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As soon as Woodward’s new book appeared, you knew Charles Krauthammer would have at it. Here’s that column.
… What kind of commander in chief sends tens of thousands of troops to war announcing in advance a fixed date for beginning their withdrawal? One who doesn’t have his heart in it. One who doesn’t really want to win but is making some kind of political gesture. One who thinks he has to be seen as trying but is preparing the ground — meaning, the political cover — for failure.
Until now, the above was just inference from the president’s public rhetoric. No longer. Now we have the private quotes. Bob Woodward’s new book, drawing on classified memos and interviews with scores of national security officials, has Obama telling his advisers: “I want an exit strategy.” He tells the country publicly that Afghanistan is a “vital national interest,” but he tells his generals that he will not do the kind of patient institution-building that is the very essence of the counterinsurgency strategy that Gens. Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus crafted and that he — Obama — adopted.
Moreover, he must find an exit because “I can’t lose the whole Democratic Party.” This admission is the most crushing of all.
First, isn’t this the party that in two consecutive presidential campaigns — John Kerry’s and then Obama’s — argued vociferously that Afghanistan is the good war, the right war, the war of necessity, the central front in the war on terror? Now, after acceding to power and being given charge of that very war, Obama confides that he must retreat, lest that very same party abandon him. What happened in the interim? Did it suddenly develop a faint heart? Or was the party disingenuous about the Afghan war all along, using it as a convenient club with which to attack George W. Bush over Iraq, while protecting Democrats from the charge of being reflexively antiwar? …
Streetwise Professor, Craig Pirrong gives us a look at the military’s thinking about Afghanistan that Woodward’s account does not offer.
…It would be more accurate to say: the military refused to provide Obama with the option he preferred–and which the military knew he preferred. That option being, of course, a plan for a rapid withdrawal from Afghanistan. Rapid withdrawal being something between an immediate cut and run leaving behind a token force of trainers, and an only slightly lighter version of the plan currently in force.
This refusal frustrated Obama no end, because the military’s obstinacy deprived him of the political cover he desired. The Pentagon and the uniformed military weren’t about to recommend something they did not believe in. They said, in effect: if you want to gut the mission in Afghanistan, you take the responsibility, and don’t hide behind us. …
It should be noted, moreover, that the current brass …are deeply concerned about the stress on the Army and Marines in particular, and would be anxious to reduce commitments to the extent they believe prudent. They also realize that Afghanistan is a logistical nightmare. The fact that they were pretty unified on the approach needed in Afghanistan despite their concerns over the stresses an increased commitment would impose on the force speaks volumes. …
Twice last week we carried items about China’s strange aggressiveness; first from Robert Samuelson and then Anne Applebaum. Showing the benefits to the U. S., is a great piece by Walter Russell Mead in the American Interest as he compares China to Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
… Chinese policy today seems bent on following Wilhelm’s road to ruin. Chinese pressure is pushing countries like India, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Australia towards closer cooperation with the United States. China’s regional allies are substantially weaker and more problematic: North Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan. It’s a picture Wilhelm II would recognize.
Worse, from a Chinese point of view: it will take many years to live down the unpleasant impression its current actions are making. Twenty years of scrupulously patient effort at getting its neighbors to embrace China’s peaceful rise are being squandered by six weeks of aggressive diplomacy. Just as Soviet bullying periodically strengthened the NATO alliance by reminding Europeans just how much they needed American protection, so China today is unintentionally solidifying America’s Pacific alliances at no cost to us.
Personally, I am not gloating about this. America’s goal in Asia is not to win diplomatic or, God forbid, military contests with China. Our long term goal remains the development of some kind of stable international system in Asia that creates the same kind of long term peace and prosperity there that the European Union (with all its faults) has brought to Europe. Our interests will be best served when and if China ceases to throw its weight around in a sterile quest for Wilhelmine Weltmacht and seriously dedicates its power and wealth to the construction of a peaceful Asian system with appropriate protections for its neighbors. The rise of a peaceful German democracy plus an American presence and German memberships in NATO and the EU has helped other Europeans overcome their well founded fear of their Teutonic neighbors. For all the EU’s many problems, Germany today enjoys more real influence and has more security than the kaisers ever knew. …
…American power in the world has both a ceiling and a floor. If America gets too powerful and the world looks too unipolar, then countries around the world start acting in ways that cut America down to size. If China collapsed into years of internal dissension, turbulence and instability, India, Japan and South Korea might well take the opportunity to distance themselves from America. When the Soviet Union collapsed, many of the NATO countries (and especially Germany and France) looked for ways to stake out a more independent world role.
