On To Damascus, Then Teheran (Weekly Standard)

5. Gadhafi's Death Shows The Post-Iraq Syndrome Is Over (TNR)

6. Whither The Obama Doctrine? (David Ignatius)

7. Saving The Responsibility To Protect From Future Libya Wars (Democracy Arsenal)

8. Slideshow: Bye, Bye Moammar (Foreign Policy)

9. Gadhafi's Death May Not Lead To Bump For Obama (Politico)

10. The Warplanes And Warships of Libya  (WIRED's Danger Room)

Photo: Getty Images via Passport

What's The Matter With Leon Panetta? Posted by Michael Cohen

This past Friday, President Obama announced that he would be sending 100 combat equipped soldiers to Central Africa to help the governments of the region combat the Lord's Resistance Army, which is a particularly nasty and nihilistic terrorist organization that operates along the Ugandan border. It's a pretty straightforward intervention and one that is even codified in US law.

Yet here is what Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had to say about it in an interview with CBS News:

 Pelley: Did you have reason to believe that this part of Central Africa was becoming a haven for terrorism?

Panetta: There are elements there that either have ties to al Qaeda or that represent the forces of terrorism on their own. And that's what's dangerous.

Why Leon, why?

The United States is not sending troops to Central Africa to combat al Qaeda (at the very least that's not what the President of the United States told Congress about why he was sending troops to Central Africa). The al Qaeda presence in the region is at best, infinitesimal.  Going after the LRA with 100 non-combat US troops should be defensible on its merits without some silly Al Qaeda angle thrown into the mix. So why would Panetta make a comment like this?  It all has the odor of a transparent effort bolster the domestic case for military intervention by linking it somehow to terrorism and al Qaeda. 

In isolation this gaffe would not be a huge deal, but it fits a disturbing pattern of misstatements and overblown rhetoric from Panetta. Back in July in his first trip overseas as Secretary of Defense he said that the US was in Iraq because of al Qaeda and 9/11; he also pledged to keep 70,000 US troops in Afghanistan until the end of 2014. The latter is in contradiction of US policy that was announced by President Obama only a month before and the former is in contradiction of the truth.

On the issue of keeping US troops in Iraq beyond the December 31, 2011 departure date Panetta has taken the odd approach of publicly negotiating with the Iraqi government in public - a surefire way to prevent any deal from actually occurring.

But it's on defense spending where Panetta has really gone off the deep end -- taking on maximalist, almost apocalyptic, positions including calling potential cuts "catastrophic," "draconian" "doomsday"-inducing and akin to America "shooting itself in the head."  This tracks with he said in August, when he wrote only days after the hard fought debt limit deal was signed that automatic cuts to the DoD budget "would undermine the military’s ability to protect America and its vital interests around the globe" and that such a move would "do real damage to our security." This is bizarre hyperbole, particularly sincePanetta hasn't identified a single way in which these cuts will "hollow" out the US military.

In fact, as Ben Armbruster pointed out recently when pushed to identify what risks would come from these reductions in current military spending (a fiscal outlay that far surpasses US spending during the Cold War) the best example that Panetta could point to was that the US presence in Latin America and Africa would have to be reduced. And why? Because according to Panetta the US would need to maintain a presence in the Middle East and the Far East.

It's funny that sounds a bit like "prioritizing" - no wonder it was so confusing to the head of the Defense Department.

In a speech last week at the Woodrow Wilson center Panetta offered a litany of "threats" that continue to face the United States, "terrorism, nuclear proliferation, rogue states,cyber attacks; revolutions in the Middle East, economic crisis in Europe, the rise of new powers like China and India."  It reads a bit like the Pentagon's current greatest hits.

According to Panetta, "all of these changes represent security, geopolitical, economic and demographic shifts in the international order that make the world more unpredictable, more volatile and, yes, more dangerous." That these words are practically identical to the ones spoken by Mitt Romney at the VFW convention in August are disturbing enough; that by any appreciable measure the world today is far less dangerous than any point in recent history only compounds the strategic incoherence of Panetta's statement.

