This was my State of the Union.

Key words: economy, deficit, reform, jobs, war, health care, financial (all variations).

There may be no video, but honey, me an’ my home state’s whiskey got real friendly tonight.

(The man sure can speak, but lord, I hope next year’s is better.)

Numbers, numbers, numbers.

As I’m wading backwards through the last several weeks of posts, articles, papers, and other items, I’ll be revisiting things that have probably been put to bed already. Apologies if the ongoing conversation has moved elsewhere, but I find virtue in dealing with the things I read as I read them.

From Nightwatch circa 2010-01-20:

The Afghan government announced its goals for expanding its security forces in the next three to five years. The plan calls for security force levels to reach 400,000, including 240,000 soldiers and 160,000 national police, the Associated Press reported today.

At present Afghanistan claims to have 94,000 police officers and 97,000 soldiers. A British Colonel who is a member of the planning team for the security forces said that the team would be asked to approve a goal of 134,000 soldiers and 109,000 police by the end of this year. That would increase to 172,000 soldiers and 134,000 police by the end of next year.

The numbers are mainly on paper. The purpose of this entry is to update readers about the official numbers.

The literacy rate and level of familiarity with technology are so low that the goal of adding 40,000 soldiers this year is not credible and can only be a paper drill. In the past 8 years, the annual average increase has been just over 11,700 soldiers and more than half desert. What would make anyone think an increase of 40,000 soldiers, regardless of their lack of capability, was achievable this year? Moreover, while Afghanistan needs more police, it urgently needs paramilitary police.

“Not credible” is the polite way of saying “this is bullshit.” I’ve always been wary of giving credence to the development targets for a professional Afghan security force, and this does nothing to assuage that wariness. It seems that it must constantly be reiterated that Afghanistan is not Iraq; hell, you can’t do justice by comparing it to Pakistan either, which has had enough stability to maintain the ISI and other security operations for far longer than Afghanistan has had the Taliban pried from its capitol. At a basic level, to manage as large numbers of professional (somewhat Westernized) security forces as is targeted in Afghanistan, there has to be enough literacy amongst a managerial corps to handle those forces. And it simply doesn’t exist.

Not to be facile, but it takes time to build basic education into an illiterate society, and it won’t be accomplished by any exit deadline set by the West. This is a ridiculous inflation of the capability of Afghan infrastructure and Western efficacy in this field.

The exponential increase the “British colonel” is describing just makes me heave a sigh. I bet Rory Stewart is doing the same thing.

This is what would happen if SM Stirling were writing America.

Via Yglesias via James Fallows, a Fake is the New Real thought experiment:

This map is by Neil Freeman from FakeIsTheNewReal.org. It’s based on a division of the country into 50 state units with more-or-less equal population — 5 to 6 million apiece — and preserving existing boundaries where possible. (As with the new state of “Missouri.”) I love many of the other state names — Lincoln, Joaquin, Tombigbee. My childhood home would have been along the border of Coronado and Mojave. In a reapportioned Senate each of these units would have two votes.

So I would go from living in Oregon to living in Willamette, and (I agree with Yglesias) go unpleasantly but not unsurprisingly from a blue to a red state. I’ll admit, the most fascinating thing for me about this map is what the mapmakers decided to name the citizen-proportionate states (Llano Estacado! Bitterroot! Okefenokee!) because at heart I’m a scifi nerd with a serious love of alternate histories. But it’s also worth looking at as the Census 2010 starts ramping up throughout the nation. The Census is simultaneously one of the most powerful expressions of data mining in, I believe, the world; as well as one of the most logistically challenging. I’m very interested to see the white paper at the end of the process. (Me and just about every corporate enterprise in the Western world.)

and he even put the budget on iMovie!

::blows dust off blog::

Well, that was a longer absence than I anticipated. I have some crummy health problems that are occasionally more persistent than I would like, and this was one of those instances where I dropped a ball. (The ball being this blog.) Forgive me?

I’m still working on getting caught up on, well, everything (a couple hundred emails! 1500 items in RSS feed! rending of fabric!) but this piece from Slate caught my eye this morning. The iState of the Union: Steve Jobs delivers the annual presidential address.

Now let’s take a look at national security. When we got in here last year, torture was basically OK. We were water-boarding people and doing all sorts of terrible things. If you’re the president of the United States, how do you solve this? Hmm. Oh wait, we have solved this. We banned torture. Boom. Now that’s what I call an amazing breakthrough.

(APPLAUSE. HOOTING.)

OK, I know what you’re thinking: Afghanistan. That war’s not going so well. Kind of a quagmire. So what do you do? You get a better strategy. The 2010 Afghanistan war is newer, better, and cheaper. Want to see what it looks like?

(DELIRIOUS SCREAMS.)

