If you are at all interested in the future national security of the United States, do yourself a favor and take a few minutes to read Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen’s speech yesterday at Kansas State University. It’s clear that Adm. Mullen understands the changing nature of warfare in the 21st century and that the military must adapt along with it. Mullen’s fears that U.S. foreign policy is “too dominated by the military” is particularly striking given that Adm. Mullen is, well, the highest ranking military officer in the U.S. military. Or, to quote Nathan Hodge of Danger Room, Mullen seems to be saying that, “avoiding wars is as important as winning them.”

Adm. Mullen endorses a strong, smart and principled national security worldview that progressives should embrace. Here are a few extended excerpts (they’re long, but worth it), which should double as powerful rebuttals to any conservative who accuses progressives of being “weak on security”:
On the nature of war:

[T]here is no single defining American way of war. It changes over time, and it should change over time, adapting appropriately to the most relevant threats to our national security….[T]he military may be the best and sometimes the first tool; it should never be the only tool. The tangible effects of military engagement may give policymakers a level of comfort not necessarily or wholly justified. As we have seen, the international environment is more fluid and more complex than ever before.
[…]
Contrary to popular imagination, war has never been a set-piece affair. The enemy adapts to your strategy and you adapt to his. And so you keep the interplay going between policy and strategy until you find the right combination at the right time.
[…]
Trying everything else is not weakness. It means we don’t give up. It means we never stop learning, and in my view if we’ve learned nothing else from these two wars of ours, it is that a flexible, balanced approach to using military force is best.

On the relationship between defense and diplomacy:

Defense and diplomacy are simply no longer discrete choices, one to be applied when the other one fails, but must, in fact, complement one another throughout the messy process of international relations….[W]e cannot count on military might alone. We have to invest in our homeland security; we have to improve and better coordinate our intelligence; and we will have to use diplomacy, because no one nation can meet the challenges of an interconnected world acting alone. My fear, quite frankly, is that we aren’t moving fast enough in this regard.

 

U.S. foreign policy is still too dominated by the military, too dependent upon the generals and admirals who lead our major overseas commands. Secretaries Clinton and Gates have called for more funding and more emphasis on our soft power, and I could not agree with them more. Should we choose to exert American influence solely through our troops, we should expect to see that influence diminish in time.

On the use of force:

 

Force should, to the maximum extent possible, be applied in a precise and principled way….[P]recisely applying force in a principled manner can help reduce…costs and actually improve our chances of success. In this type of war, when the objective is not the enemy’s defeat but the people’s success, less really is more. Each time an errant bomb or a bomb accurately aimed but against the wrong target kills or hurts civilians, we risk setting our strategy back months, if not years.

Precise and principled force applies whether we are attacking an entrenched enemy or securing the population. In either case, it protects the innocent. We protect the innocent. It’s who we are. And in so doing, we better preserve both our freedom of action and our security interests.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/thejointstaff/ / CC BY 2.0

I haven’t written much on the Marja offensive—the joint US/Afghan/NATO operation in the Helmand province city of the same name—because I wanted to see how it played out before drawing sweeping conclusions.

The assault on Marja (population 80,000) is now in its third week. It is the largest offensive in Afghanistan by U.S./NATO/Afghan troops since 2002, involving some 5,000 total troops. Marja had been one of the last significant Taliban strongholds in Helmand province, and NATO and Afghan commanders had eyed it as potentially excellent example of the alliance’s new force posture and growing inter-operability with the Afghan military. “Force posture,” you ask? That’s right—lost in last year’s debate of how many American troops to send was the more important point about why extra forces were needed.

General McChrystal’s counter-insurgency strategy was a page ripped from General Petraeus’ Iraq playbook of early 2007, when violence in that war began to decrease significantly. It’s a military mindset that values protecting the local population over killing the enemy. General Petraeus rightly pointed out, “We don’t want to destroy Marja to save it.”

