R2P: The New Obama Doctrine?
• May 3, 2012

“More and more, we all confront difficult questions about how to prevent the slaughter of civilians by their own government, or to stop a civil war whose violence and suffering can engulf an entire region. I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds. . . . Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That’s why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.” — President Barack Obama

This statement from President Obama could easily be applied to the emerging civil war in Syria, but they were actually spoken at the outset of his administration, on the occasion of his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance. In his speech, he spoke eloquently about “just war,” and “the choice between armed intervention and complicity in oppression.” Both of these messages implicitly embrace an internationalist philosophy that’s widely become known as “Responsibility to Protect,” or “R2P.”

A little over a decade ago, the phrase “responsibility to protect” was introduced by an international commission in an effort to recast the doctrines of “right to intervene” and “obligation to intervene,” while still preserving the intent to act decisively in humanitarian crises. R2P quickly assumed the status of a “norm” (rather than a law) for the United Nations in preventing mass atrocities of the kind witnessed in Rwanda and Bosnia.

A year ago, in his speech justifying the U.S. intervention in Libya, Obama announced that Libya’s assault against its civilian population created a “responsibility” for the international community, stating that “when our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act.”

Most recently, the U.S. dispatched a special operations force to Uganda to act against one of Africa’s most brutal guerrilla groups.

The precedents in word and deed clearly convey an active endorsement of R2P. However, the true test may lie ahead in our response to Syria’s ongoing repression.

R2P has evolved with a set of defining “pillars,” “thresholds” and “obligations.” Entire non-governmental organizations have since been built around R2P. It even has its own Twitter hash-tag with a host of followers, to include billionaire George Soros and actress Mia Farrow — all of the necessary marketing ingredients for a presidential doctrine, ready-made.

R2P has strong advocates within the Obama administration, including Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, and Samantha Power, the National Security Council’s senior director, widely considered one of the principal architects of the Libya intervention.

In short, R2P shatters the premise that sovereignty, in the strict Westphalian sense is inviolable, arguing instead that it is a responsibility. According to R2P, every state has a responsibility to protect its population from mass atrocities. If they can’t do it themselves, the international community is obligated to assist them — even if they don’t want the help. Once peaceful measures like economic sanctions have failed, the international community has the responsibility to intervene militarily — but only as a last resort and only if the UN Security Council authorizes it.

In a narrative reminiscent of St. Augustine’s letter to Boniface outlining what would ultimately become the foundation for Just War theory, R2P advocates that all military interventions must fulfill six broad criteria:

• Just Cause
• Right Intention
• Final Resort
• Legitimate Authority
• Proportional Means
• Reasonable Prospect

Even a cursory review of President Obama’s speech justifying our Libya intervention last year shows a close alignment — even synchronization — with these criteria.

While circumventing Congress is nothing new for presidents, what is noteworthy in the case of Libya is Obama’s apparent effort to elevate R2P as a universal principle that not only trumps traditional perceptions of national sovereignty but also transcends the constitutional tenets that give Congress the sole authority to declare war.

Whether the president will declare his official sponsorship of R2P remains to be seen, but the language of his recent speeches and the actions of his administration make it clear that R2P is indeed a cornerstone of his foreign policy. A telling indicator will be whether he is willing to give R2P even more prominence by intervening militarily in Syria without UN Security Council approval.

While some may hail a unilateral NATO campaign against Syria as further strengthening R2P, the irony is that it could actually weaken it. Just as inconsistency or failure to act in humanitarian crises can diminish an R2P-based policy, any perception of “R2P-as-Subterfuge” for Western national self-interests (crushing the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah axis, for instance), could have devastating affects for the broad R2P construct, long term.

In the coming months, Obama’s action or inaction on Syria will largely determine whether R2P is to remain a UN norm or if it will ultimately emerge as the “Obama Doctrine.” It’s a topic being discussed by administration strategists — and the whispers outside the White House gates have already begun. Yet, a more fundamental, if not practical, question for those West Wing discussions will be whether an R2P policy is sustainable in a time when defense budgets are dramatically declining.

