The past decade's worth of American foreign policy debacles has led to some lazy thinking on American empire.  Either the United States is using force to advance rapacious economic interests, or Washington is neglecting economic diplomacy because U.S. foreign policy has become too militarized.  Right, now, neither argument holds up terribly well. 

For example, the Financial Times' Lina Saigol looks at postwar foreign direct investment in Iraq and notes the prominent absence of U.S. and British firms:

After almost nine years, $1tn spent and 4,487 American and 179 British lives lost, theUS is withdrawing from Iraq, leaving the country’s vast economic spoils to nations that neither supported nor participated in the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Turkey, Iran, China, South Korea and Arab states have already invested billions in Iraq, far outpacing their US and UK counterparts in every non-oil sector from transport and telecoms to housing and construction.

This is really a variation of a theme.  Take a look at Afghanistan, and the same pattern plays itself out -- significant U.S. military investment, remarkably little follow-on U.S. economic investment, significant investments by others.  In short, arguments that the United States uses its military power to advance its economic interests don't hold up well at all -- unless one wants to posit that U.S. elites are really an executive committee of the Chinese Communist Party's economic bourgeoisie. 

The overmephasis on military force has been a long-running criticism of American foreign policy.  That said, it leads to some lazy analytical habits.  Consider this NYT Sunday Review essay by Stephen Glain on the U.S. "pivot" to the Pacific Rim: 

With the economy in disarray, President Obama chose a costly instrument in deciding to expand the American military commitment in Asia by deploying a Marine contingent to Australia; the move will only help insulate the Pentagon from meaningful spending cuts and preserve the leading role the military has played in foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks....

Indeed, America’s top diplomat has become the chief civilian advocate for military answers to diplomatic challenges. Speaking in Honolulu last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for “a more broadly distributed military presence” in Asia. While in Manila, she appeared on an American warship and reaffirmed the nearly 60-year-old security pact between the United States and the Philippines. She also has endorsed the creation of an American-led regional trade pact that pointedly excludes China for the present, a remarkably petty snub compared to the way her legendary predecessor George C. Marshall offered (without success, in the face of Stalin’s suspicions) to include the Soviet Union in the postwar reconstruction plan that now bears Marshall’s name. And this month she visited Myanmar, where the Obama administration has assiduously worked to neutralize a corrupt and repressive government in favor of democratic reform; in the grander strategic game, this, too, could be read in Beijing as a tactic to weave the country — which has been Beijing’s ally — into an American noose around China. 

OK, this argument is confusing on a number of fronts.  First, how is ratifying an FTA with South Korea and negotiating a framework agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership an example of an excessive role for the military? 

Second, President Obama was quite explicit in saying he would welcome Chinese participation in TPP.  However -- like Marshall before him -- Obama is saying this because he's pretty sure China will be unwilling to pay the regulatory coin necessary to join. 

During the 1990's, one could argue that U.S. foreign policy in the Pacific Rim was too heavily dominated by the Treasury Department.  During the 2000's, one could argue that it was too heavily dominated by the Defense Department.  Right now, U.S. policy in the region looks like a decent balance of security and economic diplomacy.  I suspect that this balance has been so rare for so long that analysts simply aren't used to recognizing it. 

The combination of President Obama's Afghanistan speech, recent congressional votes on Libya, and the tenor of the GOP presidential debate have prompted gnashing of teeth from the usual suspects about the rise of isolationism and the decline of America.  This is good -- a robust debate should be had about balancing America's role abroad with fiscal demands at home, what it means for the United States to have a robust overseas presence, and so forth. 

Please, however, for the love of God, can this debate take place without Niall Ferguson? 

I ask because his latest essay for Newsweek contains the laziest paragraph I will read today.  In this column, Ferguson strains to displace Tom Friedman as The Creator of Inane Metaphors.  He coins "IOU-solationism"  to descibe the instinct to retrench because of domestic difficulties.  There's a pedestrian description of rising sentiment for retrenchment.  Then we get to the lazy paragraph, which happens to be the only one in his column that provides a justification for why defense cuts are a bad idea: 

The United States certainly needs to get its fiscal house in order. But any serious analysis of the benefits of defense cuts needs to consider the potential costs of walking away from countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. If radical Islamism is a declining force around the world, I hadn’t noticed.

