Foreign Policy In Focus

Marine Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander of ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) in Afghanistan, "flew to Logar province, just south of Kabul, to meet with villagers and offer his condolences for the bombing Wednesday that Afghan officials said killed 18 civilians," reported the Washington Post on June 8."The airstrike was called in by U.S. troops after they came under fire while pursuing a Taliban fighter in a village in the Baraki Barak district.

Allen said to the Afghans:

“I know that no apology can bring back the lives of the children or the people who perished in this tragedy and this accident, but I want you to know that you have my apology and we will do the right thing by the families,” … NATO troops often make condolence payments to the families of victims in civilian casualty incidents.

Apologizing implies you'll try not to do the same thing in the future. Otherwise, the apology is empty. The definition of insanity is continuing air and drone strikes and expecting the results to be different each time.

NATO and the United States should just own its atrocities and its intentions to continue committing them. Because they're certainly not going to end until we leave Afghanistan.

Missile defense systems against nuclear strikes are often considered "destabilizing" to the strategic balance." On May 3, Russia's RIA Novosti demonstrated this principle in action.

Russia does not exclude preemptive use of  weapons against [NATO] missile defense systems in Europe but only as a last resort, the Russian General Staff said on Thursday at a missile defense conference in Moscow.

“The placement of new strike weapons in the south and northwest of Russia against [NATO] missile defense components … is one possible way of incapacitating the European missile defense infrastructure,” Chief of the General Staff Nikolai Makarov said.

Taking into account the “destabilizing nature of the missile defense system... the decision on the pre-emptive use of available weapons will be made during an aggravation of the situation,” he said.

Exactly why missile defense is destabilizing can be difficult to grasp (at least it was for me). After all, it only seems natural for a state to seek to protect itself against nuclear attack. Besides, how can a parry be considered as aggressive as a thrust? I once endeavored to explain in a post.

Here's how it works. A state -- Russia again -- is considered vulnerable to a first, or initial, strike by the United States, during the course of which many of its surface (as opposed to those based in submarines, which are, of course, mobile) nuclear weapons would be wiped out. (This argument requires a suspension of belief that Russia would refrain from launching a counterattack on warning, that is, while the U.S. missiles were in the air, instead of waiting until they struck  -- still the only sure-fire method of verifying a nuclear attack.)

Russia's retaliatory force would be further diminished if much of it was destroyed while in the air by U.S. missile defense. (This requires a suspension of belief that the day when missile defense is that effective will ever come). The crux of this theory is that since Russia knows that under this arrangement it's going to lose missiles both on the ground and in the air it's motivated to build more to compensate. (Why Russian missile defense isn't considered destabilizing to America's “deterrent” is a question seldom, if ever, raised.)

More from the RIA Novosti article:

“By 2018-2020 – that is the third and fourth phases of the deployment of the Euro-missile defense in Europe – the continent should have enough [NATO] anti-missile defense to be able to intercept part of Russia’s intercontinental ballistic missiles, and submarine launched ballistic missiles,” Patrushev said at an international conference on Euro-missile defense in Moscow.

At the Christian Science Monitor, Yousaff Butt backed this up.

The problem with European missile defense is that while it’s designed to counter Iran, the faster interceptors due to come online in 2018 will also be able to engage Russian warheads, upsetting this all-important perception of parity.

Though what Butt probably meant by "designed to counter Iran" was in the highly unlikely event that Iran develops missiles that could reach Europe, not to mention the nuclear weapons that would be affixed to them as warheads. Meanwhile RIA Novosti reported that NATO's Deputy General Secretary Alexander Vershbow said:

"In fact, we have no desire at all to disturb global strategic stability," told the conference. "Quite the contrary: NATO missile defense will be capable of intercepting only a small number of relatively unsophisticated ballistic missiles. It does not have the capability to neutralize Russian deterrence."

Ivan Oelrich explained in the January/February issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (behind a pay wall)

Almost all independent US analysts—that is, those outside the government and the defense industry—are deeply skeptical of the feasibility of missile defenses, especially against a technically sophisticated country like Russia. To these skeptics, therefore, Russia’s position seems frustratingly irrational: Russia is letting the potential for mutually beneficial arrangements be undermined by the USA’s politically motivated pursuit of a system that will never work.

But Patrushev said:

“Our experts say other targets, which could require serious missile defense against it, do not really exist.”

The United States and NATO may act like Russia is being a drama queen about missile defense, but it knows very well that the system will never be used against Iran. Even if that were its intention, it would be years before it's necessary to defend Europe against Iran -- years of NATO missile-defense deployment acting as a burr in Russia's saddle as well as an ongoing obstacle to disarmament. Not only is missile defense destabilizing, it's an endless fund of misinformation between the United States and Russia.

Excerpted from Other Words. 

Libya is commonly counted as a success story among the ongoing Arab uprisings. NATO bombing, the story goes, saved thousands of lives and allowed Libyans to overthrow the absurd and murderous Muammar Gaddafi. The intervention proves that the West has aligned its interests in the Arab world with its values — and may even be a measure of redemption for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the deeper colonial past.