I asked Bill Hartung, who is a Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and a defense budget expert how he would rate the absurdity of these comments on a scale of 1 to 10 . . . his response was 12.  And Hartung should know - he served on the Sustainable Defense Task Force which outlined about one trillion dollars in defense cuts over ten years that would NOT turn the military into a hollow force.

If one wants to argue that defense cuts will be bad for US military preparedness and national security that's obviously an appropriate argument (even if it is, in my view, wrong). But Panetta has gone far beyond that, employing scare tactics, fear-mongering and apocalyptic warnings to make his argument. Worst of all by suggesting that its not defense spending that should be cut, but rather entitlement spending like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security he's basically siding with Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill and undercutting the President and Democrats in Congress who are currently negotiating with Republicans about additional cuts to the budget. 

It's not enough that Panetta is using inflammatory rhetoric to make his case for preserving the Pentagon's bloated budget; he's also feeding Republicans the attack lines they can use against Democrats if defense cuts do actually occur.

All of this seems at pace with a Sec Def who seems preternaturally focused on making sure everyone at the Pentagon likes him. Whatever one thinks of Robert Gates tenure at DoD he at least occasionally demonstrated the ability to speak some difficult truths to the military. Panetta, on the other hand, seems more inclined to offer chest thumping and flag-waving. 

As Spencer Ackerman devastatingly pointed out last week his recent speech to the AUSA convention was a pander-ific performance that glossed over the reality of austerity politics and pledged that significant cuts in the DoD budget will "not happen on my watch.”

And then there was this, "This nation needs an Army that can deter any potential aggressor — an expeditionary Army able to deploy to distant battlefields and, upon arrival, decisively overwhelm any enemy land force,” Panetta said. “And if an enemy does challenge us in a conventional land war, we need an Army that can, as General George Patton used to say, ‘Hold the [enemy] by the nose and kick them in the ass.’” To listen to Panetta talk about the the threats facing the United States, the importance of a big ass-kicking Army and the need "to make sure that rising powers understand that the United States still has a strong defense" you'd think that either Panetta has been asleep for the past ten years or Max Boot is now writing his speeches.

It is almost as if Panetta is so desirous of approval from the military brass that he is going out of his way to sound as tough as he possibly can. Indeed, when he was in Iraq over the summer even the Washington Post remarked on his "salty" language and occasionally martial tone with the troops.

I understand that a new Secretary of Defense wants to be respected in the building, but Panetta is taking this way too far - and trying way too hard.  

Of course there's another explanation for Panetta's obsequiousness - he is deeply inculcated by the notion that Dems are vulnerable on national security and they must do a good job of seeming "tough" enough to run the military. After all, who can forget this priceless Panetta quote captured in Bob Woodward's "Obama's Wars" about Obama'sfall 2009 review of Afghanistan policy:

He told other principals, "No Democratic President can go against military advice, especially if he asked for it." His own recommendation would be, "So just do it. Do what they say." He repeated to other key White House officials his belief that the matter should have been decided in a week.  

If one didn't know better (and there really is not much reason to suspect otherwise) Panetta is another in a long list of Democrats whose inclination is to approach national security issues through the narrow prism of domestic politics. His public statements sound like those of a Democrat too insecure to talk sensibly about the future of the US military and national security policy.

Panetta is the first Democrat to be Secretary of Defense in more than 14 years he should start behaving like it, rather than a caricature of how Democrats are supposed to act on foreign policy and national security. 

Getting Obama Foreign Policy Wrong - Part II Posted by David Shorr

The theme this week is the various ways that our foreign policy wonk colleagues distort the Obama Administration's record to fit their own preconceived notions. Yesterday the culprit was Mark Lagon, as he championed the so-called "values agenda" of democracy promotion and human rights. Now we shift to the Realist end of the spectrum, beginning with a  World Politics Review piece by Nikolas Gvosdev. (You may need to go through RealClearWorld to read the whole thing.)