A few thoughts: 

1)  Psst... Niall.... just because you haven't noticed does not mean that radical Islamist movements haven't declined.  Last I checked, groups like Al Qaeda were waning in popularity among Muslim populations (to the point where Osama bin Laden mused about renaming Al Qaeda).  Oh, and if you failed to notice, you should know that Osama bin Laden is still dead. 

I understand that not every assertion can be backed up in an 800 word column.  Really, I get that.  It's perfectly fine to assert  "the U.S. economy is weak" or "China is rising"  or "Salma Hayek is hot" without providing any supporting evidence -- these stylized facts represent common knowledge.  The rising power of radical Islam does not fall into this category, however.  Seriously, this might be the worst paragraph I've seen in a published column this year.  It's all casual assertion and no evidence. 

2)  There is a difference between radical Islamist groups that wish to control their own territory and groups like Al Qaeda that want to target the rest of the world.  I'm not the biggest fan of the former groups, but Ferguson presumes that U.S. military force should be directed at them.  This strikes me as a great way to globalize local conflicts, amping up the threats to the United States rather than tamping them down.  I suspect Ferguson disagrees -- but he provides no counterargument. 

3)  Ferguson alludes to recent developments in Yemen as a reason to be concerned about Al Qaeda and its affiliates exploiting the Arab Spring, which is a fair point.  Here's a key question, however -- does having large numbers of American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq help or hinder a policy response in other vulnerable countries?  And when is the use of force not the best allocation of resources for this policy conundrum?  

I'm not the only one to notice Ferguson's recent bloviations.  Last month Michael Lind wrote a broadside against Ferguson in Salon.  Lind paints Ferguson as someone who's always been a hack, which is unfair -- he produced some genuinely interesting economic history back in the day.  Still, it's genuinely sad to witness the odd decline of Ferguson from premier economic historian to hack commentator.  Financially, he's much richer from this move, but his writing has become so impoverished over the past decade that he's writing his way out of the foreign policy conversation. 

I've frequently bemoaned the ignorance of economic history and foreign economic policy in debates about international relations.  Because of this, I must mourn the passing of Ferguson's ability to make informed contributions to important policy debates.  The opportunity cost of reading his current hackwork, however, has become way too high.   

As a group, foreign policy analysts and international relations theorists tend to focus on how large, impersonal factors affect the contours of world politics.   We're like this for two reasons:  a) Large-scale factors -- like, say, demographics -- really are pretty important; and b) We get allergic reactions to media narratives that stress the ways in which one person or one decision made all the difference.

Because of this trait, an event like bin Laden's death has lead to an orgy of blog posts and essays pointing out that not much has changed.  Charli Carpenter's first response was to ccharacterize it as "a single operation in a vast and endless war, that apparently will have no impact on our foreign policy."   Daveed Gartenstein-Ross recounts the myriad ways in which Al Qaeda still matters in a post-Osama world.  Neither Nate Silver nor David Weigel thinks that the effect on Barack Obama's political popularity will be that great.  Ben Smith points out that conspiracy theorists will have a field day with this, just like they have a field day with everything else. 

So, let me go against my instinct to agree with all of the above points and suggest why bin Laden's demise really is, in the words of the VPOTUS -- a big f***ing deal: 

1)  Pakistan.  You can slice this any way you want, the brute fact is that bin Laden was living in the Pakistani equivalent of Annapolis -- a posh resort town that happens to house a lot of Pakistani retired generals, not to mention their main miltary academy.  This doesn't look good for Pakistan, as their continued silence suggests.  As he promised in his campaign, Obama violated Pakistan's sovereignty, sent in special forces, took out bin Laden, and did it all without consulting the Pakistanis about it.  So not only does the Pakistani leadership look incompetent, they also look impotent. 

