Obama's wars Book review 2/2
First general impressions and then India centric view:
Okay, I am done with the rest of the book. Overall the book is about an intellectual, cold, calculating President who knows how to wield power, not get awed or taken in by his Army or intelligence agencies, ask sharp probing questions and rein in his own military. If one incident summarizes the book, it is this: After months of deliberations and nine rounds of grueling strategy reviews, the NSC agrees on a troop level of 30,000. Obama is ready to draft his order when Pentagon and Gates come back with "pending requests" of 4500 support troops and 10% leeway on the 30,000.
Obama erupts. Dictates a 5 page terms sheet clearly laying down the objectives and the numbers so that nobody -- not the vast Armed forces bureaucracy at the Pentagon or the overeager generals get any leeway in "interpreting" his orders in whatever ways they please. (by the way the 5 page terms sheet is worth reproducing here, it clearly lays down US objectives, time lines and force levels in A'stan. I will see if I can scan it from the book).
While such hands on, intellectual and probing President is quite remarkable, what I feel is that this exercise is only as good as its participants. On the one hand, there is Hillary whose loyalty is suspect. Then there is Gates, who is committed to leaving his job in 2011, well before Obama's re-election. Then there is Petraeus, who is media savvy and comes across as a military man who views civilians as unavoidable nuisance. There is Adm Mullen who is stuck in a peculiar place. As chairman of JCSC he is the senior most military officer tasked to advise the President. But since Chief of JCSC is not in the operational chain of command (it flows from the Defense secretary directly to theater commanders and from there to combat commanders), he is more of a figurehead than a soldier. Add to that his tendency to overrule other Chiefs of Staff. In short, after several rounds of gruelling discussions among people who lack imagination, pursue their own agenda and regurgitate operational plans on autopilot, Obama is presented with only one real option. the other two "alternatives" are unrealistic -- 85,000 troops (not available) and 10,000 advisors (surely leading to a Taliban takeover) -- which brings it back to square one -- the original McChrystal recommendation.
Now from an India centric viewpoint. First, what can we expect will happen in Afghanistan?
The rest of the book is a painstaking detail of how the scope and involvement of the US in Afghanistan has been drastically reduced after several rounds of meetings. US seems to have come around to the view that a "Taliban defeat" is a virtual impossibility. For example, Petraeus says:
We are not going to defeat the taliban, but we do need to deny them access to key population areas and lines of communication to contain them.
If at all the operation ends on a high note, it will be after Kandahar is secured.
According to some intelligence analysis, Kandahar was susceptible to a mass uprising that might resemble the 1968 tet offensive in Vietnam...Watch Kandahar, the intelligence warned. It could be more important than Kabul.
After which US troops begin to make their exit.
Next, what is in store for India?
Indians should read this book and WAKE UP!! I feel that the book says only one part of the story. It starts off grandly with Obama declaring:
We need to make clear to people that the cancer is in Pakistan. Obama said. The reason we are doing the target, train and transfer in Afghanistan is so the cancer doesnt spread there.
But then devolves into
The consensus inside the intelligence community was that Afghanistan would not get straightened out until there was a stable relationship between Pakistan and India. A more mature and less combustible relationship between the two longtime adversaries was more important than building Afghanistan, Lavoy said
This reminds me of a story of a man who loses his ring at home, and searches for it in the street, because there is better streetlight there. But this is more sinister than that:
There was another side to the tough talk. As a result of nearly endless policy discussions in the White House, Jones (National Security Advisor), Donilon (Deputy NSA), Lute (Senior advisor for AfPak) and others had repeatedly asked: How are we going to get these guys in Pakistan to Change? For the moment, they knew that this was the wrong question. Pakistan was not going to change. The Pakistanis were hardwired against India. Lets quit banging our heads against the wall and accept it...Pakistan would be at such a disadvantage in a conventional war....that it had relied on two asymmetric tools -- proxy terrorism through LeT and threat of nuclear weapons....Jones tried to convey to them (Pakistanis): We've come to the conclusion that after years of trying, we're not going to change your strategic calculus. It's yours. We accept it and want to understand it better. You get to be Pakistanis in this relationship, while we get to be the Americans. We're not going to try to be both.
Time for SDREs to be less of Gandhi and more of Indira Gandhi.
, in fixing a smile throughout the debate. Tharoor said Hanif's attitude was intriguing. It was indicative of Pakistan's denial of shared historical roots and cultural underpinnings : . "It is time to get away from the sense of denial,'' Tharoor said.
