From: emmanuel (emmanuel@bayou.com)
Date: Wed Sep 24 2008 - 10:00:28 EDT
*The New President and the Global Landscape (Open Access)*
Stratfor Today » September 23, 2008 | 1028 GMT
By George Friedman
It has often been said that presidential elections are all about the
economy. That just isn’t true. Harry Truman’s election was all about
Korea. John Kennedy’s election focused on missiles, Cuba and Berlin.
Lyndon Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s elections were heavily about
Vietnam. Ronald Reagan’s first election pivoted on Iran. George W.
Bush’s second election was about Iraq. We won’t argue that presidential
elections are all about foreign policy, but they are not all about the
economy. The 2008 election will certainly contain a massive component of
foreign policy.
Print Version
To download a PDF of this piece Click here.
U.S. Foreign Policy — The Presidential Debate
Part Two: Obama’s Foreign Policy Stance
We have no wish to advise you how to vote. That’s your decision. What we
want to do is try to describe what the world will look like to the new
president and consider how each candidate is likely to respond to the
world. In trying to consider whether to vote for John McCain or Barack
Obama, it is obviously necessary to consider their stands on foreign
policy issues. But we have to be cautious about campaign assertions.
Kennedy claimed that the Soviets had achieved superiority in missiles
over the United States, knowing full well that there was no missile gap.
Johnson attacked Barry Goldwater for wanting to escalate the war in
Vietnam at the same time he was planning an escalation. Nixon won the
1968 presidential election by claiming that he had a secret plan to end
the war in Vietnam. What a candidate says is not always an indicator of
what the candidate is thinking.
It gets even trickier when you consider that many of the most important
foreign policy issues are not even imagined during the election
campaign. Truman did not expect that his second term would be dominated
by a war in Korea. Kennedy did not expect to be remembered for the Cuban
missile crisis. Jimmy Carter never imagined in 1976 that his presidency
would be wrecked by the fall of the Shah of Iran and the hostage crisis.
George H. W. Bush didn’t expect to be presiding over the collapse of
communism or a war over Kuwait. George W. Bush (regardless of conspiracy
theories) never expected his entire presidency to be defined by 9/11. If
you read all of these presidents’ position papers in detail, you would
never get a hint as to what the really important foreign policy issues
would be in their presidencies.
Between the unreliability of campaign promises and the unexpected in
foreign affairs, predicting what presidents will do is a complex
business. The decisions a president must make once in office are neither
scripted nor conveniently timed. They frequently present themselves to
the president and require decisions in hours that can permanently define
his (or her) administration. Ultimately, voters must judge, by whatever
means they might choose, whether the candidate has the virtue needed to
make those decisions well.
Virtue, as we are using it here, is a term that comes from Machiavelli.
It means the opposite of its conventional usage. A virtuous leader is
one who is clever, cunning, decisive, ruthless and, above all,
effective. Virtue is the ability to face the unexpected and make the
right decision, without position papers, time to reflect or even enough
information. The virtuous leader can do that. Others cannot. It is a gut
call for a voter, and a tough one.
This does not mean that all we can do is guess about a candidate’s
nature. There are three things we can draw on. First, there is the
political tradition the candidate comes from. There are more things
connecting Republican and Democratic foreign policy than some would like
to think, but there are also clear differences. Since each candidate
comes from a different political tradition — as do his advisers — these
traditions can point to how each candidate might react to events in the
world. Second, there are indications in the positions the candidates
take on ongoing events that everyone knows about, such as Iraq. Having
pointed out times in which candidates have been deceptive, we still
believe there is value in looking at their positions and seeing whether
they are coherent and relevant. Finally, we can look at the future and
try to predict what the world will look like over the next four years.
In other words, we can try to limit the surprises as much as possible.
In order to try to draw this presidential campaign into some degree of
focus on foreign policy, we will proceed in three steps. First, we will
try to outline the foreign policy issues that we think will confront the
new president, with the understanding that history might well throw in a
surprise. Second, we will sketch the traditions and positions of both
Obama and McCain to try to predict how they would respond to these
events. Finally, after the foreign policy debate is over, we will try to
analyze what they actually said within the framework we created.