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that anything that destabilizes Pakistan is a BFD -- and the way this played out destabilizes the country. 

2)  The United States just re-shaped the narrative.  International relations scholars assume that most actors in world politics care about some combination of power, wealth and prestige.  The U.S. killing of bin Laden strengthens American prestige and weakens Al Qaeda's.  According to reports, Bin Laden used his wife a woman as a human shield to protect himself during the firefight, which will tarnish his legacy, even to AQ operatives.  Perceptions matter, and this symbolic victory for the United States will affect perceptions of American power. 

Of course, all it takes for for the debt ceiling not to be raised and this'll disappear, but still...

3)  The United States has increased its bargaining leverage in the Af-Pak region.  As both Matthew Yglesias and Ross Douthat suggest, the death of bin Laden is one of those symbolic moments during which U.S. policy in the region might be re-evaluated.  There are reasons to believe that this blow is actually going to sting for Al Qaeda. 

It's at this moment when a president might have more credibility in bargaining with either Afghanistan or Pakistan.  A large-scare withdrawal is now politically feasible in ways that it wasn't 24 hours ago -- and anti-war members of Congress are already getting frisky about it.  They also have the American public on their side. 

If the administration is smart, they will use this pressure to withdraw to start actually withdrawing, or at least pressure Afghan and Pakistani officials into acting in a somewhaqt more cooperative manner. 

4)  Al Qaeda won't be able to exploit the Arab Spring.  Al Qaeda had already whiffed  badly in handling the Arab unrerst of 2011, and bin Laden's popularity in the region had been falling as of late.  That said, think of bin Laden (in this way and only this way) as like Sarah Palin -- someone who had declining poll numbers but a still-very-rabid base of support.  It's not obvious that this support will transfer to any other jihadist. 

Al Qaeda's remnants and affiliates might be able to operationally exploit the regimes changes in the region -- but they've lost whatever slim reeed they had at a political presence.

5)  It's a social science bonanza!!!  Terrorism experts should be positively giddy about this development.  Bin Laden's death is a great "natural experiment" to see whether Al Qaeda is as decentralized and resilient as some experts claim.  The AP reports that, "U.S. forces searched the compound and flew away with documents, hard drives and DVDs that could provide valuable intelligence about al-Qaida."  I, for one, hope that bin Laden's location in Abbotabad means that he was more of a central node than analysts expected. 

Readers are welcomed to proffer their own explanations for why this is a big f***ing deal in the comments. 

I confess to being fascinated by academic or literary downfalls, so I've been spending the past few days catching up on the imbroglio over Greg Mortenson, his Central Asia Institute (CAI), and his bestsellers Three Cups of Tea and Stones Into Schools.  

To sum up:  through his books and CAI, Mortenson has popularized his mission to build schools and educate children (particularly girls) in Pakistan and Afghanistan as a way of reducing extremism in that region.  Investigative reports by 60 Minutes and Jon Krakauer strongly suggest the following: 

1)  Mortenson either fudged or flat-out lied about some of the more gripping anecdotes in both books. 

2)  Mortenson used CAI as a vehicle to promote his books and subsidize his income.  CAI covered his travel expenses for book tours and purchased books in such a way to boost royalties for Mortenson.  According to financial statenments, CAI devoted more of its budget to Mortenson's promotional tours than actually building schools in Central Asia.  Mortenson rebuffed efforts by other CAI employees to impose financial controls on his expenditures.

3)  CAI/Mortenson exaggerated the number of schools that were built, and in many cases even if the schools were built, they have been left unused due to a variety of logistical and organizational failures. 

Mortenson and CAI have responded with a plethora of media interviews, direct responses and open missives to supporters.  Most of these seem pretty feeble to me.  When Mortenson says that, "It is important to know that Balti people have a completely different notion about time," you kinda wonder if Mortenson isn't talking about himself.)  Official investigations are now under way, publishers are belatedly fact-checking, and some prize committees are very busy wiping egg off of their face. 

To be fair, Mortenson has actually built schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  On my personal Scandal-O-Meter, this rates far below Bernie Madoff -- but pretty far above, say, Doris Kearns Goodwin. 