Like any self-respecting Realist, Nick judges foreign policy on the basis of America's geostrategic position: are we playing smart geopolitics, in terms of alignments and power balances and the current constelation of forces? He isn't nearly as harsh as Lagon in his assessment of Obama and does challenge the Republicans to do better. As a key to how Nick's view diverges from my own, the following passage caught my eye:

The U.S. presidential election could be an opportunity for the incumbent and challengers to present their contrasting visions of how the U.S. should prioritize its interests, commitments and partnerships. Last week, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney took a stab at doing just that when he identified the United Kingdom, Israel and Mexico as the key relationships that the U.S. needs to preserve and enhance. 

So for Gvosdev, you define your priorities through your relationships. I'm not so sure. For one thing, taking stock of what are considered key relationships doesn't tell you all that much about political or policy differences in our domestic debate. I didn't care much for the Romney speech, but if you asked me to name the countries with which the United States has the deepest affinity, I'd say the UK, Israel, and Japan. Then I'd quickly stress relations within North America, Canada as well as Mexico. On the question of the most consequential relationship: China. Most fraught and vexxed?  Pakistan. And my guess is that a wide political spectrum of foreign policy specialists would view those questions roughly the same way. Does that mean we have a latent consensus about strategic priorities?

But personally, I think a foreign policy defining characteristics are the ojectives toward which it is aimed and its 'theory of the case' for achieving them. Relationships with friends and frenemies are an ongoing matter of care and maintenance -- hardly simple or easy, but surely we expect foreign policy to steer nations' alignment and policy stances to build the kind of world we want to see. Or maybe this itself is an orientation. And part of Nick's column is quite fairminded at judging Obama foreign policy on its own terms. He wonders if the toxic political atmosphere: 

...will disincentivize any administration, whether a re-elected Obama team or a GOP replacement, from engaging in bold gambles. The Obama administration has taken a number of such gambles since 2009: that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev would become more powerful and secure a second term in the presidency; that China would be receptive to a G-2 dialogue; that a combination of sanctions and dialogue would jump-start negotiations to resolve the Iran nuclear standoff. None of these gambles has paid off as much as was hoped. The question now is, to what degree will a new administration in 2012 be willing to depart from Washington's "conventional wisdom"?

True enough, the administration has had to adjust its expectations in terms of progress with China and Iran. Even so, a fair reading of the record shows success in steadily moving the ball down the field, even if the earlier high hopes have been disappointed. (I've actually been working with a colleague to write an assessment at this level.)

Surely it's too harsh to definitively declare President Obama's policy "reactive, unfocused, and ineffective," which was the verdict of Jeremi Suri's New York Times op-ed last week. Like Gvosdev, Suri argues for prioritization and stresses that trying to do too much undermines the ability to do anything. And he goes the extra step of suggesting the correct priorities for foreign policy: bolstering the position of the dollar as the global currency, stemming the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and preserving good relations with China. 

What's really strange is that for all his disdain for Obama foreign policy, Suri's some of prescriptions are hard to distinguish from what the administration is already doing. For beginners, compare Suri's recommendation re China to Gvosdev's assessment. To which I'd add that the substance of dialogue between Beijing and Washington has been focused on administration priorities such as nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea and macroeconomic rebalancing -- which bear close resemblance Suri's two other priorities. 

For instance, I stare and stare at the following graf about the nuclear threat and cannot find anything that the Obama administration hasn't already been doing, and energetically so:

Securing facilities and supplies must receive high-level attention and funding, despite defense budget cuts. Supporting a rigorous international system that penalizes proliferators (especially Iran and North Korea) must dominate Washington’s activities in the United Nations and other international bodies. And the president must do more to build support for multilateral enforcement, including possible military action.

As to the position of the US dollar, I think Obama is absolutely right to be emphasizing economic growth globally, the same way he is domestically. Now it's true that Suri pins a lot of his argument to the need to put down some of the balls we're trying to keep in the air. But again, read Suri's prescription and tell me how different it is from the president's policy:

Washington no longer has the resources or the political mandate to act in ways that make a positive difference in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

How Critics of Obama Foreign Policy Get it Wrong Posted by David Shorr

Now that President Obama's Republican have started to declare themselves on foreign policy, this has fired a starter's pistol for fellow wonks to draw their comparisons and critiques. I ran across three such pieces that dovetail especially well with one another -- each of the authors voicing different sets of concerns. And from these distinct angles, each also gives short shrift to the Obama administration. 

