Too Much AfPak 12/07/2009
Diplomatic skill and foreign policy acumen are both finite resources. Over the past couple of months we've wasted a lot of both debating and implementing the Obama administration's AfPak policy. Stephen Walt explicates the argument:
But there is another cost to digging in deeper in Afghanistan. Obama has now bet the future of his presidency on being able to achieve something he can describe as "success" there, and he has only 18 months to do it. He's shackled with a sluggish economy that is unlikely to turn around soon, so there are going to be plenty of disaffected voters by 2012. The Dems are going to lose a bunch of seats in the midterms, making it even tougher to pass domestic legislation that might win broad voter approval. And having alienated a lot of the people who worked their butts off for him in 2008 (because they thought he would be different), he's going to have a hard time generating the sort of grass roots enthusiasm that won him the White House in the first place. Progressive Dems won't switch sides, but some of them will stay home. He may even have trouble getting Shepard Fairey's endorsement if Afghanistan doesn't turn around fast.
All this means that Obama will have to devote a lot of time and attention and political capital to the war in Afghanistan, an impoverished land-locked country of modest strategic importance. Meanwhile, life will go on in the rest of the world, and U.S. relations with a number of far more important countries will not receive the attention they should. Here are three examples.
Walt goes on to suggest that this intense focus on AfPak has hurt American interests specifically in Japan, Turkey, and Brazil. While I'm not normally a huge Walt fan, his argument is consistent with my experience in Azerbaijan. The Embassy here is virtually hamstrung by the Obama administration's failure to even nominate a candidate for the ambassadorship. This has strained relations with the Azerbaijani government, imperiled the ever tenuous Nabucco pipeline, and allowed the Azeris to get away with an alarming series of human right violations.
But there is another cost to digging in deeper in Afghanistan. Obama has now bet the future of his presidency on being able to achieve something he can describe as "success" there, and he has only 18 months to do it. He's shackled with a sluggish economy that is unlikely to turn around soon, so there are going to be plenty of disaffected voters by 2012. The Dems are going to lose a bunch of seats in the midterms, making it even tougher to pass domestic legislation that might win broad voter approval. And having alienated a lot of the people who worked their butts off for him in 2008 (because they thought he would be different), he's going to have a hard time generating the sort of grass roots enthusiasm that won him the White House in the first place. Progressive Dems won't switch sides, but some of them will stay home. He may even have trouble getting Shepard Fairey's endorsement if Afghanistan doesn't turn around fast.
All this means that Obama will have to devote a lot of time and attention and political capital to the war in Afghanistan, an impoverished land-locked country of modest strategic importance. Meanwhile, life will go on in the rest of the world, and U.S. relations with a number of far more important countries will not receive the attention they should. Here are three examples.
Walt goes on to suggest that this intense focus on AfPak has hurt American interests specifically in Japan, Turkey, and Brazil. While I'm not normally a huge Walt fan, his argument is consistent with my experience in Azerbaijan. The Embassy here is virtually hamstrung by the Obama administration's failure to even nominate a candidate for the ambassadorship. This has strained relations with the Azerbaijani government, imperiled the ever tenuous Nabucco pipeline, and allowed the Azeris to get away with an alarming series of human right violations.
Comments
Garrett
12/13/2009 16:22
Obama is all in now in Afghanistan. Ironically enough, hope seems to be the centerpiece of his new policy in Afghanistan. Hope that Pakistan supports the efforts to eradicate ad-qai'da, hope that Karzai's administration will prove competent instead of corrupt, and hope that the Afghan people will accept a central government. It will be interesting to see how things develop from here. Mr. Obama must feel like Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon when he said, "alea iacta est."
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