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It was quite clear by the time President Obama got to the end of his State of the Union speech last night that it was very much—the state of America, not the state of the world. Barely 10 minutes—roughly 900 of 7,500 words—were devoted in his hour-long address to global issues, a passing nod, an odd rhetorical flourish, a vague threat to America’s enemies—North Korea and Iran, al-Qaeda and the Taliban (not even by name, in the latter’s case). Controlling global warming? Good. Withdrawal from Iraq? Leaving behind a democratic government? Well, we shall see in the wake of the coming elections.

Among the few accomplishments he cited? Thirty thousand more troops to Afghanistan and a big multilateral conference opening in London today to prop up the government of President Hamid Karzai. But within hours, this latter president undercut Obama’s whole message, suggesting it would be five to ten years before his nation could stand on its own against its many enemies, foreign and domestic. No route home soon for those 30,000 additional men and women apparently.

So what was on the agenda of the American president, and what was not?

Certainly not the Middle East. Despite his stem-winding speech in Cairo nearly a year ago, and the appointment of a master envoy, George Mitchell, Israelis and Palestinians are as far apart as ever. “If we had anticipated some of [the] political problems on both sides earlier, we might not have raised expectations as high,” Obama admitted to Time’s Joe Klein last week.

A quick laughline over global warming. (“I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change….”) But no mention of the buzz-saw he walked into in Copenhagen which all but collapsed, leaving environmentalists puzzled at best, bitter at least.

Global trade? A pledge to double U.S. exports in the next five years—and move toward some Doha accord. Hardly a message many of America’s trading partners would like to hear. And especially those who were somehow left out of the message entirely:

“And that’s why we’ll continue to shape a Doha trade agreement that opens global markets, and why we will strengthen our trade relations in Asia and with key partners like South Korea and Panama and Colombia.”  What happened to China? India? Brazil? Clearly straw men, purely passing cautionary tales: “China is not waiting to revamp its economy. Germany is not waiting. India is not waiting.” Look out America, the world is out there breathing down our backs, waiting to steal our first-place position:

“These nations aren’t playing for second place. They’re putting more emphasis on math and science. They’re rebuilding their infrastructure. They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America. (Applause.)”

Nuclear disarmament? “The United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades.” When? No deadline. When they’re finished.

And Iran?  “As Iran’s leaders continue to ignore their obligations, there should be no doubt: They, too, will face growing consequences. That is a promise. (Applause.)” Which consequences, when and who will accompany us? Empty rhetoric does not go a very long way in Tehran or Qom.

And before his peroration reaffirming America’s “ideals and values,” there was a final summary of his global agenda:

“That’s the leadership that we are providing—engagement that advances the common security and prosperity of all people. We’re working through the G20 to sustain a lasting global recovery. [The only suggestion in the speech that our economic melt-down, which we helped touch off, is a global problem needing global solutions.] We’re working with Muslim communities around the world to promote science and education and innovation. We have gone from a bystander to a leader in the fight against climate change. We’re helping developing countries to feed themselves, and continuing the fight against HIV/AIDS. And we are launching a new initiative that will give us the capacity to respond faster and more effectively to bioterrorism or an infectious disease—a plan that will counter threats at home and strengthen public health abroad. As we have for over 60 years, America takes these actions because our destiny is connected to those beyond our shores.”

Last week, I was asked on the PBS broadcast WorldFocus to sum up the president’s first year in international relations. He has, I replied, substantially improved our global image. We are, in many parts of the world, no longer a pariah nation. But concrete results, real accomplishments, changing the course of history or even peoples’ lives? Not much yet. As the anchor Martin Savidge observed, great progress in the most deeply divided regions, particularly the Middle East, is only rarely achieved without the undivided focus and attention of the president of the United States—a president who is now more than ever distracted by a packed domestic agenda.

Where the president has weighed in, it is only in the form of a quick fly-through in Copenhagen, a one-off speech in Cairo, a brief stopover in the chairman’s chair at a UN disarmament session. Then he’s gone. Whoosh. Another item on his daily agenda ticked off and then on to his next stop.

