US mid-terms and Af-Pak policy: what lies ahead

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Daily Times
Thursday, November 11, 2010

COMMENT: US mid-terms and Af-Pak policy: what lies ahead —Dr Mohammad Taqi


The mid-term defeat has shattered Obama’s walking-on-water myth. He, therefore, will remain engaged with India, the Central Asian Republics and even Iran, as the counterpoise to Pakistan. The Pakistani establishment obviously does not like this scenario and that is the catch-22 for the US


The dust has started to settle on the US mid-term elections. With 239 seats, the Republican Party has gained control of the US House of Representatives while the Democrats have managed to hang on to a majority in the Senate with 53 seats. Out of the 37 state gubernatorial races, the Republican candidates have won 29, including 10 key swing states.

For more than half the US electorate, the economy was the top priority followed by the related issue of the budget deficit. The education, healthcare and immigration reforms were next on the voters’ mind, with environment and energy trailing way behind. While Mr Barack Obama may have literally saved the faltering world of capitalism from demise, the gains were not tangible enough for the common man to have voted for the president’s party.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the national security issues, including foreign wars and homeland security, were mentioned neither by the voters nor the candidates. Indeed, the words ‘war’ or ‘conflict’ did not feature in the election-day network television coverage at all. November 2, 2010 showed the wisdom of the dictum: ‘All politics is local,’ But around the world, and especially in the Pak-Afghan region, people and pundits alike are trying to make sense of what lies ahead in terms of US foreign policy, especially how it projects hard power.

The US constitution provides for both the executive and the legislative branches of the government to have a share in drafting foreign policy. Perhaps the best interpretation of these constitutional parameters came from Edward S Corwin, who wrote: “What the constitution does, and all that it does [sic], is to confer on the president certain powers capable of affecting our foreign relations, and certain other powers of the same general kind on the Senate, and still other such powers on Congress; but which of these organs shall have the decisive and final voice in determining the course of the American nation is left for events to resolve.”

However, historically, US presidents have considered and projected foreign policy as their domain. Presidents like Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan before him had reinvented themselves by literally going extrovert after election defeats at home. The US presidents have constitutional powers to formulate foreign policy in a considered manner through policy statements and implementation, proposing legislation and negotiating international agreements and treaties. Alternatively, a reactive — but still constitutional — foreign policy measure could come as a response to a world event or an altered dynamic in events already underway.

Obama has roughly 13 months to lay out his foreign policy agenda, before the Iowa Caucus in January 2012 kick-starts the presidential election campaign. Going by the recent election results and the way he has been walking on eggshells during the present tour, it seems highly unlikely that Obama will make any monumental independent decisions in the foreign policy realm. While trying to prevent any unexpected events from forcing his hand, the US president will strive to stay the course in various hotspots around the world, including Pakistan’s both frontiers.

The change of guard in the House of Representatives or the addition of a few Senate seats to the Republican tally will have negligible bearing on how the president projects both hard and soft power. The most important landmark in the congressional oversight of the current foreign policy will be the review of the Afghan war next month. In all likelihood, the policies and plans presented originally in 2008 — including the drawdown date of July 2011 — will be endorsed again without any major changes. The military side of the effort would continue to be funded but there remains a potential for political arm wrestling when it comes to financing the civilian projects, especially in Afghanistan, due to alleged corruption issues.

The same review will also focus on Pakistan’s role in the Afghan imbroglio. That Pakistan is essential for US success and ultimately peace in Afghanistan is understood clearly by both Obama and the Congress. However, the perception — and to a large extent the reality — remains that Pakistan continues to come to the negotiating table with its suicide jacket on. If — and a mighty if that is — Obama can miraculously manage to talk Pakistan’s establishment out of its delusional belief in its zero-sum regional policy, that alone may be sufficient to earn him immortality in history. Alas, the mid-term defeat has shattered Obama’s walking-on-water myth. He, therefore, will remain engaged with India, the Central Asian Republics and even Iran, as the counterpoise to Pakistan. The Pakistani establishment obviously does not like this scenario and that is the catch-22 for the US.

Around this time last year, Obama took a page out of Mikhail Gorbachev’s ‘get out of Afghanistan’ manual. To allay Pakistani concerns regarding India, he may have to revisit his handbook. A key issue at the 1988 Geneva Accords was how the various powers continued to arm their proxies in Afghanistan. George Shultz, the then US Secretary of State, had noted at the signing of the accord: “It is our right to provide military aid to the resistance. We are ready to exercise that right. But we are prepared to meet restraint with restraint.” He was alluding to what became known as negative symmetry. Unless Obama is willing to take on the Pakistani establishment militarily, establishing negative symmetry, i.e. getting all regional powers, including India, to lay off Afghanistan, may be his only realistic chance at enduring peace in that hapless country.

With the Republican victories across the board, especially in the swing states, a plethora of domestic problems that are not likely to go away, winning a UN Security Council seat for India or using trade agreements with it to force China into playing ball on currency issues, are unlikely to give Obama an edge in his re-election bid. Even an unlikely breakthrough in the stalled Middle East talks is not going to be of much help when all politics again become local. Come 2012, Obama would not be able to afford a disaster in or originating from the Pak-Afghan region. President Carter had learned something similar at his peril. What seems now like a long shot in the Pak-Afghan region could become Obama’s foreign policy legacy. But does he have any fire left in his belly?

The writer can be reached at mazdaki@me.com