A military option - hot war, or hot air?

So, as the last few days of the Bush administration wind to a close, it's perhaps comforting to know we didn't live through the worst of possible outcomes. New reports reveal that, despite earlier fears and rumors, Bush ultimately rejected Israeli requests to facilitate an attack on Iran. (That being said, Sanger appears to be wrong about his first line. A JPost article I linked to earlier notes that not only did we sell Israel GBU-39s, but they're using them now in Gaza.) Now that the US has handed most of Iraqi airspace back over to Baghdad, it seems Israel's last realistic chance to hit Iran without alienating its allies has passed.

Even if you're of the persuasion that the Iranian nuclear program should be stopped by any means, you should be glad the Israeli option isn't on the table. Letting Israel attack Iran would still result in all the same negative consequences for the US (and Israel) without having anywhere near the military effectiveness of an American lead-strike. While the IDF is well-equipped, its ability to use airpower strategically pales in comparison to the United States and would fall short of the level necessary to land a killing blow on the Iranian nuclear program. The entire reason Israel needed to buy GBU-39s in the first place was so Israeli fighter aircraft (F-15s and F-16s) could project the bunker-busting power without sacrificing the range larger ordnance requires. Even then, it's questionable whether Israel could muster enough forces to hit Arak, Ishafan, or Bushehr, Iranian air defense sites and C4I centers, or significantly hamper Iran's ability to retaliate against Israel by unconventional means.

Furthermore, Israel's ability to permanently cripple the Iranian nuclear program is unlikely. Since Iran's nuclear program is far better distributed than Iraq's in 1980, their planned strike at Natanz would still leave other nuclear facilities open. Even if some of them were hit, Israel would substantially increase the incentive for Iran to develop nuclear arms to deter Israeli attack, while only setting the program back a few years. Iran would also likely expel the IAEA inspectors and reject any sort of international controls on its program. Such an attack would be politically embarrassing enough for the US and EU to allow Russia and China to quietly (if even that subtly) provide political cover and material support for Iranian military and nuclear programs.

Meanwhile, the US would hardly escape the political fallout. Using American designed planes, American built bombs, and flying through what was then American patrolled airspace, the US would have been held just as responsible even if its pilots and aircraft were not directly involved. Iranian retaliatory action in Iraq or the Persian Gulf would be likely. As for the Israelis, the fretting about the comparative handful of rockets from Palestinian refugee camps would be nothing compared to the violence of action Hezbollah could achieve with Iran's full support in a retaliatory operation (or even achieved during the 2006 conflict). While Khamenei stands opposed to utilizing Iranian volunteers as martyrs to retaliate against Gaza, there is little doubt in my mind he would be aggressively backing them to respond to an Israeli attack.

That being said, could the United States really have done any better? Would it be able to in the future?

While American strategic airpower is magnitudes greater than anything Israel could hope to muster (bombers, superior basing locations, carriers in the Gulf, and thus the ability to bring more and heavier firepower to bear), airpower alone might not have the ability to prevent an Iranian nuclear program from continuing. The Bush administration originally mulled tactical nuclear weapons to ensure the destruction of Iranian bunkers. Additionally, there's no guarantee that the people and technological skills can be bombed away with the bunkers.

So, John Robb proposed something different - but, by his own admission, still liable to unleash blowback. Instead of simply targeting Iranian nuclear infrastructure, Robb proposes collapsing the Iranian state, and thus its capability to support a nuclear program at all - using Effects-Basd Operations (EBO) to systematically undermine the Iranian regime. But the notion of EBO was discredited the year that article was written - in Lebanon, Israeli reliance on EBO lead to a fiasco. The US military has effectively renounced the concept. So if the application of airpower at any level is unlikely to achieve the desired outcomes, and a ground intervention remains entirely out of the question, can the US honestly pursue a policy where the military option is kept "on the table?"