The world, led by Americans who are globally engaged, is still waiting for results, and focus. He has the innate talent, the prayers of the world, all the good will imaginable. Now, in his second year, the debut, as he so quite rightly observed, of a bright new decade, it is time to buckle down and deliver on at least a few of his brightest promises.

David A. Andelman is the editor of World Policy Journal and The World Policy Blog. A veteran domestic and foreign correspondent and editor of The New York Times, CBS News, and most recently Forbes.com, he is the author of A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.

America’s rapprochement with India, and its centerpiece nuclear agreement, is a bright star in the otherwise murky firmament of the George W. Bush years. India is a large power; it is a secular, democratic power, not influenced by Islamist radicalism. Its large Muslim population of 140 million seems generally—so far—not attracted to that kind of fanaticism.

India is a country with a population of 1.17 billion whose numbers are destined to exceed those of China by 2050. (Pakistan’s population, much smaller, but not insignificant, is roughly 180 million). The advantage of the U.S.-India rapprochement, in the short and medium term, lies in the fact that this huge country is right next to a string of Muslim countries whose populations are generally (though not universally) hostile to U.S. interests.

Because of the strategic importance that the United States places on both India and its troubled sister, Pakistan, policymakers in Washington have periodically tried to play the role of peacemaker in the region, hoping to push both nuclear-armed countries to resolve the bad blood between them—which, for the most part, has revolved around the contested province of Kashmir.

In 2009, U.S. Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke reportedly tried to include India in his Afghanistan-Pakistan (AfPak) portfolio, which seemed to mean that he wanted to take a crack at the Kashmir problem. The Indians, however, would have none of it, and AfPak remains limited to the two nations that make up the somewhat unwieldy conjunction.

Indian relief map of the Line of Control

Steve Coll, in a New Yorker article on March 2, 2009, brought to light a parallel or “back” channel in Indo-Pak negotiations that took place during the regime of Pervez Musharraf. If the discussions had succeeded, and it appears they came close, it could have resulted in a sort of free movement of populations across the Kashmiri line of separation—without a change of sovereignty between the advantageous Indian and unimpressive Pakistani portions. However, Musharraf went into a political tailspin after his dispute with the Pakistan judiciary and had to leave office in August 2008. With his departure, the talks seem to have ended. Ironically, according to Coll, the Indians had come to trust Musharraf, despite the fact that he was the main instigator of the abortive Pakistani attack at Kargil, in Kashmir, in 1999.

The arrangement nearly worked out reflects the Indian insistence that the line of separation (called the Line of Control) must not be altered, as this could affect the status of the Indian-held Valley of Kashmir, the beautiful “jewel in the crown” of the whole affair. Moreover, from the Indian point of view, ceding any part of Indian-held Kashmir, in what would be seen as stemming from religious reasons, would compromise the Indian political philosophy of secular government.

In any event, a settlement now seems extremely unlikely in the short term, especially after the horrific attacks on Mumbai in November 2008 which originated in Pakistan. As long as Kashmir remains as it is, unequally divided, Islamabad will likely never be satisfied, which means we can expect more Pakistani agitation inside India and an increasingly stronger riposte from New Delhi. There is definitely a fear that the two Pakistan-sponsored terrorist groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are not only still active; worse, extrapolating from the attack on Mumbai, these groups may have set their sights on more ambitious targets, unleashing havoc within India’s metropolitan cities rather than engaging India’s massive deployments in Jammu and Kashmir.

So where do things stand now? Read the rest of this entry »

The investigations of U.S. Army major Nidal Malik Hasan’s November 5 murder of 13 soldiers at a military base in Fort Hood, Texas, and of the December 25 failed attempt by a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to detonate a bomb inside a 300-passenger plane en route to Detroit, have revealed links between these terrorists and a spawning Al Qaeda network in Yemen.

