US New Diplomacy

Times of India
Top Article:
Exercise Of Smart Power
N D Batra
27 July 2009, 12:00am IST

Recently, US defence secretary Robert Gates, a no-nonsense seasoned hand from the Bush administration, stated explicitly in Foreign Affairs that "to fail - or to be seen to fail - in either Iraq or Afghanistan would be a disastrous blow to US credibility, both among friends and allies and among potential adversaries".
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton - who recently visited India to reaffirm the strategic and economic bonds built by the previous administration - wholeheartedly endorses Gates's views when he said that because of its grinding poverty and unfriendly neighbourhood, "Afghanistan in many ways poses an even more complex and difficult long-term challenge than Iraq - one that, despite a large international effort, will require a significant US military and economic commitment for some time". Read "some time" as a long, long time, even though it has been often said that Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. Gates has asked for an additional 22,000 troops for the army, for the next three years. An extra 17,000 troops and 4,000 military trainers are being sent to Afghanistan. Do not expect the US to leave the Af-Pak region to its own devices; nor will US presence be against India's national interest.
Gates's national defence strategic vision goes far beyond what has ever been attempted anywhere. A most serious problem that the US military confronts is how speedily it can move forces from one danger zone to another. Gates's solution: build a swift and lethal force fitted with precision-guided weapons, on-the-spot intelligence-gathering by a network of satellites; troops that can be airdropped to a battle zone bypassing existing bases or beachheads. Networked with GPS, unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles and remotely controlled drones that can provide real-time battlefield view, a lighter and speedier force can end the war quickly with fewer civilian casualties.
In the early days of Iraqi operations, swiftness was achieved through maximum cooperation among Special Forces, army, navy, marines and air force, enabling them to act as one cohesive yet flexible force. This strategy that the Pentagon should incorporate into its war manual, according to Gates, will nevertheless not be enough. The army must be trained for the unconventional war carried out by a dispersed and networked enemy that draws its sustenance from many non-state actors sheltering in failing or unfriendly states. Besides, 'GI Joe' should be ready for doing social reconstruction and building civil society for which much more than a smart military doctrine is needed. Neither the Rumsfeld doctrine of 'shock and awe' nor the Powell doctrine of massive force application to serve a well-defined public-supported national interest is enough for the Af-Pak situation.
The al-Qaeda-Taliban asynchronous warfare strategy has made nonsense of every military doctrine. The US needs a new model for dealing with the enemy. "Terrorist networks", Gates has said, "can find sanctuary within the borders of a weak nation and strength within the chaos of social breakdown. A nuclear-armed state could collapse into chaos and criminality. The most likely catastrophic threats to the US homeland ^ for example, that of a US city being poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack ^ are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states." The new defence strategy must take into account "the lethality of state conflict with the fanatical and protracted fervour of irregular warfare" and "wars...in which Microsoft coexists with machetes and stealth technology is met by suicide bombers," added Gates quoting defence scholars. That has been India's dilemma.
While Pakistan's nuclear threat has held India back from taking defensive-offensive measures, ISI-backed and professionally-trained terrorist groups under the disguise of charities and civic societies have been causing mayhem from India's heart of democracy, the majestic Parliament, to its city of palaces Jaipur to its most cosmopolitan corporate and cultural nexus and plexus, Mumbai. The Taliban-al-Qaeda in Afghanistan-Pakistan cannot be eliminated by traditional military strategies. The enemy has to be tracked down "hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block", argues Gates, for which "the United States needs a military whose ability to kick down the door is matched by its ability to clean up the mess and even rebuild the house afterward".
Addressing the Council on Foreign Relations before her India trip, Clinton called it the exercise of "smart power...the use of all means at our disposal, including our ability to convene and connect. It means our economic and military strength, our capacity for entrepreneurship and innovation...The question is not whether our nation can or should lead, but how it will lead in the 21st century...America will always be a world leader..." As the Pentagon is "re-programmed" and recalibrated to become a new effective global force, the US cannot forget the much larger potential threat emerging: China's growing mastery of outer space and cyberspace, satellite warfare and cyber warfare. That is where the future US-India strategic dialogue should begin.
(The writer is professor, communications and diplomacy, at Norwich University, US.)