In George W. Bush’s first term, many officials foolishly did and said things that triggered ‘ceiling behavior’ around the world. They created the impression that America had the power and the will to reshape the entire international order to its taste. In truth, we lacked both the ability and the will to carry that through; the Bush rhetoric alienated other countries and set off negative reactions around the world in part because it did not fully grasp the dynamics of America’s world role.
But American power has a floor as well as a ceiling. Just as the defeat in Vietnam ended up by strengthening our ties with Asian countries who were suddenly terrified we would abandon the region in a general retreat, the difficulties the Bush administration experienced did not, as so many of its critics predicted, lead to a general collapse of America’s world position. A chastened but still powerful America is more or less what most of the world really wants: an America that is strong enough to defend regional power balances in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, but not so strong and cocky that it believes it can remake the world in the short term. …
The Economist compares India to China and says that in the long run, India’s economy will win.
…There are two reasons why India will soon start to outpace China. One is demography. China’s workforce will shortly start ageing; in a few years’ time, it will start shrinking. That’s because of its one-child policy—an oppressive measure that no Indian government would get away with. Indira Gandhi tried something similar in the 1970s, when she called a state of emergency and introduced a forced-sterilisation programme. There was an uproar of protest. Democracy was restored and coercive population policies were abandoned. India is now blessed with a young and growing workforce. Its dependency ratio—the proportion of children and old people to working-age adults—is one of the best in the world and will remain so for a generation. India’s economy will benefit from this “demographic dividend”, which has powered many of Asia’s economic miracles.
The second reason for optimism is India’s much-derided democracy. The notion that democracy retards development in poor countries has gained currency in recent years. Certainly, it has its disadvantages. Elected governments bow to the demands of selfish factions and interest groups. Even the most urgent decisions are endlessly debated and delayed.
…No doubt a strong central government would have given India a less chaotic Commonwealth games, but there is more to life than badminton and rhythmic gymnastics. India’s state may be weak, but its private companies are strong. Indian capitalism is driven by millions of entrepreneurs all furiously doing their own thing. Since the early 1990s, when India dismantled the “licence raj” and opened up to foreign trade, Indian business has boomed. The country now boasts legions of thriving small businesses and a fair number of world-class ones whose English-speaking bosses network confidently with the global elite. They are less dependent on state patronage than Chinese firms, and often more innovative: they have pioneered the $2,000 car, the ultra-cheap heart operation and some novel ways to make management more responsive to customers. Ideas flow easily around India, since it lacks China’s culture of secrecy and censorship. That, plus China’s rampant piracy, is why knowledge-based industries such as software love India but shun the Middle Kingdom. …
Claudia Rosett’s latest is on the UN’s plans to deal with contacts with extraterrestrials. No, really. This would be great comedy if we weren’t picking up the tab.
Just when you thought the United Nations could not possibly become any more inane, out comes a story in London’s Sunday Times that the UN is about to appoint a special envoy for alien life forms. The idea, apparently, is that if aliens contact or land on earth, demanding “Take me to your leader,” the UN will have a designated official ready to step in as chief mouthpiece for the human race.
…The question we ought to be asking is how many U.S. tax dollars the UN plans to lavish on this new arrangement. …
…The UN official reportedly in line for the new role of head of alien outreach is a Malaysian astrophysicist, Mazlan Othman. She currently heads the UN’s Vienna-based Office for Outer Space Affairs, also know as UNOOSA, or OOSA. According to London’s Sunday Times, Othman recently gave a recorded talk, in which she said that in the event of signals from extraterrestrials, humankind should be ready with “a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject.” …