Major Hasan reportedly exchanged e-mails and sought spiritual guidance from a radical U.S.-born Islamic cleric, Anwar Al-Awlaki, who grew up in Yemen. Mr. Abdulmutallab, for his part, said he received training and explosive devices from the Al Qaeda operatives during his four-month stay in Yemen last year.

Yemen’s involvement in these terrorist acts has also shed light on its president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, whom Washington urged to launch a vast antiterrorist operation, now underway in the volatile Arab nation.

Mr. Saleh is a seasoned war horse. He served as North Yemen’s president for 12 years, before merging the north and south in 1990, following decades of colonial and ideological division. He has been president of this Sunni-dominated nation ever since, although the real extent of his authority is questionable.

The government repeatedly clashed with separatists in the south through the 1990s, and the insurrection flared again in 2008. Moreover, violence has escalated in the country’s northwest, along the border with Saudi Arabia, and repeated attempts to quash these Shiite insurgents (led by Abdul-Malik Al-Houthi) have been largely unsuccessful. In the northwest, Al-Houthi insurgents crossed into Saudi Arabia last month, murdering two Saudi patrol guards and triggering a joint Saudi-Yemeni airstrike against guerrillas. Today, the government’s control is effectively limited to the areas surrounding the capital, Sana’a.

Although newspapers and 24-hour news channels seem keen to highlight Yemen as the new front in the “war on terror,” the nation actually surfaced as a breeding ground for international terrorists in the early 1990s, when impoverished refugees escaping violence in neighboring Somalia were recruited by Al Qaeda in Yemen. In October 2000, Al Qaeda terrorists blasted a hole in the American Navy destroyer USS Cole harbored in the Yemeni port of Aden, killing 17 U.S. sailors. And, in September 2008, Al Qaeda bombed the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a, killing ten non-American citizens.

For the most part, the Bush administration’s engagement in Afghanistan and Iraq prevented it from allocating resources to confront the burgeoning terrorist network in Yemen. One critical mark of escalation in the Bush administration’s counterterrorism tactics was a CIA-sponsored drone strike in Yemen at the end of 2002 that killed six Al Qaeda operatives, including Qaed Sinan Harithi, the suspected organizer of the USS Cole incident. Today, the reoccurrence of domestic terrorism puts pressure on Obama to eradicate the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula before it gathers strength and threatens the stability of that nation.

Indeed, the “systemic problems” that President Obama referenced in his speech about intelligence failures leading up to Mr. Abdulmutallab’s attempted bombing could just as well describe the state of affairs within Yemen. The country is plagued by numerous socioeconomic and political ills, including an excessive reliance on rapidly dwindling oil resources, severe water shortage, pervasive corruption, inter-regional tensions, and illiteracy, poverty, unemployment, and population growth rates that are among the highest in the Middle East. While protracted sectarian and territorial disputes have made the task of state-building increasingly difficult for Mr. Saleh, most of the problems the country faces today are the product of his own heavy-handed and short-sighted policies. Read the rest of this entry »

This may sound like a gross exaggeration, but forgive me a bit of idealism when I say that Barack Obama has made the greatest speech ever uttered by a government leader in the twenty-first century. Even comparing him with the great orators of the twentieth century— Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, Franklin Roosevelt, and Adolf Hitler—he comes out in the top five…and that is just for delivery. As for content, he stands alone at the summit.

Very few papers have published the full text of his Nobel acceptance speech and even fewer television programs have run the full speech, which suggests that editors do not know their history and cannot perceive its significance.

For the head of state of the one remaining superpower, whose military spending dwarfs the sum of all the world’s militaries combined, to talk of “the law of love” between peoples, to conjure up the examples of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi, quoting the former as saying, “violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones” is astonishing. Even more astonishing is Obama’s statement: “I am living testimony to the moral force of non-violence.”

There is no cynicism in this man, no double speak, no blather, and no fear. What you see is what you get. He told the audience in Oslo gathered to witness his acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize that “we do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected. We do not have to live in an idealized world to still reach for those ideals that will make it a better place. The non-violence practiced by men like Gandhi and King may not have been practical or possible in every circumstance, but the love that they preached—their faith in human progress—must always be the North Star that guides us on our journey.”