The mantra “clear, hold, and build” has been the recipe for success: clearing Taliban out of an area, holding the area so Taliban don’t immediately return, and building basic governing capacities that show locals that NATO and Afghan forces are serious about improving people’s lives, not just destroying. To execute this strategy, you need more boots on the ground.

It’s important for progressives to realize that though American casualties have been rising as our forces live among Afghans, that’s because they’re putting themselves in the firing line between civilians and the Taliban. Of course, civilians are killed, whether it’s because our forces have mistakenly identified a location as a Taliban hideout or because the Taliban has ruthlessly used civilians as human shields. There have been, depending on whose numbers you believe, probably somewhere around 25 civilian deaths in Marja thus far. They are all tragedies. But as Sarah Holewinski (full disclosure: a friend through the Truman National Security Project) of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Combat (CIVIC) says, care to avoid civilian casualties is at its highest in years:

Soldiers on the ground are telling us, ‘look, we’re restricting our air power. We’re going in on foot. We are shooting only when we know that that other combatant is carrying a gun. So we’re trying to distinguish as clearly as possible between civilians and combatants.’ ….And then when an incident actually does happen, they are very quick to do an investigation, and then pay compensation.

The offensive was repeatedly announced in the Afghan press weeks before it happened. Sounds crazy, right? But the military knew that even though many Taliban fighters would flee out of town, the better course of action was to give civilians time to prepare.

The military side of the campaign was relatively swift and effective. The Afghan flag now flies over Marja, and mid-level American officers are happy with the progress. Taliban certainly remain scattered throughout the countryside, but as long as they are dispersed away from the city with no real power-base, that’s acceptable for now.

But here comes the hard part—the “building” phase. General McChrystal says, “We’re not at the end of the military phase, but we’re clearly approaching that….The government of Afghanistan is in the position now of having the opportunity, and the requirement, to prove they can establish legitimate governance.”

 

McChrystal has said that there’s an Afghan “government in a box” (allegedly trustworthy Afghans set to temporarily run Marja) ready to roll in and start working on basic public services. That’s a plus because it clears out the local corruption-laden crew and stands a better chance of success, but potentially dangerous because the government transplants are aliens to the local power structures and traditional Afghan system of family-based patronage.

So what do the locals think? As far as I’ve observed, quotes from local tend to fall into three general categories, something along these lines and in roughly equal numbers:

1. “Good riddance to the Taliban. This operation was needed.”
2. “Life wasn’t so bad under the Taliban. It wasn’t great, but I was surviving. What are the Americans doing?”
3. “The Afghan Army is completely incompetent. If they Americans don’t stay engaged in Marja, the whole deal will have been for nothing.”

Thus far, Marja seems to have been an effective demonstration of the first two aspects of counter-insurgency strategy (“clear” and “hold”), but the “build” will take months upon months to come to fruition. If the NATO/Afghan engagement produces an effective local government with decent public services, public opinion will begin to swing towards the first quote above. That’s a big “if.”

And if it is indeed one of the last major Taliban strongholds in southern Afghanistan — I’m not expert enough to weigh whether that’s true — the Marja operation will have certainly been worth it.

Take a minute to soak in Tom Ricks’ column in NYT today. Here are a two key excerpts:

IRAQ’S March 7 national election, and the formation of a new government that will follow, carry huge implications for both Iraqis and American policy. It appears now that the results are unlikely to resolve key political struggles that could return the country to sectarianism and violence.  If so, President Obama may find himself later this year considering whether once again to break his campaign promises about ending the war, and to offer to keep tens of thousands of troops in Iraq for several more years. Surprisingly, that probably is the best course for him, and for Iraqi leaders, to pursue.

[…]

The political situation is far less certain, and I think less stable, than most Americans believe. … All the existential questions that plagued Iraq before the surge remain unanswered. How will oil revenue be shared among the country’s major groups? What is to be the fundamental relationship between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds? Will Iraq have a strong central government or be a loose confederation? And what will be the role of Iran (for my money, the biggest winner in the Iraq war thus far)?