So, what are the takeaway lessons from all this?  Five thoughts:   

1)  Reading through Krakauer's story, the striking thing is not the extent of Mortenson's deception but rather the fact that it took so long for this to come to light.  Mortenson has been a celebrity since Parade profiled him in April 2003.  The fact that Mortenson was able to write two best-sellers and enjoy the lecture circuit for eight years despite the surprising number of people who knew there were issues with Mortenson's narrative.  The moral of the story is that , even in a transparent Web 2.0 era, myths can trump reality for a looooong time. 

2)  Even Mortenson's detractors make it clear that they think he's done much good in Central Asia, so this realy isn't a Bernie Madoff-style scam.  It does suggest, however, that political analysts who think of NGOs and celebrity activists as pursuing humane policy ends only for altruistic purposes are living in  Fantasyland.  It's a world of complex and overlapping motives, and no influential actor in international relations is a saint.   

3)  What's interesting to me about the inaccuracies/fabrications in Three Cups of Tea is that, by and large, they are irrelevant to the larger policy question of whether schools can help reduce violent extremism.  Whether Greg Mortenson was kidnapped by the Taliban or not, whether he wandered into a village or not don't really matter from a policy perspective.  Based on the amount of ink pixels being spilled used on these questions, however, it's quite clear that these narrative elements really do matter.  As Laura Miller has pointed out in Salon, however, greater attention is being paid to those details than the NGO mismanagement. 

This suggests, in many ways, the power that creation or origin narratives have in developing politically alluring policies.  CAI ain't lying when they say that, "Greg’s speeches, books and public appearances are the primary means of educating the American people on behalf of the Institute."   Coming up with a compelling policy is not always enough to generate action -- narratives matter one whole hell of a lot. 

4)  Does Mortenson's myths and mismanagement undercut the policy message?  To tell the truth, I'm not blown away by Mortenson's policy message -- indeed, it's pretty weak.  As Alanna Shaikh points out in FP:

Its focus was on building schools -- and that's it. Not a thought was spared for education quality, access, or sustainability. But building schools has never been the answer to improving education. If it were, then the millions of dollars poured into international education over the last half-century would have already solved Afghanistan's -- and the rest of the world's -- education deficit by now.

Over the last 50 years of studying international development, scholars have built a large body of research and theory on how to improve education in the developing world. None of it has recommended providing more school buildings, because according to decades of research, buildings aren't what matter. Teachers matter. Curriculum matters. Funding for education matters. Where classes actually take place? Not really.

Spencer Ackerman has a detailed, link-rich post at Wired detailing the ways in which U.S. military's COINistas have drunk way too deeply from Mortenson's magical teacup.  

In the best defense of Mortenson I've seen, Daniel Glick blogs the following: 

But here’s the crux for me.  As somebody who has worked in a Muslim country (I was a Knight International Press Fellow working in Algeria in 2006), I know that Americans need a lot of bridge building in the Islamic world.  Mortenson has gone where few others have gone, and has put in incredible time and energy to raise awareness, seed schools, and give girls opportunities for education that would not be theirs otherwise.  I have no doubt he has done orders of magnitude more good than harm.  The same cannot be said for a lot of NGOs doing development work around the world, much less our military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hmmm.... maybe.  At a minimum, I'd like to see the costs and the benefits of Mortenson's activities weighed very carefully right now. 

5)  I, for one, look forward to the day when 60 Minutes and Jon Krakauer start looking into the living dead.  I will hereby defend every fact, every citation in Theories of International Politics and Zombies to the end of my days, or the end of days, whichever comes first. 

Am I missing anything? 

Tom Brokaw has acquired sufficient gravitas such that, when he clears his throat in a meaningful way, he gets his own New York Times op-ed essay.

This morning, Brokaw cleared his throat about why the ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan in Iraq aren't being talked about during this election campaign season. 

[W]hy aren’t the wars and their human and economic consequences front and center in this campaign, right up there with jobs and taxes?