Obama may well be president of the United States for eight years. With this kind of vision, the changes in American foreign policy may well be profound. Yet, he once said that turning the direction of the United States was like turning around an oil tanker—it will take many miles of ocean to achieve.

Let us though, for a moment, imagine some of the things that might happen. Already he has pledged to close Guantanamo and to prohibit torture. It may well be he will allow the prosecution of ex Vice President Dick Cheney, ex Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and other high officials to be sent for trial for war crimes. He will certainly over time cut the budget of the armed forces. He will allow the military to serve in the peacekeeping operations of the United Nations, while upping the expenditure on UN efforts including helping refugees and saving the lives of children. He will increase aid to deserving countries. He will work to eliminate malaria, measles, malnutrition, leprosy, and the other global maladies that could be eradicated quickly—and for far less than is now being spent on HIV/AIDS. He will dismantle trade barriers that hurt developing countries. He will push hard for human rights, which will mean not just pushing the cause abroad but moving to have Congress ratify the half-dozen treaties on human rights waiting for attention, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child. He will push hard on nuclear disarmament, a policy that already has found a partner in Russia. Likewise, he will leave no stone unturned in the process of halting and rolling back the spread of nuclear weapons. There will be no more wars justified by misleading, barefaced twisting of the evidence. There will be no more arms supplied to corrupt and violent dictators. And he will step up America’s efforts to control global warming and pollution.

These policies won’t be implemented overnight. Even the most sanguine among us understand that, at very least, they will take 8 years and probably much longer. But if Obama can convince voters of the value of changing U.S. foreign policy in a more benign direction, a successor who believes in the same cause will succeed him.

But in Oslo, Obama also made what many consider a contradictory point—that violence and armed force in some situations are necessary: “As a head of state sworn to protect my nation, I cannot be guided by [the example of Gandhi and King] alone. I face the world as it is.”

In so doing, he defended America’s role in Afghanistan, although many argue that this is a great mistake that could ruin all his dreams. He has said that America will start to withdraw by the summer of 2011. The pressures to stretch this timetable will be enormous. This will test his will, his political skills, and above all his high ideals.

And, speaking on behalf of the idealists among us, a lot will depend on how the peoples of the world show their support for his grand vision of a better planet.

Jonathan Power is a syndicated columnist and a contributing editor of Prospect magazine in London. His most recent book is Conundrums of Humanity (Martinus Nijhoff, 2007).

Over the past few months, a public opinion firestorm has ravaged the German government as the weight of a tragic event in Afghanistan continues to press down hard on the collective conscience of the nation. The impetus for the current uproar was the bombing of two trucks in Kunduz, Afghanistan on September 4, which was ordered by German forces and resulted in the deaths of numerous civilians (estimates range from 17 to 142). Yet, what seemed to be an ugly but collateral blip on the nation’s broad foreign policy radar has turned into a veritable crisis of the first order for the lawmakers in Berlin, with the future of Germany military engagement in Afghanistan at stake. The debate could not come at a more embarrassing moment for the government.

When Germany initially committed itself to sending troops to Afghanistan, it did so wanting to be the “good guy” in the war effort—the country that would “stabilize” Afghanistan with its contingent of soldier-humanitarians while the Americans did the majority of the fighting. But now, with its soldiers both in harm’s way and inadvertently doing harm, the presence of German troops on Afghan soil has become infinitely more difficult to justify to a skeptical public at home, a majority of who now want a complete withdrawal. Moreover, there’s a growing perception within Germany that the government no longer even pulls its own strings, having recently re-committed its 4,400 troops in Afghanistan to another year of duty, while lacking a significant voice either in Washington or at NATO headquarters.

Still, the new strategy proposed by President Obama is promising for those in Germany who have a political stake in the intervention. The more hawkish voices within the German government have held that domestic security and freedom are being defended in the Hindu Kush. But this argument has gained little traction lately, especially among a populace that is now so ill-at-ease about Germany’s role in Afghanistan—a role that appears to be moving toward full-fledged participation in a war not of its own making.

