... He is our man indeed. And Hamid Karzai's casual assumption this morning of another five-year term as Afghanistan's president, after the election runoff was canceled when his only opponent pulled out of the race, saddles the Obama administration with a king-size migraine.

The U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has rested on a central goal: building public trust in a strong, democratic central government. Sixty-eight thousand American troops are deployed there in service of that goal. The election process, beginning with a nationwide vote in August, was seen as crucial in demonstrating that democracy works and is worth the hard work and risk-taking required to support it.

Today that idea is a shambles. Now the U.S. strategy rests on an undemocratic, corrupt and weak central government, a president who cheated his way into office in an election held under American supervision, an election that even the government of Afghanistan concedes was stolen. The script couldn't have been improved if Taliban chieftain Mullah Omar had put himself to the task....

More at Politics Daily.

The Pentagon plans to dramatically increase the surveillance capabilities of its most advanced unmanned aircraft next year, adding so many video feeds that a drone which now stares down at a single house or vehicle could keep constant watch on nearly everything that moves within an area of 1.5 square miles. The year after that, the capability will double to 3 square miles. Military officials predict that the impact on counter-terrorism operations in Afghanistan will be impressive. "Predators and other unmanned aircraft have just revolutionized our ability to provide a constant stare against our enemy," said a senior military official. "The next sensors, mark my words, are going to be equally revolutionary."

Unmanned MQ-9 Reaper aircraft now produce a single video feed as they fly continuously over surveillance routes, and the area they can cover largely depends on altitude. The new technology initially will increase the number of video feeds to 12 and eventually to 65. Like the Reaper and its earlier counterpart, the Predator, the newest technology program has been given a fearsome name: the Gorgon Stare, named for the mythological creature whose gaze turns victims to stone. Unmanned aircraft, used both for surveillance and for offensive strikes, are considered the most significant advance in military technology in a generation. They not only have altered the conduct of warfare, but have also changed the nature of the current policy debate in Washington...

More at The Los Angeles Times.

In an earlier blog regarding the U.S. Army Officer Shortage, I highlighted a few problems with officer talent management that link to leadership development. In the interest of improving leadership development for our officer corps, I have been reading an great book by Dr. Mark Moyar of the U.S. Marine Corps University, A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq from Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, 2009.

As evidenced by the over-registered Marine Corps University's conference on "COIN Leadership in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Beyond," where GEN Petraeus gave the keynote address to the "COIN Nation," there is a thirst for understanding the role of individual leadership in the COIN arena.

Readers from all ranks will be interested in Moyar's succint identification of what it takes to succeed in the contemporary operating environment. Anyone who understands that effective leadership in a counterinsurgency setting - or the conventional battlefield - often does come down to the behavior of one individual will find that this book resonates with important themes...

More at Kings of War.

In early October, as President Obama huddled with top administration officials in the White House situation room to rethink America's failing strategy in Afghanistan, the Pentagon and top military brass were trying to make the president an offer he couldn't refuse. They wanted the president to escalate the war - go all in by committing 40,000 more troops and another trillion dollars to a Vietnam-like quagmire - or face a full-scale mutiny by his generals.

Obama knew that if he rebuffed the military's pressure, several senior officers - including Gen. David Petraeus, the ambitious head of US Central Command, who is rumored to be eyeing a presidential bid of his own in 2012 - could break ranks and join forces with hawks in the Republican Party. GOP leaders and conservative media outlets wasted no time in warning Obama that if he refused to back the troop escalation being demanded by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander overseeing the eight-year-old war, he'd be putting U.S. soldiers' lives at risk and inviting Al Qaeda to launch new assaults on the homeland. The president, it seems, is battling two insurgencies: one in Afghanistan and one cooked up by his own generals...

More at Rolling Stone.

In its continuing search for an alternative to General Stanley McChrystal's comprehensive counterinsurgency approach to the war in Afghanistan, and with President Obama having eliminated the minimalist counterterrorism plan of Vice President Joe Biden, the White House has lately been floating a split-the-difference trial balloon: "McChrystal Lite" or, to give the veep his due, "McChrystal for the cities, Biden for the countryside."

Last week the New York Times was allowed a sneak-peak of what this half-pregnant approach might look like. It reported that White House advisers are aiming to defend "about 10 top population centers." A number of press accounts indicate that the number of additional troops would be capped at around 20,000 - half the 40,000 recommended by McChrystal - no more than four brigade-sized units and the needed support. The Times also indicated that McChrystal had briefed the White House on how he would employ any reinforcements: "The first two additional brigades would be sent to the south, including one to Kandahar, while a third would be sent to eastern Afghanistan and a fourth would be used flexibly across the nation."

To the Washington punditocracy, half a loaf sounds about right; even if they don't think it's the right strategy, they think it's what Obama will do as a matter of domestic politics. But does it make any military sense? ...

More at The Weekly Standard.

Hikmatullah, a tall Pashtun farmer dressed in turban and white cloak, looks slightly bewildered as a US Army officer offers him tea and bread and questions him about what he wants from life. A crowd has gathered around them on the steps of the local bakery, young boys and old tribesmen gawking to see what the fuss is about. Hikmatullah says that he's a happy man with five children and that what he wants most is security. From the quizzical look on the farmer's face, perhaps he's wondering: Can these pleasant, tea-drinking American soldiers really be the same people who are assaulting Taliban fighters in this region of eastern Afghanistan?

