The Washington Post’s new series Top Secret America is well intentioned:

When it comes to national security, all too often no expense is spared and few questions are asked – resulting in an enterprise so massive that nobody in government has a full understanding of it.

That’s right. As an intelligence community analyst for some five years, I’ve seen plenty of the bureaucratic inefficiencies, excess and unchecked spending, and unwieldy sprawl that have mushroomed since 9/11. From this perspective, it’s important that questions get asked, money be justified, and overlap — where necessary and possible — be reduced.

My beef with the article — the first in a three-part series — is that it is framed as “big = bad.” Its thesis seems to be that more construction, more analysts, more information, more publications are all fleecing America. The series’ lede lays out this premise:

The investigation’s other findings include:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year – a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

If you’re writing a piece of investigative journalism that is an implicit call for more oversight, pointing out physical size is an obvious organizing frame that seems to illustrate the problem. If there are a bunch of big buildings and no one knows what happens in them, are they necessary?

The problem, however, is delving into why physical size is symptomatic of the problem. Here, the article falls short — lost is that some of these mysterious, large building have contributed to our national security. Raw size isn’t the intelligence community’s problem.

For example, former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair released the IC’s budget for the first time. At $75 billion, it’s almost twice the State Department’s, but only ten percent of DoD’s (however, though the Pentagon’s intel spending is counted in Defense’s budget). If increased oversight improves efficiency by — oh, pick a number — 15 percent, the IC’s budget is still $64 billion and the vast majority of those new buildings out in suburban Maryland are still being built.

Or take the National Security Agency’s budget, the agency that controls our satellite spies that listen in to bad people (when not embroiled in Bush-era domestic eavesdropping cases). It’s budget has doubled.   Based on the “big = bad” frame, you might think this is inherently negative. I’d argue that there’s more to the story, and that the increase in signals intelligence collection has kept the country safer by forcing Al Qaeda to use arcane and slow means of communicating.

Buried are two important reasons why size matters, a link that should be made more explicitly. First:

The overload of hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual reports is actually counterproductive, say people who receive them. Some policymakers and senior officials don’t dare delve into the backup clogging their computers.

IC bean-counters value quantity over quality, the latter being more difficult to judge. I can’t tell you how many times we were told to “produce more,” irrespective of whether that production had any mission impact. A lot of dog shit is more valuable that one diamond. That’s because budgets are justified by numbers.

And second:

[S]ecrecy can undermine the normal chain of command when senior officials use it to cut out rivals or when subordinates are ordered to keep secrets from their commanders.  One military officer involved in one such program said he was ordered to sign a document prohibiting him from disclosing it to his four-star commander, with whom he worked closely every day, because the commander was not authorized to know about it.

Almost four years ago, I was in a meeting with the new intelligence chief for a certain country I was working on. He was briefed by my boss’s boss on a variety of secret operations my organization had going in the area. When the chief asked for further information about a specific operation, my boss’s boss continued on for several minutes about all the amazing intelligence we’re getting from it.

It was highly inconvenient that I knew better: in truth, that operation had been shut down for over a year, and continued to exist on paper only. My boss’s boss was giving the new chief a complete snow job, only to give the appearance of competence and justify more money. I decided to quit that afternoon.

In sum, there’s been no question that the intelligence community was ill-equipped to deal with the new security threats facing the country that grew in complexity and immediacy between the end of the Cold War and 9/11. An overhaul was necessary, and the community continues to face growing pains in the aftermath of that reorganization and the increased budgets that come along with it.

The central tension in intelligence spending is striking a balance between dollars and security. Much of the post-9/11 intel money has effectively contributed to the country’s security, an inconvenient truism that’s glossed over in the Post’s new series. In the remaining articles, I hope the focus is on the marginal rate of increased security for every dollar spent. And in cases where we’re not getting enough bang for our buck, I hope there’s a better explanation of what drives those inefficiencies. Raw size is an occasional indicator of a deeper problem, not the problem itself.

