The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat

by Vali Nasr

  The Taliban had been ready for talks as early as April 2009. At that time, Afghanistan scholar Barnett Rubin, shortly before he joined Holbrooke’s team as his senior Afghan affairs adviser, traveled to Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. In Kabul he met with the former Taliban commander Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, who told Rubin the Taliban were ready to break with al-Qaeda and talk to America. He laid out in detail a strategy for talks: where to start, what to discuss, and the shape of the settlement that the United States and the Taliban could agree on. Zaeef said the Taliban needed concessions on prisoners America held in Guantánamo and wanted the removal of some Taliban names from so-called black lists developed by the U.S. government and the United Nations sanctioning terrorists. Rubin went to Riyadh from Kabul, and there he met with Prince Muqrin, the Saudi intelligence minister, whose account of conversations with Taliban go-betweens lined up with what Zaeef had told Rubin.

  Back in Washington—on the day he was sworn into government service—Rubin wrote a memo regarding this trip for Holbrooke. That afternoon the two sat next to each other on the US Air shuttle back to New York. Holbrooke read the memo, then turned to Rubin and said: “If this thing works, it may be the only way we will get out.” That was the beginning of a two-year campaign to sell the idea of talking to the Taliban to Washington: first to Secretary Clinton, then to the White House and President Obama.

  Reconciliation meant a peace deal between Karzai and the Taliban that would end the insurgency and allow American troops to go home. The military had opposed the idea from the outset. The Pentagon thought that talking to the Taliban—and even talking about talking to the Taliban—was a form of capitulation to terrorism. The CIA, too, was not enthusiastic, believing that the Taliban were not ready to talk. Reconciliation, for them, was a Pakistani ploy to slow down the American offensive in Afghanistan and reduce American pressure on Pakistan.

  Those attitudes scared the White House, ever afraid that the young Democratic president would be seen as “soft.” The White House did not want to try anything new, nothing as audacious as diplomacy. It was an art lost on America’s top decision makers in the White House. They had no experience with it and were daunted by the idea of it.

  While running for president Obama promised a new chapter in American foreign policy, especially when it came to managing thorny issues in the Muslim world. America would move away from Bush’s militarized foreign policy and take engagement and diplomacy seriously. Talking and extending a hand would be his priority. But when it came down to brass tacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Hillary Clinton was the lone voice making the case for diplomacy. The White House had decided early on to walk in lockstep with the military. Clinton elevated the State Department’s profile, but without the White House’s backing its influence was no match for that of the Pentagon and CIA.

  During the 2009 strategic review Clinton held her cards close to her chest. In the many meetings I attended with her on various aspects of the war she asked a lot of questions, and on one occasion said she did not believe in cut and run. So it was not a surprise that in the end she supported sending more troops to Afghanistan. However, she was not on board with the deadline Obama imposed on the surge, nor was she for hasty troop withdrawals in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clinton thought those decisions looked a lot like cut and run and would damage America’s standing in the world. Add this to where she came out on a host of other national security issues, including pushing Obama to go ahead with the Abbottabad operation to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and breaking with the Pentagon to advocate using American air power in Libya, and it is safe to say she was, and remains, tough on national security issues.

  But Clinton does not see American foreign policy as a zero-sum choice between hard power and diplomacy. She shared Holbrooke’s belief that the purpose of hard power is to facilitate diplomatic breakthroughs. America is not going to fight its way out of one crisis after another; it has to deftly use all elements of its national power, military might as well as diplomatic, to find its way out of vexing conflicts like Afghanistan.

  During many meetings on Afghanistan and Pakistan (and separately on the Middle East) I attended with her, she would ask us to make the case for diplomacy and then quiz us on our assumptions and plan of action before evaluating how it might work. At the end of this drill she would ask us to put it all in writing for the benefit of the White House.

  Holbrooke and Clinton had a tight partnership. They were friends. Clinton trusted Holbrooke’s judgment and valued his counsel, counsel that Holbrooke happily provided on a variety of issues, and not just on Afghanistan and Pakistan. They conferred often, and Clinton protected Holbrooke from an obdurate White House. The White House kept a dossier on Holbrooke’s misdeeds, and Clinton kept a folder on churlish attempts by the White House’s AfPak office to undermine Holbrooke, which she gave to the national security adviser, Tom Donilon. The White House tried to blame Holbrooke for leaks to the press. Clinton called out the White House on its own leaks. She sharply rebuked the White House after an article in The New Yorker mentioned a highly secret meeting with the Taliban that it was told about by a senior White House official.

  Holbrooke went to battle first, getting battered and bruised. Then Clinton would take up the charge, lobbying with her counterparts in the Pentagon and CIA. And whenever possible she went to the president directly, around the so-called Berlin Wall of staffers who shielded Obama from any option or idea they did not want him to consider.

  Clinton had regular weekly private meetings with the president (sometimes the two of them met alone, and at other times they were joined by a few of the president’s key staff). She had asked for the “one-on-ones” as a condition for accepting the job of secretary of state. This way she made sure that once she was on board, the White House would not conveniently marginalize her and the State Department. Clinton used this time to talk to Obama about ideas that his staffers would keep out.