The credible deterrence value of such a policy is unclear. For Iran to believe we would allow an open-ended conflict we are unprepared to deal with across the Middle East (and into Central Asia where Iran's influence in Afghanistan might come into play), America would be the one playing the role of a "rogue state" that does not recognize Iran's deterrent through insurgency and state sponsored terrorism. But the military option has too much value as a political signal to voters scared of an Iranian bomb, and to countries thinking of withdrawing from the non-proliferation treaty, since the prospect of two countries withdrawing from the treaty and pursuing the nuclear bomb would undermine the NPT's credibility.

So even if diplomatic engagement with Iran is ultimately necessary, does the US really have a fall-back plan for Iran? I'll throw in my ideas later...

The justice and (f)utility of force in Gaza

As Israeli troops enter Gaza and the human cost of Operation Cast Lead mounts, it is becoming increasingly difficult to justify - on moral or strategic grounds - the actions of the IDF. While Israel does have a right to defend itself against attack, it is unlikely that by any standards of just war that Israel is acting proportionately. The morality of interactions between polities - the legalistic morality idealists would like to govern international affairs - does indeed entitle Israel to recourse through force of arms. But war is a broad thing - and it is the execution of this retaliation, not its initiation, that one must examine if one would like any claim to fighting a "just war."

There is a mode of thought, present among proponents of Cast Lead as it is among all modern belligerents, that cuts off its concern with moralism once victimhood entitles one to retaliation. After that point, the ends of retaliation justify the means - military necessity and political-self preservation take precedent. While this argument usually attempts to extend the morality of beginning retaliation to all aspects of its conduct, the underlying message that morality is less relevant, if not irrelevant once both sides are in combat. The only relevant morality is that which entitles the victim to retaliation. There is a case to be made for emphasizing the moral objective or achieving retaliation of winning a conflict at the expense of moral conduct in battle, but it is not one we associate with the notion of just war theory.

When a government wages a war on the proposition that protecting innocent civilians from being bombed, proportionality in its own measures, especially when they are concentrated against an enemy that is not distinct from the civilian population, is necessary. Even in WWII, when the Allies conducted a policy of "total war," that conflict's inherent basis in a state system provided grounds for waging wars against countries (ones that did not recognize in themselves a separation between people and government) with established governments. But Israel does not intend to recognize Hamas as a legitimate government, and therefore it cannot simply write off the Palestinian people's desire for safety and claim they are conducting a just war, and not just invoking the idea of one.

Our sense of proportionality is inextricable from our preferences among the belligerents. How many commentators who claimed Russia's actions in Georgia were disproportionate now support Operation Cast Lead? This is likely why the notion of just war will remain more an elastic clause for belligerents than what it was intended as - an actual constraint on the use of force. Instead, it has become an enabler.

That being said, the ultimate reality of the situation is that even if Israel were to embrace a consequentialist outlook and use whatever means necessary to destroy Hamas, it will doom Cast Lead to failure. Israel's goal of destroying Hamas will prove incompatible with its goal of protecting its population without being forced to conduct a long occupation. Even as the IDF estimates it is killing and capturing hundreds of terrorists a day, more rockets keep falling on Israel. Destroying Hamas would likely require a long operation that approaches the problem in keeping with successful counterinsurgency tactics. Because counterinsurgency and modern warfare has become population-centric, simply going out and killing all of the terrorists is not possible and will not be helpful. Without a significant and sustained military presence, it is unlikely Israel will be able to remove Hamas from the fabric of Palestinian society or , and once Israel does leave Hamas can claim a propaganda victory since Hamas, contrary to Israel's aims, still exists as an armed force. Even if Hamas were to be destroyed, Ehud Barak's objective of ensuring there is "no terror activity in Gaza" would not be achieved. More radical groups like Islamic Jihad, who've been waiting for this war all along, could step in to fill the power vacuum. Gaza without Hamas would be more anarchic and unpredictable than before.

