I was struck by the unexpected tone of President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize speech — instead of spending the entire address laying out a vision to achieve world peace, he instead spend the first half addressing the odd position in which he finds himself: receiving this prize while serving as Commander-in-Chief of a nation involved in two wars.

In the process, he laid out the most compelling ideological foundation for a progressive view on national security I have heard him ever give:

We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations – acting individually or in concert – will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.

I make this statement mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago – “Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones.” As someone who stands here as a direct consequence of Dr. King’s life’s work, I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence. I know there is nothing weak –nothing passive – nothing naïve – in the creed and lives of Gandhi and King.

But as a head of state sworn to protect and defend my nation, I cannot be guided by their examples alone. I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people. For make no mistake: evil does exist in the world. A non-violent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies. Negotiations cannot convince al Qaeda’s leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history; the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.

I raise this point because in many countries there is a deep ambivalence about military action today, no matter the cause. At times, this is joined by a reflexive suspicion of America, the world’s sole military superpower.

Yet the world must remember that it was not simply international institutions – not just treaties and declarations – that brought stability to a post-World War II world. Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms. The service and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform has promoted peace and prosperity from Germany to Korea, and enabled democracy to take hold in places like the Balkans. We have borne this burden not because we seek to impose our will. We have done so out of enlightened self-interest – because we seek a better future for our children and grandchildren, and we believe that their lives will be better if other peoples’ children and grandchildren can live in freedom and prosperity.

This is where progressives should stand on national security:  we must acknowledge that there is evil in the world and show a resolve to make tough choices when America’s vital national security interests are at stake.  Our preference is to not use force, but when all other options have been exhausted and our security remains directly threatened, force may be the last resort.

Though we would prefer that

It looks like the White House is circling in on a new strategy in Afghanistan that focuses on protecting major population centers like Kabul, Kandahar, Mazar-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad, and a few other large villages.

If endorsed, it would adopt the major elements of General McChrystal’s proposed counterinsurgency strategy, albeit it on a more limited scale that perhaps acknowledges  40,000 additional troops aren’t enough to effectively pacify the entire country.  Or, as the NYT put it:

At the heart of this strategy is the conclusion that the United States cannot completely eradicate the insurgency in a nation where the Taliban is an indigenous force — nor does it need to in order to protect American national security. Instead, the focus would be on preventing Al Qaeda from returning in force while containing and weakening the Taliban long enough to build Afghan security forces that would eventually take over the mission.

This strategy would certainly prevent the Taliban from regaining control of the country, thereby denying Al Qaeda the petri dish it needs to reconstitute an ability to attack the United States.

Furthermore, this is a realistic approach about what we can achieve, even with increased - but finite - resources.  It may simply not be a sensible use of resources to deploy tens of thousands of American forces to Helmand, a massive southern province that has 20 percent of the land, but only three percent of the population.

However, the fundamental question for me is would this strategy effectively cede control over large swaths of the country to the Taliban where al Qaeda elements could re-enter and rebuild its abilities.  One senior administration addressed that point, saying, “We are not talking about surrendering the rest of the country to the Taliban.”

But under this scenario in Helmand, field commanders would compensate for the lack of a full-time troop presence by keeping pressure on insurgents with drone strike, aided  intelligence from local populations about pockets of Taliban.  But by ceding control to the Taliban, we could be alienating the local population — the eyes and ears necessary to target the drones.

And finally, a potential side-effect of protecting select urban areas is that as the only stable regions, they might be flooded by rural villagers that don’t want to live under the Taliban.  Would this increase the burden on troops to the point that their presence has diminishing returns as the cities swell with refugees?

Consider me cautiously optimistic, but nervous.

The State Department is involved in a massive project - the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review - that is designed to address a serious “funding imbalance” between the civilian and military institutions involved in American national security.

Says Anne-Marie Slaughter, Director of Policy and Planning at the State Department and in charge of the review,

This is not an abstract planning exercise that goes into a report and sits on a shelf,” she said. “It’s a planning exercise that does connect to the budget, that’s very important, but the implications go far beyond the budget. The budget is the tool to implement what we’re going to come up with. This is really what I think secretaries of state should be doing, which is a kind of farsighted look into how the United States is going to implement its foreign policy agenda in the 21st century.”