Let me emphasize that this is not a partisan exercise. The best
guarantee of objectivity is that there are members of our staff who are
passionately (we might even say irrationally) committed to each of the
candidates. They will be standing by to crush any perceived unfairness.
It is Stratfor’s core belief that it is possible to write about foreign
policy, and even an election, without becoming partisan or polemical. It
is a difficult task and we doubt we can satisfy everyone, but it is our
goal and commitment.
The Post 9/11 World
Ever since 9/11 U.S. foreign policy has focused on the Islamic world.
Starting in late 2002, the focus narrowed to Iraq. When the 2008
campaign for president began a year ago, it appeared Iraq would define
the election almost to the exclusion of all other matters. Clearly, this
is no longer the case, pointing to the dynamism of foreign affairs and
opening the door to a range of other issues.
Iraq remains an issue, but it interacts with a range of other issues.
Among these are the future of U.S.-Iranian relations; U.S. military
strategy in Afghanistan and the availability of troops in Iraq for that
mission; the future of U.S.-Pakistani relations and their impact on
Afghanistan; the future of U.S.-Russian relations and the extent to
which they will interfere in the region; resources available to contain
Russian expansion; the future of the U.S. relationship with the
Europeans and with NATO in the context of growing Russian power and the
war in Afghanistan; Israel’s role, caught as it is between Russia and
Iran; and a host of only marginally related issues. Iraq may be
subsiding, but that simply complicates the world facing the new president.
The list of problems facing the new president will be substantially
larger than the problems facing George W. Bush, in breadth if not in
intensity. The resources he will have to work with, military, political
and economic, will not be larger for the first year at least. In terms
of military capacity, much will hang on the degree to which Iraq
continues to bog down more than a dozen U.S. brigade combat teams. Even
thereafter, the core problem facing the next president will be the
allocation of limited resources to an expanding number of challenges.
The days when it was all about Iraq is over. It is now all about how to
make the rubber band stretch without breaking.
Iraq remains the place to begin, however, since the shifts there help
define the world the new president will face. To understand the
international landscape the new president will face, it is essential to
begin by understanding what happened in Iraq, and why Iraq is no longer
the defining issue of this campaign.
A Stabilized Iraq and the U.S. Troop Dilemma
In 2006, it appeared that the situation in Iraq was both out of control
and hopeless. Sunni insurgents were waging war against the United
States, Shiite militias were taking shots at the Americans as well, and
Sunnis and Shia were waging a war against each other. There seemed to be
no way to bring the war to anything resembling a satisfactory solution.
When the Democrats took control of Congress in the 2006 elections, it
appeared inevitable that the United States would begin withdrawing
forces from Iraq. U.S expectations aside, this was the expectation by
all parties in Iraq. Given that the United States was not expected to
remain a decisive force in Iraq, all Iraqi parties discounted the
Americans and maneuvered for position in anticipation of a post-American
Iraq. The Iranians in particular saw an opportunity to limit a Sunni
return to Iraq’s security forces, thus reshaping the geopolitics of the
region. U.S. fighting with Iraqi Sunnis intensified in preparation for
the anticipated American withdrawal.
Bush’s decision to increase forces rather than withdraw them
dramatically changed the psychology of Iraq. It was assumed he had lost
control of the situation. Bush’s decision to surge forces in Iraq,
regardless by how many troops, established two things. First, Bush
remained in control of U.S. policy. Second, the assumption that the
Americans were leaving was untrue. And suddenly, no one was certain that
there would be a vacuum to be filled.
The deployment of forces proved helpful, as did the change in how the
troops were used; recent leaks indicate that new weapon systems also
played a key role. The most important factor, however, was the
realization that the Americans were not leaving on Bush’s watch. Since
no one was sure who the next U.S. president would be, or what his
policies might be, it was thus uncertain that the Americans would leave
at all.
Everyone in Iraq suddenly recalculated. If the Americans weren’t
leaving, one option would be to make a deal with Bush, seen as weak and
looking for historical validation. Alternatively, they could wait for
Bush’s successor. Iran remembers — without fondness — its decision not
to seal a deal with Carter, instead preferring to wait for Reagan.