I do not expect the United States to make an all-out effort to resolve this misguided conflict, (especially since our diplomatic sympathies lie deeply enough with Israel to favor its perspective). Nor, ultimately, would it likely be able to. Ehud Barak and the Israeli government are acting out of their own interests and needs, and we will not make much headway in convincing the Israelis not to do so. America has its own share of flawed wars that need attention, and regional crises of much more direct relevance to American interests. There are some who would like to hand Israel-Palestine over to Clinton as soon as Obama is in office (Israel's ground operations will most likely be done with). Some Clinton proponents believed she would be the perfect Secretary of State to handle negotiations, thanks to her credibility among Israeli hawks, past sympathies for Palestinians and association with the most peaceful and (potentially) productive periods in the Israeli-Palestinian relationship. But in the wake of Cast Lead, staking her credibility and legacy to dealing with an intractable conflict that will be of secondary importance to our own wars (and their necessary regional diplomatic efforts) does not strike me as a particularly good idea.

Finance, Industrial Policy and The Limits of Power

I've been reading a lot of Andrew Bacevich lately, and while I may not be enamored with all of his diagnosis or prescriptions for the ailing American hegemon, they are impossible to ignore. At the very least lend a very useful framework for analyzing our present predicament. One of Bacevich's most important observations on domestic politics is that an ideology of "National Security" has, for the past 60 years, justified a relentless expansion of executive power.

TARP has given this expansion new relevance. Because bailout plans are guaranteed to fail if their credibility is undermined by major changes, the short-term well being of the economy is hostage to the will and whimsy of the executive branch. In Bacevich's latest book, America's economic ills consist of its entitlement to a culture of consumption and its underpinnings - cheap credit, cheap oil, and cheap imported goods. As far as economic policy goes, the conservative Bacevich savages Reagan's rhetoric of indulgent individualism. Because economic debate in the United States remains a left vs. right, government vs. market affair (even as the President once decried as "laissez-faire" does more to move America towards "socialism" than any has in years), it is tempting to analyze Bacevich in the same way. Such rhetoric compels the disgruntled to come away from The Limits of Power with a worldview that finds free market ideology complicit with this culture of consumption, and thus the obvious solution with a stronger government that can rein in finance, promote alternative energy and rebuild American industry to wean it off of imports. Reject "market fundamentalism," and the culture of consumption might wither away.

But such an interpretation is naive, if not delusional. If anything, Bacevich's thesis that our economic addictions are rooted beneath the veneer of partisan politics requires us to recognize it as naive and delusional. We have already seen a massive expansion in government power and reining in of the free market, and it has only served to further promote the underpinnings of this "culture of consumption." We have spent over a trillion already and potentially guarantee trillions more to ensure access to credit. The business cycle has taken care of cheap oil for us. As for cheap imported goods, perhaps the government might take a step in the "right" direction. But if you asked me, the widening trade deficit is more a symptom of our refusal to save than of a dangerous reliance on foreign products.

The evolving manifestations of America's insatiable entitlement have substituted government for the market to facilitate its addiction to consumption-fueled growth. The ideology of "National Security" may now find a new place in the bailout debates and industrial policy. Wesley Clark insists that the maintenance of American military power relies on the protection of our auto industry, and justifies his claims with a variety of arguments similar to those The Limits of Power targets. Take one paragraph:

In a little more than a year, the Army has procured and fielded in Iraq more than a thousand so-called mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles. The lives of hundreds of soldiers and marines have been saved, and their tasks made more achievable, by the efforts of the American automotive industry. And unlike in World War II, America didn’t have to divert much civilian capacity to meet these military needs. Without a vigorous automotive sector, those needs could not have been quickly met.

The ideology of "National Security" in The Limits of Power functions as an elastic clause to justify whatever the United States would prefer to do in the interest of power. In this case, Clark identifies the interests of American national security not just with equipping its massive military, but in paving the way for its transformation into fighting counterinsurgency and the war on terror. But he also implies that such debt is necessary so that these wars can be fought without influencing civilian life, hoping to insulate Americans from even indirect civic liability in their conflicts.

