The Trouble With Petraeus
Posted by Michael Cohen
So I'm still having a hard time getting my head around the fact that President Obama has chosen David Petraeus to be his new director of central intelligence. Was Joe Lieberman busy? Here's someone who became a public advocate, rather than advisor, during presidential deliberations on Afghanistan policy; someone who misled the President about the ability of the military to turn things over to the Afghan security forces by the summer 2011 and someone who repeatedly used media leaks and public media appearances to advocate for a counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan that by all accounts is failing spectacularly.
I mean I understand the concept of keeping your friends close and your enemies closer, but this is sort of ridiculous.
This issue, notwithstanding, my concern about this move is two-fold: one is that it continues the further militarization of our intelligence agencies, away from intel gathering to covert operations; and second I fear for the impact on Afghanistan policy.
On the first point, Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti have a smart article on how these moves continue the process of basically turning the agency into a militarized, operational arm of the Pentagon. So not only do you have someone at Langley who seems to be a big advocate of special operations; but you put someone at DoD (Leon Panetta) who built up the covert action capability at the CIA. Hard to imagine that either will suddenly slow down the cooperation between the two agencies on this front. And if one of the goals of the Obama Administration was to shift attention away from terrorism as the focus of US foreign policy I'm not sure how giving top national security jobs to the guy who built up the CIA's clandestine service over the past two years and the guy who managed the last two American wars achieves that goal. If anything it ensures that two of the Administration's top strategic thinkers (and I use those words guardedly) will have an intimate and perhaps overweening focus on terrorism as the focal point point of US national security policy.
Also it's worth remembering here that the CIA is primarily a civilian, espionage agency - not a hornet's nest of covert ops (no matter what Hollywood movies might tell you). How is Petraeus going to fare in that part of the job; managing the CIA's intel gathering mandate? Maybe this is the direction that the Administration wants to take the agency, but it does raise the very serious question of whether the Petraeus's likely focus on military operations and cooperation with DoD will have a deleterious impact on the intel-gathering part of the CIA's mandate. Does Petraeus have any track record of being able to effectively manage this fairly significant aspect of what the CIA does? Might be a question worth exploring at this confirmation hearings.
On Afghanistan, there is another more serious concern. While I am glad to see Petraeus out of day-to-day management of the war (if only because it would theoretically allow the White House to establish more control over the mission) I do wonder about the impact on the future of that policy.
Today there is something of a divide in the Obama Administration between those who think the time has come to being political reconciliation with the Taliban - and a more influential group that believes military pressure against the Taliban must be maintained and that the time is not right for negotiations. It appears, from the outside, that Petraeus comes down on the latter camp; believing that continued pressure will wring eventual concessions out of the Taliban.
It's worth asking what effect this will have on analysis about Afghanistan with the agency. Knowing that Petraeus is an advocate for a very specific policy choice in Afghanistan could have a potentially chilling effect on analysts in the agency. After all, there is some evidence that Petraeus has weighed in heavily on these matters in the past (the White House's December Af/Pak review comes to mind). How this affects the tenor and tone of intelligence analysis that gets passed up the chain of command to the White House and elsewhere is not an insignificant issue. It seems for the sake of Afghanistan policy that it might be better if the person in charge at Langley didn't have his thumb on the scale.
In the end, the White House seems to be adopting the view that it's better to have Petraues inside the tent pissing out, then pissing in. But there is a cost for doing so - and I'm not sure that the White House fully appreciates it.
So I hadn't quite realized how unpopular David Petraeus was in Pakistan until I read this piece in the New York Times today:
The appointment of Gen. David H. Petraeus as director of the Central Intelligence Agency puts him more squarely than ever in conflict with Pakistan, whose military leadership does not regard him as a friend and where he will now have direct control over the armed drone campaign that the Pakistani military says it wants stopped.
Pakistani and American officials said that General Petraeus’s selection could further inflame relations between the two nations, which are already at one of their lowest points, with recriminations over myriad issues aired publicly like never before.
The usually secretive leader of the Pakistani Army, Gen.Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has made little secret of his distaste for General Petraeus, calling him a political general.
Now it almost goes without saying that the CIA's relationship with Pakistan is the most important US agency relationship to any other country in the world. And on a good day, that relationship stinks (a situation only further inflamed by the Davis incident and Pakistan's general disinclination to do anything helpful for the United States in regard to the war Afghanistan and fighting al Qaeda). But it does beg the question, will the Petraeus selection make that relationship better or worse?
Now in a sense perhaps we shouldn't dwell on the issue. After all, the US relationship with Pakistan is in terrible shape and I genuinely don't think there is a good way to improve upon it unless we dramatically shift US strategy in Afghanistan. But if Petraeus is being picked in part because of his knowledge of the operational arts; if those operational arts are most relevant when it comes to the US relationship with Pakistan and in particular the fight against al Qaeda; and if Petraeus is mistrusted by the Pakistanis . . . well then what exactly is the value added of putting Petraeus in the DCI job? I'm not asking the question in jest; behind some fuzzy notion of "leadership" I'm at a loss in understanding why Petraeus is the best person for the job, especially since there seem to be a number of indicators that would point to him being the wrong man (not to mention the fact that it's impossible to believe that anyone at the White House actually trusts him).
Aha, but perhaps I've missed David Petraeus's most obvious attribute - over to you Mr. President:
I'm also very pleased that Leon's work at the CIA will be carried on by one of our leading strategic thinkers and one of the finest military officers of our time, General David Petraeus.
Petraeus is one of our leading strategic thinkers? Interesting. Now clearly generals occasionally show some level of strategic enlightenment. Eisenhower comes to mind; so to does George Marshall, even Colin Powell for a brief moment - but field commanders? Isn't Petraeus's greatest skill on the tactical level? Where has he shown great strategic thinking? As a person who thought (among others) that the US not only could, but should conduct armed social work and nation building in Afghanistan, well I'm not sure that "great strategic thinker" is the description that comes to mind.
So aside from the obvious political advantage of keeping Petraeus inside the tent I'm just having hard time seeing why Petraues got picked . . . unless of course the political advantage is the reason why. But who would ever accuse the Obama Administration of putting the politics of foreign policy ahead of actual foreign policy decision-making?
Or are you saying the NATO forces let the terrorists infiltrate from Afghanistan to Pakistan?
