Time to ‘Reset Our Thinking’ Says HS Policy Institute’s Cilluffo

My concern when people talk about Afghanistan and the Taliban and Talibanization [is] it’s not a monolithic organization. It’s not the way it was with [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar. It’s very locally flavored in terms of how we deal with these issues. We’ve got to take a regional perspective on some of this. Obviously, indigenous folks will help us. If you look at Iraq, we started out us vs. them, but then they came to conclude that AQI [al Qaeda in Iraq] in particular was nothing but a violent, bloody organization that was providing nothing new, providing no future. They were against everything, for nothing. I’m not sure that you can take those same lessons from Iraq and apply them to Afghanistan because it’s a very different cultural situation. The real challenge is the FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan], and I think you’ve seen some nuance in some of the thinking in Pakistan since the primaries in particular. It’s very easy for me to say the do-no-harm principle, and as much as we can get other fingerprints on the knife, to use a bad analogy, to be part of the solution, I think it benefits us greatly. In other words, if we have individuals in our sights, obviously notably UBL [Osama bin Laden] and the leadership the more you can enable the indigenous services to do what affects them greatest and most, the more we should be focusing on that. In the FATA, that’s easier said than done. But when we talk about the Taliban there’s not a single Taliban. For a while there everything was under the banner of AQ. They did happen to morph and merge and acquire  . . .  terrorist organizations, but it wasn’t helpful to paint everything under that brush. It’s not as simple as that. And I do think, counterinsurgency planning 101, as much as we can enable others to provide them with the tools to better help themselves, and not just in the military context but provide for security so that they feel safe enough to be able to act, that should be where the emphasis is. But it’s always harder to get that foreign budget for softer, smarter [ways] to get the job done.

Q: Do you think there’s a chance that instead of shifting resources from a military effort in Iraq to a military effort in Afghanistan, the administration might shift or build up the State Department’s resources?

A: I think we have to. I think the greatest advocate of all has been Secretary [of Defense Robert] Gates. But how do we translate that with the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, Congress? That’s the challenge. Not to be tongue-in-cheek again, but I’ve kind of come to conclude we have three parties in America: Democrats, Republicans, and appropriators. With the new commander in chief, there are a couple of lines in the sand that he can work, not in a confrontational way with the Congress, but say ‘these are my three priorities, leadership make it happen.’ It’s never going to happen through the committee structure itself. I think this could be one of those: I want to a vast bump-up in some of the State Department functions. But not just State, it’s also reconstruction beyond that. NGOs have a huge role in this and sometimes have more street credibility than any government program. But how do you mobilize that without having it be an instrument of government and at the same time provide for their safety and security? These are not easy solutions. But I think that he will invest, and that would probably be an investment well spent, to balance it out a little smarter. I guess it was Napoleon who said all warfare is 80 percent psychological and nonmilitary and 20 percent military, but how do you round that square, and how do you do so in a way that has the resources and the performance measures, the metrics, all of which are significant?

Q: Do you think that it’s possible to do without a significant increase in spending?

A: For me, being in government, one of the lessons I was surprised to learn is you can only have so many priorities, and they’re all competing, and calendars, time, drives that to some extent. So you’ve got to find ways where you get the two-for, you get the return on investments beyond guards, guns, gates, you get the secondary and tertiary benefits. We’re not going to have endless monies to throw at some of these problems, but I do think there’s an opportunity to tweak some of the big platforms that costs endless amounts of money to some of the smarter, more people oriented initiatives. Again do you give them fish or do you teach people to fish? As much as we can teach people to fish, it’s in their best interests. And I’m not saying we’re the ultimate fishermen, I’m not trying to make an arrogant statement that we know, and you’re right to ask the economic question. The incoming administration’s relationship with the legislative branch is important, that is I think a lesson anyone should glean from where the current administration was not very strong.

Q: Are there other areas that you think might show a sharp turn in a different direction, in addition to soft-power spending?

A: [Vice President-elect Joseph R.] Biden himself has put together an interesting proposal on Pakistan. He had a proposal before he was tapped as the vice president that was a little more carrot and a little stronger stick focused: much more non-military, non-security spending, but on the security spending, [there were] firmer benchmarks to be able to meet certain outcomes and criteria. My gut tells me that no one’s going to come in and totally change things immediately. Hopefully they’re going to be able to take time and absorb, see the landscape, see what’s working, see what’s not, see what the opportunities are, opportunities costs lost. I don’t see, as some will say, immediate structural changes at DHS, I see more in prioritization and nuance in some of that. But there are a lot of game-changers, there are a lot of wild cards that as much as you prepare for you can’t predict or expect. I often say since the end of the Cold War, threat forecasting has made astrology look respectable, and I don’t have a crystal ball. But Pakistan, there are a whole host of different issues that can really become game-changers in this space. There you’re looking at grisly crisis management, cool-headed evaluation, assessment, that’s something I’m not sure anyone can predict.

Q: Do you think there’s a higher chance that a crisis will develop given that transitions are dangerous times, and certainly different countries are going to start testing, already have started testing?

A: Look at how Russia’s been probing for so long, getting back to an old, conventional kind of [testing to] see how far they can get. I think the adversary moves when they can, and opportunists often strike when and where we least expect them to. That said, I think some of the nation states will certainly be probing to see how far they can go in certain areas. It is a time of vulnerability. After [British Prime Minister] Gordon Brown came in he was immediately tested.  . . .  You obviously had 3-11 in Madrid. You also had our own presidents tested early in their first terms. But I think we sometimes weight that too much, because I’m not sure the adversary knows precisely when and where they’re hitting either. It’s gotten to the point where you have al Qaeda central, you’ve got the franchises, but you also have the wannabes and the startups and the cell structures that will move when and where they can. So, in a weird way, the best-case scenario in the U.K. was the gang that couldn’t shoot straight, with the Glasgow bombing and others; because they were not successful, the U.K. was able to stay the course and put together a thoughtful, common-sense approach to dealing with engagement that didn’t isolate communities, but rather tried to engage.

There are game-changers that none of us can think of. That’s what we need to be thinking about, what are those things over the horizon? Egypt is starting to concern me a bit. The economic situation, and you see clampdowns, and at some point you could have all sorts of unknowns arise. Pakistan is obviously one of those potential game-changers as well. Will the bomb travel? That’s not an insignificant trivial set of issues if you’re a bullet away from new players coming into power. It’s very interesting to see the kingdom of Saudi Arabia playing a very active role in Afghanistan and elsewhere. With Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Iraq for that matter, I think there’s an opportunity to look at this much more regionally. India’s under great stress and pressure as well, [suffering] attack after attack recently. If I were to look at this, I would almost not look at it in a traditional, bilateral kind of environment, I’d try to look at this thing broader, more regionally, enable other actors. Where does India fit in? Where does Pakistan? Syria, that’s another wild card. They could warm up, or cool down. The point is that we’ve got to be able to look at this thing a little more broadly than we have, and I think a regional approach would be quite smart in this particular context, because you can bring other actors, give them a sense of ownership, weigh their concerns but also look at it a little more holistically.