Similarly, seeing foreign jihadists encroaching in Sunni regions and the
Shia shaping the government in Baghdad, the Sunni insurgents began a
fundamental reconsideration of their strategy.
Apart from reversing Iraq’s expectations about the United States, part
of Washington’s general strategy was supplementing military operations
with previously unthinkable political negotiations. First, the United
States began talking to Iraq’s Sunni nationalist insurgents, and found
common ground with them. Neither the Sunni nationalists nor the United
States liked the jihadists, and both wanted the Shia to form a coalition
government. Second, back-channel U.S.-Iranian talks clearly took place.
The Iranians realized that the possibility of a pro-Iranian government
in Baghdad was evaporating. Iran’s greatest fear was a Sunni Iraqi
government armed and backed by the United States, recreating a version
of the Hussein regime that had waged war with Iran for almost a decade.
The Iranians decided that a neutral, coalition government was the best
they could achieve, so they reined in the Shiite militia.
The net result of this was that the jihadists were marginalized and
broken, and an uneasy coalition government was created in Baghdad,
balanced between Iran and the United States. The Americans failed to
create a pro-American government in Baghdad, but had blocked the
emergence of a pro-Iranian government. Iraqi society remained fragmented
and fragile, but a degree of peace unthinkable in 2006 had been created.
The first problem facing the next U.S. president will be deciding when
and how many U.S. troops will be withdrawn from Iraq. Unlike 2006, this
issue will not be framed by Iraq alone. First, there will be the urgency
of increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Second, there
will be the need to create a substantial strategic reserve to deal with
potential requirements in Pakistan, and just as important, responding to
events in the former Soviet Union like the recent conflict in Georgia.
At the same time, too precipitous a U.S. withdrawal not only could
destabilize the situation internally in Iraq, it could convince Iran
that its dream of a pro-Iranian Iraq is not out of the question. In
short, too rapid a withdrawal could lead to resumption of war in Iraq.
But too slow a withdrawal could make the situation in Afghanistan
untenable and open the door for other crises.
The foreign policy test for the next U.S. president will be calibrating
three urgent requirements with a military force that is exhausted by
five years of warfare in Iraq and seven in Afghanistan. This force was
not significantly expanded since Sept. 11, making this the first global
war the United States has ever fought without a substantial military
expansion. Nothing the new president does will change this reality for
several years, so he will be forced immediately into juggling
insufficient forces without the option of precipitous withdrawal from
Iraq unless he is prepared to accept the consequences, particularly of a
more powerful Iran.
The Nuclear Chip and a Stable U.S.-Iranian Understanding
The nuclear issue has divided the United States and Iran for several
years. The issue seems to come and go depending on events elsewhere.
Thus, what was enormously urgent just prior to the Russo-Georgian war
became much less pressing during and after it. This is not unreasonable
in our point of view, because we regard Iran as much farther from
nuclear weapons than others might, and we suspect that the Bush
administration agrees given its recent indifference to the question.
Certainly, Iran is enriching uranium, and with that uranium, it could
possibly explode a nuclear device. But the gap between a nuclear device
and weapon is substantial, and all the enriched uranium in the world
will not give the Iranians a weapon. To have a weapon, it must be
ruggedized and miniaturized to fit on a rocket or to be carried on an
attack aircraft. The technologies needed for that range from material
science to advanced electronics to quality assurance. Creating a weapon
is a huge project. In our view, Iran does not have the depth of
integrated technical skills needed to achieve that goal.
As for North Korea, for Iran a very public nuclear program is a
bargaining chip designed to extract concessions, particularly from the
Americans. The Iranians have continued the program very publicly in
spite of threats of Israeli and American attacks because it made the
United States less likely to dismiss Iranian wishes in Tehran’s true
area of strategic interest, Iraq.