  But even then she had a tough time getting the administration to bite when it came to diplomacy. Obama was sympathetic in principle but not keen on showing daylight between the White House and the military. Talking to enemies was a good campaign sound bite, but once in power Obama was too skittish to try it.

  On one occasion in the summer of 2010, after the White House had systematically blocked every attempt to include reconciliation talks with the Taliban and serious regional diplomacy (which had to include Iran) on the agenda for national security meetings with the president, Clinton took a paper SRAP had prepared on the subject to Obama. She gave him the paper, explained what it laid out, and said, “Mr. President, I would like to get your approval on this.” Obama nodded his approval but that was all. So his White House staff, caught off guard by Clinton, found ample room to kill the paper in Washington’s favorite way: condemning it to slow death in endless committee meetings. A few weeks after Clinton gave Obama the paper I had to go to an interagency meeting organized by the White House that to my surprise was going to revise the paper the president had given the nod to. I remember telling Clinton about the meeting. She shook her head and exclaimed, “Unbelievable!”

  Clinton got along well with Obama, but that did not mean that the State Department had an easy time dealing with the White House. On Afghanistan and Pakistan at least, the State Department had to fight tooth and nail just to have a hearing there. Had it not been for Clinton’s tenacity and the respect she commanded, the State Department would have had no influence on policy making whatsoever. The White House had taken over most policy areas: Iran and the Arab-Israeli issue were for all practical purposes managed from the White House. AfPak was a rare exception, and that was owed to Holbrooke’s quick thinking in getting SRAP going in February 2009 before the White House was able to organize itself.

  The White House resented losing AfPak to the State Department. It fought hard to close down SRAP and take AfPak policy back. That was one big reason why the White House was on a warpath with Holbrooke—he was in their way and kept the State Departmen
t in the mix on an important foreign policy area. Holbrooke would not back down. He would not cede ground to the White House, not when he thought those who wanted to wrest control of Afghanistan were out of their depth and not up to the job.

  When Holbrooke died in December 2010, Clinton kept SRAP alive, but the White House managed to take over AfPak policy, in part by letting the Pentagon run the policy on Afghanistan and the CIA on Pakistan (which escalated tensions with Pakistan). Clinton wanted John Podesta, an influential Democratic Party stalwart who had served as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, to succeed Holbrooke. But Podesta was too influential (including with the president) and too high profile, and that would have made it difficult for the White House to manage him and snatch AfPak policy back from the State Department. The White House vetoed the choice. Turf battles are a staple of every administration, but the Obama White House has been particularly ravenous.

  Add to this the campaign hangover. Obama’s inner circle, veterans of his election campaign, were suspicious of Clinton. And even after Clinton proved she was a team player they remained concerned with her popularity and approval ratings, and feared that she could overshadow the president.

  Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs until spring 2012, told me, “She [Clinton] did a great job pushing her agenda, but it is incredible how little support she got from the White House. They want to control everything.” Victories for the State Department were few and hard fought. It was little consolation that its recommendations on reconciliation with the Taliban or regional diplomacy to end the Afghan war eventually became official policy after the White House exhausted the alternatives.

  The White House campaign against the State Department, and especially Holbrooke, was at times a theater of the absurd. Holbrooke was not included in Obama’s video conferences with Karzai and was cut out of the presidential retinue when Obama went to Afghanistan. According to Rajiv Chandrasekaran, on one occasion the White House’s AfPak team came up with the idea of excluding Holbrooke from the president’s Oval Office meeting with Karzai and then having Obama tell Karzai, “Everyone in this room represents me and has my trust” (i.e., not Holbrooke). Clinton foiled that ploy and would go on to foil others.4 Nonetheless, the message to Karzai was: ignore my special representative.5

  At times it looked as if the White House was baiting Karzai to complain about Holbrooke so they could get him fired. After Holbrooke died, the White House quickly changed its attitude. It signaled to Karzai that it would no longer welcome criticism of the president’s special representative and that it expected Kabul to work with SRAP. Obama told Karzai in a video conference that Ambassador Marc Grossman (Holbrooke’s replacement) enjoyed his trust and spoke for him. That helped Grossman in his job, but it did little to change the perception that American policy was scattered and confused.

  The White House worried that talking to the Taliban would give Holbrooke a greater role. For months the White House plotted to either block reconciliation with the Taliban or find an alternative to Holbrooke for managing the talks. General Lute, who ran AfPak at the White House, floated the idea of the distinguished UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi leading the talks. Clinton objected to outsourcing American diplomacy to the UN. Pakistan, too, was cool to the idea. The “stop Holbrooke” campaign was not only a distraction, it was influencing policy.

  The president’s national security adviser, General Jim Jones, would travel to Pakistan for high-level meetings without Holbrooke and would not even inform the State Department of his travel plans until he was virtually in the air. Again the message was “ignore Holbrooke.” This sort of folly undermined American policy. It was no surprise that our AfPak policy took one step forward and two steps back.

