While the United States has focused on the role of Pakistan in Afghanistan, the role of India has remained largely overlooked. Since 2001, India has restored diplomatic relations with Afghanistan, invested heavily in reconstruction projects, and increased bilateral trade. As a result, Pakistani-based terrorist groups who initially planned attacks on Indian soil, now also increasingly target Indian workers and diplomats in Afghanistan. How can the United States better work with its fellow democratic ally? What opportunities can Afghanistan pursue with India?

Please join the Center for Naval Analyses for a workshop on India's role in Afghanistan: Security, Politics, and Trade, on Monday, 12 July, from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

Panelists include: Ashley Tellis, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (confirmed); Steve Coll, President of the New America Foundation (confirmed); Ali Jalali, Distinguished Professor at NDU's Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies (invited), S. Frederick Starr, Chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center (confirmed); and moderator Dr. Jerry Meyerle, Research Analyst at CNA (confirmed).

The workshop will be held in the Gold Room of the 2168 Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill. Please RSVP to kattm@cna.org or 703.824.2436 by Friday, 9 July.

You ask me to analyze what has always made me jump when others might pause. Tough question. I've always been competitive and 22 years at United Press International (UPI), the now defunct news wire service, only sharpened that edge. UPI's motto was always: A Deadline Every Minute. You learned to move fast, get the story fast and first, write fast and leave The Associated Press in the dirt.

When I went to Vietnam to cover the war in the spring of 1965 I had just turned 23 years old. I spent my first seven months covering the U.S. Marines. The learning curve is steep in combat. You learn to read a situation, or a man, instantly and if you are wrong it can cost you your life.

At the core, down deep, is a willingness to act on instinct when the situation leaves no time for chewing things over or searching the memory for a textbook solution. I trust my instincts. They are the sum total of all I know, all I have read, all I have experienced, all I have learned. Instinct has served me well all my life. It has permitted me to jump when others might not, and survive to tell the stories.

Read the entire interview.

Ravi Khanna

Voice of America

The change in the US military command in Afghanistan has brought to the forefront yet again the controversy over President Obama's July 2011 deadline in Afghanistan. Is it a deadline for the US to begin actually withdrawing its troops? Or is it a deadline to assess the progress made in breaking the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, in order to determine the future course of action.

President Obama set the deadline in December of last year, as he announced his decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. "These additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces," he said. "And allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011".

But hours after the announcement, officials like Defense Secretary Robert Gates began downplaying the deadline, amid fears that it might send a wrong message to the Taliban and also to the Pakistanis and Afghans.

The controversy came up again as the U.S. Senate was confirming General David Petraeus to replace ousted General Stanely McChrystal.

"Somebody needs to get it straight, without doubt, what the hell we're going to do come July because I think it determines whether or not someone in Afghanistan is going to stay in the fight," Senator Lindsey Graham, South Carolina said.

Some experts on Afghanistan agree with Senator Graham.

David Kilcullen, the Australian Army's former adviser to General Petraeus, says the 2011 date is already affecting the thinking of Pakistani and Afghan leaders. "I think both Pakistani and Afghan leaders are positioning themselves for possible future negotiations with the Taliban," he stated. "That is the rational action of local leaders that we are leaving. So I think there is a problem here relating to our declared date for pulling out and that is underpinning a lot of discussion."

But General Petraeus told lawmakers he sees the deadline as a message of urgency, to complement the message sent by deploying additional US 30,000 troops. He said rather than waiting for the US troops to withdraw, Taliban insurgents are fighting to break the alliance's will. "It is important to note the president's reminder in recent days that July 2011 will mark the beginning of a process, not the date when the US heads for the exits and turns out the lights. As he explained this past Sunday, in fact, we'll need to provide assistance to Afghanistan for a long time to come."

Anthony Cordesman, a senior Afghanistan expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says the president should have been more careful to begin with, and fully explain the deadline, which, he says, is not just about reducing the number of US troops in the country.

"We have to show major progress in this war by 2011. We have to show that the new strategy can work. And win over time. That's the real deadline," Cordesman said. "It is not whether we can reduce the total American military manpower, or I should say, personpower."

Controversy or no controversy, some analysts point out the deadline has resulted in a renewed urgency on the part of NATO to train the Afghan security forces who are expected to gradually take over as, and when, the international forces leave the country.

An excerpt:

President Obama will soon have to face the realization that the sanctions strategy against Iran has fared no better than his bid to engage Iran's leaders in direct negotiations. Iran's strategy of patiently playing for time, generating diplomatic support from the developing world, and convincing China and Russia to dilute sanctions at the Security Council is working. The United States and its allies have not been able to develop sufficient leverage to disrupt Iran's strategy.