Not much of this comforting tale rings true.

The regime Gaddafi led was violent and decrepit. It did, however, have a support base that, albeit narrow, was broader than those of dictators in Tunisia and Egypt. Libyans were also divided, to some degree, by long-standing regional and tribal claims, some of which Gaddafi's regime had exploited to consolidate its rule. The situation a year ago was part popular uprising, part civil war. NATO's intervention seems to have strengthened the latter half of the equation.

It's far from clear that NATO warplanes saved lives. When Libya's deputy UN ambassador Ibrahim Dabbashi warned of "genocide" as he defected from the regime in February 2011, the death toll was 233, according to Human Rights Watch. Estimates of the total number dead are now all over the map and run as high as 30,000, but all sources agree that most of these people were killed after the UN Security Council authorized the NATO sorties on March 17.

No one knows how many were civilians, or how many died under NATO bombs, but NATO and allies like Qatar badly overstepped the stricture to "protect civilians" laid out in the UN Security Council resolution. They ignored, for instance, the arms embargo stipulated in the previous resolution, supplying weapons, training, and in the end tactical instructions to the rebels.

The overall effect of the intervention was thus to intensify and prolong the combat on the ground rather than end it swiftly. And the long-term consequences for Libya grossly contradict the NATO mission's spirit

To read Chris Toensing's column in its entirety, visit Other Words.  

Chris Toensing is editor of Middle East Report, published by the Middle East Research and Information Project.

In the aftermath of the Nov. 26 NATO attack on two border posts that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers, the question being asked is whether the assault was a “fog of war” incident or a calculated hit aimed at torpedoing peace talks in Afghanistan? Given that the incident has plunged relations between Washington and Islamabad to a new low at a critical juncture in the 10-year war, the answer is vitally important.

According to NATO, U.S. and Afghan troops came under fire from the Pakistani side of the border and retaliated in self-defense. American officials have suggested that the Taliban engineered the incident in order to poison U.S.-Pakistani relations. But there are some facts suggesting that the encounter may have been more than a “friendly fire” encounter brought on by a clever foe, an ill-defined border, and the normal chaos of the battlefield.

Afghan Taliban commander Mullah Samiullah Rahmani denies they were even in the area—and the insurgent group is never shy about taking credit for military engagements (of course, if deception was involved that is what the Taliban would say). However, this particular region is one that the Pakistani army has occupied for several years and is considered fairly “cleansed” of insurgents.

The incident was not the case of a drone attack or bombing gone awry, a common enough event. For all the talk of “precision weapons” and “surgical strikes,” drones have inflicted hundreds of civilian deaths and 500 lb. bombs have very little in common with operating rooms. Instead, the NATO instruments were Apache attack helicopters and, according to Associated Press, an A-130 gunship. In short, the assault was led by live pilots presumably identifying targets to their superiors.

Those targets were two border forts, architecture that has never been associated with the Taliban. It is true the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan is porous and not always clearly defined, but the Afghan insurgents don’t build concrete posts. A “fort” is duck soup for a drone or a fighter-bomber, which is why the Taliban favor caves and hidden bunkers.

Naturally enough, both sides disagree on what happened. The Americans say they took fire from the Pakistani border, engaged in a three-hour running fight, and called in the choppers at the end of the battle.

But, according to the Pakistanis, there was no fire from their side of the border, and helicopters started the battle, which went on for a little less than two hours. Pakistan also says there were two Apache attacks. The first struck outpost Volcano, and when the fort’s nearby companion, outpost Boulder, fired on the helicopters, it also came under assault. Pakistan claims that its military contacted NATO to warn them they were attacking Pakistani troops, but the firing continued. The helicopters finally withdrew, only to reappear and renew the attack when the Pakistanis tried to reinforce the besieged forts.

Might it have been a matter of bad intelligence?

According to the Pakistanis, Islamabad has been careful to identify its posts to NATO in order to avoid incidents exactly like this. Pakistan Gen. Ashfaq Nadeem said, “it is not possible” that the “NATO forces did not know of the location of the Pakistani posts.”  Pakistan Gen. Ashram Nader called the attack a “deliberate act of aggression.”

Could it have been “deliberate”? Mistakes happen in war, but the timing of this engagement is deeply suspicious.

It comes at a delicate moment, when some 50 countries were preparing to gather in Bonn, Germany for talks aimed at a settling the Afghan War. Central to that meeting is Pakistan, the only country in the region with extensive contacts among the various insurgent groups. If the U.S. plans to really withdraw troops by 2014, it will need close cooperation with Pakistan.

“This could be a watershed in Pakistan’s relations with the U.S.,” Islamabad’s high commissioner to Britain, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, told the Guardian (UK). “It could wreck the time table for the American troop withdrawal.”