The answer is yes. Even as US forces show a gentler side with their new stress on people-friendly counterinsurgency, they continue to conduct devastating attacks on the enemy. It's this mix of hard and soft that's the essence of the US battle plan here, but this reality is not well understood back in America. The Washington debate about the Afghanistan war -- pitting advocates of a broad counterinsurgency strategy against those who favor a narrower counterterrorism approach - has sometimes been misleading, at least in terms of what actually goes on here. The fact is that US forces are doing both missions every day and night - and indeed are becoming increasingly effective at each one...

More at The Washington Post.

President Obama has asked the Pentagon's top generals to provide him with more options for troop levels in Afghanistan, two US officials said late Friday, with one adding that some of the alternatives would allow Obama to send fewer new troops than the roughly 40,000 requested by his top commander. Obama met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the White House on Friday, holding a 90-minute discussion that centered on the strain on the force after eight years of war in two countries. The meeting - the first of its kind with the chiefs of the Navy, Army, Marine Corps and Air Force, who were not part of the president's war council meetings on Afghanistan in recent weeks - prompted Obama to request another such meeting before he announces a decision on sending additional troops, the officials said.

The military chiefs have been largely supportive of a resource request by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top US and NATO commander in Afghanistan, that would by one Pentagon estimate require the deployment of 44,000 additional troops. But opinion among members of Obama's national security team is divided, and he now appears to be seeking a compromise solution that would satisfy both his military and civilian advisers. Obama is expected to receive several options from the Pentagon about troop levels next week, according to the two officials, who discussed the deliberations on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly...

More at The Washington Post.

Obama Meets Joint Chiefs to Review Afghanistan Strategy - Thom Shanker and Helene Cooper, New York Times.

President Obama met Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to discuss the way ahead in Afghanistan - in particular how sending more forces might affect the health of the military, already strained by eight years of war. Administration and military officials said the top officers from the Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force briefed the president on the long-term consequences for personnel and equipment under various options being considered. The central question is whether the scope of reinforcements would require the military either to cut time at home between deployments or to extend tours in the combat zone. No decisions were made Friday. With Mr. Obama scheduled to leave Washington for a weeklong trip to Asia on Nov. 11, one administration official said the likelihood of announcing his decision before then was fading.

The meeting came as administration officials are starting to grapple with how Mr. Obama will make the case for his Afghanistan strategy, whatever his decision. Mr. Obama has come under fire from critics who say he has yet to explain clearly to the country or the international community what he is trying to do in Afghanistan, and why it is worth risking more American troops. The issue of deployments is of particular concern to the ground forces, which are carrying the burden in Afghanistan and in Iraq. An important variable is the current timetable for Iraq, which envisions almost all Marines out by next spring, with overall troop levels scheduled to drop to about 50,000 by the end of next summer...

More at The New York Times.

Topic include:

1) Why would 'American officials' expose their own intelligence source?

2) U.S.--India military cooperation: some rare good news in Asia.

Why would 'American officials' expose their own intelligence source?

On Oct. 27 the New York Times reported that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of President Hamid Karzai and a major power broker in Kandahar, was a paid intelligence asset of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Times's sources for this allegation included "current and former American officials" including a former CIA officer and perhaps a senior U.S. military officer in Kabul. Ahmed Wali Karzai acknowledged aiding U.S. efforts but denied receiving any payments from the CIA.

The piece asserted that Karzai's alleged connections to Afghanistan's drug trade created deep frustrations with senior political and military officials in both the Obama and Bush administrations.

Did frustration and moral outrage with Karzai's illicit activities lead U.S. officials to expose him as a paid CIA asset? It would certainly be understandable, for these officials may have a low opinion of him and perhaps by association his brother the president. But this collective outburst is folly and will make a nearly impossible task for the Americans in Afghanistan only that much harder to achieve.

The U.S. officials who exposed Karzai are likely hoping that with his status now public, he will no longer be useful to the CIA. Perhaps they are hoping that the CIA will be too embarrassed to continue paying him. As the New York Times piece discusses, some officials believe that if the U.S. really wants better governance in Afghanistan, it must begin by getting rid of types like him. They believe that for a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy to succeed, clean Afghan administration needs to occur concurrently, not later. By continuing to work with the president's brother, the CIA was not cooperating with this view. Those objecting to the CIA's alleged connection with Karzai appear to have used the New York Times in an attempt to resolve this interagency dispute.

Regardless of which strategy President Obama chooses for Afghanistan, executing that strategy will require extensive cooperation with all levels of Afghan society. U.S. officials have to deal with Afghan society as it is, not as they wish it might be. With no history of success at strong central government, and not much prospect of establishing it anytime soon, U.S. officials have to deal with local strong men. If, perhaps like Ahmed Wali Karzai, the local strong man is both very powerful and equally unsavory, U.S. military, State Department, and CIA field officers will have to weigh the feasible alternatives, if any can be found. If there are no alternatives, U.S. officials will have to quietly decide whether the mission is worth the moral consequences.