We should not be surprised if economic nationalist rhetoric strengthens its rhetoric of national security. The steel industry is never far behind in making similar arguments. While it may seem outlandish to read all such articles through the lens of Bacevich's thesis, it is important to fully absorb the book's argument. The culture of consumption and faith in militarism that brought us to this point was not the making of any one person or party. Neither will the effort that overcomes it be. If we accept his criticism of the past, we must recognize its relevance to our present and future, regardless of who is leading us.

I do not consider Bacevich one of the best critics of the Bush administration because I agree with him entirely (I do not think we can so easily and confidently revert to the purely defensive, conventional military posture he advocates, among other things). I consider Bacevich one of the best critics of the Bush administration because he understands the Bush administration's worst flaws in their proper context - not as the sole responsibility of some cabal that has hijacked America, but as the manifestation of long-term trends at all levels of government and society that both parties and most Americans have comfortably allowed to run rampant, if not encouraged. The root problems will not disappear simply because the party has changed even if the symptoms manifest themselves differently. The most sobering part of The Limits of Power is that we can see the trends it identifies continuing to manifest themselves today. Obsession with immediate economic gratification at the expense of managing debt, messianic ambitions of America's role in world affairs, a national security strategy focused on the "imperial periphery" and the appropriation of the concept to justify the interests of selfish interests in a broken system - these have not disappeared. The current iterations of these actions - the financial bailout, the move away from reducing budget deficits, our desire to regain moral world leadership and fix Afghanistan, to help American industries - are arguably more justified and clear-sighted than those of the Bush administration. But as the country waits in anticipation of the inauguration and an era of change, it is important to remember not only the limits the Bush administration came up against in exercising power abroad, but the limits we will face in truly changing how it is exercised.

You Break America, You Buy American?

Chrysler is set to get a $4 billion loan from the US Treasury to aid its restructuring, the latest in a line of concessions to the American auto industry. I remain skeptical of the utility of these measures. At best, they will likely continue to struggle against foreign automakers with plants in other US States. At worst, there are now concerns we will set off a new wave of beggar-thy-neighbor policies, where "ghosts of Smoot and Hawley... will not announce themselves in their full protectionist garb."

Advocates of industry bailouts declaim criticism of these rescue packages as hypocrites and union-bashers, who would shovel trillions to Wall Street fraudsters whose con games with imaginary money created this mess, while scorning the real, Main Street Americans in Detroit who "make things" and are merely the victims of corporate greed and corruption. However, until financial liquidity is based on the provision of automobiles and not dollars, the same standards simply do not apply. Indeed, our government is theoretically ensuring trillions of dollars to prop up the financial sector. But that does not mean that other industries automatically deserve similar treatment.

No, the real problem with bailout hypocrisy will come when other American industries start demanding their own bailouts, handouts, and government directed favoritism. After all, Americans make more than just cars, and they have stopped buying more than just cars since this recession has hit. The process has already begun with Obama's proposed economic stimulus. The steel industry, for instance, has asked that a "buy American" clause be inserted into any stimulus legislation. Given that the most likely stimulus packages will focus heavily on infrastructure, this would amount to billions in guaranteed purchases of American steel. Theoretically the Keynesian multiplier effect would justify these costs, since the steel workers could in turn spend money and stimulate the economy further. But with the stimulus multiplier of 1.1 or lower likely and other potential pitfalls and inefficiencies to fiscal policy, it would make more sense to provide as many public goods as possible at the lowest cost. That means buying cheaper raw materials even if they come from abroad.

