Update On The Afghan War & British Politics

The pressure on the Prime Minister from the Army to increase the long term British military presence in Afghanistan has been intensifying after 15 deaths in 12 days in Helmand Province. The Army wants a rise in British troop levels from 8,300 to 9,000 in November and it is backed by the Tory opposition.

The media consensus tends to back the Army and the Tories but without much enthusiasm. Opinion polling either shows the country to be evenly split on whether the British should even be there at all. Many want the British to pull out.

Politicians Play At Statesmen

Given a lack of engagement in the war by the public, the political class of all parties once again appears to be detached from reality. The criticism is still not of the war but of the conduct of the war.

However, the Tories are beginning to demand some strategic explanation of why losing lives in Helmand province is so important to national security. Privately, most intelligent politicians know that, without massive American engagement, this war is not winnable – and perhaps not even then.

So why are British soldiers being permitted to die! The rhetoric of Government has given up on Blairite high ideals (democracy and human rights) and it has shifted to the threat to British streets. But this is scarcely credible.

British actions in West Asia are likely, eventually, to re-target terror to the UK, whether to extend the war to bring it home to us or perhaps to exploit popular doubts or as an act of desperation in defeat.

The real reason for British engagement is solidarity as junior partner to the US and as an attempt to make NATO relevant but these are truths that dare not be spoken too loudly after Iraq.

The Prime Minister is also personally asserting that the Army has the right equipment and manpower to do the job this summer – he is claiming military support for his contention.

It is as if he is waiting for some short term success, based on US determination not to let the British fail, to enable him to shift funds back from butter to guns later in the year - perhaps relying on some patriotic tabloid surge of popular support based on a victory in the field and on signs of economic recovery.

Bluff & A Possible U-Turn

But what is not credible is the assertion of military backing for the Government. The military probably accept that they will get little now but their fear is that their men are dying to give cover to a dodgy election. The ground won to put Karzai and his cronies back in power will be ceded.

Yes, military chiefs will try to stay out of politics and will get the strong hint from New Labour that further direct comments are unwise – but this will not silence the informal dialogue between angry military figures and both media and opposition.

There is no credible source that does not know that the military are furious that political dithering has turned a serious military operation into a bargain basement effort, threatening to repeat past blunders (through poor resourcing and management) in Iraq.

Beneath this is the sense of being used as a blunt instrument for ill thought out political ends. We can sense an eventual political u-turn in the making, with some face-saving formula to limit the political damage, but, as a political ‘fix’, when it comes, it may be too little, too late.

What the Army wants is a permanent rise in numbers on the ground after the Afghan election in order to hold ground. This is an open Treasury cheque for a period when the Government knows that it will be preparing the public for post-election spending cuts on services.

The British Army may get the political traction for a permanent presence in Afghanistan but not before proof of the military pudding on the ground - that is, unless the Government really cannot hold the line against dissenters. And that is now quite possible.

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Evaluating Obama's Cairo Speech

Obama’s Cairo Speech was well received. The consensus in Europe was that fine words were not quite the same as actions. The careful wording indicated no major breakthroughs. 

This was a consolidation of recent policy shifts in an attempt to build a pro-US coalition of interests within the Arab and Muslim worlds. As we expected, the President positively played up his personal connections to Islam and to Africa.

Altogether though, this speech may not have been epoch-making but it will be regarded as of great historical importance.

A Guide to US Foreign Policy

The sentiments of the US President were widely appreciated in the ‘official’ Arab world (a ‘new beginning in US-Muslim relations’, opposition to negative stereotyping of Islam, a personal commitment to the two state solution, acknowledgement of past US errors in the region, call for joint action against extremism).

Iraq has now been positioned as history. There was not an apology for Iraq but an acceptance that it was a blunder that the US had learned from.

The attack on stereotyping provided a key message but with an assertion, in effect, that the US was a ‘good thing’ – not just self-interested but a source of global progress. It remains to be seen just how credible this positioning (which harks back to Truman and Kennedy) is in practice.