The United States must draw down its forces in Iraq to fight in
Afghanistan. The Iranians have no liking for the Taliban, having nearly
gone to war with them in 1998, and having aided the United States in
Afghanistan in 2001. The United States needs Iran’s commitment to a
neutral Iraq to withdraw U.S. forces since Iran could destabilize Iraq
overnight, though Tehran’s ability to spin up Shiite proxies in Iraq has
declined over the past year.
Therefore, the next president very quickly will face the question of how
to deal with Iran. The Bush administration solution — relying on quiet
understandings alongside public hostility — is one model. It is not
necessarily a bad one, so long as forces remain in Iraq to control the
situation. If the first decision the new U.S. president will have to
make is how to transfer forces in Iraq elsewhere, the second decision
will be how to achieve a more stable understanding with Iran.
This is particularly pressing in the context of a more assertive Russia
that might reach out to Iran. The United States will need Iran more than
Iran needs the United States under these circumstances. Washington will
need Iran to abstain from action in Iraq but to act in Afghanistan. More
significantly, the United States will need Iran not to enter into an
understanding with Russia. The next president will have to figure out
how to achieve all these things without giving away more than he needs
to, and without losing his domestic political base in the process.
Afghanistan, Pakistan and the Taliban
The U.S. president also will have to come up with an Afghan policy,
which really doesn’t exist at this moment. The United States and its
NATO allies have deployed about 50,000 troops in Afghanistan. To
benchmark this, the Russians deployed around 120,000 by the mid-1980s,
and were unable to pacify the country. Therefore the possibility of
60,000 troops — or even a few additional brigades on top of that —
pacifying Afghanistan is minimal. The primary task of troops in
Afghanistan now is to defend the Kabul regime and other major cities,
and to try to keep the major roads open. More troops will make this
easier, but by itself, it will not end the war.
The problem in Afghanistan is twofold. First, the Taliban defeated their
rivals in Afghanistan during the civil war of the 1990s because they
were the most cohesive force in the country, were politically adept and
enjoyed Pakistani support. The Taliban’s victory was not accidental; and
all other things being equal, without the U.S. presence, they could win
again. The United States never defeated the Taliban. Instead, the
Taliban refused to engage in massed warfare against American airpower,
retreated, dispersed and regrouped. In most senses, it is the same force
that won the Afghan civil war.
The United States can probably block the Taliban from taking the cities,
but to do more it must do three things. First, it must deny the Taliban
sanctuary and lines of supply running from Pakistan. These two elements
allowed the mujahideen to outlast the Soviets. They helped bring the
Taliban to power. And they are fueling the Taliban today. Second, the
United States must form effective coalitions with tribal groups hostile
to the Taliban. To do this it needs the help of Iran, and more
important, Washington must convince the tribes that it will remain in
Afghanistan indefinitely — not an easy task. And third — the hardest
task for the new president — the United States will have to engage the
Taliban themselves, or at least important factions in the Taliban
movement, in a political process. When we recall that the United States
negotiated with the Sunni insurgents in Iraq, this is not as far-fetched
as it appears.
The most challenging aspect to deal with in all this is Pakistan. The
United States has two issues in the South Asian country. The first is
the presence of al Qaeda in northern Pakistan. Al Qaeda has not carried
out a successful operation in the United States since 2001, nor in
Europe since 2005. Groups who use the al Qaeda label continue to operate
in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but they use the name to legitimize
or celebrate their activities — they are not the same people who carried
out 9/11. Most of al Qaeda prime’s operatives are dead or scattered, and
its main leaders, Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, are not
functional. The United States would love to capture bin Laden so as to
close the books on al Qaeda, but the level of effort needed — assuming
he is even alive — might outstrip U.S. capabilities.
The most difficult step politically for the new U.S. president will be
to close the book on al Qaeda. This does not mean that a new group of
operatives won’t grow from the same soil, and it doesn’t mean that
Islamist terrorism is dead by any means. But it does mean that the
particular entity the United States has been pursuing has effectively
been destroyed, and the parts regenerating under its name are not as
dangerous. Asserting victory will be extremely difficult for the new
U.S. president. But without that step, a massive friction point between
the United States and Pakistan will persist — one that isn’t justified
geopolitically and undermines a much more pressing goal.