Ricks goes on to advocate slowing down the U.S. withdrawal, which can really only occur if the Iraqis offer to re-open negotiations on the status of forces agreement (SOFA). It was signed in the waning days of the Bush administration and establishes December 31, 2011, as the date when “all United States forces shall withdraw from Iraq.”

While the future in Iraq certainly continues to look murky and Ricks’ suggestion should be kept in mind, I don’t think we’re quite at the point of seriously debating a change to the SOFA just yet. Let’s wait until the March 7th elections have passed and the mood of the country and new government shake out until we think about it. After all, it’s not our call anyway — as the SOFA clearly states, “The United States recognizes the sovereign right of the Government of Iraq to request the departure of the United States Forces from Iraq at any time,” and that’s a politically weighty sentence to revisit if you’re a brand new Iraqi government.

That’s why I don’t think the announcement of General Odierno’s contingency plan to delay withdrawal is much of a definite harbinger at this point. That’s what the military does — it plans for things. They’re the best Boy Scouts (motto: Be Prepared) in the world. And just because it plans, doesn’t mean the commander-in-chief is about to put those plans in motion. After all, we have a plan on the books to attack Iran. And I’ve got $20 that says we have a plan to attack Canada.

But then again, invading Canada would make winning the hockey gold medal a lot less fun.

Najibullah Zazi pled guilty yesterday in what should be a major coup for the administration. Right now, they’re not exploiting it for all it’s worth.

First, some background: Zazi traveled from Colorado to New York with explosives in his car and the intention to detonate them in the New York subway, potentially killing hundreds of innocent Americans. The NYT is reporting that Zazi copped to it after DOJ pressured him into cooperation out of fear that the inquiry might widen to include other members of his family. As a part of the deal, prospectors believe he’ll prove a valuable source of information about his contacts in Pakistan, where he met with al Qaeda and learned to make the devices.

Though Zazi’s plea has been sealed by the judge, he has admitted to conspiracies to use weapons of mass destruction, to commit murder in a foreign country, and to provide material support for a terrorist organization. In exchange, he’ll reportedly be sentenced to a life term in a June 25th hearing. Leaving Zazi to anonymously rot in jail is a win-win for the USA in the worldwide PR battle with al Qaeda, too. Sentencing him to die denies terrorists the sickening prospect of using Zazi as a “martyr” in recruiting and financing propaganda. This is worth remembering when KSM’s sentencing comes around.

The case demonstrates that the intelligence community can partner with law enforcement agencies to provide swift, effective justice to those who would harm us. The American security apparatus “connected the dots” to prevent a major terrorist attack. What’s more, it shows that the Obama administration is committed to defeating terrorism and can apply the civilian justice system as part of that effort.

The bottom line is that this is an absolutely huge win for a sound, progressive worldview on national security. The good news is that Attorney General Eric Holder is out making the case. The bad news is that he’s making the case in the wrong way. Here’s a telling statement on the usefulness of the civilian court system from his press conference:

To take this tool [civilian courts] out of our hands, to denigrate this tool flies in the face of facts and is more about politics than it is about facts.

It’s a perfectly sound and correct argument. It’s also one that most Americans ignore.

It would be much more effective to frame the national security argument in terms of emotion, not wonkery. Americans want to hear that their country is strong, that we’re beating terrorism, and that we’re on the offensive in that fight. Using civilian courts shouldn’t be referred to as a “tool”; rather, the entire case should be framed as a “strong victory over those who are dedicated to killing us.”

Conservatives don’t care about facts. They fight these ideological battles on emotional grounds, and for decades their arguments have resonated more with Americans than progressive ones. I would rather have the AG preempting conservative attacks using the Zazi case by projecting an image of staunch, fist-pounding resolve to defend the country, not wonkishly responding to conservatives’ false assertions that civilian courts are weak.