I'll start with Mark Lagon's World Affairs piece, because Mark is a [disclosure] good friend and also because I must deal with this pesky trope about  "declinism." The following passage at least gives a more sophisticated take -- putting it in the context of Mark's broader point about Obama abandoning the values agenda of democracy promotion -- but he's still drawing from the same Republican messaging memo:

That President Obama should have excluded it from his vision of America’s foreign policy assets—particularly in the key cases of Iran, Russia, and Egypt—suggests that he feels the country has so declined, not only in real power but in the power of example, that it lacks the moral authority to project soft power. In the 1970s, many also considered the US in decline as it grappled with counterinsurgency in faraway lands, a crisis due to economic stagnation, and reliance on foreign oil. Like Obama, Henry Kissinger tried to manage decline in what he saw as a multipolar world, dressing up prescriptions for policy as descriptions of immutable reality.

Wow, that's three declines in as many sentences, along with a quite deft way of couching the "apology" charge without quite saying it ("...lacks the moral authority..."). First, the issue isn't whether America has moral authority; we certainly do, and I doubt President Obama ever loses sight of that. The real question is how to leverage that moral authority. Should US foreign policy presume that the American example's unassailable power trumps any and all skepticism? For governments of some countries, questioning American motives is just a way to deflect pressure off of themselves, but that doesn't answer the question of whether moral authority can be overplayed? This isn't a debate about moral authority, but about smug self-satisfaction versus savvy self-awareness.

Which brings us to "prescriptions" and "descriptions." Without taking the bait on the Obama-as-Kissinger thing, it's fair to say that the argument for a self-aware policy is based on certain judgments about international political reality. Principally this: the presumption and constant assertion of US righteousness -- without any tempering or active effort to bolster US credibility -- just won't cut it in today's world. I don't know about "immutable," but yeah, I'd say it's a reality that if the United States to get things done, it must do more than stand tall and proud. It may feel good to keep beating the drum of American greatness, but real-world foreign policy effectiveness comes down to undercutting and outmaneuvering those who offer resistance, rather than expecting them to crumble in the face of our awesomeness. So then, what is the appropriate countercharge to "declinist?"  I can think of a couple: "out of touch," "delusional." ("Delusionist"?)

The other gap in Mark's lament about Obama's supposedly value-free policy is his cavalier attitude toward the other considerations of policy. Here's his explanation of how wrong Obama got his policy toward Russia:

Instead of establishing a foundation of clear principles in his reset of relations with the Putin regime, President Obama has seen relations with Russia in terms of a larger picture of strategic arms control. He believes proliferators like Iran and North Korea can be restrained if the major nuclear powers reduce their stockpiles, in fealty to the premises of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Hence, the New START Treaty was his singular focus with Russia and the grounds for his appeasement of Putinism. 

Yup, there's the "A" word, a reliable device that puts you squarely on the right side of history and makes you a political heir to Churchill. I guess Mark doesn't really think much of strategic arms control -- no biggie if the United States walked away from the decades of mutual strategic force limits and verification that the US has had with Russia and its Soviet predecessor. For my part, I am hugely grateful for what President Obama did in the December 2010 lame duck session, for yielding on a losing battle over the Bush-era tax cuts in order to make sure New START was ratified by the Senate. (Same goes for the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell.) 

In fact, I'm especially grateful on behalf of America's moral authority. Mark may not care, but a failure by the Senate to ratify New START would've been a MASSIVE black eye for our international reputation. Now, on the theory that friends can be frank with each other, that whole naive-about-restraining-Iran-and-North-Korea slam is one of the smarmiest around. As discussed above, the progressive concept of moral authority calls for the US to occasionally bulk up our own moral standing through steps like the nuclear disarmament that America promised under the NPT. Now I don't know anyone with views that resemble your caricature, but we do believe that New START makes it easier for the United States gain support in pressuring Iran. And conversely, its failure would only have made it harder. Whenever conservatives couch it this way, it lowers the level of the debate several notches.

Tomorrow I'll look at the critiques made from the perspective of a self-described Realist and someone worried about overstretch.