The answer is very likely that the vast majority of Americans wake up every day worrying, with good reason, about their economic security, but they can opt out of the call to arms. Unless they are enlisted in the armed services -- or have a family member who has stepped forward -- nothing much is asked of them in the war effort.

The all-volunteer uniformed services now represent less than 1 percent of the American population, but they’re carrying 100 percent of the battle…

No decision is more important than committing a nation to war. It is, as politicians like to say, about our blood and treasure. Surely blood and treasure are worthy of more attention than they’ve been getting in this campaign.

It's true that Iraq was a much bigger issue during the 2002 and 2006 midterms. Is Brokaw right that the lack of a draft is deflecting the issue? Sort of. 

Brokaw has half a point in saying that the all-volunteer force blunts the incentive to have a public debate on this Very Important Topic. There's a better reason to explain the silence, however: There's not much daylight between the two parties on this issue. 

In 2008, the Bush administration began the drawdown phase in Iraq. In 2009, the Obama administration anted up for 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan. Neither war is popular with the U.S. electorate. 

Given these political facts, why would either party bring up these conflicts? Democrats can't rail against wars being prosecuted by a Democratic president. Not even nutjob ultra-conservative hacks can credibly claim that Obama has been a "Kenyan anti-colonialist" on the military front. Democrats can't really run on a "see, we told you that Obama isn't a war wimp!" message either. The GOP has little incentive to call for doubling down in these conflicts and can't really pivot towards a "pro-peace" position either. [I suspect the Islamophobia issue is cropping up on the GOP campaign trail because it's a stalking horse for "getting tough" with the United States' enemies. Even here, however, it's not like Democrats have created all that much daylight between them and the party of opposition.] 

If neither party has an incentive to bring up these wars during the campaign, the only way it becomes an issue is if a powerful interest group and/or social movement raises it. Here's here the all-volunteer force comes into play. Perhaps some returning veterans want to bring up the war as an issue for policy debate -- but the returning veterans do not appear to be alienated en masse. There is also no U.S. equivalent of the Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia -- not that the Russian version was all that effective. All one finds on this terrain are the Cindy Sheehans of the world, and her credibility has been eroding as of late. 

Brokaw is right that matters of blood and treasure should be debated. But a debate requires politicians to have divergent views to debate about -- and right now, that doesn't exist between the major parties. 

Question:  what do Top Secret America and Wikileaks have in common? 

Answer:  they both pretty much put me to sleep. 

Call me shallow, call me jaded, call me cynical, but there's not that much there there in either effort.  Day 1 of the Top Secret story was the most informative of the bunch, no doubt -- but even that story was frustratingly short on detail.  Day 2 and Day 3 were worse, in that they didn't tell me anything I already know.  Day 2 of Top Secret America told me that  outsourcing to private contractors is bad, bad, bad, and very expensive.  Day 3 was kind of like your local news teasers: "Are NSA employees living RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO YOU?!"  If you live in the vicinity of BWI, it turns out the answer is, "yes, but it's not a big deal." Again... yawn. 

If Top Secret America actually prompts hearings/reform efforts, then yay, dead tree journalism.  Otherwise, the reveal was far less than the hype. 

As for Wikileaks, Blake Hounshell and Andrew Exum sum up my feelings on the matter.  So it turns out that the war in Afghanistan is not going well and Pakistan is playing a double game?  Well, knock me down with a feather!! 

In essence, neither story provides much in the way of new information -- they merely serve as news pegs through which intractable policy issues can be debated anew.  If those debates prove fruitful, that's great -- but during a summer in which I've seen the Stupidest Topics Ever become cable show fodder, I ain't getting my hopes up. 

This might be my own subfield prejudice at work.  Every once in a while someone from security studies tells me that international political economy is really, really boring and that they can't understand how I could find it interesting.  I think today is one of those days in which I would tell them the same thing. 

Am I missing anything?  Seriously, anything? 