Photo Credit: Orin Zebest

President Obama has reorganized U.S. foreign policy around a new trinity of diplomacy, development and defense. That’s been a sore point among some progressive internationalists, who see the omission of a fourth “d” – democracy – as an overreaction to George W. Bush’s messianic freedom agenda.

Administration officials insist that they aren’t abandoning democracy, just promoting it in new and more subtle ways. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently offered an intriguing case in point.

As Americans celebrated Independence Day, Clinton was in Krakow, Poland for the 10th anniversary gathering of the Community of Democracies. In an important speech that got little attention back home, she unveiled what she called a 21st century approach to promoting democracy by defending civil society. Clinton described an independent civic sector as a nursery for democratic citizenship, no less critical to a free society than representative government and a market economy. And she warned of a spreading global backlash against civil society.

Over the last six years, Clinton noted, 50 governments have clamped down on the ability of civil society or non-governmental organizations to operate freely. She called out persistent violators by name: not just usual suspects like Russia, China and Iran, but also aspiring autocracies like Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and some, such as Egypt and Ethiopia, that are closely allied with Washington. “An attack on civic activism and civil society is an attack on democracy,” she told the assembly.

This marks a significant departure from the Bush administration’s approach to democracy, which centered on demands for elections and accountable political institutions. “All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you,” Bush declared in his 2004 inaugural address. Against the backdrop of the war in Iraq and the war on terror, however, Bush’s freedom agenda acquired a menacing and coercive aura. And when the United States insisted on elections in Gaza, only to see Hamas win in 2006, many critics questioned whether elections are always the right starting point in democracy promotion.

Clinton aimed more modestly, but shrewdly, at bolstering a particular aspect of liberty – freedom of association. In authoritarian countries, civil society or “third sector” organizations play an especially vital role in building the infrastructure of liberal democracy. The United States learned the hard way during the Bush years that democracy can rarely be imposed by force, and from the top down. Support for local voluntary associations, on the other hand, is harder to caricature as some heavy-handed U.S. attempt to “export democracy.” Yet it’s deeply subversive, in that it enables indigenous reformers to carve out space for civic action that is independent of state control. By defending the right of CSOs to organize and operate, and receive international support, the United States and other free countries can promote democracy from the ground up.

Also intriguing was Secretary Clinton’s choice of venue. The Community of Democracies (CD) was launched in 2000 by then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs Bronisław Geremek. Although originally seen as a way to consolidate the wave of democratic reformism that swept the world after the end of the Cold War, the Community often seemed adrift during the last decade. Lax membership rules haven’t helped: some of its 104 members aren’t by any stretch genuine democracies.

If it is going to be a force for democratic solidarity in the world, the CD needs a clear and invigorating mission. Clinton suggested one: rallying the world’s democracies to support embattled civil society groups. She proposed a four-part plan:

1. Setting up a mechanism at the CD for monitoring repressive measures against civil society organizations.
2. Encouraging the United Nations Human Rights Council to champion the right of association.
3. Enlisting regional organizations such as the Organization of American States, the African Union and the Arab League to protect civil society.
4. Creating some sort of “rapid response mechanism” to bring joint diplomatic pressure to bear on governments that suppress civil society.

In addition, Clinton said the United States would contribute $2 million to a new fund dedicated to helping NGOs targeted by repressive rulers.

True, these are not especially bold measures. And the Human Rights Council, dominated by autocratic regimes, can scarcely be trusted to defend human rights, let alone the right to associate. But Clinton rather deftly managed to elevate the issue of defending civil society without turning it into a purely American demand or preoccupation. In fact, a CD working group headed by Canada is expected to take the lead.

An internationalist approach, in which America coaxes rather than trying to dominate, is essential at a time when distrust of U.S. unilateralism still lingers, even in a relatively friendly forum like the CD. Our task now is to work with like-minded countries to make defense of civil society an international norm, just as Americans were instrumental in getting the United Nations to adopt the International Declaration of Human Rights after World War II. In this respect, Secretary Clinton’s speech was a strong start.