OK, let me call up iMovie. See those drones? They were doing OK, taking out some of the top guys in the Taliban. That just wasn’t good enough. We took them apart, totally redesigned them. They’ve got multi-touch, 3G, and augmented reality terrorist locators. Starting tonight, you can buy them on apple.gov. Just kidding. We wouldn’t do that. But we could do that, if we wanted to. And boom—just like that, we’ve changed warfare. How do you like that, America?

(CHANTS OF “USA! USA!”)

…USA! Man, a corporate takeover never looked so good. (And I don’t think I’ve ever been so eager for a State of the Union address as this one.)

If you folks have some handy links of things I should read that I’ve missed in the last several weeks, I’d appreciate it if you’d drop them in the comments.

2010

Happy new year, folks. Hopefully it’ll be a new year when I can get back to regular posting. Take care.

Also known as December.

In the last twelve days, my car has broken down and been fixed, I’ve found a new apartment, I registered to vote, went to a hearing at the county courthouse, replaced my work computer that self-immolated unexpectedly, and tried, in vain, to shop for winter holiday presents.

You can perhaps understand my lack of posting.

And so, in lieu of the usual foreign policy-military-foreign development thinkiness, have this amusing quote from Overheard in New York. (Real content soon. Unless something else goes awry.)

Teenage boy, explaining why he joined the Air Force: We’ve been around since World War II. We fought against the Germans and sank several submarines. We also killed a whale, but that’s not the point.

–Bard High School, Queens

Isn’t that why everyone joins? Apart from the whale, of course.

What would a T.E. Lawrence Doctrine be?

Diplopundit tipped me off to Alexander Wolf’s new paper in SSQ, U.S. Interventions Abroad: A Renaissance of the Powell Doctrine?, in a post written before Obama’s West Point speech. Wolf addresses policies of doctrinal change, and in particular the possible return of the Powell Doctrine. From the paper:

[T]he Powell Doctrine begins with the interest-based decision to intervene and formulates an operational catalogue of criteria for the “proper” execution of military intervention. Accordingly, the military should only be put to use when:

(1) The national interest requires it;

(2) The number of troops employed corresponds with the mission they are to execute;

(3) The mission is clearly defined, both politically and militarily;

(4) The size, composition, and disposition of the troops is constantly being reevaluated;

(5) The operation has the support of both the Congress and the American people; and

(6) There is a clear exit strategy.

The Doctrine, as it holds, is meant to hold off the possibility of mission creep–which struck a note for me, as Michael Cohen updated his Afghanistan Mission Creep series on Monday as well, before the speech. Michael said:

Going forward, it’s critical that progressives (and others!) hold the Administration’s feet to the fire on the strategy being announced tonight. I think a few things will be key: how closely is the Administration adhering to its own benchmarks denoting success, is there progress on getting the Pakistanis to crack down on Afghan Taliban safe havens, are there signs that Karzai is not only tackling corruption but devoting resources to a counter-insurgency fight and the performance of the Afghan military. Without significant progress on these fronts it’s hard to see the President’s strategy bearing fruit in Afghanistan.

I wonder: is the fear of Mission Creep assuaged with this renewed conception of the Powell Doctrine? Because during the West Point speech, Obama quite clearly laid out most of those points.

1. He made the case point by point that the national interest requires it. I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat.

2. The number of troops–forty thousand, with the newly announced addition of 7000 more from NATO is commensurate with McChrystal’s request, and reports have it that both McChrystal and Petraeus were satisfied that what Obama authorized would suffice to execute the mission.

3. That mission was defined in March, and reiterated again this week: Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.

To meet that goal, we will pursue the following objectives within Afghanistan. We must deny al Qaeda a safe haven. We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government. And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future.

4. This remains to be seen, but in one sense it seems like the transition deadline of 2011 would promote force review.

5. While initial signs point to Congressional favor waning and American public opinion diminishing (at least, for the moment), my personal opinion is that there is sufficient national will to meet this escalation, but it is a very precarious will. Things will depend as much on whether the climate bill eclipses public attention sufficiently to distract punditry–I mean, the news–away from Afghanistan as whether Operation Cobra’s Anger (which I can’t help but say in a movie announcer’s voice) is immediately successful at producing quantifiable, soundbyte-worthy results.

6. But taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow
us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the
transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011. Which, as we have discussed, is both clear and muddy. But it’s definitely an exit strategy.

Is this just an executive expression of logical thought? Or is the Powell Doctrine back en vogue? And if this is an iteration of the Powell Doctrine, perhaps it assuages some fears of mission creep. (But don’t stop writing critiques, Michael! Holding the administration accountable is one of the most important things going forward. )

*

Edited to add: Mis-typed the author of the paper’s name as Andrew when it was Alexander; corrected now. Apologies.