By contrast, the very public exposure of Ahmed Wali Karzai only exposed some U.S. officials to be petulant and self-destructive. As a result of his exposure, Karzai may now provide less help to the Americans and more help for the Taliban and the drug barons. The CIA had hoped to recruit other local strong men or Taliban leaders into its employ. The prospects for that, in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world, must now be considerably lower. In fact, any measure of American reliability, so crucial for the success of a counterinsurgency campaign, has been damaged. And if some hoped that embarrassing the Karzai family would boost Abdullah Abdullah into the presidency, such an outcome would only boost the ferocity of Pashtun resistance.

A subtext of the New York Times story was the moral complexity of Afghan culture. But it is also a story of America's culture, which simply may not be suited for military-social engineering campaigns such as that envisioned for Afghanistan.

U.S.--India military cooperation: some rare good news in Asia

Oct. 27 was the final day of Exercise Yudh Abyhas 2009, where a mechanized infantry battalion of the Indian Army hosted a similar unit from the U.S. Army for two weeks of combined trained. The exercise concluded with a complex live-fire assault involving tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and helicopter-borne infantry. According to Lt. Gen. A.S. Sekhon of the Indian Army, this training exercise was the largest the Indian Army has ever done with a foreign army.

This was the fifth annual iteration of Exercise Yudh Abyhas. In previous years Indian soldiers have trained in Alaska and Hawaii while U.S. soldiers have trained at India's counterinsurgency and jungle warfare school.

It is not only the U.S. Army that is developing a relationship with India. The U.S. and Indian air forces recently completed their fourth annual installment of Exercise Cope India. Malabar 2009, an annual U.S.--India naval training exercise, occurred in April, and added Japanese naval forces to the event. Previous Malabar exercises have involved U.S. aircraft carrier strike groups and U.S. Marine Corps amphibious assault forces.

Although hardly trouble-free, the rapid expansion in the defense relationship between the United States and India contrasts sharply with the troubled security relationships the U.S. has with China and Pakistan. After much pleading, this week the Chinese government finally sent Gen. Xu Caihou, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, to meet with U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. It was the first meeting at this level the U.S. has had with China since 2006. Admiral Timothy Keating, the recently departed commander of U.S. Pacific Command, fared no better engaging with his Chinese counterparts. In an interview with the Financial Times, Keating remarked, "I don't have their [senior Chinese military officials'] phone number. I can't pick up the phone and wish them happy birthday. I don't mean to be glib about it . . . [But] we don't enjoy the sort of communication that I have with almost every other military leader in Asia."

The U.S. security relationship with Pakistan has its own troubles. According to the Pew Research Center, only 16 percent of Pakistanis surveyed have a favorable view of the United States and 13% have confidence in President Barack Obama. On Oct. 28 U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Pakistan and received an angry reception over perceived U.S. infringements of Pakistan's sovereignty and blame for the Taliban's bombing campaign in Pakistan's cities.

With little seeming to go right with Afghanistan, Pakistan, or China, U.S. policymakers should be pleased with warming U.S.--India defense ties. It is U.S. policy to support China's peaceful and harmonious arrival as a major power. The U.S. is also trying to find a happy ending to its troubles in Afghanistan. But good intentions have little to do with good results. When pondering Afghanistan, Pakistan, and China, the U.S.--India defense relationship is something both countries will take comfort in - and may someday need.

THE highly decorated general sat opposite his commander in chief and explained the problems his army faced fighting in the hills around Kabul: "There is no piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another," he said. "Nevertheless much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize.

"Our soldiers are not to blame. They've fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills." He went on to request extra troops and equipment. "Without them, without a lot more men, this war will continue for a very, very long time," he said.

These sound as if they could be the words of Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, to President Obama in recent days or weeks. In fact, they were spoken by Sergei Akhromeyev, the commander of the Soviet armed forces, to the Soviet Union's Politburo on Nov. 13, 1986.

The op-ed, a quick summary of top-level Soviet policy in Afghanistan, concludes with this:

In 1988, Robert Gates, then the deputy director of the C.I.A., made a wager with Michael Armacost, then undersecretary of state. He bet $25 that the Soviet Army wouldn't leave Afghanistan. The Soviets retreated in humiliation soon after. Mr. Gates, we can assume, paid up.

I am sure Robert Gates never imagined that 20 years later he would find himself flying into Bagram for exasperated conferences with his generals.

Soviet tactics in Afghanistan were brutal in the extreme and the slaughter and refugee crisis that ensued in the 1980s in no way compares to the current experience.

But although the U.S. has used a much gentler hand than the Soviets, the results (or lack thereof) seem the same. Perhaps those Afghans who choose to fight don't care what tactics, techniques, and procedures their enemies use. Now the hope is that one final addition of troops and reconstruction spending will isolate those Afghan recalcitrants and achieve a recognizable improvement in stability.

Success requires commitment. But commitment makes failure much more painful. Military historians have many examples in both categories. Committing to success means taking a risk on great pain, a dilemma President Obama and his advisers must now understand.