  During one trip General Jones went completely off script and promised General Kayani, Pakistan’s top military man, a civilian nuclear deal in exchange for Pakistan’s cooperation. Panic struck the White House. It took a good deal of diplomatic tap dancing to take that offer off the table. In the end one of Kayani’s advisers told me that the general did not take Jones seriously, anyway; he knew it was a slipup. The National Security Council wanted to do the State Department’s job, but was not up to the task.

  Nor were Afghans and Pakistanis alone in being confused and occasionally amused by the White House’s maneuvers. They also baffled people in Washington. The White House encouraged U.S. ambassadors in Kabul and Islamabad to go around the State Department and work with the White House directly, undermining their own agency. Those ambassadors quickly learned how easy it was to manipulate the White House’s animus for Holbrooke to their own advantage. In particular, Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, became a handful for the State Department. In November 2010 Obama and Clinton went to Lisbon for a NATO summit and planned to meet with Karzai there. Eikenberry asked to go as well. Clinton turned down his request and instructed him to stay in Kabul, but, backed by the White House, he ignored the secretary of state and showed up in Lisbon.

  Even at the State Department reconciliation was not without its critics, some on Holbrooke’s team. Rina Amiri, Holbrooke’s other senior Afghanistan adviser, thought the whole idea of negotiating with the Taliban was a betrayal of the hopes and aspirations of the Afghan people—it would condemn them to relive their horrible Taliban past. She reminded Holbrooke at every turn that the Taliban could not be trusted. They had not abandoned their narrow view of Islam and draconian attitude toward women, they were relentless in visiting violence on the population, and only wanted America out of the way to take Afghanistan back where they left it in 2001. She insisted that most Afghans were wary of reconciliation—we should at least allay their fears by talking to them about the idea before moving ahead. Otherwise, women, civil society groups, and non-Pashtun minorities (Hazaras, Tajiks, and Uzbeks) who had fought against the Taliban in the Northern Alliance would never back a deal with the Taliban, and in a worst case, that could mean civil war. It was foolish to think Karzai could sell reconciliation to Afghans—he was not even consulting them on the idea. She thought America should convince him to make the case.

  Others echoed Amiri’s concerns and added that Pakistan had already tried reconciliation with its Pakistani Taliban and the outcome was hardly reassuring. The Taliban there had used truces to establish brutal theocracies and then resume fighting when they were ready. The Taliban were crafty interlocutors with an agenda. They too knew how to realize their goals by fighting and talking.

  Holbrooke listened to all these views, probed them, and debated their merits. But he concluded that we were not going to win the war, and we were not going to fight forever. We were going to leave at some point. Without a deal, we would still leave, only later, and with Afghanistan even worse off for years of fighting. In a deal we could address some of the issues the critics raised; without a deal, their worst predictions would come true. He thought we had to push ahead with reconciliation, but we had to design the process and structure a final deal accounting for some, if not all, of the dangers Amiri and others had alerted him to.

  Pursuing reconciliation was difficult against the combined resistance of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the White House. It took a massive toll on Holbrooke. He knew it had to be done delicately and against strong resistance. Rubin provided the intellectual capital, arguing in ever greater detail that evidence showed the Taliban would come to the table; Karzai and many Afghans favored talking to them. A deal that would sever ties between the Taliban and al-Qaeda and bring peace in Afghanistan was within reach. Holbrooke asked Rubin to put his ideas into a series of memos that Holbrooke then fanned out across the government. After Holbrooke died Rubin put all those memos into one folder for the White House. Then, in early spring of 2012 in a meeting at the White House, Clinton pushed the White House one more time to consider the idea. National Security Adviser Tom Donilon countered that he had yet to see the State Department make a case for reconciliation. So Clinton asked Rubin for every memo he had written on reconciliation going back to his
first day on the job. The three-inch-thick folder spoke for itself. It took over a year of lobbying inside the administration to get the White House to take seriously the idea of reconciliation. It was close to eighteen months after Rubin wrote his first memo that Clinton could finally, and publicly, endorse diplomacy on behalf of the administration, in a speech at the Asia Society in February 2011.

  Reconciliation involved more than Karzai and the Taliban, however. Holbrooke thought that a political settlement between them was possible if Afghanistan’s key neighbors (Iran and Pakistan) and other important regional actors (India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia) could be induced to support it. Iran had backed the last political settlement in Afghanistan, the Bonn Conference of 2001. Pakistan had not been a part of that deal, but its acquiescence was bought afterward with generous American aid. This time Iran was not part of the equation, but Holbrooke hoped that Pakistan would go along much as Iran had done at Bonn if Washington actively engaged Islamabad. You needed at least one of the two—Iran or Pakistan—for a settlement to have a chance.

  It was important to tackle the problem from the outside in because all these countries had vital interests in Afghanistan, and unless they endorsed the process and its outcome, it would fail. In addition, America would eventually leave, and then it would be up to those neighbors and regional actors to keep the final deal in place. They would do that only if they had been included in the process all along and saw their interests protected in the final political settlement. America’s job was to get the region on board with a peace process and commit to protecting its outcome. That perspective never grew roots in Washington. Even when the White House warmed up to the concept of talking to the Taliban it saw diplomacy as hardly more than a cease-fire agreement with the Taliban.