It is designed to roughly model the Pentagon’s Quadrenial Defense Review, which similarly connects threats to strategies to resources to budgets.

What’s more, it’s exactly what the State Department needs - with a budget hovering around $40billion, or well less than 10 percent of the Pentagon’s, it’s quite fair to say that in 2009, Foggy Bottom is responsible for well more than 10 percent of the national security of the United States.  Now it just needs the bureaucratic proof to justify that need to Congress.  Et voila - the QDDR!

I’ve been pretty tardy about posting stuff to AOM of late, and for that, I apologize.  As I alluded to earlier, we’re starting to transition to The Progressive Fix here at the PPI, and I’m imagining - but not certain - that AOM will  be gobbled up by that site.  Sigh.

But for now, the hits keep coming.  I had a two-fer on Friday, with the RCP piece as well as this article in Foreign Policy.  Here’s a tease. Enjoy:

As deliberations about the Obama administration’s strategic direction in Afghanistan unfold, the White House is weighing whether al Qaeda, in fact, needs an Afghan safe haven — an expanse of land under the protection of the Taliban — to reconstitute its capability to attack the United States. Many noted scholars doubt it. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass bluntly stated, “Al Qaeda does not require Afghan real estate to constitute a regional or global threat.”

He’s wrong. Although the group has been significantly weakened since late 2001, the only chance al Qaeda has of rebuilding its capability to conduct a large-scale terrorist operation against the United States is under the Taliban’s umbrella of protection.

It hasn’t been easy going of late for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s illegitimate president.

First came the summer repression - in the wake of a fraudulent election, Ahmadinejad spent most of his time repressing an internal revolution as hundreds of thousands took to the streets in mass protest.

Up next was this week’s speech to the general assembly of the United Nations, where Ahmadinejad carried on about alleged Jewish desires to start a new form of slavery, charges that prompted a mass walk-out by many of the world’s major powers.

It’s tough to mix such bombast with dented credibility under normal circumstances.  But the hits keep on coming for the regime in Tehran:  The U.S., Britain, and France have just revealed  knowledge of a secret Iranian underground nuclear facility near the holy city of Qom.

We call this getting caught with your pants down.

Iran tried to limit the damage by preemptively notifying the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency in advance of the tri-lateral announcement in Pittsburgh, but to no avail.  Iran was hiding a facility, and even if it proved to be of the benign civilian power variety, the burden of proof now falls squarely on the mullahs’ shoulders.  Perhaps this is why Ahmadinejad left the door cracked open at the end of his unsettling UN address with a pledge “to shake all those hands which are honestly extended to us.”

The Obama administration should be salivating:  Iran’s damaged legitimacy at home and abroad likely make it more willing to engage in meaningful dialogue about its nuclear program.  And with Russia recent indication of support for sanctions - a bonus, repeat bonus, outcome from chosing to strengthen American security by abandoning missile defense in Eastern Europe in favor of a sea-based system - there is a real chance of leveraging broad international pressure to move Iran.  (And indeed, Russia’s main task may be pressuring China to support sanctions.)

The trick is to ensure that the Iranians don’t get away with “window dressing” diplomacy - that is, giving the appearance that they’re meeting internationaldemands, while actuality not giving away much at all.

The first such test will come soon - Iran has promised to give the IAEA access to interview Iran’s nuclear scientists.  The international coalition must insist that the interviews take place on the IAEA’s terms:  likely outside of Iran, for as long as the IAEA requests, and covering whatever topics are deemed necessary.

Next, the international coalition should push for IAEA access to all Iranian nuclear sites, and couple refused access with broad sanctions on imports of refined gas.

These will be the first important steps to learning if even a fault-ridden Iranian regime can be an honest partner.