A new Director for Chrismukkah

It didn’t slip my notice that, early last month, Obama announced his nomination for USAID. Rajiv Shah, currently an Under Secretary at the USDA. His hearing was Tuesday, news that was likely eclipsed with the West Point speech.

I do think it’s a net positive that any nomination has been made, after nearly ten months and a bit of moaning about it. And Dr. Shah has a pretty impressive resume.

Josh Rogin at The Cable obtained the written answers Dr Shah submitted prior to the hearing, which give some insight into his perspective on the troubles USAID faces and the department’s role in US foreign policy–particularly in Afghanistan. But as Diplopundit notes:

The whole thing is worth reading although one comes away without the answer to the questions we really want answered. The only thing that seems sure from this and from the hearing is that we won’t really know how much change there will be for USAID until the roll out of the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review next year.

Important point. Given the significant changes made to USAID administration ca. 2006, it makes me curious as to how, or if, USAID will play against this escalation in Afghanistan. (Which is, of course, but one of USAID’s development locales.)

TNR also came out with thoughts on USAID this week that touch on the balance Shah faces as USAID’s role comes to be redefined for Obama’s administration, during the QDDR taking place in the State Department.

Into this debate over the role of foreign aid–self-interest versus altruism? short-term versus long-term?–steps Shah. It’s impossible to know how the new USAID chief will act, although, as a young pick with no prior experience at the agency, he seems likely to defer to Clinton. One thing is for sure: He won’t have a lot of time to get his bearings. As soon as he’s confirmed, he will probably join the State Department’s Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR), which will aim to provide a blueprint for coordinating diplomatic and development efforts.

The State Department denies that the QDDR will be used to justify a shift toward strategic aid as opposed to pure humanitarian aid. At a briefing about the QDDR in July, Director of Policy Planning Anne-Marie Slaughter was asked: “Traditionally, humanitarian aid has been kind of walled off from the diplomatic objectives of the United States. Should this be seen in some way as a blurring of that bright line?” She answered no; but USAID watchers still worry that State Department control of the agency means a certain approach to foreign aid will prevail. Says Atwood, “Diplomats are trained for certain expertise but development is not one of them. … If you believe in that, you need a strong and independent voice representing development interests at the table–because otherwise the tendency is for short-term political priorities to win out over long-term development goals.”

I highly recommend reading Shah’s answers to the Kerry-Lugar hearing, even if I don’t find them to be wholly satisfying. This is the first real movement USAID has had this calendar year, and I’m interested to see how it goes.

As the crow flies

Bruce might be right that Fred Kaplan over at Slate goes somewhat overboard in his assessment of Obama’s speech, but I have to say, I thought this was worth pulling out of Kaplan’s article:

The issue that has caused the most controversy is his statement that our troops will begin to come home in July 2011.

Critics say that this sends the wrong signal to the Afghan people; that if they think we’re leaving in less than two years, they won’t trust us to protect them in the first place; and that, in any case, the Taliban will simply lie low and “wait us out.”

This complaint misreads the policy. The key word in Obama’s speech was that in July 2011, the United States will “begin” to transfer responsibility for security to the Afghan forces. The pace of this transfer—how quickly we will continue to withdraw and at what point we’ll get out altogether—will be determined by “conditions on the ground.” (Obama may not have underscored this phrase, but in a background press briefing earlier in the day, “senior officials” emphasized it strongly; one predicted that it would be the most misunderstood and misreported part of the speech.)

I’ve read so many analyses and reviews and play-by-plays of Obama’s West Point speech (transcript; White House Fact Sheet) that my head is kind of spinning with thoughts, but the above point is essentially what I thought when I watched the speech. Obama gave just enough definition to the action he was authorizing to appease the elements of his political base who do not want the United States to be at war; similarly, he gave a fair-sized rhetorical space in which to direct a draw-down–which is to say, he built in a way to withdraw and remain simultaneously with no firm commitment to a date or time.

I will say, though, that I agree with Ricks and with the underlying theme of Andrew Sprung’s analysis: this was a pragmatic explanation of a decision thoroughly weighted, and not a patriotic call to arms. It was an assessment, laid out rationally, that offers a conclusion; not a sweeping muddle of vacuity styled as a plan. To my philosopher mind, I thought he did a superb job of reviewing several premises, challenging or reaffirming them, and re-articulating and outlining his strategy in theatre.

But I’ll admit, I hope the State of the Union is a little more rousing. There’s wasn’t much rise and fall in this sucker–which was entirely appropriate.

Obnoxious latin subject line: “officium veneratio terra”

Caught the speech. Had some beer. Had a spit-take. Still mulling my thoughts, but find I am mostly satisfied. Maybe it was the challenge to NATO for five thousand additional troops that took three months to work out? Either way, great speech.