Help Returning Warriors and Have Fun at a St. Patrick’s Day Fundraiser
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Make your St. Patrick’s Day more than just an opportunity to party — remember our returning warriors and benefit the non-profit, Not Alone, at a hip, new restaurant.

The March 17 celebration at Todd and Ellen Gray’s Watershed Restaurant will raise funds for Not Alone, which is dedicated to supporting returning warriors, veterans and their families. One of the sponsors for the “You are not alone” party — which will feature Gray’s signature Eastern Seaboard-inspired cuisine, a specialty cocktail drink and an open bar — is the Georgetown Media Group, which produces the Georgetowner and the Downtowner newspapers.

Many of our returning warriors struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and suicidal thoughts. Not Alone is a national organization that offers a variety of programs, services and resources for warriors, veterans and their loved ones. It offers both on-line and off-line programs that can help restore hope for those who struggle. Not Alone recently launched a free, confidential and anonymous community service in and around Washington, D.C.

Watershed Restaurant, site of the St. Patrick’s Day party, is located in the NoMa neighborhood near Capitol Hill at 1225 First Street, N.E. The Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington named Todd Gray “Chef of the Year” in 2011. He shares a passion for inventive interpretations of American cuisine with his wife Ellen. For readers of the Georgetowner and the Downtowner, tickets which cost $100 are discounted at $70 per person, or $125 for two tickets. For more information, visit www.NotAlone.com. [gallery ids="100529,119459" nav="thumbs"]

A Balanced Budget for D.C. Now, But What About Fiscal 2013?
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This week, the D.C. Council met at its annual retreat to review legislative priorities, receive briefings from various officials and make plans for the coming year. We also recently received the audit of the fiscal 2011 budget – known as the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (“CAFR”), an event of particular interest to me as Chair of the Council’s Committee on Finance and Revenue. 

First, the good news from the fiscal 2011 CAFR: the District sustained its 15th annual balanced budget and unqualified “clean” audit. In short, our finances today are a far cry from the desperate straits we faced in the mid-1990s. The audit also confirmed we have no “material weaknesses” (we had two in fiscal 2008) and reduced our “significant deficiencies” from five to two. I am glad we have made meaningful progress on our internal control systems. Every year, the District spends millions of dollars on various audit functions – not only the CAFR, but also the operations of the D.C. Auditor and the Office of the Inspector General. A few years ago, we decided to pool all this information more systematically and bring in under-performing agencies to submit remediation plans to correct the deficiencies. This new approach has begun to pay off.

We finished fiscal 2011 with a surplus of nearly $240 million, which now resides in our savings accounts. While I am glad that our financial position remains so strong, this surplus has caused a lot of anger among the hundreds of thousands of District residents who were asked to pay a number of new taxes and fees in last year’s budget, which I voted against. Before we rush to spend this money on an ever-expanding government, I think we need to take a hard look at making more sustainable spending choices. We have already received briefings on the status of the current fiscal 2012 budget by Mayor Gray and are expecting the upcoming fiscal 2013 budget submission from the mayor in late March. While we have a windfall now, indications are that the mayor will seek to spend all of this money and more to address potential gaps in the budget if he does not begin to spend within his budget. 

Every year, seemingly, we face “spending pressures” in the middle of the fiscal year. As it is February, the mayor has the opportunity to review these problems and take corrective action so that we end fiscal 2012 with a balanced budget. A more difficult challenge will be the work of the mayor and the council to balance the fiscal 2013 budget. Unfortunately, the government has built in cost increases every year, so that we pass the biggest budget in our history each year in spite of the difficult economic climate. No other state goes through recessions without making tough spending choices as a result. Clearly, this spring we will have some very serious challenges facing us and many tough decisions to make. I hope that with your help we can convince the mayor and my colleagues to find efficiencies within existing agency budgets by making tough choices rather than simply increasing taxes every year.