Thus, it is welcome that the new American strategy is placing greater focus on the Afghan people and society. Likewise, the military components embodied in the upcoming Afghan “surge” seem to be more rational and targeted than under Bush, while the civil programs are stronger and likely to be less scatter-shot than in the past. But even with some good news coming out of Washington these days, Berlin still needs a clear humanitarian and civil society mission to bolster the legitimacy of its involvement in the conflict. Unfortunately, new signals from both the American and German governments are blurring the lines.

First, there’s the insistence on the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden, as again reiterated by General Stanley McChrystal in the halls of the U.S. Congress on December 8, 2009. But of what use is such a goal, whether as part of the broader Operation Enduring Freedom or as related to policies against Al Qaeda? This goal is profoundly unpopular in Germany, both due to the lack of a clear rationale and the echoes of President Bush’s bellicose ideology. Read the rest of this entry »

The U.S. military on Friday began its first major offensive against the Taliban since President Obama announced the deployment of an additional 30,000 soldiers to Afghanistan on Tuesday. Operation Cobra’s Anger comprises 900 American Marines and British soldiers from Task Force Helmand, and 150 Afghan soldiers. In concert with the combat assault, a small contingent was dropped behind Taliban lines in northern Now Zad Valley—once a bustling market city of 30,000 that after years of fighting is a ghost town, home only to poppy fields—to disrupt Taliban communications and supply lines. Marine spokesman Maj. William Pelletier reported from Camp Leatherneck in Helmand: “Right now, the enemy is confused and disorganized. They’re fighting, but not too effectively.” Pelletier also reported that the coalition uncovered several arms caches and at least 400 pounds of explosives. Earlier on Friday, after a summit in Brussels, 25 NATO countries pledged 7,000 additional soldiers to Afghanistan, which will bring the combined U.S.-NATO forces to about 150,000 by this summer. NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told delegates at NATO headquarters that the coming year would “see a new momentum in this mission.” Most of the additional U.S. soldiers will be deployed to the south and east, against the insurgency’s strongholds, whereas most of the additional NATO soldiers will be deployed to the north and west to defend against Taliban incursions and to begin political and economic development. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will host a special summit on Afghanistan for all troop-contributing nations in London on January 28.

Russia and the United States failed to reach a new agreement on nuclear arms as the midnight expiration of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) looms, but both sides say they want a new weapons reduction treaty to come into force as soon as possible. START, which is set to expire at midnight on December 4, is an arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia signed by Mikhail Gorbachev and George H. W. Bush in 1991. It has led to the removal and destruction of about 80 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons and has also provided an important framework for verification, which will cease to formally exist when the treaty expires. But the Kremlin issued a statement on behalf of the U.S. and Russian presidents on Friday, emphasizing their “commitment, as a matter of principle, to continue to work together in the spirit of the START treaty following its expiration, as well as our firm intention to ensure that a new treaty on strategic arms enter into force at the earliest possible date.” The Russian Foreign Ministry said “intensive work” on a new treaty is ongoing and that “preparations for the signing are coming to a close,” but details of a new agreement have not been finalized. Washington has expressed its determination to establish a new agreement by the end of the year, and hopes to agree on an arms reduction treaty by the time President Obama travels to Oslo next week to accept his Nobel Peace Prize.