The United States needs the Pakistani army to attack the Taliban in
Pakistan, or failing that, permit the United States to attack them
without hindrance from the Pakistani military. Either of these are
nightmarishly difficult things for a Pakistani government to agree to,
and harder still to carry out. Nevertheless, without cutting the line of
supply to Pakistan, like Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail, Afghanistan
cannot be pacified. Therefore, the new president will face the daunting
task of persuading or coercing the Pakistanis to carry out an action
that will massively destabilize their country without allowing the
United States to get bogged down in a Pakistan it cannot hope to stabilize.
At the same time, the United States must begin the political process of
creating some sort of coalition in Afghanistan that it can live with.
The fact of the matter is that the United States has no long-term
interest in Afghanistan except in ensuring that radical jihadists with
global operational reach are not given sanctuary there. Getting an
agreement to that effect will be hard. Guaranteeing compliance will be
virtually impossible. Nevertheless, that is the task the next president
must undertake.
There are too many moving parts in Afghanistan to be sanguine about the
outcome. It is a much more complex situation than Iraq, if for no other
reason than because the Taliban are a far more effective fighting force
than anything the United States encountered in Iraq, the terrain far
more unfavorable for the U.S. military, and the political actors much
more cynical about American capabilities.
The next U.S. president will have to make a painful decision. He must
either order a long-term holding action designed to protect the Karzai
government, launch a major offensive that includes Pakistan but has
insufficient forces, or withdraw. Geopolitically, withdrawal makes a
great deal of sense. Psychologically, it could unhinge the region and
regenerate al Qaeda-like forces. Politically, it would not be something
a new president could do. But as he ponders Iraq, the future president
will have to address Afghanistan. And as he ponders Afghanistan, he will
have to think about the Russians.
The Russian Resurgence
When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, the Russians were
allied with the United States. They facilitated the U.S. relationship
with the Northern Alliance, and arranged for air bases in Central Asia.
The American view of Russia was formed in the 1990s. It was seen as
disintegrating, weak and ultimately insignificant to the global balance.
The United States expanded NATO into the former Soviet Union in the
Baltic states and said it wanted to expand it into Ukraine and Georgia.
The Russians made it clear that they regarded this as a direct threat to
their national security, resulting in the 2008 Georgian conflict.
The question now is where U.S.-Russian relations are going. Russian
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union a
geopolitical catastrophe. After Ukraine and Georgia, it is clear he does
not trust the United States and that he intends to reassert his sphere
of influence in the former Soviet Union. Georgia was lesson one. The
current political crisis in Ukraine is the second lesson unfolding.
The re-emergence of a Russian empire in some form or another represents
a far greater threat to the United States than the Islamic world. The
Islamic world is divided and in chaos. It cannot coalesce into the
caliphate that al Qaeda wanted to create by triggering a wave of
revolutions in the Islamic world. Islamic terrorism remains a threat,
but the geopolitical threat of a unifying Islamic power is not going to
happen.
Russia is a different matter. The Soviet Union and the Russian empire
both posed strategic threats because they could threaten Europe, the
Middle East and China simultaneously. While this overstates the threat,
it does provide some context. A united Eurasia is always powerful, and
threatens to dominate the Eastern Hemisphere. Therefore, preventing
Russia from reasserting its power in the former Soviet Union should take
precedence over all other considerations.
The problem is that the United States and NATO together presently do not
have the force needed to stop the Russians. The Russian army is not
particularly powerful or effective, but it is facing forces that are far
less powerful and effective. The United States has its forces tied down
in Iraq and Afghanistan so that when the war in Georgia broke out,
sending ground forces was simply not an option. The Russians are
extremely aware of this window of opportunity, and are clearly taking
advantage of it.
The Russians have two main advantages in this aside from American
resource deficits. First, the Europeans are heavily dependent on Russian
natural gas; German energy dependence on Moscow is particularly acute.
The Europeans are in no military or economic position to take any steps
against the Russians, as the resulting disruption would be disastrous.