Photo Credit: nrbelex

“Is America really Israel’s ally? You think so? We’re not so sure.” An Israeli Defense Force reservist said this to me during a post-dinner drink on a deck overlooking the captivating Sea of Galilee last week.

My response was curt — “You better start believing it. Otherwise, you’re screwed.” Okay, perhaps that wasn’t terribly “PC” and perhaps my tone did little to convince him. After all, my reservist friend wasn’t particularly predisposed towards diplomatic nuance — he opposed any peace deal whatsoever.

However, the sentiment he expressed — that Israel is alone, that it has been abandoned and that it can only count on itself — is deeply embedded in Israel’s national psyche. I’m not here to argue whether this world-view is correct, but like it or not, it’s important to recognize that it exists, and that it lies at the heart of many Israeli foreign policy decisions.

It was hardly just one IDF reservist that tingled my spidey-sense. A top-level Israeli ex-peace negotiator was even more explicit: “Are we paranoid? Yes.” The IDF soldier based along the “blue line” separating Israel and Lebanon believed what UNIFIL — the UN’s peacekeeping force along the border — was doing “is not sufficient” to protect Israel.

The former peace negotiator went on to recount a meeting with a well-known European newspaper’s editorial board. When the board asked what the Israeli government disliked about the newspaper’s writing style, he responded succinctly: “To be sure comma,” a phrase that typically starts the sentence that ends with, “Israel has the right to defend itself.”

That caveat –“To be sure, Israel has the right to defend itself” – is standard fare among American and European opinion columns that go on to criticize Israeli actions. From his perspective, that disclaim glosses over the threats Israel lives under — international terrorist groups in southern Lebanon and Gaza bent on firing rockets and sending suicide bombers into his country, coupled with the stress of a perpetually unstable region, and Iran’s repeated threats of Israeli destruction. His point was: that in Washington, London or Paris, it’s easy to discount the seriousness (would it really make sense for Iran to attack?), scale and immediacy of these threats as these cities don’t live under them every day.

But in Israeli eyes, these threats loom larger. That’s what drove Israel’s unapologetic heavy hand in the 2nd Lebanon War, in Operation Cast Lead, and during the flotilla incident when so many Palestinian civilians were killed in the fighting. Israel is prepared to endure the resulting international condemnation, because civilian causalities and a soiled reputation are lesser evils when compared with looming national security threats, “It’s us or them, and I’d rather it be them. We can’t count on anyone else, so we’ll do it ourselves.”

In short, Israel is banking on military victories to create the appearance of invincibility. Israel reasons that, if the Arab countries believe they can defeat Israel militarily, why then would the Arabs be interested in a peace agreement. Yet that sentiment lands Israel in a catch-22 — if Israel appears militarily invincible, then why negotiate peace? The answer is, of course, that the longer conflict drags on, the higher the cost of appearing invincible will be — in lives, resources, and reputation.

Israel shouldn’t be given a pass for its heavy-handed actions, particularly ones that needlessly take the lives of innocent civilian bystanders. But understanding Israel’s conflicted inner-monologue is a critical component in brokering a lasting peace.

Photo credit: Hoyasmeg’s Photostream

Last Friday, the Jerusalem Post reported that some 265 Israeli soldiers were lured into a cybersecurity trap, unwittingly revealing the location of a secret Israeli military base.

Soldiers who formerly served at the secret facility set up a Facebook group to serve as a mechanism to share stories and reflections about their time at the base. It was a “public, closed” group, which means the wider Facebook community could learn of the group’s existence, but applicants must request membership from the group’s organizer.

The location was exposed when a journalist requested membership, which was granted without vetting his (non-existent) military credentials.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, a soldier intimately involved in the army’s cyber operations said the group is one example of many serious security breaches by [Israeli Defense Force] soldiers in online social networks.