Settlers in the West Bank rejected a personal plea from Israel’s prime minister to respect his 10-month construction freeze, vowing to defy the law and resist any attempts to enforce it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a moratorium on building new settlements in the West Bank last week, which settler leaders responded to with a civil disobedience campaign that has blocked inspectors from entering the settlements. “You have the right to demonstrate. You have the right to protest,” Netanyahu told settler leaders in a meeting on Thursday, according to a statement released by his office. “You have the right to express an opinion, but it’s unacceptable not to respect a decision that was taken by law.” He did, however, promise that building work could resume after the 10 month-freeze was lifted. The temporary and limited halt to settlement construction is designed to draw Palestinian negotiators to resume peace talks. In his meeting with the settlers, Netanyahu “stressed that this is the optimum decision for Israel at this time, if you look at the overall strategic reality,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the prime minister. “This is our confidence-building measure. Now it is in the Palestinians’ court. We have moved in an unprecedented manner, and it is time for them to respond.” The Palestinians contend that the new building restrictions do not go far enough, particularly because they only apply to construction in the West Bank and not to East Jerusalem, as well. But the settlers contend that the moratorium represents “the beginning of the end,” and they have scheduled a mass demonstration for next week in Jerusalem.

The dollar strengthened on Friday against both the yen and the euro after U.S. labor statistics reported that U.S. job losses in November were less than 10 percent of the expected figure. Gold, in turn, which strengthened to a record high on Thursday after rallying for weeks against expectations for a falling dollar, weakened slightly on Friday along with other metals. The dollar appears to be recovering from hitting a 14-year low against the Japanese yen last week, and is likely to continue strengthening as the United States further emerges from the recession, with job growth—and the recent less-than-expected job losses a small but encouraging sign—viewed as a principal indicator of future economic gains. Similarly, the Canadian dollar rose after Canada reported a jobs increase of 79,000, far more than expected. The stock markets responded positively to the labor markets. Upon the opening bell on Wall Street on Friday, the S&P 500, the NASDAQ composite, and the Dow Jones all hit intra-day highs for the year. Overseas, London’s FTSE 100 rose 1 percent and the FTSE Eurofirst 300 added 1.7 percent. UBS’ director of floor operations at the NYSE, Art Cashin, said of the U.S. employment statistics, “Santa Clause may have come early with this number.”

President Barack Obama’s long-awaited shift in strategy on the war in Afghanistan has received praise from European leaders, but getting more troops from them to help support the additional 30,000 U.S. forces now planned for deployment may prove more difficult. While British Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged 500 more troops in Afghanistan, and NATO promised at least 5,000 more, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in an interview that he would send “not a single solider more.” However, the newspaper quoted an unnamed senior French official saying President Sarkozy may reconsider. Germany, which has 4,400 troops in Afghanistan, said it would be ready to do more police training but was reluctant to commit more troops. The deployment will bring the total number of American troops to 98,000, while Britain will now have about 10,000 soldiers in the region. U.S. officials have said they’re looking for an additional 5,000 to 7,000 troops from allies. The Taliban released a statement following President Obama’s announcement, saying the extra troops “will provoke stronger resistance and fighting. [The U.S. forces] will withdraw shamefully.”

In an apparent attempt to crack down on inflation and its small but growing free market economy, North Korea revalued its currency and froze all cash transactions. The move, the first in 17 years by North Korea, caused confusion within the country, according to reports. The official exchange rate between the old won and the new is now 100 to one. Some analysts see the burgeoning free market economy threatening Kim Jong-Il’s hold on power and that the aim of the revaluation is to redistribute wealth throughout the country—a single family will reportedly be allowed to hold no more than 150,000 new won (roughly $1100) in hard currency. According to reports, all cash enterprises and services have been suspended by the government. North Korea took tentative steps to liberalize its economy after a famine in the late 1990s. Since then, the black market economy has grown and illicit currency exchanges have profited. The move seems intended to wipe clean the fortunes of these underground entrepreneurs and reestablish a more “perfect” socialist state.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) began public hearings on the legality of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, which Pristina declared in February, 2008. Kosovo, which had been under a provisional UN administration since 1999, has been recognized as independent by 63 countries (including the United States) since its unilateral secession, and is expected to argue that it was never part of Serbia. “Kosovo’s independence is irreversible and that will remain the case, not only for the sake of Kosovo, but also for the sake of sustainable regional peace and security,” Kosovo’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Skender Hyensi said on Tuesday. “We are certain the court will confirm the will of Kosovo’s people to be independent and free.” Serbia, however, has argued that Kosovo’s secession was a “flagrant violation” of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and has claimed the move was ethnically motivated and thus illegal under international law. The UN General Assembly had asked the ICJ, which is the United Nations’ highest judicial body, for an advisory ruling on the matter at the request of Serbia. The ICJ will hear testimony from 29 countries over the next nine days before issuing its ruling. Though it will not be binding, the decision is expected to set a precedent for other secessionist movements around the world, such as in Chechnya and Basque Country in Spain.