Second, as the United States maneuvers with Iran, the Russians can
provide support to Iran, politically and in terms of military
technology, that not only would challenge the United States, it might
embolden the Iranians to try for a better deal in Iraq by destabilizing
Iraq again. Finally, the Russians can pose lesser challenges in the
Caribbean with Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, as well as potentially
supporting Middle Eastern terrorist groups and left-wing Latin American
groups.
At this moment, the Russians have far more options than the Americans
have. Therefore, the new U.S. president will have to design a policy for
dealing with the Russians with few options at hand. This is where his
decisions on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan will intersect and
compete with his decisions on Russia. Ideally, the United States would
put forces in the Baltics — which are part of NATO — as well as in
Ukraine and Georgia. But that is not an option and won’t be for more
than a year under the best of circumstances.
The United States therefore must attempt a diplomatic solution with
Russia with very few sticks. The new president will need to try to
devise a package of carrots — e.g., economic incentives — plus the
long-term threat of a confrontation with the United States to persuade
Moscow not to use its window of opportunity to reassert Russian regional
hegemony. Since regional hegemony allows Russia to control its own
destiny, the carrots will have to be very tempting, while the threat has
to be particularly daunting. The president’s task will be crafting the
package and then convincing the Russians it has value.
European Disunity and Military Weakness
One of the problems the United States will face in these negotiations
will be the Europeans. There is no such thing as a European foreign
policy; there are only the foreign policies of the separate countries.
The Germans, for example, do not want a confrontation with Russia under
any circumstances. The United Kingdom, by contrast, is more willing to
take a confrontational approach to Moscow. And the European military
capability, massed and focused, is meager. The Europeans have badly
neglected their military over the past 15 years. What deployable,
expeditionary forces they have are committed to the campaign in
Afghanistan. That means that in dealing with Russia, the Americans do
not have united European support and certainly no meaningful military
weight. This will make any diplomacy with the Russians extremely difficult.
One of the issues the new president eventually will have to face is the
value of NATO and the Europeans as a whole. This was an academic matter
while the Russians were prostrate. With the Russians becoming active, it
will become an urgent issue. NATO expansion — and NATO itself — has
lived in a world in which it faced no military threats. Therefore, it
did not have to look at itself militarily. After Georgia, NATO’s
military power becomes very important, and without European commitment,
NATO’s military power independent of the United States — and the ability
to deploy it — becomes minimal. If Germany opts out of confrontation,
then NATO will be paralyzed legally, since it requires consensus, and
geographically. For the United States alone cannot protect the Baltics
without German participation.
The president really will have one choice affecting Europe: Accept the
resurgence of Russia, or resist. If the president resists, he will have
to limit his commitment to the Islamic world severely, rebalance the
size and shape of the U.S. military and revitalize and galvanize NATO.
If he cannot do all of those things, he will face some stark choices in
Europe.
Israel, Turkey, China, and Latin America
Russian pressure is already reshaping aspects of the global system. The
Israelis have approached Georgia very differently from the United
States. They halted weapon sales to Georgia the week before the war, and
have made it clear to Moscow that Israel does not intend to challenge
Russia. The Russians met with Syrian President Bashar al Assad
immediately after the war. This signaled the Israelis that Moscow was
prepared to support Syria with weapons and with Russian naval ships in
the port of Tartus if Israel supports Georgia, and other countries in
the former Soviet Union, we assume. The Israelis appear to have let the
Russians know that they would not do so, separating themselves from the
U.S. position. The next president will have to re-examine the U.S.
relationship with Israel if this breach continues to widen.
In the same way, the United States will have to address its relationship
with Turkey. A long-term ally, Turkey has participated logistically in
the Iraq occupation, but has not been enthusiastic. Turkey’s economy is
booming, its military is substantial and Turkish regional influence is
growing. Turkey is extremely wary of being caught in a new Cold War
between Russia and the United States, but this will be difficult to
avoid. Turkey’s interests are very threatened by a Russian resurgence,
and Turkey is the U.S. ally with the most tools for countering Russia.
Both sides will pressure Ankara mercilessly. More than Israel, Turkey
will be critical both in the Islamic world and with the Russians. The
new president will have to address U.S.-Turkish relations both in
context and independent of Russia fairly quickly.