Pakistan has now withdrawn from the Bonn talks, and relations between Washington and Islamabad are as bad as they have ever been. The Pakistanis have shut down two major land routes into Afghanistan, routes over which some 50 percent of supplies for the war move. Islamabad has also demanded that the CIA close down its drone base at Shamsi in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province.

Who would benefit from all this fallout?

It is no secret that many in the U.S. military are unhappy about the prospect of negotiations with the Taliban, in particular the organization’s most lethal ally, the Haqqani Group. There is an unspoken but generally acknowledged split between the Defense Department and the State Department, with the former wanting to pound the insurgents before sitting down to talk, while the latter is not sure that tactic will work. Could someone on the uniformed side of the division have decided to derail, or at least damage, the Bonn meeting?

It is also no secret that not everyone in Afghanistan wants peace, particularly if it involves a settlement with the Taliban. The Northern Alliance, made up of mostly Tajiks and Uzbeks, want nothing to do with the Pashtun-based Taliban that is mainly grouped in the south and east, and in the tribal regions of Pakistan. The Afghan Army is mostly Tajik, who not only make up the bulk of the soldiers, but 70 percent of the command staff. President Hamid Karzi is a Pashtun, but he is largely window dressing in the Northern Alliance-dominated Kabul government.

There are broader regional issues at stake as well.

It was no surprise that China immediately came to Pakistan’s defense, with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechu expressing “deep shock and strong concern” over the incident. China is not happy about the NATO deployment in Afghanistan and less so about the possibility of permanent U.S. bases in that country. At a Nov. 2 meeting in Istanbul, China, along with Pakistan, Iran and Russia, opposed a long-term American deployment in the area.

Iran is worried about the threat of U.S. military power on its border, Islamabad is concerned that prolonging the war will further destabilize Pakistan, and Beijing and Moscow are suspicious that the Americans have their sights set on Central Asia gas and oil resources. Both Russia and China rely on Central Asia hydrocarbons, the former for export to Europe, and the latter to run its burgeoning industries.

China is also anxious about the Obama administration’s recent strategic shift toward Asia. The U.S. has openly intervened in disputes between China and its Southeast Asian neighbors in the South China Sea, and recently signed an agreement to deploy 2,500 Marines in Australia. Washington has also tightened its ties with Indonesia and warmed up to Myanmar. To China, all this looks like a campaign to surround Beijing with U.S. allies and to keep its finger on the Chinese energy jugular vein. Some 80 percent of China’s oil moves through the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.

A key ingredient in any formula to offset Beijing’s growing power and influence in Asia is the role of India. New Delhi has traditionally been neutral in foreign policy, but, starting with the Bush administration, it has grown increasingly close to Washington. China and India have a prickly relationship dating back to the 1962 border war between the two countries and China’s support for India’s traditional enemy, Pakistan. China claims on part of India’s border area have not improved matters.

India would also like a Taliban-free government in Kabul, and anything that discomforts Islamabad is just fine with New Delhi. There are elements in the American military and diplomatic community that would like to see Washington dump its alliance with Pakistan and pull India into a closer relationship. A fair number of Indians feel the same way.

So far, the White House has refused to apologize, instead leaking a story that showing any softness vis-à-vis Pakistan during an election year is impossible.

In the end, the border fight may turn out to be an accident, although we are unlikely to know that for certain. Military investigations are not known for accuracy, and much of what happened will remain classified.

But with all these crosscurrents coming together in the night skies over Pakistan, maybe somebody saw an opportunity and took it. In a sense, it is irrelevant whether the attack was deliberate or dumb: the consequences are going to be with us for a long time, and the ripples are likely to spread from a rocky hillside in Pakistan to the far edges of the Indian Ocean and beyond.

For more of Conn Hallinan's essays visit Dispatches From the Edge. Meanwhile, his novels about the ancient Romans can be found at The Middle Empire Series.

"Not everyone is outraged by the NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers," I wrote at Focal Points yesterday.

In other words, Pakistani insurgents got NATO, with its helicopters and fighters, to do its work for it and attack Pakistani military forces, as well as sow yet more discord between Pakistan and the United States. 

Others celebrated the attacks too. At the Guardian, Saeed Shah and Jon Boone write that Afghans who in Kunar -- the incident occurred on its border with Mohmand, Pakistan -- "said they were delighted by the strike against the bases, saying they believed Taliban fighters were being harboured by the Pakistani army."

Though

Pakistan says there were no militants operating on its side. … Coalition and Afghan troops believe they received fire from insurgents operating from close to the Pakistani post, which is located 300 metres into Pakistani territory. A senior Afghan official told the Guardian that a combined Afghan-Nato squad had received incoming fire from 'the so-called Pakistani post", prompting them to call for air support. "The most important point here is that they were receiving fire from the direction of that post." … Afghan and coalition officials have accused Pakistan repeatedly in the past of failing to act to stop Taliban militants using its territory.

We'll give the last word to Qari Ehsanullah Ehsan, a Kunar tribal leader, who said "The people of Kunar are happy. We have been telling the Americans for a long time that the Pakistanis are bringing the Taliban to our villages."