U.S.-Poland SOFA Agreement

In case you missed it, Undersecretary of State Ellen Tauscher was in Poland yesterday to sign a Status of Forces Agreement. The forces in question are the U.S. troops that will be stationed there to service the Patriot missile batteries that have replaced the “hard” missile defense installations that so riled Russia. In other words, Poland got what it wanted all along, which was an American troop presence, if a less permanent one, to create on-the-ground commitments on the part of the U.S. The fact that Poland has also committed more troops to Afghanistan suggests that whatever offense was taken […]

Scaling Back Corruption Will Give Afghans Another Option

“Corruption is the great leveler,” 2009 Afghan presidential candidate Ashraf Ghani said at an Asia Society event on Tuesday. “We have perfect national unity [on that subject], when we are divided on other things.” Corruption is not unique to Afghanistan, or other developing nations. However, ending large-scale corruption there will be one of the pillars needed to form a stable nation, according to experts at an Asia Society event. Ghani, a former Afghan finance minister, broke down the corruption issue in alarming detail, exposing the shortcomings of both the international and Afghan communities. For a country that recently acknowledged that […]

Counterinsurgency, commonly referred to by its military acronym, “COIN,” essentially boils down to armed nation-building — a deliberate process of empowering people and weakening guerrillas until a state-friendly balance emerges. By contrast, counterterrorism seeks the tactical annihilation of the enemy. President Barack Obama’s new Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy is an effort to do both, promising to dismantle and disrupt al-Qaida while leaving the expensive and time-consuming job of definitively defeating it to Islamabad and Kabul. Call it COIN-lite. Can such an approach work? For now, yes. But if we extend the time horizon to 5-10 years from now, the outlook […]

This Week’s WPR Video Highlights

Here are a few of this week’s highlights from WPR’s video section: – President Obama met with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan this week. In this press conference, the leaders discuss a wide range of issues. In a twist, following Erdogan’s visit to the U.S., the Turkish ambassador to the United States resigned from his post. – As Obama’s new Afghan strategy begins to be implemented, experts in this VOA video say Pakistan must play a key role. – RussiaToday reports on a new Russia-India nuclear deal. The move to intensify bilateral ties comes on the heels of Prime Minister Manmohan […]

Exagerrating Corruption’s Effect in Afghanistan

I’ve long felt that the discussion of the Afghan government’s many shortcomings tends to exagerrate the importance of the corruption factor in driving the insurgency. To the extent that the government is corrupt, that’s more a problem for those funding it — namely, international donors. The problem in Afghanistan is that the government is not just corruptbut also incompetent, leaving service vacuums in terms of security andlaw and order that are filled by the Taliban. But worse still, all thereporting suggests that government officials are also actively engagedin either targeting the population or else complicit with those thatdo. I was […]

TOKYO — Asia may already have an alphabet soup of regional economic and security arrangements, but Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd seems to believe there is room for at least one more. At a gathering of regional ministers, media and think tanks, Rudd argued that the region risked drifting in the face of challenges ahead. “We need to plan — we need to plan with each other, rather than against each other, as has often been the custom in times past,” he said, addressing a two-day conference, “Asia Pacific: A Community for the 21st Century,” held in Sydney beginning last […]

NEW DELHI — After months of vacillation, and relentless pressure from Western nations, India finally announced a unilateral climate mitigation measure to reduce its carbon intensity levels by 20 percent to 25 percent on its 2005 levels over the next 11 years. The decision comes against the looming backdrop of the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, which opened on Dec. 7. The new goals mark an unambiguous departure from New Delhi’s traditional position that rich nations are historically responsible for global warming and should therefore take up the bulk of the responsibility for all reduction efforts. India has […]

NATO’s New Clothes

I mentioned a WSJ article last week that reported that Georgia would be deploying a brigade to Afghanistan. That raised my eyebrows, since a Georgian brigade can be as much as 3,300 troops. But Joshua Keating found this WaPo article putting the number of Georgia troops at a more realistic 900. The WSJ article has since been revised to reflect that number as well, with no mention of a brigade anymore. (Keating raises another interesting point, namely, why would Georgia think that contributing troops to Afghanistan will help its NATO chances, which I’ll try to discuss a bit later.) As […]

Karzai Talks Security

In a joint news conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates,Afghan President Hamid Karzai stated that Afghanistan is 15 to 20 yearsaway from being able to afford a modern, expansive military force.Gates says that he does not see that long of a time frame and hopesthat Afghan forces will be able to operate on their own in five years.Al Pessin reports from Kabul for VOA News.