Before the budget is released, we first go through the performance oversight process. Over the past two weeks, I have sent a number of questions to the agencies under my purview to collect data on agency structure and recent spending. After I review what has worked and what has not, I will be in a better position to make recommendations on adjustments to the agency budgets for next year. Thanks for your support during this process, and please feel free to contact my office as well as to my colleagues to share your views.

No Dodos, Bush and Obama Stopped a Depression
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Forty years ago, I won what became my family’s first “Dodo of the Year” award. Instead of calling me an unmitigated idiot, my father called me a dodo, after the now-extinct bird famous for being too stupid not to run away from, but toward, its captors who then killed it.

Before each new year, while doing resolutions, my dad sought nominations for new “Dodos,” and an annual ritual was born.

My act of dodo-ism was parking my car on the hill on Main Street and failing to engage the parking brake. As I got out of the car, it began to roll backwards across four lanes of traffic. After making a useless effort to stop it, all I could do was watch helplessly. Fortunately, no cars were coming in either direction, and brick planters across the street stopped my car from crashing through two stores.

Had I not jumped out of the path of my runaway car, it would have crushed me. My dad may have had to bury me, but he still rightly would have called me a dodo. Instead, we had an honest conversation about the virtues of emergency brakes on hills.

If only we could do the same in this presidential election with all the screeching about jobs losses and bailouts.
In February 2008, 137.9 million Americans had jobs, a national high. In January 2009, 133.5 million people had jobs, a loss of 4.4 million jobs during the last year of President George W. Bush’s presidency.

In January 2010, at the end of President Barack Obama’s first year in office when jobs started to climb back up, another 4.3 million had lost jobs, leaving 129.2 million Americans employed. Both 2008 and 2009 saw similar losses, though technically, a few more were lost during Bush’s last year.

November 2008 and January 2009, both under Bush’s watch, were the two worst months of this recession, when more than 800,000 jobs were lost. February and March 2009, President Obama’s first two months in office, were the next two worst months.

Like my inability to stop my car rolling down the street, no one – a president, a Treasury secretary, a Fed chairman – could have stopped the job-loss express either immediately or within two months.

At the beginning of the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover’s laissez-faire, leave-it-to-the-markets policy believed government should get out of the way and allow markets to fix the problem. At the same time, the Fed did nothing to stimulate the economy. The result? Unemployment jumped from 4.2 percent in 1928 to 8.7 percent in 1930 – very similar to President Bush’s last year in office – and with no government intervention, unemployment continued to rise until it hit 25 percent in 1933.

When Franklin Roosevelt became president in March 1933, he immediately closed the banks, instituted banking reforms and initiated a broad range of government programs. The bleeding stopped within a year – similar to President Obama’s first year. Though growth remained anemic under Roosevelt, unemployment trickled down to 17 percent in 1939 when the industrial production required by World War II pulled the country out of the Great Depression.

This time, Presidents Bush and Obama sought and received $700 and $800 billion, respectively, and the Fed kept money flowing. It stopped a depression.

Memories get fuzzy – or selective – in the heat of a presidential election. The various presidential candidates are arguing that the bailouts were failures, that Obama is the cause of the job losses, and that the Fed should be eliminated. In effect, they are arguing for Hoover’s laissez-faire policies.

When President Bush looked down the black hole of “laissez-faire,” he famously said, “This sucker could go down,” asked for $700 billion and cut the checks. Had President Bush done nothing, the two largest U.S. banks and two of the three U.S. auto companies – Citibank, Bank of America, GM and Chrysler – would have disappeared. Heaven knows what catastrophe would have followed. Yet, the presidential candidates, in effect, are suggesting that would have been better.

Like Roosevelt, Presidents Bush and Obama, and the Fed, took dramatic action. They saved a now-thriving auto industry. Our banks are recovering. More than 3 million new jobs have been created in the last two years. Government can do good.

When my car was going to crush me, I jumped out of the way. Presidents Bush and Obama had the courage to step in front of failing banks, collapsing car companies, and a landslide of job losses and try to stop them. Had they followed my example, they, too, could have won “Dodo of the Year.”