Think I’m wrong? Look no farther than this WaPo/ABC poll that shows the only category that conservatives are “winning” on national security right now is the civilian courts vs. military courts argument, despite the civilian courts’ effectiveness in the Reid, Moussaoui, and, now, Zazi cases. Why? My hunch is that the emotional idea behind a military court simply projects a better image of strength, irrespective of the justice it may deliver.

Now is the time to go on the offensive. Progressives should use this very tangible example of progressive strength and smarts on national security and show that conservative approaches continue to be reckless. Or we could continue fighting this battle on conservatives’ terms and keep wasting our breath.

It’s not hard to understand China’s angry reaction to President Obama’s meeting yesterday with the Dalai Lama. Beijing claims that Tibet’s spiritual leader is a “separatist,” but he has never demanded independence. Instead, the Dalai Lama has become a living symbol of ideals that China, for all its burgeoning strength, deeply fears: human rights, free expression, religious liberty and democracy.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14^th Dalai Lama, is unquestionably a thorn in Beijing’s side. Since being forced into exile in 1959, he has been a gentle but relentless opponent of China’s attempts to suppress Tibetan cultural and spiritual identity. The “simple Buddhist monk,” as he calls himself, won the Nobel Peace Prize for espousing nonviolence in the struggle for Tibetan autonomy within China.

The Dalai Lama is cut from the same mold as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., great moral leaders who rose to prominence by fusing the spiritual and the political. But where Gandhi and King couched their demands for justice in values honored (if in the breach) by their oppressors, the Dalai Lama confronts a Chinese regime that rejects liberal ideals as exclusively Western. On the contrary, it vaunts the superiority of  “Asian values” of order, social harmony, and deference to authority.

Of course, the Dalai Lama’s rejection of violence, his refusal to foment ethnic hatred, and his calls for dialogue with Beijing, are prudent as well as grounded in the values of Tibetan Buddhism. After all, there are only six million Tibetans living in close proximity to over a billion Han Chinese. But as Carl Gershman noted today at a packed ceremony at the Library of Congress, the Dalai Lama’s approach also has “preserved the moral integrity” of the Tibetan cause and left open the door to a future reconciliation with a less insecure, more tolerant Chinese government.

Gershman, president of the National Endowment for Democracy, presented the Dalai Lama with NED’s Democracy Service Medal. The award is intended to highlight what Gershman called an underappreciated dimension of the Dalai Lama’s work – his staunch support for democracy. Over the years, Tibetan exiles in India have developed representative institutions and held elections to select political leaders. Such efforts, of course, only aggravate China more by giving the lie to its claims that democracy isn’t for Asians. In this sense, Gershman noted, Tibet is not a mere sideshow; its fate is linked to that of China’s intrepid dissidents and democracy activists.

They too deserve recognition and moral support from U.S. political leaders, even if that too chafes China’s ruling elites.

The English language online version of Der Spiegel is reporting that Mullah Abdul Salam — a big-fish Taliban commander who has been responsible for recent attacks against German forces stationed in northern Afghanistan — has been arrested by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Salam has been described by both Der Spiegel and the LA Times as the “shadow governor” of province of Kunduz. While Salam doesn’t appear to be the critical lynch-pin that Mullah Baradar was, the LAT explains:

In Kunduz, a once-quiet corner of Afghanistan, Salam presided over a major buildup of Taliban forces over the last 18 months. The insurgents took over entire districts, repeatedly attacked Afghan security posts, harried NATO troops in the province — who were mainly Germans — and menaced a NATO supply line running through Kunduz.

One of the worst civilian-casualty episodes of the war occurred in August after suspected Taliban fighters hijacked a fuel truck. The Germans, fearing the vehicle would be used for an attack on their main base in Kunduz, called in an airstrike that killed dozens of insurgents — and also dozens of civilians.