This is more important than just saving money by buying cheaper foreign products, though. Countries like China are desperate to provide some form of stimulus through exports, as their own citizens and governments are unlikely to provide an increase in consumption or spending significant enough to prevent serious slowdowns. In steel, for example, China may already be promoting its companies to export. Should we mix economic recovery with economic nationalism, these countries will have to respond with programs of economic nationalism of their own to compensate for being shut out abroad. Between Treasury involving itself in industry and not just finance and the potential of a "buy American" stimulus, perhaps these claims that fiscal policy might lead to global trade wars may not be so alarmist after all.

The Last Shots of 2008

A month ago I referred to relying on resolving the Kashmir dispute to accomplish our foreign policy goals in South Asia is akin to relying on resolving the Arab-Israeli dispute to accomplish our foreign policy goals in the Middle East. So, true to form, the ceasefire in Gaza has erupted into violence that may lead up to a major ground offensive.

Just as in Kashmir, we would have to put pressure on a nominally allied country to gain the favor of Muslims. It is unlikely we will see any sort of grand settlement without moving Israel closer to its pre-1967 borders or stopping settlement in the West Bank. Meanwhile, that we supply Israel with billions in military arms does little to endear us to the Palestinians or the broader Islamic community.

That being said, Israel is acting entirely within its rights and responsibilities as a sovereign country. When Hamas launches rockets at Israeli homes, Israel is obligated to retaliate against Hamas. Putting pressure on Israel to make concessions as it responds to these attacks may seem like the sensible step for peace negotiations, but in all likelihood it would only strengthen hawks and reduce our leverage as a broker of negotiations, even if it enhanced our credibility among Palestinians.

So far Operation "Cast Lead" seems to be proceeding well for the Israelis. According to most reports, the IDF has caught Hamas unprepared and landed heavy blows against infrastructure and logistics. Thanks to this surprise advantage (and some new ordnance from Uncle Sam), Israel's tactics of using airstrikes seem to be working reasonably effectively so far, with "50 percent" of capability for rocket attack eliminated. (The IDF actually started its own Youtube channel to highlight its "precision bombing" in Gaza, while Arab networks have already brought Gaza to the center of their attention.)

But with 20,000 Hamas fighters in Gaza and the party's non-military wing firmly embedded in the Strip's social services, it's going to take more than a bombing campaign to destroy their operational capability. So far, the Israeli government has alluded to new phases of operations, possibly involving ground troops in an operation "to totally change the rules of the game." Even if this was enough to destroy Hamas, would Israel really want to? Because destroying Hamas would require destroying the government of Gaza, does Israel really have a Phase IV planned to pick up the pieces?

On top of all of this, the man who has the most riding on Operation Cast Lead, Ehud Barak, is also the man most to bring progress in negotiations - and with the election coming up soon, he cannot afford to bring Israel another July War.

In Afghanistan, Pakistan's offensive against the insurgents in Pashtunistan has closed off the Peshawar corridor. Since the majority of our supplies come through Pakistan, this is just one more reason why they will have to remain an ally in the war on terror. But since this route is becoming less and less reliable, we will need a new solution. This requires us to deal with two possible alternatives:

1. Strengthening the route through Russia into Central Asia. This means dropping human rights claims against the 'stans and increasing our reliance on Russia through rail transport. While Russia is generally glad NATO is doing its job in Afghanistan and fighting Islamic terror there, this course isn't particularly palatable to people concerned about human rights or worried about Russia's future course.
2. Trying to open the "East-West Corridor" from the Caucasus across the Caspian into Central Asia. Once again, we have to concede human rights issues to countries like Uzbekistan. This time, though, we would likely end up increasing our military presence in the Caucasus in a way Russia would be very unhappy with, possibly stressing the Western European NATO members who fear they will suffer the most from Russia's response to American penetration of the post-Soviet sphere.
   

An Afghan Awakening?