In some ways, China is the great beneficiary of all of this. In the
early days of the Bush administration, there were some confrontations
with China. As the war in Iraq calmed down, Washington seemed to be
increasing its criticisms of China, perhaps even tacitly supporting
Tibetan independence. With the re-emergence of Russia, the United States
is now completely distracted. Contrary to perceptions, China is not a
global military power. Its army is primarily locked in by geography and
its navy is in no way an effective blue-water force. For its part, the
United States is in no position to land troops on mainland China.
Therefore, there is no U.S. geopolitical competition with China. The
next president will have to deal with economic issues with China, but in
the end, China will sell goods to the United States, and the United
States will buy them.
Latin America has been a region of minimal interest to the United States
in the last decade or longer. So long as no global power was using its
territory, the United States did not care what presidents Hugo Chavez in
Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua — or
even the Castros in Cuba — were doing. But with the Russians back in the
Caribbean, at least symbolically, all of these countries suddenly become
more important. At the moment, the United States has no Latin American
policy worth noting; the new president will have to develop one.
Quite apart from the Russians, the future U.S. president will need to
address Mexico. The security situation in Mexico is deteriorating
substantially, and the U.S.-Mexican border remains porous. The cartels
stretch from Mexico to the streets of American cities where their
customers live. What happens in Mexico, apart from immigration issues,
is obviously of interest to the United States. If the current trajectory
continues, at some point in his administration, the new U.S. president
will have to address Mexico — potentially in terms never before considered.
The U.S. Defense Budget
The single issue touching on all of these is the U.S. defense budget.
The focus of defense spending over the past eight years has been the
Army and Marine Corps — albeit with great reluctance. Former Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was not an advocate of a heavy Army, favoring
light forces and air power, but reality forced his successors to
reallocate resources. In spite of this, the size of the Army remained
the same — and insufficient for the broader challenges emerging.
The focus of defense spending was Fourth Generation warfare, essentially
counterinsurgency. It became dogma in the military that we would not see
peer-to-peer warfare for a long time. The re-emergence of Russia,
however, obviously raises the specter of peer-to-peer warfare, which in
turn means money for the Air Force as well as naval rearmament. All of
these programs will take a decade or more to implement, so if Russia is
to be a full-blown challenge by 2020, spending must begin now.
If we assume that the United States will not simply pull out of Iraq and
Afghanistan, but will also commit troops to allies on Russia’s periphery
while retaining a strategic reserve — able to, for example, protect the
U.S.-Mexican border — then we are assuming substantially increased
spending on ground forces. But that will not be enough. The budgets for
the Air Force and Navy will also have to begin rising.
U.S. national strategy is expressed in the defense budget. Every
strategic decision the president makes has to be expressed in budget
dollars with congressional approval. Without that, all of this is
theoretical. The next president will have to start drafting his first
defense budget shortly after taking office. If he chooses to engage all
of the challenges, he must be prepared to increase defense spending. If
he is not prepared to do that, he must concede that some areas of the
world are beyond management. And he will have to decide which areas
these are. In light of the foregoing, as we head toward the debate, 10
questions should be asked of the candidates:
If the United States removes its forces from Iraq slowly as both of you
advocate, where will the troops come from to deal with Afghanistan and
protect allies in the former Soviet Union?
The Russians sent 120,000 troops to Afghanistan and failed to pacify the
country. How many troops do you think are necessary?
Do you believe al Qaeda prime is still active and worth pursuing?
Do you believe the Iranians are capable of producing a deliverable
nuclear weapon during your term in office?
How do you plan to persuade the Pakistani government to go after the
Taliban, and what support can you provide them if they do?
Do you believe the United States should station troops in the Baltic
states, in Ukraine and Georgia as well as in other friendly countries to
protect them from Russia?
Do you feel that NATO remains a viable alliance, and are the Europeans
carrying enough of the burden?
Do you believe that Mexico represents a national security issue for the
United States?
Do you believe that China represents a strategic challenge to the United
States?
Do you feel that there has been tension between the United States and
Israel
----[This List to be used for Eritrea Related News Only]----