Late last year, a series of raids, carried out mainly by U.S. special forces, drove the insurgents underground in Kunduz, but their presence remained a threat.

What in the dickens is going on here? As is eloquently detailed in Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars, the ISI essentially started and supported the Taliban throughout the ’90s, and has an institutional culture that has been loathe to crack down on its own project.

Why now? Why has the ISI suddenly decided to wrap-up two significant Taliban commanders in two days, a batting average that makes them look like Ted Williams compared to their standard impersonation of the 1987 Cleveland Indians’ Otis Nixon (I’ll spare you the click — .059 BA).

Consider this: By arresting these guys, the ISI is amassing credit and power. Sure, you could say that the Americans have finally convinced the Pakistanis that it’s in Islamabad’s interest to side with Washington. In the long-term, it definitely is.  But as the strategic landscape shifts and there may be some sort of negotiation with the Taliban (ill-advised though that may be, in my opinion), the ISI is simply collecting all the big cards in its own hand.

The bottom line is that nothing’s for certain just yet — the ISI could continue to cooperate with the Americans, or simply look the other way during an escape attempt, just like the Yemenis.

The capture of Mullah Baradar, the Taliban’s top military commander, is indeed very welcome news. If you want the full scoop on Baradar, read Ron Moreau’s Newsweek profile of him from last August, which depicts Baradar’s role thusly:

Baradar appoints and fires the Taliban’s commanders and governors; presides over its top military council and central ruling Shura in Quetta, the city in southwestern Pakistan where most of the group’s senior leaders are based; and issues the group’s most important policy statements in his own name. It is key that he controls the Taliban’s treasury—hundreds of millions of dollars in narcotics protection money, ransom payments, highway tolls, and “charitable donations,” largely from the Gulf.

[…]

Baradar determines much of the Taliban’s grand strategy as well. In late 2007 he ordered Taliban forces to focus their attacks on disrupting the flow of U.S. and NATO military supplies, and to push closer to the cities, especially Kabul. U.S. military chiefs were dismayed by his success.

[…]

Partly because of Baradar’s strong roots among the Popalzai—Afghanistan’s largest and most influential Pashtun tribe—he could bring a number of tribal leaders onboard in the event of serious peace talks. But for now, Taliban leaders seem convinced that negotiations are merely a ploy to peel off elements of the insurgency, which U.S. commanders have more or less acknowledged. “We see no benefit for the country or Islam in such kind of talks,” Baradar told NEWSWEEK.

Taking Baradar into custody not only removes a critical operational commander from the field of battle, but also has the potential to be a treasure trove of intelligence about ongoing Taliban operations. And though I think that Pakistan’s security services will continue to play both sides, this operation is one piece of notable collaboration between the CIA and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

What should we expect? We should keep in mind a tried and true axiom — we can’t kill or capture our way to victory. As is the pattern after most high-value terrorist/guerilla arrests, Baradar will be almost immediately replaced, likely by a younger and less experienced operative who will maintain a substantial though degraded medium-term operational tempo. These are the kinds of arrests that prove the administration is serious about degrading the Taliban’s capabilities.

But based on this high-value pattern, I expect to see a near-term spike in Taliban attacks as the group attempts to prove its continued viability. It will be interesting to see what sort of effect the arrest has on the ongoing battle at Marja (a Taliban stronghold in the Helmund province), a joint U.S.-Afghan operation that could have been timed to knock the Taliban further on their heels during a period of internal instability.

This is unbelievably rich. Check out this exchange from Dick Cheney’s appearance on the ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday:

DICK CHENEY: I think, in fact, the situation with respect to al Qaeda, to say that, you know, that was a big attack we had on 9/11, but it’s not likely again, I just think that’s dead wrong. I think the biggest strategic threat the United States faces today is the possibility of another 9/11 with a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind. And I think al Qaeda is out there even as we meet, trying to figure out how to do that.

JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS: And do you think that the Obama administration is taking the necessary steps to prevent that?