“It’s a security failure and they made a big mistake,” the soldier told The Media Line. “There is a reason why this base is a secret and this will undoubtedly cause harm, allowing Israel’s enemies to get important information and use it to attack Israel.

“Not only did they set up a group,” he said, “they set up the group publicly, rather than by invitation only.”

…

“Beyond national security, it is also a safety issue,” the source continued. “In the past Hezbollah operatives would set up a profile pretending to be Israeli women and ask to be friends with soldiers or join soldiers’ groups on Facebook. Over time through the status updates Hezbollah learned a bit about the soldiers, where they lived and were able to connect the dots. In theory, they could eventually kidnap that person,” he explained.

What’s the proper policy response?  Should the IDF ban all its soldiers’ access to Facebook?  That’s usually the American military’s knee-jerk response. According to Danger Room’s Noah Shachtman, education is the key. Here’s what he said in a PPI policy memo on a proper response to open-network, military-centric cyber threats:

The armed forces find it much easier to ban something than to educate its troops about responsible use. MySpace and YouTube are inaccessible from Pentagon computers – even though the military makes extensive use of the sites. Thumb drives are mostly forbidden as well, even though battlefield units rely on them to swap data in lonely places where bandwidth is hard to find. In the name of information security, information flow has been restricted. Meanwhile, secret overhead surveillance feeds are routinely left unencrypted; with an off-the-shelf satellite dish and $26 software, militants can see through the Air Force’s eyes in the sky. It’s a problem the military has known about for more than a decade but never bothered to fix. According to the Wall Street Journal, “the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn’t know how to exploit it.”

Clearly, there needs to be a rather serious re-evaluation of military information assurance. The Pentagon needs to do a better job of figuring out theoretical risks from actual dangers; secret drone feeds can’t be left open while blogs are placed off-limits. Troops also need to be trained – and then trusted. The military routinely gives a 19-year-old private the power to kill everyone he sees. Surely, if that private can be taught to use an automatic rifle responsibly, he can be educated in computing without sharing secrets.

Militaries have give-and-take relationships with social networking sites. Yes, there are clearly vulnerabilities, but Facebook, Skype and Twitter are morale-boosters — they let troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere stay connected to their families.

The military’s heavy-handed — shut-it-down mentality — kills morale and troops will get around the blockages anyway. As a former DoD civilian employee, I can give you multiple internet-based email services that allow access to your officially-blocked Gmail address.

Education is the only solution, and the military needs to embrace.

Photo credit: US Army Korea- IMCOM’s Photostream

You no doubt remember the now-infamous flotilla incident of May 31, when Israeli soldiers raided a ship off Israel’s coast and killed some nine Turkish—including one Turkish-American—citizens as they attempted to deliver supplies to Gaza Strip. The issue is of course highly complex and the point of this post is not to pass judgment on who’s to blame. Rather, I’d like to focus on a serious consequence of the flotilla, regardless of culpability: the severely negative impact on Israeli-Turkish relations. It’s critical that these countries get along.

Historically, the Middle East’s only semblance of a Muslim democracy has had stable if not excellent relations with Israel. But in the aftermath of the flotilla, Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel and canceled scheduled joint military exercises with the Israelis. Turkey sought an official apology from Israel and insisted that Tel Aviv pay compensation to the victims’ families. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister, who was in no mood to play nice, flatly refused and then personally insulted the Turkish ambassador in a meeting.

(And for those who really want to get into the weeds of Israeli politics, I’d encourage you to read up on the internal political maneuvering between Lieberman, Israeli PM Netanyahu, and Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who had a secret meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, probably in an attempt to skirt the caustic Lieberman and smooth things over.)

