Okay - I’m really leaving now.  Well soon anyway, really soon.

Have a great couple weeks - I’ll check in here every-so-often.

Happy summer.

Jim

Last week, in the midst of the debate over whether to purchase more F-22 fighter jets, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) absurdly suggested that we needed to purchase the maligned plane to defend against our ally, India. You read that correctly.  Quickly clarified by his staff, Senator Cornyn clarified that he meant China, not India.

Wow. Even Cornyn’s clarification is a head-scratcher, both for its style and substance.

First, the Texan Senator shown stunningly poor timing.  He fingered China as America’s greatest national threat just asits Vice Premier Wang Qishan arrived in Washington this week to discuss the relationship that President Obama has said will shape the 21st century in a new era of “sustained cooperation, not confrontation.”

This cooperation that makes large-scale military confrontation almost unfathomable.  Love it or hate it, with $1.5 trillion in US securities currently owned by Beijing, the United States and China are sharing the world’s economic driver’s seat for the foreseeable future.  Because of our ever-increasing co-dependence, the financial tidal wave that would follow any military confrontation is almost unthinkable–if China stops buying American Treasury bills, the US would effectively go bankrupt.  And then a bankrupt America can’t buy Chinese goods.

Or to put it another way, the bankers will stop a war before the generals start one.

Second, Cornyn grossly misunderstands the strategic military landscape.  While it is true that China’s military poses the greatest challenge to American firepower, it’s important to put China’s capabilities in context: think Washington Generals vs. the Harlem Globetrotters.  A Sino-American war twenty years would look like that game too — China’s military spending and technological advancement - while formidable and increasing - won’t catch up to the US for about two decades even if DC didn’t spend another dime on military hardware.

The Chinese of course know this, which is why they’ve shifted away from a militiary-on-military paradigm, as detailed nicely in Andrew Krepinevich’s recent Foreign Affairs article.  China’s military strategy is focused on “area denial”, which acknowledges the shortcomings in its firepower and seeks instead to limit American access to strategic locations, thereby driving up the cost of any American offensive.

Any way you slice it, Cornyn’s strange justification for the F-22 just doesn’t pass muster.

It’s 2009, and today’s enemies don’t have the nice, neat answers that conservatives would like.  When they wake up to today’s reality, it will be a good morning for American security.

Ladies and Gentlemen -

Over the next two weeks, posting will be spotty at best.

Today and tomorrow, the PPI is moving offices to Dupont Circle.  Then tomorrow night, I’m off on what I consider a well-deserved vacation.  You may not consider it so well-deserved, but whatever… I’m going to St. Petersburg, Tallinn, and Stockholm, so please shoot me an email if you’ve got travel tips.

Listen to Richard Holbroke - the Obama administration’s point-man on everything Afghanistan - as I did on NPR this morning, and I was struck by how much his voice sounds like Gene Simmons’, the erstwhile God of Thunder.  I don’t know if Holbrooke can pull off the guttural scream in the chorus of Cold Gin, but he stands a fighting chance.

While the KISS army would be proud of him, I wish Holbrooke had qualified his enthusiasm for the election.  Consider this exchange:

[NPR's} Renee Montagne: What have you seen as you have traveled through the country these past days that would allow you to say that this election will be fair enough for most Afghans to accept it?

Richard Holbrooke: I’m not ready to judge the elections. All I can say is they’re really important. As President Obama has said, they are the most important event in Afghanistan this year, the first contested elections in Afghanistan’s history. What I’ve seen is democracy at work.

A lot of the techniques Americans are most familiar with — campaign rallies, negative advertising, positive advertising, one of the candidate’s supporters all turn out in a special color of blue at the rallies — this is all politics, Western-style, in a wartime condition. It’s just remarkable to watch. It’s exciting.

… Elections are rarely perfect. This election, in unprecedented wartime conditions, is certainly not going to be without its rough spots. It’s the integrity of the voting process in the middle of a brutal war. How many countries would have had the courage to hold an election under these circumstances? But Afghanistan is, and they should be given credit for it.

True, elections are vitally important; they are democracy at work.  Furthermore, holding this election in the midst of a war is impressive, and the Afghans deserve American support now because this election is the only way to legitimize the government’s power.

But also, an election is only one part of a democratic society, along with an accountable bureaucracy, a free press, and strict adherence to the rule of law.  In the exchange above, Holbrooke implies that the election is the end of the democratic process–rather than a part of it–to the detriment of those other pillars of a functioning democracy.