CHENEY: I think they need to do everything they can to prevent, and if the mindset is it’s not likely, then it’s difficult to mobilize the resources and get people to give it the kind of priority that it deserves.

Every time Dick Cheney claims or infers that the Obama administration isn’t fighting al Qaeda as hard as the Bush administration supposedly did, repeat after me: Remember the Iraq War? If the Bush administration was as focused on al Qaeda as Dick Cheney misremembers, would we have gone into Iraq?

It’s even more astounding that Republicans are so desparate to criticize the administration on national security that they’re now claiming that the Obama administration is being too harsh. You read that correctly. Here’s Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO), the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee:

Over a year after taking office, the administration has still failed to answer the hard questions about what to do if we have the opportunity to capture and detain a terrorist overseas, which has made our terror-fighters reluctant to capture and left our allies confused. If given a choice between killing or capturing, we would probably kill.

If Senator Bond will take the flowers out of his hair for a second, he might remember an exchange with CIA Director Leon Panetta as Panetta revealed the cancellation of a legally questionable CIA program to kill al Qaeda operatives. Bond seemed far more in favor of killing AQ members back in July when he asked the director:

Why would you cancel [the program to kill AQ operatives]? If the CIA weren’t trying to do something like this, we’d be asking ‘Why not?’ “

I guess he was for it before he was against it.

Keep in mind that none of the Republican attacks on national security are working anyway, as evidenced by the latest polls.

Francis Fukuyama is often derided in progressive circles because he was one of the architects of neoconservatism. Fair enough — when you’re one of the intellectual driving forces behind the Iraq War, that’s going to cost some credibility down the road. But Fukuyama’s shaky track record goes back even farther, when he predicted in 1992’s The End of History and The Last Man that the end of the Cold War essentially signaled the end of ideological struggle between civilizations. Someone forgot to tell that to al Qaeda.

With all that behind him, it’s understandable why some would be leery about paying him heed now. But Fukuyama’s most recent WSJ op-ed is actually worth your time. Fukuyama’s piece focuses on democracy promotion in the Middle East, a policy that has traction with groups across the political spectrum, including PPI, the National Democratic Institute, The Project on Middle East Democracy, and the International Republican Institute. And if a high-profile neoconservative acknowledges the failings of the Bush administration and smartly pushes the current administration on a sound policy, then we should pay attention. He says:

While Mr. Obama paid lip service to the need for greater Middle East democracy in his June 2009 Cairo speech to the Muslim world, he has done very little concretely to back this up in terms of quiet pressure for democratic change on the part of allies like Egypt, Jordan or Morocco. Indeed, the administration’s ramping up of military support for Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the wake of the attempted Christmas day airliner bombing suggests that we’ve gone back to the traditional U.S. policy of reliance on Arab strongmen.

This would be a big mistake. For the core premises of the Freedom Agenda remain essentially correct, even as its enunciation in the midst of the Iraq invasion undercut its credibility. Mr. Obama runs the risk of falling in bed with the same set of Middle Eastern authoritarians and alienating broad political populations in the region. …

The problem with the Bush administration’s Freedom Agenda wasn’t its fundamental analysis, but the way that it was articulated in the midst of the highly unpopular Iraq war. Democracy promotion was used from the start to justify the invasion, and in the eyes of many Arabs became synonymous with American occupation….

Mr. Obama arrived in office with none of this baggage, and therefore had an opportunity to recommit the United States to peaceful democratic change. But the window is rapidly closing as the U.S. draws closer to the region’s authoritarian rulers.

While I’m not sure that the Obama administration’s focus on Yemen undercuts the Cairo speech in the way Fukuyama suggests, I think the general point is valid. After all, the trick is protecting America’s immediate interests while encouraging openness over the long term. So how to strike that balance? I’d recommend checking out a few of POMED’s publications, like those here. Or, check out a paper Shadi Hamid wrote for PPI last year.