St. Patrick’s Day Parade in DC (photos)
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Constitution Ave. was a sea of green as Washington DC kicked off its annual St. Patrick’s Day Celebrations with a parade on Sunday March 11. Traditionally, the District hosts the parade on the Sunday preceding the actual St. Patrick’s Day which won’t arrive til March 17. The parade featured floats, Irish dancers, bands and military units. The grand marshall of this year’s parade was popular restaurateur Cathal Armstrong (Restaurant Eve, Virtue Feed and Grain). View our photos of the event by clicking on the photo icons below. [gallery ids="119788,119690,119682,119675,119665,119657,119649,119641,119632,119698,119706,119778,119769,119760,119752,119744,119733,119724,119714,119621,119611,119601,119494,119485,119797,119477,119803,119468,119809,119817,119504,119513,119591,119581,119572,119562,119553,119543,119533,119524,100530" nav="thumbs"]

U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council Lunch With Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush
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Honorees, distinguished guests, journalists and friends crowded inside the Benjamin Franklin room at the State Department on March 21 to congratulate the members of the U.S.-Afghan Women’s Council on the 10th anniversary of supporting the women of Afghanistan.

Founded in 2002 by President George W. Bush and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, the council connects both U.S. and Afghan governments with the private sector, academia and non-governmental organizations to identify needs and to develop and implement initiatives to support Afghan women and girls. The council is based at Georgetown University.

“There is an Afghan proverb: A good year is determined by its spring. I think that is a worthy proverb to keep in mind, and indeed it is a call to action for us to be sure that the spring sets the pace for the kind of good year we hope to see in Afghanistan,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said. “Let there be no doubt that even as the U.S. role in Afghanistan changes during the next few years of transition, we will continue to stand with and work closely with Afghan women.”

“Some may wonder if these efforts and partnerships truly make a difference,” said Zala Ahmad, a student from rural Afghanistan who now studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts thanks to the council. “I can tell you firsthand that they do.”

While toasting the council with red glasses of hibiscus tea, dining on endive salads and Atlantic cod, and treating tastebuds to the sweet dessert served, a passion fruit clafouti, guests listened to Clinton, former First Lady Laura Bush, John DeGioia, president of Georgetown University, Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues Melanne Verveer and several other speakers from Afghanistan involved with the council share stories and the astronomical differences in percentages of Afghan females now attending schools and even holding prominent positions.

“Girls make up about 40 percent of the nearly 8 million children going to school in Afghanistan today,” Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan Zalmai Rassoul said. “In 2000, there were no girls at that time.” He also noted that 30 percent of school teachers and 15 percent of university teachers are women. Today, 24 percent of doctors and medical workers across Afghanistan are women.

Even with these positive numbers, he said Afghan women continue to be innocent victims, but the council has helped give them their opportunity back.

“God created a couple,” said Vartan Gregorian, president of Carnegie Corporation of New York. “He did not create men first, women second. He created a couple at the same time. So, there is no way half of the couple can be inferior to the other half of the couple.”

After several rounds of applause credited to the amount of effort and success that has gone in to the council, both Clinton and Bush were presented awards for their dedication by Georgetown University. Clinton was given the Caring for Children Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for Child and Human Development by DeGioia, who teased that Clinton has been fighting for the rights of women and children since she wrote her scholarly article in 1973 for the Harvard Educational Review. Bush received the Champion for Afghan Women Award from Verveer, who said Bush “led by example, mobilizing resources to ensure that Afghan women and girls gain skills, opportunities, and particularly the education that they were denied under the years of Taliban repression.”

When the luncheon was finished, Verveer said the program was over but the journey to continue fighting for the rights of Afghan women is not. “We hope that we will all continue to work together,” she said.

Ins & Outs 4.4.12
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M&T Bank, which has a branch on Thomas Jefferson Street, will be adding another Georgetown location at 1420 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W., where the clothing store, Commander Salamander, once sold its funky wares.