Hmmm.... which magazine should I peruse online this AM.... maybe TNR?  The National Interest?  Nah, I'm not in the mood for deep thinking.  I'll just look at Rolling Stone, that won't take much intellectual heavy lifting.... oh, look, a profile of General McChrystal.... hmmm.... um.... holy cats.

Since everyone and their mother has their take on this Mongolian clusterf**k imbroglio already, I'm not going to bother linking to the rest of the blogosphere.  Instead, just a few measured and a few off the cuff reactions: 

1.  Doris Kearns Goodwin makes the case in today's New York Times that Obama doesn't have to fire McChrystal, pointing out that Union General George McClellan was far ruder to Lincoln, and yet was not fired.  This is historically true, but I'm not sure it's really the best example.  To put it gently, McClellan was a lousy, timid general -- by letting him stay on, Lincoln accomplished little but to prolong the war. 

2.  I find myself in agreement with Tom Donnelly and William Kristol: 

McChrystal should not be the only one to go.  Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and “AfPak” czar Richard Holbrooke should likewise either submit their resignations or be fired by President Obama.  Vice President Biden and his surrogates should be told to sit down and be quiet, to stop fighting policy battles in the press.  The administration's "team of rivals" approach is producing only rivalry.

They're right (see also David Ignatius).  McChrystal did himself no favors in the RS article, but he's hardly the only Afghan policy heavyweight to be tarnished by the essay.  Eikenberry poisoned the well with his press leaks last year, and Holbrooke is, well, Holbrooke.  A clean sweep might be the best move Obama could make. 

3)  Speaking of neoconservatives, it's worth noting that, contra Josh Rogin's take, GOP policy wonks are reacting the way you would expect a loyal opposition to react.  That is to say, sure, they're making hay of the problems with the Afghan strategy, but they're also quite firm in saying that Obama should dire McChrystal.  See Kristol,  Eliot Cohen, John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham. 

This should not be terribly surprising.  Neoconservatives have been pretty clear all along about civilian control of the military, and McChrystal's gaffes cut right to the heart of this issue. 

4)  One final point:  beyond the descriptions of McChrystal and his aides acting like jackasses in Paris, the RS article was of little use.  It presented a slanted portrait of COIN and it's advocates, and seemed determined to paint McChrystal in the worst light possible.  As Blake Hounshell observed, it failed to note that at this stage it's impossible to evaluate the COIN strategy, because these approaches tend to have "darkest before the dawn" qualities. 

What do you think?

Comment away on Obama's Afghanistan speech here.  My quick hits:

• Well, everyone who's been waiting for Obama to do something unpopular to demonstrate his leadership skills should shut up for a while;
• My favorite bit was the Eisenhower quote: "As President, I refuse to set goals that go beyond our responsibility, our means, or our interests.  And I must weigh all of the challenges that our nation faces.  I don't have the luxury of committing to just one.  Indeed, I'm mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who -- in discussing our national security -- said, 'Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration:  the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.'"
• To that end, my reaction to the proposed policy is very similar to my reaction to Bill Belichick's much-discussed fourth down play a few years back.  At the end of that post, I wrote:

[I]t's possible to defend Belichick's call on fourth down as the rational, utility-maximizing decision, but conclude that he committed a series of small blunders that got the Patriots to the point where they had to convert a high-risk, high-reward play.  In other words, sometimes the criticized decision might be the right one to make, but the decisions that structured the controversial choice might not have been. 

... Looking at the Obama administration's foreign policy, which move echoes Belichick's play-calling?

I think I have my answer now. 

This is a 51-49 decision, and I'm far from confident that he's doing the right thing.  If that Eisenhower quote is any indication, however, I'm pretty sure that the decision-making process was solid. 

Developing....

The Economist's Democracy in America blog takes me to task for this post on the French/European response to sending more troops to Afghanistan: 

[Drezner] then notes a small "to be sure": fewer than 5% of voters in France, Germany, Italy and Britain support sending more troops to Afghanistan too. That pretty decisively handcuffs those goverments. Why not call the Germans or Brits "passive-aggressive-y"?  Because it wouldn't fit the American stereotype of Gallic limp-wristedness.