Why is this important?  If Holbrooke sounds like he’s too enthusiastic about elections for elections’ sake then that’s what his Afghan interlocutors hear, and it’s how they’ll act:  “Just keep the Americans happy with an election every few years; the money will keep flowing.”

Rather, Holbrooke could qualify his support for the campaign while emphasizing the need to bolster the other pillars in Afghanistan’s democracy along with the election.  And while he’s at it, Holbrooke might throw a jab in at President Karzai, by encouraging him to show up at the next presidential debate.

… and that’s something The Demon could rock out to.

NYT:

NAWA, Afghanistan — In three combat tours in Anbar Province, Marine Sgt. Jacob Tambunga fought the deadliest insurgents in Iraq.

But he says he never encountered an enemy as tenacious as what he saw immediately after arriving at this outpost in Helmand Province in Afghanistan. In his first days here in late June, he fought through three ambushes, each lasting as long as the most sustained fight he saw in Anbar. …

In contrast to Iraqi insurgents, the Taliban do not seem to have access to large artillery shells and other powerful military munitions that Anbar fighters used to kill hundreds of Marines and soldiers. The bombs found so far have been largely homemade with fertilizer, though they have still killed more than 20 British soldiers and United States Marines to the north and south of Nawa.

“If they had better weapons, we’d be in real trouble,” said Lance Cpl. Vazgen Matevosyan.

Far be it from me to comment on this - because I haven’t just spent a month in Afghanistan - but here’s some perspective on the situation from Abu Muquawama:

1. Winning in Afghanistan will be really, really difficult. I was and am still haunted by one of the last paragraphs in David B. Edwards’ majesterial Heroes of the Age:

Afghanistan’s central problem [is] Afghanistan itself, specifically certain profound moral contradictions that have inhibited this country from forging a coherent civil society. These contradictions are deeply rooted in Afghan culture, but they have come to the fore in the last one hundred years, since the advent of the nation-state, the laying down of permanent borders, and the attempt to establish an extensive state bureaucracy and to invest that bureaucracy with novel forms of authority and control.

…

2. I was tremendously impressed by the quality of the men and women working for General McChrystal at ISAF. There is a joke going around that when Petraeus took charge in Iraq, he gathered the smartest people he could find to help him win. When McChrystal took charge in Afghanistan, meanwhile, he gathered … well, a bunch of guys from the 75th Ranger Regiment. The truth is, General McChrystal has assembled a team of smart officers and advisers who understand the challenges of Afghanistan and are willing to speak unpleasant truths. …

3. General McChrystal understands population-centric COIN. Forget all that nonsense about a guy with decades of direct-action special operations experience not being mentally limber enough to adapt to protecting the population. … McChrystal is not inclined to draw attention to his storied history as a special operator. But when he tells you that it’s impossible to kill your way out of this war, you believe him — because Lord knows, he’s tried.

I like Joe Klein’s take:

This emphasis on the nuclear issue is disproportionate. Iran is allowed to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. … But let’s assume the worst: say Iran is working on a bomb; say it acquires one in the next few years. Only Benjamin Netanyahu and assorted American neoconservatives believe — or pretend to believe — that Iran might actually use it, given Israel’s overpowering ability to strike back. …

To be sure, an Iranian bomb would not be a good thing. … But it would not be cataclysmic, either — unless Obama decided to pre-empt it militarily. In any case, the question is, Does the President really want to paint himself into this corner? Does he want to face the possibility of going to war or, more likely, retreating from his insistence on a bomb-free Iran?

A wiser alternative may be to stand down, for a while. “Turn away and whistle,” an Iranian academic suggested recently. Don’t abandon the nuclear-sanctions process, but don’t force it, either. Don’t pursue negotiations. Let the disgraced Iranian government pursue us, as it might, in order to rebuild credibility at home and in the world — and then make sure the regime’s interest isn’t just for show. After all, Iran isn’t the most frightening nuclear challenge we’re facing. That would be the next country over, Pakistan.

On substance, I agree with most of what Joe says — Iran isn’t the next Soviet Union, and this debate desperately needs some cold agua thrown on it — but I do question the extent to which Iran is willing to pursue the United States, at least at first.  We may get to that point, but it will be a rocky road for a while — I think the mullahs would prefer forcing the Obama administration to the negotiating table in the same manner the North Koreans do — by firing off a few tests and hoping we get nervous.  And if Obama reacts to this, Iran negotiates from somewhat of a position of strength.

The only antidote is patience.  White House needs a ton of it, and American political pressures typically don’t allow for that.  Obama has shown himself to be pretty cool under the 24 hour news cycle pressure, and Iran’s sabre rattling after a sham election might leverage weapons development as the next test.