General David Petraeus, Commander of NATO ISAF, appreared on NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday (transcript here). More can be found at the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Bloomberg, Agence France Press, BBC News, CNN News, Reuters, Associated Press, Politico and The Hill.

The Washington Post published two items concerning General David Petraeus' interview with Rajiv Chandrasekaran. Excerpts from the interview can be found here and Rajiv Chandrasekaran's follow-on article, "Gen. David Petraeus says Afghanistan war strategy 'fundamentally sound'", can be found here.

Fred W. Baker's American Forces Press Service overview of the "Meet the Press" interview follows (emphasis SWJ):

Growing pockets of security progress in Afghanistan must be extended and linked to fully root out the Taliban and other extremist organizations, and that will take time, the top U.S. and NATO commander there said in a prerecorded interview aired today.

"We're making progress, and progress is winning, if you will," Army Gen. David H. Petraeus told NBC's David Gregory in the "Meet the Press" interview. "But it takes the accumulation of a lot of progress ultimately ... to win overall, and that's going to be a long-term proposition, without question."

In his first significant interview since taking command of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus acknowledged what he called "up and down" progress, with coalition and Afghan forces taking key sanctuaries from the Taliban, but not without a fight. Petraeus said progress really only began this spring, as more U.S. and international forces began pouring into the country, stretching out into areas that before were Taliban strongholds.

Late spring saw operations in central Helmand province start to improve security conditions there, but now expanding into neighboring Kandahar province is proving to be a "tough fight," the general said.

"What we have are areas of progress. We've got to link those together, extend them, and then build on it, because of course the security progress ... is the foundation for everything else -- for the governance progress, the economic progress, rule of law progress and so forth," Petraeus said.

The general said he understands the growing lack of U.S. patience for the war in Afghanistan, but he noted that only in the past 18 months has the proper focus been in place for the strategy on the ground there.

"A lot of us came out of Iraq in late 2008 and started looking intently at Afghanistan," he said. "We realized that we did not have the organizations that are required for the conduct of a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign."

Also, he said the fight in Afghanistan was under-resourced.

Under President Barack Obama's orders, by the end of this month the number of U.S. troops on the ground there will have nearly tripled, Petraeus said. Also, NATO forces have expanded, and the number of civilians supporting the war will have tripled. Funding also was increased to train 100,000 more Afghan national security forces.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan now has almost 120,000 troops from 47 different countries assigned to it. The United States provides 78,430 of those ISAF troops, part of the roughly 100,000 American troops now based in the country.

The largest regional command in Afghanistan is in the south, with 35,000 troops. The command is focused on Kandahar, the country's second-largest city and the spiritual home of the Taliban. The next-largest regional command is in the east, with 32,000 personnel.

After the United States, the country with the largest number of troops with ISAF is the United Kingdom with 9,500, followed by Germany with 4,590. France is next with 3,750, followed by Italy with 3,400, Canada with 2,830, Poland with 2,630, Romania with 1,760, Turkey with 1,740, Spain with 1,555, and Australia with 1,455.

"The inputs are already enabling some outputs," Petraeus said. "And, of course, what we have got to show is that these additional inputs can allow greater progress, and that that's progress that can be sustained, over time, by Afghan forces and Afghan officials."

Petraeus said the commitment in Afghanistan will be enduring, and would not say how many U.S. troops will begin to leave under Obama's July 2011 transition timeline.

"It would premature to have any kind of assessment at this juncture as to about what we may or may not be able to transition," he said. But, he added, any troop movement will be based on the conditions on the ground.

"As the conditions permit, we transition tasks to our Afghan counterparts and the security forces in various governmental institutions, and that enables a responsible drawdown of our forces," he said.

Petraeus said Obama's July 2011 timeline to begin turning security over to the Afghans and drawing down U.S. forces provides a sense of urgency for Afghan leaders, people in uniform and civilians contributing to the effort "that we've got to get on with this, [that] this has been going on for some nine years or so, that there is understandable concern [and] in some cases, frustration."

"And therefore," he said, "we have got to really put our shoulders to the wheel and show, during the course of this year, that progress can be achieved."