The US is hoping to launch a second "Awakening" of tribal militias - this time in Afghanistan. While this idea might seem commendable, the more one examines Afghanistan, the less viable it seems without some significant changes from how it was accomplished in Iraq. While it will be important that we bring Afghans in the South and East who might otherwise ally themselves with the fundamentalist militias on board, accomplishing this by empowering the militias themselves will likely be a major mistake. Iraq's government had far more credibility at the national and local level, and provided both a pathway for integrating the militias in such a way that the government could eventually monopolize force in those areas, and in the transition could theoretically check potential excesses on the part of the Sons of Iraq, and thus helped balance power between combatant factions.

In Afghanistan, however, actual local governance is incredibly weak, since many officials aren't elected but appointed. If we pursue these tactics, we will be delegating more power to the tribes and people of Afghanistan in some ways, yes, but we will not be doing so in a sustainable manner. The Awakening in Iraq is working because it built on ties between Sunni communities and the militias; through the plan to integrate the militia members with the government, it in turn helped bind the militias to the government and thus would help reinforce the credibility of the Shia dominated government to Sunnis. The militia program in Afghanistan, however, seems to bypass the idea of building government credibility or ties between the militias and the government entirely:

During a weekend visit, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the U.S. focus on establishing a strong central government in Afghanistan may have been "overstated." He said the U.S. would now focus more on "enabling the communities, the tribes and their leaders."

"How strong the central government will be in the future, I think, is yet to be determined," he told reporters.

This is focusing on a legitimate problem but responding in a very risky way. I certainly have been critical of a Kabul-centric Afghan policy. That said, I don't think the solution is to create a parallel security force that does what the government is supposed to. Now, the creation of these militias is indeed only a first phase, but until we can integrate them with the de jure local governments they will require constant US handling to prevent them from further destabilizing Afghanistan in the long run. However, that integration cannot be effective until the people of Afghansitan see their local governments as legitimate, which means without fixing the problem of governance in Afghanistan this entire effort may be wasted.

To be fair, similar criticisms were voiced at the beginning of the Anbar Awakening, and fortunately many of these fears have not (yet) been realized. But again: different country, different problems. As we've already seen, Afghanistan there are the issues of governance to sort out. But there are also underlying problems in our military strategy, too. Where the United States had a significant ground presence in Sunni-dominated areas in Iraq, the ground presence in the turbulent regions of Afghanistan has proven inadequate. America cannot effectively combat today's hostile militias because when Americans (or whatever other ISAF force there is) go back to their bases, the Taliban can control the countryside. Replace "Taliban" with "warlords" and one can see why revitalizing non-governmental militias could be so dangerous. If warlords do come to control these militias, checking them will not be easy, since they, not the US, not ISAF, and not the Afghan government, will have the last words. Counterinsurgency needs to be population-centric to succeed, and without our soldiers being deployed accordingly, the militia strategy will indeed be counterproductive. If we do not want to send another hundred thousand or more troops into Afghanistan for a long, long time, we will need to begin deploying our men into the midst of the villages we hope to defend. Such a strategy may carry a higher cost in both blood and treasure, but there is no easy way to win this war.

Also in the news...

As the global economy flounders, Russia is organizing the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, in hopes of... "not creating a cartel." Keep in mind that Putin came up with the idea of a "Gas OPEC" in 2002 and that Gazprom board member and nominal Russian "executive" Medvedev hoped this organization would achieve OPEC's level of influence. How such an organization could achieve OPEC's influence without the power to manipulate the flow of gas is beyond me. And while yes, there are Russian ships cruising in the Carribbean again, those interested in geopolitics should be more concerned about Russia's energy deals than its military deployments. Russia's fleet is still not a viable challenge to the US on the open seas, and even if the era of "cheap gas" and today's falling energy prices ends, it still won't be enough - even when the gap between the US and USSR was narrowest, the US still had a clear naval advantage outside of the USSR's regional waters. However, because Gazprom intends to invest more in energy resources outside the post-Soviet sphere, Latin America is more important to the Kremlin for economic reasons than military ones. While countries like Bolivia and Venezuela are ideologically opposed to American influence and globalization, this does serve as a good reminder of why the US needs to stay politically active and economically open around the world - there are countries waiting to pick up where we left off, and they may not use such an advantage to our best interests.