Suffice it to say that the relationship is in trouble, a point that was reinforced several times over as I traveled in Israel last week and spoke with Israeli academics, government officials, and military members.  The vast majority of some of Israel’s leading strategic thinkers found that the degradation of Turkish-Israeli relations was top of the list of immediate problems. More striking, most seemed to believe the problems started well before the ill-fated flotilla, and implied the very nature of Turkish PM Erdogan’s election and his ruling AK Party’s “Islamist” bent was the driving force behind the threat.

That’s not to give Turkey a pass, of course. Its overtures to Iran and exploitation of the flotilla issue for domestic political purposes prompted Philip Gordon, the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, to rightly signal that Washington’s troubles with Turkey’s recent actions:

We think Turkey remains committed to NATO, Europe and the United States, but that needs to be demonstrated. There are people asking questions about it in a way that is new, and that in itself is a bad thing that makes it harder for the United States to support some of the things that Turkey would like to see us support.

However, the nearly uniform analysis among Israel’s experts remains troubling. To me, it suggested that Israel is deeply bothered by the inclusion of any Islamic strain within a democratically elected government in a Muslim-majority country. Even a democratic government, as Alex Taurel and Shadi Hamid have written, that is lead by “the most moderate, pro-democratic Islamist party in the region today.” Giving up on Turkey and the AKP could come at a price, as Taurel and Hamid argue, and “strengthen those Islamists who see violence and confrontation as a surer means to influence political power.”

This creates an opening for the Obama administration. It’s clear that Israel needs a friend in Turkey, as a military interlocutor, as a potential peace-broker with Syria, and as a Muslim ally and NATO member that stands between Iran and the West. And Turkey needs Israel, to be perceived as an honest mediator in world affairs, and as a source of tourist revenue. And the Obama administration needs them to cooperate for regional stability and solidarity against Iran.

The subject of Israel-Turkish relations was reportedly addressed during PM Netanyahu’s meeting with President Obama last week in Washington. Repairing this damaged relationship should be a particular point of emphasis from the White House to both parties in the months ahead.

I peered nervously into my colleagues’ offices after reading this morning’s wrap-up of the Russian spy case:

The operation, referred to by U.S. investigators as “the Illegals program,” was aimed at placing spies in nongovernmental jobs, such as at think tanks, where they could glean information from policymakers and Washington-connected insiders without attracting attention.

I realize Steven had studied in Russia, and this afternoon I’m going to fire up the old Blackadder tapes and figure out just how to catch him in the act.

Kidding aside, the story goes that 10 Russian spies were arrested (one remains at-large) as part of the largest espionage takedown I can remember.

Dan Drezner over at Foreign Policy thinks the whole thing is “low-rent” and “bizarre” because the ring is charged only with being “unregistered agents of a foreign government.” Drezner’s opinion is just odd — by definition, the nature of espionage is difficult to detect and harder to prove. To put this in perspective, it’s a huge deal when one intelligence operative gets caught — think Aldrich Ames, Robert Hansen, or most recently, my former professor Kendall Myers. Now we have 10, who worked in a loosely coordinated manner. The fact that we know as much as we do is testament to some pretty solid counterintelligence work.

Perhaps Drezner is unimpressed because of the nature of the suspects’ work: The press has categorized them more as talent-spotters who would recruit Americans in influential positions to provide information, not the actual spies themselves who’d bring documents out of sensitive government buildings. But I think categorization is likely an underestimation of what they actually did. These individuals may have recruited talent, but they also would have probably played a role in transmitting information back to Moscow.

The group was likely composed of Russia’s best. Remember the first (and best) Mission:Impossible with the “NOC” list? NOC stands for Non-Official Cover, and that’s what we’re talking about here — deep cover spies whose true identities are hidden from all but a handful of people. When Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claims to have no idea what this is all about, that’s because he really doesn’t. Anonymity and deniability is by design.

Click over to Jeff Stein’s SpyTalk blog to get a flavor of how seamlessly the ring blended in with their American communities. I always find it hysterical that the neighbors are so shocked when spies in their midst are exposed — if the neighbors aren’t shocked that the normal-looking Canadian next door was leading a massive international Russian spy ring, then that would be news.