Regardless of how the transition plays out next summer, Petraeus predicted an enduring U.S. commitment in Afghanistan that will evolve as the capabilities of the Afghan government and its forces improve. At the end of the day, he said, it boils down to the Afghan government becoming accepted and supported by its people, and in turn providing the support and services the people expect.

"It's not about their embrace of us. It's not about us winning hearts and minds," Petraeus said. "It's about the Afghan government winning hearts and minds."

Petraeus said he is leery of using the term "winning" with reference to the fight in Afghanistan, because it implies a clear-cut and obvious victory that will not necessarily ensue.

"It seems to imply that ... you just find the right hill out there somewhere, you take it, you plant the flag, and you go home to a victory parade. I don't think that's going to be the case here," he said. "I think ... that this [is] going to require a substantial, significant commitment, and that it is going to have to be enduring, to some degree -- again, albeit its character and its size being scaled down over the years."

In the end, the general said, the United States must remember why it began fighting in Afghanistan in first place.

"We are here so that Afghanistan does not, once again, become a sanctuary for transnational extremists the way it was when al-Qaida planned the 9/11 attacks in the Kandahar area, conducted the initial training for the attackers in training camps in Afghanistan before they moved on to Germany and then to U.S. flight schools," he said.

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The Daily Telegraph (Thomas Harding) reported last week (we are playing catch-up this morning) that the Royal Air Force is to be cut to its smallest size since World War I. The paper has been passed a copy of "detailed proposals" that will see Britain's Armed Services cut by "16,000 personnel, hundreds of tanks, scores of fighter jets and half a dozen ships". The proposal would see the "British Army reduced by as much as 40 percent and the Royal Marines transferred from the Navy and assigned to an elite unit that would include the Army's remaining two parachute battalions". Greg Grant at Defense Tech is also covering the planned reduction in force as is Captain Hyphen at Kings of War. Hat Tip GrEaT sAtAn'S gIrLfRiEnD via Facebook.

Petraeus: Conditions Will Drive Afghanistan Withdrawal - Donna Miles, American Forces Press Service.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13, 2010 -- President Barack Obama has made clear he wants the best military advice possible concerning the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, and ultimately, the situation on the ground will drive the timetable, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top commander there, said in an interview to be aired this weekend.

"What the president very much wants from me, and what we talked about in the Oval Office, is the responsibility of a military commander on the ground is to provide his best professional military advice [and] leave the politics to him," Petraeus told NBC's David Gregory.

NBC released excerpts of the interview, scheduled to be broadcast Aug. 15 on "Meet the Press."

"Certainly, I am aware of the context within which I offer that advice," Petraeus said. "But that just informs the advice; it doesn't drive it. The situation on the ground drives it."

Looking ahead to Obama's July 2011 deadline to begin withdrawing troops, Petraeus said the challenge now is to demonstrate signs of progress.

"I think our job is again to show those in Washington that there is progress being made," he said. "To do that, we've got to build on the progress that has been established so far, because there is certainly nothing like irreversible momentum."

Petraeus, who previously served as U.S. Central Command commander, assumed command of U.S. Forces Afghanistan and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan last month. He replaced Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) What happens if Mexico settles with the cartels?

2) Scared of military robots? Get over it.

What happens if Mexico settles with the cartels?

The U.S. Department of Defense defines irregular warfare as "a violent struggle among state and non-state actors for legitimacy and influence over the relevant populations." By this definition, Mexico is fighting an irregular war. The Mexican government's campaign against the drug cartels is far more than a law enforcement problem; the two sides are engaged in a violent struggle for influence over the Mexican population.

Four years after Mexican President Felipe Calderón threw 80,000 soldiers at the cartels, their businesses remain as strong as ever. According to the Los Angeles Times, the overall drug trade continues to flourish, bringing in by one estimate $39 billion a year to the Mexican economy, equal to 4.5 percent of Mexico's economic output in 2009. The cartels, formerly just smuggling businesses operating largely out of sight, have evolved into political insurgents, and Calderón has openly wondered whether the Mexican state will survive. Neither side has the capacity to crush the other. This implies an eventual compromise settlement and with it a de facto or actual legalization of the drug trade in Mexico. When Calderón and the cartels make such a deal, the United States will have to deal with the consequences.

