My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse......Foreign Policy, Part Deux!

In my previous post I floated the notion of the U.S. recognizing an independent Kurdish state and bemoaned the fact that in political and diplomatic circles (and lets throw in the pundit class in this since they are as culpable as the politicians and policies they pontificate on) this idea is not receiving any real consideration. So why is that?
 
Simple, U.S. foreign policy is thought of, by the political class, as a linear thought process with the starting point being one presidential election and ending when administrations change. Instead, for an effective foreign policy, one needs to think of it as a network with synapses building linkages across seemingly dissimilar issues. The political class cannot fathom foreign policy as something other than an election soundbite.

Let's take a look:
September 11th hits and President Bush strives to dislodge Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan through a military operation. The military overwhelms the Taliban regime, dislodges the Taliban and Al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, and scatters Al-Qaeda into North Waziristan. Militarily the U.S. meets its objective but what the continuing challenge is the geopolitical challenges in the region and how to develop a viable nation-state. There was never a coherent plan in place on how to capitalize on the military success and develop a viable nation-state, after conducting an election. And little regard was made of the various geopolitical linkages within the region. The sinews that tie countries together is deeply rooted and complex, yet as a government the U.S. is abhor to make that intellectual investment, to untie the Gordian knot.

But lets look at the geopolitical realities that helped create, and should be part of the solution, the situation in Afghanistan. Pakistan's Directorate of Inter-Service Intelligence provided resources to create and prop up the Afghani Taliban. And why would they do that? A couple of reasons: one is to establish order in it's neighboring country (the defeat of the Soviet Army in Afghanistan created a haven for warlords and internal warfare for close to a decade); also most of Pakistan's foreign policies goal is continued antagonism with India, so they wanted to ensure that Afghanistan maintained a client state relationship with Pakistan.

Under this dynamic, President Obama won his presidential election partially on a promise to bring the troops home from Afghanistan. More recently, as outlined in his West Point speech, he has advocated a more isolationist U.S. position, even though he professes to believe in U.S. exceptionalism and continued role as a global leader. So what happens with the power vacuum that will ensue? How will U.S. foreign policy objectives attribute to solidify the region? Unfortunately, the political class does not seem to grasp what needs to be done and my belief is because they look at the short term instead of long term. 

How should the U.S. reorient itself to develop and achieve long term foreign policy strategy/goals? For far too long we have been using defense and unimaginative diplomacy as the tools to achieve foreign policy goals. First, team defense and diplomacy with development (D3) through inter-agency teams (subject to upcoming white paper). But development is not to be thought of as the traditional view of development, such as building wells and other infrastructure like projects, instead, we need to develop the governing institutions that will be part of a long term solution to establish viable countries. The U.S. has tremendous resources available to develop long term sustainable nation building which are not being tapped into (State and Local government institutions, academia, and private sector) and needs to be part of the discussion.

It is time for stop debating tactics and develop a coherent foreign policy that will address the current geopolitical realities and ensure U.S. global security.