The investigation went on for nearly 10 years. Seem excessive? Why, after all, would we let these guys continue to spy on the U.S. if we knew what they were up to? Since this group served as talent spotters and intelligence mules, their operations had to be drawn out and subtle as they slowly became comfortable with, and then pitched, their recruits.

To firm up their cover, they’d spend months and months working their “real jobs” and only dip into the shadowy underworld on occasion and when they felt safe. Furthermore, the FBI needed to catch them absolutely red-handed, which is no easy task. Nothing like starting a potentially massive international scandal without iron-clad proof, huh? The FBI finally got what they needed on Sunday, with a fake dead drop of $5,000. And the decade-long investigation probably means that any intelligence damage has been limited. By keeping tabs on them for so long, we should know their extended network fairly well.

Should we be surprised that Russia is still spying on us? Hell no. We do it to them. And other countries, including our close allies, do it to us (albeit for varying motives). Everyone’s looking for an informational advantage, and that’s what spying can get you.

Finally, there’s been a lot made of the timing of this incident, right on the heels of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to DC. Accordingly, we should expect Russian retaliation just to save face — they’ll probably PNG a handful of low-level diplomats whom they suspect of doubling as spies.

This could become a major international incident akin to Britain’s deteriorating relations with Moscow after the 2006 murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko, likely by Russian intelligence agents. However, I doubt it will. The timing of the arrests was bad, but they send a message of subtle strength to the Kremlin — despite wanting good relations with Moscow, Washington won’t be pushed around.

Photo credit: worldeconomicforum

A few weeks ago, the United Nations Security Council approved what have widely been hailed as the most wide-ranging and effective sanctions package against Iran ever. Today, word comes that the House and Senate have passed — by massive margins — a reconciled bill of unilateral American sanctions against Iran. The president will likely sign it.

As I’ve written before, it’s an open question how ultimately effective the UN sanctions will be, with massive loopholes for Chinese businesses (a necessary pre-condition for Chinese support in the UN Security Council, and ultimately the lesser of two evils) and a diplomatic split with Brazil and Turkey.

The current package on Obama’s desk looks to penalize companies that do business with Iran’s oil and gas sectors, as well as banks that deal with the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the group of thugs that’s the real power-broker in Tehran. Despite assurances from members of both parties that this bill forces companies into a with-us-or-against-us binary choice, it comes with significant risks: Will a rise in gas prices permit the Iranian regime to rally a divided population against a Western bully? How will the Green Movement, divided itself, react?

(If you want to see an alternate sanctions proposal, click here.)

These questions are particularly pressing amidst reports that Iran has been stockpiling fuel and reducing domestic consumption for six months.

But here’s where we need a lesson in why the international community goes to such lengths to negotiate and then impose sanctions in the first place. Political rhetoric that accompanies sanctions sets unrealistic expectations among Western audiences. Elected officials make it sound like each new round of sanctions will drive Iran to its knees or make them shudder in fear or some other impossible prediction.

The administration has to do a better job explaining why we impose sanctions. When news reports swirl about Iran skirting the sanctions by changing ships’ names, stockpiling fuel, and moving money around, it’s often portrayed in the press as a loss. But that’s actually proof that sanctions are working! The act of forcing Iran’s leadership to spend time and effort trying to evade sanctions is actually a success — it means that Iran’s actions have a cost associated with them.

There’s no guarantee, but the hope is that one day Iran’s rulers will wake up and say, “Gosh, I’m sick of trying to smuggle gas and move money around. It’s really starting to wear me down. It would be a lot easier if we could just do this above-board and have a real place in the international community.” Well, the only way to make that happen is to negotiate in good faith. If we drive Iran back to the negotiating table and force real concessions on their part, sanctions will have been a success.

Photo credit: United Nations Photo

Now that Gen. McChrystal is about to add “(ret.)” after his name, let’s examine the implications of the transition to Gen. Petraeus.