Calderón's war has managed to inflict pain on the cartels; government forces killed two top cartel leaders and have set the syndicate into a violent struggle with each other for smuggling routes. According to the Los Angeles Times story, the Mexican government estimates 28,000 people have been killed in the war, the vast majority of whom were cartel employees and associates who died in battles between the various gangs. Responding to the pressure, the cartels have transformed themselves into political insurgencies in an attempt to persuade the government to back off and to attract the support of local populations. Their actions are right out of an insurgency's standard playbook: attacks on the police (recently with car bombs), employees of state oil company Pemex -- the cornerstone of the government's revenue -- and the media.

In a speech to the nation last week, Calderón declared that the cartels' actions are "an attempt to replace the state." He pleaded with his countrymen to support the government and to report on local officials whom the drug gangs have co-opted. Calderón's plea comes as Mexico's main sources of foreign exchange are under pressure: The drug wars are chasing away tourism, competition from Asia threatens the manufacturing export sector in the north, the Pemex oil monopoly is in decline, and the struggling U.S. economy has hit expatriate receipts back to Mexico.

With Mexico's legitimate sources of foreign exchange wilting and with the government facing a bloody and open-ended war against the cartels, the prospect of a settlement must be increasingly attractive to Calderón. Legalization would legitimize the drug trade as another important export sector of the Mexican economy, along with oil, tourism, light manufacturing, and expatriate labor receipts. According to the New York Times, Calderon has opened up a dialogue with opposition political leaders in a search for possible alternatives, and has called for a national discussion on the possibility of drug legalization. Calderón's two predecessors, Vicente Fox and Ernesto Zedillo, now support some form of drug legalization.

Should Mexico call a truce and legalize its drug business, where would this leave the United States, the prime market for Mexico's drug exports? Many Americans would view Mexican legalization harshly and call for suspending Merida initiative aid and perhaps closing the border. But even if this were physically possible, vast legitimate commercial trade and the presence of so many family relationships on both sides of the border, the consequence of past migrations, would make a closure politically impossible. Should Calderón or his successors eventually choose this means of escape, the United States will simply have to cope with the consequences.

Scared of military robots? Get over it.

Robots waging war against their human creators have long been a staple of Hollywood, and the general message of movies like Terminator: Salvation is that building well-armed robots capable of operating free of human control is not a very good idea. However, Technology Horizons, a research road map written by the Chief Scientist of the U.S. Air Force, concludes that autonomous systems -- weapons and military computers making most if not all decisions without human input -- are both essential and arriving very soon.

The rapid growth in the use of military robots is well known. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has made the brisk expansion of remote-controlled aircraft like the Predator drone a top priority for missions over Iraq and Afghanistan. The CIA is now known to have its own Predator operation in Pakistan. Unmanned systems have become military essentials, performing dangerous missions such as bomb detection or extremely long surveillance flights that exceed the physical capabilities of the human body.

The Technology Horizons report predicts that further rapid growth in unmanned systems will overwhelm the military's ability to maintain constant human control, making autonomy in these systems essential. For example, successors to the Predator drone will multiply faster than the ground crews that currently control them. The Air Force is already preparing for one crew to simultaneously control four or more such aircraft. As this ratio further expands, the unmanned aircraft will have to become increasingly autonomous.

Furthermore, the data brought in by these systems is already overwhelming the intelligence analysts tasked with interpreting it. The report calls for much more advanced computer systems to process and analyze these data and autonomously develop responses.

Further autonomy, the authors argue, could also provide a way of mitigating the vulnerability of the global communications links that connect controllers with unmanned combat systems on the far side of the world. Drones operating in a hostile threat area could respond instantly instead of waiting for instructions from a far-away human. Finally, autonomy is seen as one solution to the threat of cyber attacks on robot command and control systems.

How will the Pentagon and defense contractors prevent the creation of Terminators running amok? The Technology Horizons report discusses the necessity of developing "verification and validation" techniques for establishing "certifiable trust in autonomous systems." According to the report, this is the single greatest technical barrier that must be overcome to obtain the capability advantages of autonomous systems.