Short of war, the only course remaining for the United States and its allies is containment and deterrence. A key component of such a strategy would be a security guarantee, explicitly extending the U.S. nuclear umbrella over its Arab allies around the Persian Gulf. Compared to the prospect of war, and with the other strategies having failed, an explicit U.S. security guarantee may look appealing. In July 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton mentioned the possibility of extending a "security umbrella" over the Middle East and repeated the idea in February 2010.

But a security guarantee protecting the Persian Gulf allies from Iran will not be easy. It will be difficult to define, tough to credibly implement, and contain its own risks and costs. Before agreeing to a security guarantee, U.S. policy makers need to consider these costs and risks. They should prepare programs that will increase the chance of such a strategy's success. Perhaps most important, U.S. policy makers need to be open with the American public about what a commitment to a security guarantee will mean. As was the case during the Cold War, broad public acceptance is necessary if a security guarantee is to be credible and sustainable.

Click here to read the essay.

Once again, we hear discussion within the U.S. Army on whether the name psychological operations (PSYOP) should be changed—an issue that has arisen periodically for years. The term, defined broadly as the planned use of communications to influence human attitudes and behavior of foreign audiences, is characterized by some as "toxic," "disinformation," "unsavory," and with other pejorative words. This criticism inhibits the ability of PSYOP units to support U.S. military forces and to interact with other executive branch agencies—or so goes the criticism. Thus, some argue, the term must be replaced.

I believe this would be a mistake...

More from Joint Force Quarterly.

Gen. David Petraeus' nomination as top U.S. commander in Afghanistan comes at a critical time. June has been the deadliest month for the U.S.-led coalition in the nearly nine-year-old war: More than 90 foreign troops have been killed. Concerns are also increasing over what is seen as a faltering war effort, and whether the new counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan will succeed.

Petraeus' confirmation hearing Tuesday clearly showed that there are high expectations for the four-star general, not only to seamlessly assume command in Afghanistan but to quickly try to salvage the war effort there. President Obama signed off on a counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan in December, which involves deploying an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to battle insurgents while civilians help build the country's infrastructure and civil society.

So far, the results are widely viewed as less than promising. Nowhere has this been more evident than in southern district of Marjah. U.S.-led troops launched an offensive there in February, promising to quickly rid the area of Taliban and other insurgents and to set up a viable local government. But the so-called government in a box has evaporated, and Taliban militants have come back to the area...

More at NPR.

The Red Flag: A History of Communism by David Priestland. Published by Grove

Press, New York.  655 pages, 2009. 

Reviewed by Commander Youssef Aboul-Enein, MSC, USN

 America's military leaders and counter-insurgency practitioners must not

only orient themselves to the tactics of adversaries, but the mindset that motivates

and even creates divides among insurgents.  Delving into the ideological rationale

of such enemies as al-Qaida requires patient study, reflection, debate and analysis. 

It requires the training of one's own mind to eliminate biases, and immerse oneself

in empathizing (not sympathizing) with the adversary.  Why is it important

to empathize with the enemy?  By developing such analytic rigor into the psychology,

and ideology that motivates and justifies violence one can begin to anticipate,

interrogate, and understand the landscape as well as decision-cycles of those that

challenge the United States and its allies.

 British academic David Priestland teaches Soviet political history at Oxford

University.  He has published a book entitled, "Stalinism and the Politics

of Mobilization."  Priestland's latest book is a look at the ideological evolution

of communism, from its earliest manifestations as a result of interpretations of

the French Revolution, to divisions among the ideas of social democratic political

theory and communism, to the internal divisions among Marxists.  Readers will

be able to understand the divisions and schisms that if understood at the time by

anti-communists could have provided options for undermining such ideologies during

the Cold War. An example of communist schisms utilized to America's advantage was

President Nixon's National Security team grasping the divide and animosity between

Chinese and Russian visions of communism.  Readers will delve into French Revolutionary

Claude Saint-Simon (born in 1760) who first postulated the ideas of a planned society,

and that the goal of society was production.  It is here that the Soviet model

of planned economies and societies was derived.

The book delves deeply into the ideas of Karl Marx (born in 1818), who reacted

to industrialization and humankind being reduced to cogs in a wheel, and work being

not an expression of creativity but to eat, drink and acquire material things by

advocating the abolition of the market and private property.  That is the establishment

of communism.  Marx ignored the conflicts of interests among citizens, and

individual advancement abolished.  The chapter on the Russian Revolution picks

apart divisions between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, as well as reconciling Marxist

utopia with the realities of threats to their infant revolution.  One example

is reintroducing military ranks by Leon Trotsky (born in 1879), ranks were initially

abolished but one could not fight a civil war without command, and it was not until

1935 that formal epilates were introduced into the Red Army.  Trotsky would

use Joseph Stalin's failures in the Spanish Civil War, a fight the pitted the Communists

against the Fascists as a dress rehearsal for World War II, to form the Fourth International

which opposed capitalism and Stalinism.  Trotsky would be murdered in 1940

by an undercover agent of the NKVD (the forerunner of the KGB). 