Never mind: Crave, a sandwich and salad eatery on Potomac Street that opened a couple of weeks ago, was abruptly closed. A dispute between business partners led to the decision. Manager and co-owner Garrett Bauman, also of Annie Creamcheese vintage clothing, told the Georgetowner he hoped to find another location nearby.

The men’s clothier, Gant, is coming to Georgetown in August and moving into 3239 M Street. It could not be more different than its previous tenant, the free-wheeling, live-music bar, the Saloun. The 2,000-square-foot space will sell Gant, Gant Rugger and Gant by Michael Bastian, according to Women’s Wear Daily. Georgetown just got more preppy, as if it needed more help, Gentlemen’s Quarterly opined: “The whole collection is still grounded in the archival, American sportswear Bastin and co. have perfected in the past few seasons but amped up in the flair department, complete with special details like the floral lining on an insanely perfect M-65 jacket or the bold flecks of bright yellow and orange on a Donegal tweed blazer.” As if . . .

Ligne Roset and Natuzzi are setting up shop in Glover Park. The furniture retailers have jointly leased the storefront at 2209 Wisconsin Avenue, said property manager Cynthia Cumbo, who added, “The space should be ready in March.” The space was vacant after Mobili furniture departed more than three years ago.

The clothing store, Riccardi & Sports, have left the Shops at Georgetown Park along with so many others. It can now be found at the main Riccardi at 3213 M Street — 202-625-6687.

Mega and green, too: Swedish fashion giant Hennes and Mauritz — which has its H&M store on M Street at Georgetown Park — plans a separate luxury line for 2013. “We have many different projects in progress and already next year we will be launching a completely new store chain. Like COS, which today is very successful with good profitability, the new chain of stores will be independent and complement the other offerings from the group,” CEO Karl-Johan Persson confirmed.

On April 12, H&M will launch its Exclusive Glamour Conscious Collection, promoted by Amanda Seyfried and Michelle Williams and is made using sustainable materials including organic cotton, hemp and recycled polyester.

Hair stylist Luigi Parasmo is set to open his first namesake salon with fellow stylist Javier Calvo in Georgetown. Luigi Parasmo Salon will be equipped with a staff of 14 hair, make-up and nail stylists and opens its doors to the public on Tuesday, April 10. It will be located on 1510 Wisconsin Avenue.

The Chipotle-spinoff restaurant Shophouse Southeast Asian Kitchen plans to open in the old location of Furin’s Bakery at 2805 M Street. The first Shophouse restaurant in Washington opened in Dupont Circle in September last year. Shophouse aims to serve fast Asian food with high quality. The Georgetown Shophouse will open “later this year,” according to the company.

Tony and Joe’s Seafood Place at Washington Harbour and the Potomac will finally reopen its inside restaurant for business in early May with some changes in both interior and on the menu. Since the April 2011 flood only the outside patio and bar have been open, and a limited menu has served from an outdoor kitchen.

An Alternative Way To Stay Cool This Season
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D.C. is fraught with pools on top of apartment buildings, D.C.-run community pools and the occasional roof deck restaurant, but no where is there a members-only pool social club.

Until now.

The Penthouse Pool Club on U St. opened last weekend with a large turnout despite less-than-stellar weather, drawing their 1,000 members to a 60-foot pool, private sun deck, resort cabanas, communal fire pits and a membership lounge offering full food and beverage service.    
 
The planning for the pool club started almost three years ago with an idea by David von Storch, president of Urban Adventures Companies, the parent company of VIDA Fitness, which has five locations throughout the city. A resident of D.C. for 25 years, he said there was a niche that hadn’t previously been filled, largely in part because ten years ago, there wasn’t the same demand there is now.

“It’s now a true urban center; it’s grown up a lot,” he said in a phone interview. He pointed to the neighborhood of Logan Circle, where he resides. “I can walk to the grocery store, to the gym, the hardware store and to 15 restaurants; that wasn’t possible ten years ago in virtually any neighborhood. People are looking to live in the city, it’s not just convenient for work, it actually fits with how they see themselves living.”

