Obama's Pakistan policy

Bush and Musharaff: too close for our own good?

Barack Obama has taken some flack for his recent get-tough-on-Pakistan speech.

But I'd have to say that From: Samantha Power of the Harvard University Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, who is more interventionist-minded than I am, makes some very valid points on Obama's positions in a new memo, reproduced at Mark Ambinder's blog, Power On "CW V. CWN" 08/03/07 (Power worked as an adviser to Obama for a year):

Barack Obama’s judgment is right; the conventional wisdom is wrong. We need a new era of tough, principled and engaged American diplomacy to deal with 21st century challenges.

Terrorist Sanctuaries: For years, we have given President Musharraf hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid, while deferring to his cautious judgment on how to take out high-level al Qaeda targets – including, most likely, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. Here is the result:

• Bin Laden and Zawahiri – two men with direct responsibility for 9/11– remain at large.

• Al Qaeda has trained and deployed hundreds of fighters worldwide from its sanctuary in northwest Pakistan.

• Afghanistan is far less secure because the Taliban can strike across the border, and then return to safety in Pakistan.

By any measure, this strategy has not worked. Conventional wisdom would have us defer to Musharraf in perpetuity. Barack Obama wants to turn the page. If Musharraf is willing to go after the terrorists and stop the Taliban from using Pakistan as a base of operations, Obama would give him all of the support he needs. But Obama made clear that as President, if he had actionable intelligence about the whereabouts of al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan – and the Pakistanis continued to refuse to act against terrorists known to be behind attacks on American civilians – then he will use highly targeted force to do so.

Barack Obama’s judgment is right; the conventional wisdom is wrong. We need a new era that moves beyond the conventional wisdom that has brought us over-reliance on an unreliable dictator in Pakistan and an occupation of Iraq.

The devil, as they say, is in the details. But as a policy statement, what Power describes in that quote seems very sensible to me.

At the same time, I believe it's vital for people to realize that there's no such thing as a purely "surgical strike", at least not in the sense that it's a one-time event that leaves no more than very short-term consequences. Pakistan is a nuclear power and it is the "front-line state" in one of the most sensitive territorial disputes in Muslim consciousness, the Kashmir dispute over India. An overt military attack on Pakistani territory is not something to be undertaken lightly.

There have been scattered reports and indications, of course, that US covert operations have been taking place in Pakistan with the quiet agreement of the Pakistani government. Still, an overt attack raises the stakes all around. As important as "getting Bin Laden" and disrupting his Al Qa'ida group is for the United States, it's not the only important issue in play with Pakistan.

She's also got a good point on nuclear weapons:

Nuclear Attacks on Terrorist Targets: For years, Washington’s conventional wisdom has held that candidates for President are judged not by their wisdom, but rather by their adherence to hackneyed rhetoric that make little sense beyond the Beltway. When asked whether he would use nuclear weapons to take out terrorist targets in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Barack Obama gave the sensible answer that nuclear force was not necessary, and would kill too many civilians. Conventional wisdom held this up as a sign of inexperience. But if experience leads you to make gratuitous threats about nuclear use – inflaming fears at home and abroad, and signaling nuclear powers and nuclear aspirants that using nuclear weapons is acceptable behavior, it is experience that should not be relied upon.

Barack Obama’s judgment is right. Conventional wisdom is wrong. It is wrong to propose that we would drop nuclear bombs on terrorist training camps in Pakistan, potentially killing tens of thousands of people and sending America’s prestige in the world to a level that not even George Bush could take it. We should judge presidential candidates on their judgment and their plans, not on their ability to recite platitudes.

We need to be moving away from nuclear weapons, not finding new excuses to use them. I have to disagree with Hillary Clinton on this issue, where she says:

I think that presidents should be very careful at all times in discussing the use or non-use of nuclear weapons. Presidents, since the Cold War, have used nuclear deterrence to keep the peace. And I don't believe that any president should make any blanket statements with respect to the use or non-use of nuclear weapons.

Until the Cheney-Bush administration, it was the policy of the United States that we would not use nuclear weapons on non-nuclear states. One of the biggest boosts that this administration has given to nuclear proliferation was to explicitly abandon that policy.

Tags: barack obama, nonproliferation, nuclear nonproliferation, samantha power