The Next Revolution in Military Affairs?

A lot has been written, both here on this blog and elsewhere, about COIN being the most significant military transformation to emerge from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But this Small Wars Journal post on a Marine Corps experiment to reduce the smallest independent unit of action from the battalion level to the rifle company level struck me as being potentially more significant. The move grows out of stabilization operations, and so is perfectly consistent with the COIN tactical emphasis on small-unit autonomy to react to the local social terrain. But that kind of transformation, once begun, will probably […]

Afghan Women’s Rights Situation Deteriorates

Afghan women face widespread discrimination with little help from a government that is failing to protect them against a rising tide of violence, Human Rights Watch warns in a new report. “The situation for Afghan women and girls is dire and could deteriorate. While the world focuses on the Obama administration’s new security strategy, it’s critical to make sure that women and girls’ rights don’t just get lip service while being pushed to the bottom of the list by the government and donors,” Rachel Reid, a HRW Afghanistan researcher said in a press release. The report, “We Have the Promises […]

Mullen Talks on Afghanistan

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen speaks withNewsHour’s Jim Lehrer after having spoken with troops that will deployto Afghanistan as part of President Obama’s new strategy. Mullen saysthat he stressed to troops that they should learn about Afghan cultureto try and best understand the people they are fighting alongside. Healso again stressed that the 2011 withdrawal date is simply a target.

On the first anniversary of the Mumbai attacks, many observers discussed the implications of the events that took place last Nov. 26. But few have commented on the implications of what did not take place: New Delhi did not mobilize its armed forces. It did not retaliate against terrorist safe havens, nor did it go to war with the country — Pakistan — where they were located. Rather, it limited its response to calling upon its neighbor to shut down the terrorist cells and extradite the masterminds and abettors of the Mumbai attackers. Islamabad responded half-heartedly. It failed to bring […]

Iran has long been considered one of India’s key allies in the Muslim world. But relations between the two countries have been adrift since India voted against Iran at the IAEA, in 2005 and 2006. Taken aback by India’s position, the Islamic republic responded by blocking already contracted shipments of liquid natural gas (LNG) on the grounds that the price needed to be renegotiated. The move effectively downgraded the Indo-Iranian energy relationship, with Iran subsequently making noises about building a gas pipeline to China, even as Saudi Arabia’s importance as an energy supplier to India continues to grow. However, the […]

The current annual summit between the governments of India and Russia, scheduled to last from Dec. 6-8, testifies to the continuing shared interests between both countries. Russian and Indian policymakers still pursue many common objectives while having few divergent ones. Yet, ongoing improvements in India’s relations with Western countries, especially the United States, present challenges to Russian policymakers as they strive to maintain Russia’s position as India’s most important strategic partner. A few days before arriving in Moscow, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh gave a lengthy interview with Russian media outlets in which he lavished praise on Russia. Calling their […]

A little more than 10 years after the people of what is now Timor-Leste voted for independence, this small, half-island country has compressed into a few short years what many other post-colonial states have taken decades to achieve. It has been largely destroyed, achieved independence, had a political crisis, transitioned to democracy, and now appears to be heading into a period of political calm and economic growth. After the near-catastrophic events of 2006, Timor-Leste’s prospects are looking relatively positive, even if a number of important caveats apply. After roughly 300 years of Portuguese colonial neglect came to an end in […]

“We must make sure that the deployment of our troops is not merely the appetizer and that the main course becomes . . . an outbreak of nation-building and infrastructure construction and resources which are . . . not within our capacity to provide for everyone around the world.” After eight years of operations in Afghanistan, and the recent announcement that additional troop deployments will continue to execute a strategy that stretches the military beyond its traditional combat role for at least another 18 months, the above quotation could easily convey the commitment-fatigue prevalent in Washington these days. But the […]

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