It is worth noting which seven areas of tension between the ‘cultures’ Obama highlighted because this gives us some idea of US priorities for the next two to three years:-

• There was the continued fight against violent extremism, positioning the war in Afghanistan as existential but asserting that hearts and minds were as important, if not more important, than military means of resolution’. Roula Khalaf in the Financial Times noted that the word ‘terrorism’ appeared to have been banned. The confrontational tone of the Bush years has finally disappeared.
• There was the standard line on the Peace Process, with a somewhat weak position on the settlements, which contained nothing new. However, the personal assertion of a commitment to the Peace Process is important even if many Americans might groan at the thought of their President being bogged down in overseas squabbles between intractable peoples during the most important national economic adjustment since the 1940s.
• There was the standard line on Iranian nuclear ambitions, albeit with confirmation of the softer tone in the run-up to Iranian Presidential elections where the US would dearly like to see Moussavi as the man they would deal with in future. It is hard not to see his Iranian comments as directed at young reformers, encouraging them to believe that they can oust Ahmedinejad in the coming days.
• There was a reassertion of democratic values (much stronger than expected) and of rule by consent but this was offset by a policy of state non-interference so that we can expect exhortation rather than criticism of allies.
• There was a continued ideological commitment to female equality but with a rather pragmatic tinge, adopting support for female literacy programmes that we may expect to be backed by both US and Saudi funds.
• There was a call for more tolerance of religious diversity which may presage attempts by the Saudis to give more leeway for the other Abrahamanic faiths within the Kingdom in due course. This was also a useful message for the Catholic Church and for the beleaguered minority of Christians who have been drifting to radicalisms and despairs of their own.
• And, last but not least, there was the reference to improved economic conditions – which merely states once again the real driving force for American foreign policy in any arena, the opening up of markets to build shared wealth for stability and trade (at least as Americans see things).

Regional Reactions

If the Obama speech was aligned with anyone in the region, it was with the Saudis – a remarkable turn-around in US-Saudi relations since the dark days of 2001. The visit of Obama to Riyadh in advance of Cairo soothed any possible slight to ‘amour propre’.

The eventual message fitted in perfectly with dynastic concerns and interests and both Saudis and Egyptians, old rivals, are being brought into alignment on a strategy of defensive engagement with dissent.

Western liberals committed to the region also liked it although we should always be wary of the term liberal in an Arab context.

Many reformers are, in fact, conservatives by European standards whose prime concern is the struggle for modernisation within existing elites rather than with empowering the majority whom they often fear as an uneducated mob.

Obama’s vision, to them, is a beautiful one, as it is intended to be, but few really believe that the expectations that it has raised can be easily delivered. Conversely, the Israelis were deeply unhappy.

Street reactions confirmed a tendency for Israelis to start considering it time to resist what some felt to be a near-colonial status (an irony in view of the view of opponents’ views that Israel was the tail that wagged the US dog). The official reaction was, however, muted but not oppositional.

Domestic Reactions

As for US reactions, the powerful Israeli lobby appeared stunned into relative silence. Obama’s Muslim greeting (a significant theatrical coup) and the ‘I feel your pain’ approach to the Palestinians changed radically the rhetorical terms of trade in domestic politics.

This clearly needs thinking through by Jewish strategists. The rhetoric of ‘Islamo-fascism’ now looks extremist, cultist, at best partisan, and Obama is now so secure as statesman that an Israel lobby direct attack on him could be deeply counter-productive.

The Republicans will set themselves to oppose Obama but this gives the Israeli lobby a serious internal difficulty because many Jews are liberal and otherwise inclined to Obama’s position on domestic matters.

A strong pro-Israel position also upsets the increasingly dissident and noisy if small right-wing populist and libertarian elements in the Republican Party as well as Arab-American and Muslim-American voters.

What many missed was a reference that could be implied to suggest that Israel’s nuclear capability was part of the problem and not part of the solution. The reference was understated but the global drive towards arms limitation and even elimination is a bigger story.

Israel’s nuclear weaponry has now been placed in the pot. If it is not careful, Israel might be placed in the same category as North Korea one day if events out-run the Israeli ability to adjust or resist.

This was a rhetorical triumph that built a coherent US foreign policy in the region. There is no excuse for anyone not to understand and respond to it.

The calculation now, in each regional country, is just how important the slightly weakened US is to them in their own national interest and the degree of compliance they can afford to offer.

From this perspective, the balance of power has shifted against Israel as it is currently positioning itself and towards both conservative Arab allies and reformers in the ‘alien nations’.

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