But the report's authors warn that an unmanned combat systems arms race is already underway and that less scrupulous adversaries may be —to field highly autonomous systems without spending time and effort on the certifiable verification standards the United States will likely require for itself. Maybe in this case, U.S. planners can hope that just like in the movies, those robots turn on their masters before they can threaten anyone else.

Gates Orders Marine Corps Force Structure Review by Jim Garamone of American Forces Press Service. An excerpt follows:

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has ordered a thorough force structure review of the Marine Corps to determine what an expeditionary force in readiness should look like in the 21st century.

There are questions about the mission of the Marine Corps, Gates said. Before World War II, the Marines very successfully conducted "small wars" in the western hemisphere. The service also developed the rationale and logistics needed to conduct amphibious warfare.

During World War II, the Corps was wholly dedicated to landing on the beaches in the South and Central Pacific. America's first offensive of World War II was when Marines landed on the beaches of Guadalcanal and began the campaign against Japan in August 1942. Tarawa, Saipan, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa are just a few of the landings Marines made.

Since then, Marines have fought on the beaches, mountains and trenches of Korea, the highlands and rice paddies of Vietnam, and the deserts of Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan. Although many of these operations saw Marines initially projected from the sea, "they soon turned into long, grinding, ground engagements," Gates said.

The nation does not need a second land army, Gates said, but rather forces that can deploy quickly and sustain themselves for a short period of time.

Also see Gates: Time has Come to Re-examine Future of Marine Corps by Kevin Baron of Stars and Stripes and Defense Chief Gates Orders Review of Marines' Role by David S. Cloud of The Los Angeles Times.

Win Wars? Today's General Politicks and Does P.R., Too is the title of a New York Times piece by Thom Shanker. It's a must read.

Pakistan Floods: How to Help - Today's Washington Post contains a listing of organizations that are taking donations for the Pakistan flood relief effort. The list contains contact information for each organization. Most major dailies are reporting that the United Nations has estimated it will take $240 million to help the more than 14 million people affected by the flooding during the next 90 days. The Post also reports that the U.S. rescue effort so far has "has earned rare and almost universal praise here (Pakistan) for acting quickly to speed aid to those hit hardest".

U.S. Military Seeks Slower Pace to Wrap Up Afghan Role - Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, and David E. Sanger. The New York Times reports this morning that U.S. military officials are "building a case to minimize the planned withdrawal of some troops from Afghanistan starting next summer" and that a "rising generation of young officers, who have become experts over the past nine years in the art of counterinsurgency, have begun quietly telling administration officials that they need time to get their work done".

America's Flawed Afghanistan Strategy - Dr. Steven Metz, U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute monthly op-ed.

Despite the lavish time and attention that the Obama administration devoted to reviewing its Afghanistan strategy, the result was more continuity than change. The administration adjusted U.S. troops levels and shifted some operational methods but accepted the most basic—and questionable—assumptions of the Bush strategy. Unfor-tunately, these do not hold up under close scrutiny. The new strategy, like the old one, totters on a dangerously flawed foundation.

Both the Bush and Obama strategies assume that al-Qaeda needs state support or sanctuary. That, after all, is the fundamental rationale for continued American involve-ment in Afghanistan. But throughout the "war on terror," no one has made a persuasive case that the September 11, 2001, attacks would not have happened had al-Qaeda not had bases in Afghanistan. While it may take meetings and phone calls to plot terrorism, these can be done from nearly anywhere. Al-Qaeda's Afghanistan sanctuary was a con-venience, not a necessity. Destroying the sanctuary has not stopped bin Laden and his henchmen from plotting new attacks.

Why, then, should the United States devote billions of dollars fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan if doing so has little effect on al-Qaeda's ability to launch terrorism? The answer says more about the way Americans think than it does about how terrorists operate. The United States has expended great effort to eradicate al-Qaeda's bases and training camps less because they were important than because we are effective at it. There is an old saying that, "when all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." America has an amazing hammer—its military—which is very good at seizing and controlling territory. So, we reasoned, eradicating bases and training camps will cripple al-Qaeda. Yet there is no evidence to validate this idea...

More at the Strategic Studies Institute.