The 12,000 square foot rooftop was previously just that, a rooftop with an unattractive air conditioning system. But in the three years of planning, they modified the space for the pool, and moved the A.C. system underneath it. With plans to stay open until late October, the pool is heated by the rejection energy put out by the FIDA fitness gym. The A.C. system already takes this heat out to put in cool air, so they’re simply re-routing where it goes, which in the end, von Storch says, will be a huge cost saver and an environmentally friendly decision.

With a lounge and pool capacity of 299 and 25 staffers, members and guests will be able to see panoramic capital views. The membership roster to the Penthouse Pool Club is now filled, however Urban Adventures Companies has established a waiting list for those wishing to become future members. Membership to the pool club also includes full access to all five D.C.-area VIDA Fitness locations.

Designed by Stoneking von Storch Architects of other clubs like the Soho House in New York City and Miami, he noted that the Poolhouse Club is unique in that it’ll not only have the fitness component downstairs, but Aura Spa on the first floor, due to open later this summer.

With an exclusive and an above-18 membership, the club is sure to draw crowds as the weather gets warmer.

“The fact that you have to be 18, be a member of VIDA, creates an environment where it will be more relaxing, whereas other pools there are lots of kids jumping around. This is an alternative to that on the weekends, and not have to go out of town.” [gallery ids="100715,120504,120497" nav="thumbs"]

Live Green and Repax Mounting the Largest Clothing Drive in D.C. History
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Live Green and Repax are teaming up this March to organize, Fwd: Your Fashion, the largest community clothing drive in D.C. history. The drive, which benefits Goodwill, began March 19 at various locations around the city and ends April 21 at Green Rush, Live Green’s Earth Day, eco-themed scavenger hunt, with clues that lead participants to local green businesses and offers a $1,000 prize.

“This drive is for the many people in D.C. who are going through a tough time,” explained Steve Ma, president of Live Green. Since its launch in 2008, Live Green has worked as a tool for residents to help them find affordable, quality services that are also eco-friendly, partnering with more than 100 green businesses throughout D.C. The organization was awarded the Environmental Excellence Award in 2009 by Mayor Adrien Fenty. “We are thrilled to be working with partners who, like us, are focused on job creation, a thriving green economy, and a more sustainable future.”

The drive organizer’s plan to collect more than 5,000 pounds of clothes is far more than Goodwill of Greater Washington has ever received from a single community clothing drive. Goodwill uses the money from the sales of the clothes to fund job training and employment services for people with disadvantages and disabilities. According to Goodwill’s impact calculator, this drive will fund approximately 400 hours of employment programs for Washington-area residents.

“Many businesses recognize how important it is to be actively engaged in their community,” said Marcus Stephens, vice president of Repax, a local green business that is providing its reusable moving crates to collect clothes. “We have reached out to apartment buildings, office spaces, and yoga studios to serve as drop-off locations and the response has been tremendous.”

In addition to helping Goodwill fund its employment training programs, the clothing drive will also divert thousands of pounds of waste from ending up in landfills.

“People don’t always think of Goodwill as a green enterprise but it absolutely is,” said Ma, a long time Goodwill customer. “They give clothes a new life at an incredibly good price, and their selection is fantastic.”

“We are thrilled to see the community come together in support of our work,” said Brendan Hurley, vice president and chief marketing officer of Goodwill of Greater Washington. “For so many people, our specialized job training is invaluable, but we can’t do any of it without the support of the community.”

Residents interested in donating clothes for the drive can find a map of drop-off locations HERE

Drop off locations for the drive are also listed here:

• Art of Living Center: 2401 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20009

• Capitol Hill Bikes: 719 8th St. SE, Washington, D.C. 20003

• Live Green Office: 2452 18th St., NW, Washington, D.C. 20009

• Amicus Green Building Center: 4080 Howard Ave, Kensington, MD. 20895

• That Yellow Gym: 3220 17th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20010 (in the Argyle Building)