In another jab at the United States and its Western allies, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that Iran would enrich its uranium itself rather than send it to Russia and France under a UN-brokered deal. The agreement was supposed to calm fears over Iran’s capacity to build a nuclear weapon by offering Tehran the option of letting foreign countries (which already possess enrichment technology) process Iranian uranium. This would theoretically prevent Iran from developing its own indigenous capacity for enrichment, and would ensure that the uranium provided to Iran’s civil nuclear program would fall short of levels required for weapons production. But Iran has repeatedly been backing down from the UN deal. “The Iranian nation will produce 20 percent enriched uranium and anything it needs (itself),” President Ahmadinejad said. He also called the recent International Atomic Energy Agency censure of Iran’s secret construction of a second enrichment plant “illegal.” “The Zionist regime [Israel] and its backer [the United States] cannot do a damn thing to stop Iran’s nuclear work,” he said.

Tonight, America’s commander-in-chief will address the nation to outline his new Afghanistan strategy. Among other things, this means many of the West Point cadets in the audience will learn what their immediate futures have in store.

According to White House officials, President Obama will comply with General McChrystal’s request for more soldiers, deploying 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan over the next six months. Obama has reportedly said that these young men and women will be asked to “finish the job.”

Of course, the question remains: What exactly is the “job”?

For eight years, forces on the ground have been struggling to find the mission. Hopefully, all of us will soon hear what their “job” is and why it will entail deploying thousands of extra soldiers. Thanks to McChrystal’s assessment, we now understand some of what more soldiers will do. The influx of troops will certainly build and train the Afghan army and police forces and arm militia-style provincial patrols. They will also use counterinsurgency tactics to target Al Qaeda and/or the Taliban while protecting average Afghans, as well as add a dash of nation building.

Unfortunately, this multi-billion dollar strategy ignores the reality of Afghanistan. No one can easily summarize the challenges and complexities there. The country comprises a conglomeration of cultures, ethnicities, languages, and beliefs, and is surrounded by problematic neighbors. History has shown that large-scale interventions there never work and that treading more lightly makes a difference.

Hopefully, President Obama kept this in mind during the strategic deliberations leading up to tonight’s announcement. The provincial successes we have seen thus far have come from small, non-governmental institutions that work with little, but give everything they have to empower the local people—not the warlords or corrupt government officials. Further, Afghanistan cannot be governed by military force alone, unless the goal is to establish an extended period of martial law. Without a functioning government, all those troops training and arming the Afghan forces will make little difference.

U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry recently urged the U.S. to delay sending more troops. His argument was colored by the mismanagement and corruption he’s seen within the Afghan government, afflictions that have also affected many international aid organizations. To date, billions of dollars have been poured into fighting a war without clearly defined objectives, and to building a central government without first drafting a sensible blueprint. Both military and civilian leaders need to revisit their management and cooperation efforts, and better define their “jobs” if any progress is to be made.

Unfortunately, the military solution seems to be moving forward without first determining its overall aim. Without that, there is no way to “fix” the problem, win public support (domestic and foreign), and smoothly exit the country once the insurgency is quelled.

It would behoove President Obama to remember the old adage, “Afghanistan is a graveyard of empires.” Despite the lessons of our predecessors, Washington seems bent on re-enacting past failures by shooting first and asking critical questions later. President Obama’s speech must be concise about the job he is asking our soldiers to endure while explaining how his team asked the right questions to come to this conclusion—before the final tally in money and blood climbs higher on all sides.