Piling it On

This is not looking like a good week for optimists.

The NBER threw in the towel and decided that despite the discrepancy between quarterly GDP forecasts and the official definition, the US downturn started in December 2007. Before people start grumbling about the worthless academics taking too long to get in touch with reality, remember when the stimulus package to "real Americans" was supposed to save the economy? Those were the days...

Mankiw and Cowen have good NYT editorials on the economy, in particular on what lessons we should really be taking from the '30s.

But, you shouldn't become too wrapped up in worrying about the economy. According to a bipartisan Congressional task force, you should also be worried about an attack on the US using weapons of mass destruction, the odds of which "are now better than even" between now and 2013. The report points out that a biological attack is more likely than a nuclear one, though nuclear proliferation and the destabilization of Pakistan will make loose nuclear weapons likely threats. It says the next attack on the US will also most likely originate from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan.

But, before we decide to stick to that promised policy of preemptive intervention to kill terrorists on Pakistani soil, it might be worth considering the precedent we're setting. Because there's a country that already has and it believes it has been once again attacked by terrorists based in Pakistan. Already, India has taken Obama's stance to indicate that it too has the right to kick down doors in the pursuit of justice. As Robert Kaplan, India faces a far graver threat from Islamic terrorism than the United States does.

Yet a policy that allows such attack on India's part could easily end up with a nuclear exchange - note that Pakistan does not have a "no first-use" policy on nuclear arms. While launching nuclear weapons at the United States would be futile, Pakistan does have a credible deterrent against India. This will likely be the second time that the United States must navigate its way through an Indo-Pakistani crisis while fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan.

Calls for Obama to take the "regional approach" and use Kashmir to convince Pakistan to contribute more troops to dealing with Islamic fundamentalists in its own borders and cease support for them outside of them seem more unrealistic than ever. India was hostile to the idea before the attacks, it will not be amenable to them now. The ideal outcome would be greater cooperation between the two powers on counterterrorism, but this is incredibly unlikely. As tensions increase, the US will find that Kashmir negotiations will not be able to proceed without taking sides, and treating Kashmir as a way to deal with American concerns about Afghanistan will inevitably draw the US to a pro-Pakistani line.

India has endured decades of Islamist violence on its own soil. If this sort of thing happened to the United States, we'd have taken up Armitage's cry and bombed them into the stone age. But we cannot expect that they will continue to tolerate such tragedies in a manner conducive to our goals. One way or another, Indians will feel compelled to respond. Relying on the Kashmir approach to win the war on terror is not viable. India, for its part, however, must improve its counterterrorist efforts. Watching Indian footage, city police fired at Kalashnikov-wielding terrorists with ancient bolt-action rifles while the response of more professional units has not impressed American analysts either. While there's obviously a lot more than small arms deficiencies that contributed to the problem, they are symptomatic of a deeper problem. India has invested well in its regular military but left the provincial-level counterterrorist and police forces underfunded. Terrorist attacks are thus more effective against India, and India cannot respond with its regular military without triggering a nuclear crisis. (We, too, struggle with managing the traditional gap between domestic law enforcement and the use of our military abroad. Fortunately we've managed to get by without a nuclear war scare... So far.)

The important thing to remember during all of this is that al Qaeda is hoping we'll overreact. Based on the latest tapes, they're having trouble coming up with an effective message against Obama without any policies of his they can criticize. Al Qaeda needs to provoke Obama into making a big mistake that involves perceived aggression and injustice against Muslims to maintain its base of support. This is something his cabinet should keep in mind as January 20th approaches. While I still take issue with sending Hillary Clinton to Foggy Bottom, I'm far more pleased with Obama's other national security picks. That being said, no matter what happens to the economy, sidelining foreign policy will come with consequences. Obama had really better trust his staff, because he is going to be a busy, busy man.