At a town-hall meeting on Friday, Secretary Clinton announced that for the first time, State would conduct a Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review.  This process is extensively modeled on the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review; it is designed to identify strategic priorities and match the resources needed to achieve them.  Here’s Secretary Clinton’s reasoning:

We will be doing this quadrennial review, which will be, we hope, a tool to provide us with both short-term and long-term blueprints for how to advance our foreign policy objectives and our values and interests. This will provide us with a comprehensive assessment for organizational reform and improvements to our policy, strategy, and planning processes. And this will help make our diplomacy and development work more agile, responsive, and complimentary. This is what we mean when we talk about smart power.

I think we need this type of bottom-up strategic review to coordinate our work and to accelerate transitions from old ideas and outmoded programs. A State Department QDDR protocol will give us the strategic guidance we need to help us allocate our resources more efficiently and deploy people where they will have the most impact. I think it’s a new way of doing business that will give us the dynamism that we should have and better equip us to deal with the accelerating rate of change that we confront.

Now, I know what you’re thinking.  By now, you’ve probably rolled your eyes and thought “Oh great, another bureaucratic review.  Sure.  That will solve everything.”

Stop right there, hater.  This is an essential program for the State Department.  Over the past year, we’ve heard everyone from John McCain to Bob Gates lobby for more funding for State.  The QDDR will more clearly articulated goals and missions, it just might provide the intellectual backing needed to justify a bigger budget.

One final thought - with the QDR (due 2010) and the QDDR, there seem to be a bunch of key national security agency reviews underway.  Wouldn’t it behoove us to have some sort of whole-of-government review that aligns our national security goals and missions between agencies, not just within them?  Where have I heard that before?  Oh, yes, right here, in a Memo to the New President I wrote this year:

If we are going to find the right mix of military and civilian capacities to address today’s security problems, we need to put our nation’s civilian national-security institutions on a more equal footing with our military capability. To accomplish this, I propose that you replace the Quadrennial Defense Review, which is due to be conducted next year, with a broader Quadrennial National Security Review.

My erstwhile Russia co-author Joshua Tucker has a piece up on The New Republic’s site about the Obama administration’s strategy of bolstering Medvedev at Putin’s expense.  An excerpt:

Perhaps the single greatest fault line between the two [Mevedev and Putin] that has been suggested has been a belief that Medvedev may ultimately be more of a true believer in the rule of law than Putin, and therefore more receptive of the idea of restrained (e.g., liberal) state as a means to fostering prosperity in Russia.

Intriguingly, several of President Obama’s actions related to his current trip to Moscow suggest that he may share this view of Medvedev–and is conducting his Russia outreach accordingly. The most obvious example of this was his pointed comment in an Associated Press interview before the visit that “I think Putin has one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new,” which explicitly drew a contrast between Putin and Medvedev. We can also see this approach in Obama’s speech today at the New Economic School. Not only did he mention the rule of law three times in the course of the speech, but the very first time he mentioned it, he immediately followed it by noting, “As President Medvedev has rightly said, a mature and effective legal system is a condition for sustained economic development.” Indeed, the very choice of the New Economic School–a private institution with an unquestionable reputation for academic freedom–as a venue for Obama’s major public speech can be interpreted as a subtle dig against Putin’s vision of a statist Russia….

But make no mistake, trying to exploit potential rifts between Medvedev and Putin is a bit of a gamble on Obama’s part. …  If Obama is wrong, and Putin really is calling the shots, the U.S. attempts to favor Medvedev at Putin’s expense may have negative reverberations on U.S.-Russian relations in the future. But if Obama is right, and Medvedev does indeed have independent power and preferences, then the President of the United States may very well have cleverly sent an important message to the President of Russia: We can indeed work together in a way that benefits both of us.

Josh’s analysis is spot-on, both in terms of what the administration thinks, and the risks it poses if Putin reacts negatively.  I was thinking that this situation is a bit of a parallel with how the Bush administration tried to deal with the Palestinian split - dealing only with Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority while ignoring Hamas.  Of course there are huge differences between the two situations, but if there’s a basic lesson to be drawn, it’s this:  this type of  strategy can’t be a zero-sum game.  The White House will have to deal with Putin regardless of how much it would prefer exclusive interaction deal with Medvedev.  Indeed, Obama can raise Mevedev’s profile - and probably significantly so - but should remain cognizant that Putin - like Hamas - retains an independent power base.