• Chancellor’s Row Townhomes by EYA: Regent Place NE, Washington, D.C. 20017

• Capitol Quarter Townhomes by EYA: 1020 4th St. SE, Washington, D.C. 20003

• Trohv: 232 Carroll St NW, Washington, DC 20012

Afghanistan: Hanging in the Balance
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For more than a decade, the Afghan War has been a costly and difficult campaign for the United States and its NATO allies.  As the United States begins to downsize its force in Afghanistan and turn combat operations over to the Afghan police and army, a persistent question is whether the U.S. strategy will be effective in preventing Afghanistan from slipping back to Taliban control over the long term.  U.S. strategy in Afghanistan has evolved over the past 11 years, and conditions have changed. As the U.S. drawdown picks up pace, success of the entire operation will be dependent on a series of complex variables over which the U.S. and NATO will have little control.  Without continued heavy, long-term support from the United States, it is likely that the current government of Afghanistan will not be sustainable in its current form.

In his remarks at West Point outlining his administration’s strategy, President Barack Obama said, “Our overarching goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.”  Effectively establishing Afghanistan and Pakistan as the theater of war in which to defeat Al Qaida and the Taliban, Obama set a timetable of 18 months to accomplish a series of ambitious and broadly defined objectives:  “We must deny al Qaida a safe haven.  We must reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government.  And we must strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government so that they can take lead responsibility . . .”

Assessing the Obama Strategy.  Now, more than two years later, it is clear that even as the drawdown of forces in Afghanistan is set to begin, and while some headway has been made in some areas, those overarching objectives articulated by Obama have not been met.  Director of National Intelligence James Clapper reported the intelligence community’s assessment that “[the Taliban] remains resilient and capable of challenging U.S. and international goals; and Taliban senior leaders continue to enjoy safe haven in Pakistan, which enables them to provide strategic direction to the insurgency and not fear for their safety.”

A leaked U.S. military report on the “State of the Taliban 2012,” confirms that Pakistan’s ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence agency) is encouraging the Taliban to continue fighting.  It goes on to confirm that, “Though the Taliban suffered severely in 2011, its strength, motivation, funding and tactical proficiency remain intact.” 

Negotiating the Retrograde.  Ostensibly in recognition of these shortfalls, the president has announced a “new” way forward in Afghanistan that looks remarkably similar to the counter-terror strategy originally proposed by Vice President Joe Biden. It advocated an escalation of the drone war in Pakistan and direct negotiations with the Taliban.  Broadly stated, the ultimate goal of the strategy — which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has described as “fight, talk and build” — is to prevent civil war and the reestablishment of terrorist bases in the region.  A key element that has emerged for that strategy is to give the Pakistanis a prominent seat at the table in exchange for their leverage on the Taliban to negotiate in kind.  

The Obama Administration has announced the start of direct trilateral talks between the U.S., the Karzai government and the Taliban’s political front organization, headed by Mullah Mohammed Omar and the Haqqani network.  Under U.S. encouragement, the Taliban has set up an office in Doha, Qatar, explicitly for the purpose of dealing with Washington. 

Yet, with the NATO drawdown in Afghanistan imminent, the Taliban has little incentive to negotiate, believing that it can just wait NATO out.   Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta recently announced that combat operations would be turned over to the Afghan Army in 2013.  By the end of 2014, all American combat forces are scheduled to be out of the country, with the exception of a small number of Special Operations Forces and trainers.  

The Lessons of History and the Way Ahead.  As the U.S. and NATO retrograde gains momentum, Washington will unquestionably apply billions in military foreign sales, aid, inter-agency coordination, as well as air and military contract support to Afghan security forces to support the current Afghan government.  While the peace negotiations with the Taliban are intended to inject some measure of stability as western troops leave Afghanistan, they are also an implicit recognition that that the Taliban will regain some measure of political power in the country. 

Following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989, Moscow also did its best to prop up the Communist government. However, when the aid vanished in 1992 following the Soviet Union’s downfall, Kabul became engulfed in a violent war that placed the reins of power for Afghanistan firmly in the hands of the Taliban.  More than two decades later, Washington is hoping to avoid the same fate for Afghanistan.

Steve Delonga is the president of Prometheus Security International, LLC.