Patricia DeGennaro is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute, focusing on Afghanistan, the Middle East, and civil-military affairs. She is also an adjunct assistant professor at New York University where she teaches courses on international security and U.S. foreign policy.

This article was originally published in The Huffington Post.

While the administration rolled out the red carpet to welcome Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Washington this week, the real action wasn’t around the elegantly set tables at the Obama’s first state dinner. It was across the street at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That’s right: the same folks who are spending millions to fight any government action to prevent climate change are about to be put in charge of the relationship between two of the countries most essential to finding solutions for that and other pressing global challenges.

As Robert Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia put it at an “India Day” celebration at defense and communications giant Honeywell: “The most important part of our relationship is that increasingly governments matter less and less and it’s more about empowering the private sector and our businesses, our scientists, educators so that they can all work together to achieve great things.” Honeywell’s CEO David Cote is the head of the newly expanded India-U.S. CEO Forum, which met during the Indian prime minister’s visit.

The India side is headed by Ratan Tata, one of seven Indian CEOs who accompanied the prime minister. On Monday, Nov. 23, Prime Minister Singh addressed the U.S.-India Business Council (USIBC); part of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the biggest lobbyist for the U.S.-India nuclear deal, which saw final approval in the last weeks of the George W. Bush administration. In fact, to clear one of the last remaining hurdles of the deal, the Indian cabinet just green-lighted a provision to make immune from liability U.S. nuclear plant builders in the event of an accident. This is no small feat in a country that still hasn’t gotten over the Union Carbide poisonous gas leak in Bhopal, the worst industrial accident in history. The bill must still pass India’s parliament.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has identified five pillars of the U.S.-India relationship: strategy, agriculture, health care, science and technology, and education. In all cases, the Obama administration is putting the private sector in the driver’s seat. As Robert Blake put it at meeting in Washington last Wednesday, Nov. 18: “[T]he Obama administration would really like to do much more to try to engage the private sector, both in private-public partnerships, but also in advising and working with both governments, to see how we can make the private sector portion bring the private sector to the fore in all of these dialogues.” Read the rest of this entry »

It could have been a powerful image—America’s first multicultural president promoting the benefits of an ethnically diverse society to the Chinese—but during his trip to China this week, Barack Obama chose to steer clear of comments that could be perceived as lecturing the Chinese on their (poor) human rights record, and that included any reference to their treatment of their Tibetan and Uyghur ethnic minorities.

Lecturing another country on their shortcomings during a state visit is usually a diplomatic no-no.  Unfortunately, for the past year the Obama Administration has generally taken the position that silence is golden when it comes to China and the issue of human rights, including not meeting with the Dalai Lama when he visited the United States last month. For the Chinese, the Dalai Lama is an international irritant, a highly visible spokesman reminding the world of China’s ongoing attempts to eradicate the indigenous Tibetan culture and replace it with an ethnic Han Chinese one.

Due north of Tibet, China is engaging in a much lower-profile, but just as tenacious, cultural eradication campaign against the Uyghur community in Xinjiang, China’s northwestern-most province. The Uyghurs, a Turkic people practicing the Muslim faith, have lived in the region for well over a millennia; their empire once stretched over a broad swath of Central Asia. Today the Uyghurs find themselves a minority within what’s officially called the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region” of China.

It is the result of a process that started more than 60 years ago when the Uyghurs’ briefly-independent nation of “East Turkestan” was gobbled up by Beijing and the People’s Liberation Army in 1949, a mere five years after its founding.  In 1949, just 7 percent of Xinjiang’s population was Han Chinese, but today that figure is over 40 percent—the result, the Uyghurs say, of an aggressive Han resettlement policy orchestrated by Beijing. The Chinese government meanwhile has opposed the teaching of the Uyghur language, closed mosques, arrested Uyghur religious and cultural leaders, and, the Uyghurs claim, kept them from getting jobs in their homeland, prompting a large migration of Uyghurs from Xinjiang.  (Uyghurs now make up just 45 percent of the population in their “Autonomous Region.”) Read the rest of this entry »