Two quick responses.  First, the alleged constraint of public opinion (see below) did not cause either the British or German defense ministers to categorically rule out sending more troops to Afghanistan the day after Barack Obama was sworn in.  I focused on France because the French defense minister spoke up on this at an interesting juncture. 

Second, the Economist's blogger did not read precisely what I wrote, nor did s/he apparently click through to the FT story to which I linked.  I wrote, "Less than five percent of those polled believed that European countries should send troops to Afghanistan as a gesture of solidarity with Obama. (emphasis added)"  If you look at the poll, however, a significant fraction of respondents (though not a majority or a plurality) were comfortable with the idea of sending more troops "if warranted by conditions in Afghanistan."  Furthermore, this support is stronger in France than it is in either Germany or the UK, which suggests that the French government faces a lesser constraint than policymakers in Berlin or London. 

I firmly believe that public opinion should play an important role in dictating the foreign policy of a democracy -- including France.  But these opinion polls are not quite the binding constraint that the Economist suggests.  Furthermore, it seems only polite to wait and see what Obama will say on Afghanistan before issuing a firm "Non!"

Joe Klein interviewed Barack Obama recently, and the latter had some interesting thoughts about what to do about the Taliban: 

[Q] …Should we be talking to the Taliban? I don’t mean you. [BO] You know, I think that this is one useful lesson that is applicable from Iraq. The Great Awakening, the Sunni Awakening changed the dynamic in Iraq fundamentally. It could not have occurred unless there were some contacts and intermediaries to peel off those who are tribal leaders, regional leaders, Sunni nationalists, from a more radical Messianic brand of insurgency. Well whether there are those same opportunities in Afghanistan I think should be explored.

Now, what's interesting about this is that Jane Perlez and Jane Zubair Shah have a fascinating piece in the New York Times on Pakistani efforts to trigger this kind of tribal awakening in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier: 

The tribal militias, known as lashkars, have quickly become a crucial tool of Pakistan’s strategy in the tribal belt, where the army has been fighting the Taliban for more than two months in what army generals acknowledge is a tougher and more protracted slog than they anticipated. And, indeed, the lashkars’ early efforts have been far from promising. As the strength of the militants in the tribal areas grows, and as the war across the border in Afghanistan worsens, the Pakistanis are casting about for new tactics. The emergence of the lashkars is a sign of the tribesmen’s rising frustration with the ruthlessness of the Taliban, but also of their traditional desire to run their own affairs and keep the Pakistani Army at bay, Pakistani officers and law enforcement officials say. Some in Washington have pointed to the emergence of the lashkars as a hopeful parallel to the largely successful Sunni Awakening movement in Iraq, which drew on tribes’ frustration with militant jihadis to build an alliance with American troops that helped lessen violence in Iraq. But there are significant differences, a senior American government official acknowledged. In Anbar Province, he said, the Iraqi tribes “woke up to millions of dollars in government assistance, and the support of the Third Infantry division.” But the support by the Pakistani Army and civilian government for the tribal militias has been “episodic” and so far “unsustained,” he said. In addition, tribal structures in Pakistan have been weakened in recent years by the Taliban, unlike the situation in Iraq. The tribesmen, armed with antiquated weaponry from the 1980s Afghan war, are facing better equipped, highly motivated Taliban who have intimidated and crushed some of the militia.... Even in the best of times, there are basic unwritten rules about the tribal militia in Pakistan that limit their impact. The Pakistani military, for example, can lend moral support but not initiate a tribal militia, the generals said. The lashkars come with their own weapons, food, and ammunition. They have their own fixed area of responsibility, and are not permanent. Indeed great care is taken to make sure the lashkars do not become a threat to the military itself. “We do not want a lashkar to become an offensive force,” said one of the generals, who spoke frankly about the lashkars on condition of anonymity. For that reason, the military was willing to lend fire support artillery and helicopters but would not give the militias heavy weapons, he said.

Here's a question that should be asked of both John McCain and Barack Obama -- should the United States be providing direct support to these lashkars as a way to squeeze the Taliban?