The Washington Post story quotes an unnamed White House official saying of the transition: “It’s as seamless as it could be, not only in terms of operations but also because you put someone in who’s widely respected. No one is going to doubt that he’s the right guy for the job.”
A relatively smooth transition, to be sure, but with an emphasis on the relatively. Here’s a look at five areas where the change in command might create a bit of unease.

Political expectations: Petraeus is God, at least if you ask most elected officials on the Hill. Yes, he was the architect of the “surge” in Iraq, and the “surge” was part of the reason that violence decreased in that country. The massive increase in troops helped, but the strategy change, the Sons of Iraq’s change of allegiance and a six-month cease-fire called by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were all critical.

If you’re really interested in learning the entire story of how Iraq’s civil war was tamed, read The Gamble by Tom Ricks. In it, Ricks quotes a Petraeus colleague (and I’m paraphrasing from memory) as saying, “David is the best general in the United States military. But he’s not as good as he thinks he is.” It’s like Favre to the Vikings. He’s still really, really good. But he’ll never be as good as in Green Bay.

Keep this in mind because, as Ricks says on his blog this morning, “Afghanistan 2010 may be an even tougher nut than Iraq 2007. … Our biggest problem in Afghanistan is the government we are supporting there, and it isn’t clear to me what Petraeus can do about that.”

Mission: Counterinsurgency theory and practice is Petraeus’ bag, so don’t expect that to change. Bear in mind that COIN is a strategy, not an outcome. It ends with some sort of negotiated peace, and it’s unclear if Petraeus has the same threshold for potential discussions with the Taliban as McChrystal. There has been American resistance to the idea (as there should be) of reconciling with any of the Taliban’s upper eschelon, but would Petraeus draw the line slightly differently than McChrystal?

Relations with Eikenberry: It became clear that the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, was playing second fiddle to McChrystal, who had established a clear working relationship with Karzai. During Petraeus’ time in Iraq, he may have held more sway than then-Ambassador Ryan Crocker, but they were an inseparable team that appeared together constantly. Petraeus, who is as much of a diplomat as a solider, will work to forge a better relationship with Eikenberry and turn this operation into a true civilian-military effort.

Relations with Karzai: Karzai very publicly lobbied for McChrystal to stay, and by many accounts, the two were on the same page (at least professionally). Is it possible that they were too close? Will Petraeus do a better job using America’s isolated points of leverage to extract more from the Afghan government?

Relations with Pakistan: This quote says it all:

McChrystal also played a key role in improving Kabul’s rocky relationship with Islamabad.

Yet Petraeus probably has as much, if not more, clout in Islamabad. He was an early proponent of a regional strategy that prioritized improving relations with Pakistan in hopes of persuading it to target the Afghan Taliban fighters who use Pakistani hideouts to plot attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.

Petraeus has visited Pakistan numerous times, delivering assurances that the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan would not spill over into Pakistan, visiting Pakistani paramilitary forces in the northwestern city of Peshawar and regularly praising Pakistan’s fight against its domestic Taliban.

“There’s a complete understanding of each other’s situation,” a senior Pakistani military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “He’s not a stranger.”

Troops on the ground: There’s been no shortage of troops in Afghanistan who voiced their displeasure with McChrystal’s restrictions on the use of force. Think of it this way: you’re an 18-year-old Marine, –and you’ve become a trained killer and sent to a war zone. But your commanding general seems like he’s telling you not to do the job you’ve been trained for. Many of the troops’ quotes imply a certain amount of lost respect for McChrystal. Petraeus will have to work to explain the mission and win them over to a “mission first” mentality. Training stateside should also be adjusted accordingly.

Petraeus is the consummate pro, and he’ll no doubt do his best in an incredibly challenging environment with far-from-certain results. My take is that this transition will be as smooth as one could hope.

Photo credit: Jon-Phillip Sheridan’s Photostream