The book's final chapter traces the evolution of Asian interpretations of communism,

chiefly Mao Tse Tung (born in 1893).  This is not an easy book, but begins

to train your mind into distinguishing between ideological interpretations influenced

by events, geography, history and culture.

Commander Aboul-Enein is author of "Militant Islamist Ideology: Understanding

the Global Threat," published this summer by Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland.

Mr. Chairman, Senator McCain, Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. And thank you for the rapid scheduling of this hearing.

I am, needless to say, humbled and honored to have been nominated by the President to command the International Security Assistance Force and US Forces in Afghanistan, and to have the opportunity, if confirmed, to continue to serve our nation, the NATO Alliance, our non-NATO Coalition partners, and Afghanistan in these new capacities.

At the outset, I want to echo your salute to the extraordinary service of Senator Robert Byrd. With his death, America clearly has lost a great patriot.

I would like to begin this morning by saying a few words about General Stan McChrystal, someone I've known and admired for nearly 30 years. General McChrystal has devoted his entire professional life to the defense of this nation, and he and his family have made enormous personal sacrifices during his lengthy deployments over the past nine years in particular. His contributions during that time were very significant. I can attest, for example, that the success of the surge in Iraq would not have been possible without General McChrystal's exceptional leadership of our special mission unit forces there. Similarly, the development of the Joint Special Operations Command during his unprecedented tenure commanding JSOC was extraordinary as well.

Most importantly, of course, he made enormous contributions in leading the coalition endeavor in Afghanistan over the past year. During that time, he brought impressive vision, energy, and expertise to the effort there. He made a huge contribution to the reorientation of our strategy and was a central figure in our efforts to get the inputs right in Afghanistan -- to build the organizations needed to carry out a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign, to get the right leaders in charge of those organizations, to develop appropriate plans and concepts, and to deploy the resources necessary to enable the implementation of those plans and concepts. We now see some areas of progress amidst the tough fight ongoing in Afghanistan. Considerable credit for that must go to Stan McChrystal...

Read the entire opening statement of General David H. Petraeus.

For over two hundred years, the U.S. Marine Corps has fought a two-front war, one against enemies like the Barbary pirates, the Japanese army, and al Qaeda and the second against the real mortal threat, those brigands inside the Washington Beltway who see the Marine Corps as a wasteful appendage ripe for snipping off. No one doubts the Marine Corps has done great service in Iraq and Afghanistan. But similar acclaim after World War II did not prevent calls for reducing the Marine Corps to a near-ceremonial guard. Steep budget cuts loom once again over the Pentagon. What makes the Marine Corps unique and worth spending money on?

According to the new Marine Corps Operating Concepts paper, the Marine Corps will have competitive advantages in two crucial areas: assuring littoral access and fighting "small wars." The Operating Concepts asserts that the Marine Corps's naval character endows it with unique traits and capabilities not found elsewhere in the U.S. military. These traits and capabilities make the Marine Corps the obvious tool to use when undertaking littoral access operations. Second, the Operating Concepts believes that these traits and capabilities result in a distinct advantage when fighting "small wars." These are the answers the Operating Concepts gives to Gates's questions.

The Operating Concepts paper envisions three forms of littoral access operations: engagement, such as security force assistance and "Phase Zero" operations; crisis response, such as humanitarian relief and evacuations; and power projection involving either major or irregular combat operations. With much of the world's population living near the sea and sea lines of communication and nautical chokepoints critical key terrain, the Operating Concepts asserts that littoral combat will remain an essential capability. The document explains that the Navy/Marine Corps's flexibility, global mobility, and ability to transport large combat power and logistical support remain relevant and essential capabilities.

The Marine Corps's naval character should provide the Marine Corps with unique advantages regarding "small wars" operations. The United States' maritime strategy is based on broad cooperation with allied and partner navy, coast guard and marine forces. This maritime strategy puts the Marine Corps in regular contact with cultures around the world. This familiarity and experience with foreign cultures and military forces should give the Marine Corps an important advantage when waging irregular conflicts.

The authors of the Marine Corps Operating Concepts will need to prepare for at least two rebuttals. First, Gates wondered how the Navy and Marine Corps will be able to operate in heavily-defended littoral areas in the age of precision anti-ship missiles. The Operating Concepts paper acknowledges the issue and explains how the Navy and Marine Corps are preparing for this challenge. Second, the Marine Corps's plan to heavily involve itself in security force assistance and foreign internal defense missions may set up a clash on territory already claimed by the U.S. Army Special Forces. The document explains that even in the post-Iraq, post-Afghanistan era, demand for SFA/FID is likely to exceed the supply of Special Forces. Second, there are specialized maritime SFA/FID training requirements that the Marine Corps has a unique capacity to deliver.

Secretary Gates asked what makes the Marine Corps unique. The Operating Concepts paper attempts to answer the question. What remains to be seen is whether Gates and the Congress are —to buy the answer.