# Posted 11:26 PM by Ariel David Adesnik  

PLAGIARISM PART DEUX: Here's the next section of my comments (see below):

2) Objectives:
Given the absence of a coherent strategic vision, the best approach to assessing American objectives may be to look at the top issues on the agenda and examine how competing factions within the cabinet want to address them.

a) Iraq

i) Ever since his February speech on postwar Iraq, the President has maintained a firm rhetorical commitment to nation-building and democracy promotion in the Middle East. However, there has been little evidence that any part of the administration made much of an effort – either before, during, or after the invasion – to seriously explore how best to rebuild and democratize Iraq.

(1) Unsurprisingly, the firmest commitment to reconstruction has come from those with an ideological commitment such as Paul Wolfowitz.

(2) Rumsfeld and Cheney seem to have minimal interest in the topic, preferring to delegate authority to others with greater interest.

(3) Powell seems disinterested as well, given that Iraq was never his cause.

(4) Rice appears more concerned with defending her reputation from allegations of her responsibility for allowing misleading statements about Saddam’s nuclear program into the State of the Union address.

(5) All in all, there is fairly widespread concern among Iraq watchers that the President’s interest is too superficial to maintain much of a commitment to rebuilding Iraq should that task become much more daunting than it now is. On the other hand, if the President’s interest is more than passing, he may demonstrate the same stubbornness with regard to rebuilding Iraq as he did to invading it.

b) Afghanistan

i) Neither the President nor any of his advisers has shown much interest in this subject, even ideologues such as Paul Wolfowitz. As best as this analyst can tell, the strong international and domestic consensus behind the war on Afghanistan has given the administration a free pass on its responsibility to rebuild.

ii) The unknown in the Afghanistan equation concerns possible negative outcomes in the 2003 election, such as the installation of a warlord president or even rigged elections that destroy the credibility of the US backed government. In such an instance, the US response is very hard to predict, although one can expect the usual factions to advocate their preferred solutions.

c) North Korea

i) While you didn’t mention North Korea in your brief discussion of the three scenarios, I imagine it is very high on your list of concerns. Yet given the almost total lack of transparency of the North Korean regime, prediction is almost impossible.

ii) One of the few simplifying factors in the North Korean equation is that there is no real hawkish option for the US. It is simply not possible to sustain a get-tough approach when tens of thousands of South Korean and Japanese lives can be lost in a matter of moments. Moreover, there would be no easy win for the US armed forces regardless of US sensitivity to allied civilian casualties
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iii) Of course, Pyongyang may make war inevitable. Similarly, a combination of North Korea recklessness and US confusion may result in war.

iv) Ideally, the North Korean situation will become a mini-Cold War, in which both sides eye other nervously, occasionally negotiate, and ultimately avoid serious provocation. Yet as the Cuban Missile Crisis showed, one can never truly be secure when there are fingers on the button.

d) Homeland Security

i) Sadly, Homeland security has had about as little prominence on the US agenda as the rebuilding of Afghanistan.

ii) The best way to approach this may be to consider the Administration’s neglect as a sort of strategic risk:

(1) If there are no further attacks on American soil, the Administration will continue to get a free pass on this issue.

(2) On the other hand, an Al Qaeda attack that takes hundreds or even just dozens of American lives may cause serious damage to the President’s re-election prospects. The electorate may even come to see the Iraq war a dangerous diversion that – as critics have long alleged – prevented the US from fighting the real war against terror.

3) Capabilities

a) Given the increasing length of these comments, I am going to try and be somewhat brief from now on!

b) As a percentage of GDP, US military expenditure is still far below its Cold War peak. Thus, in the face of a serious threat, there is almost unlimited potential for expansion.

c) If the threat level does not increase dramatically, however, it will be hard to secure funding for a major expansion of the armed forces, especially if the Administration persists with its deficit-inducing tax cut plans.

d) Thinking in terms of possible scenarios, the real nightmare concerns what might happen if the US had to fight North Korea or even just pursue a major buildup on the peninsula, as it did in Saudi Arabia before the invasion of Iraq.

i) In such a situation, one has to wonder how it would be possible to maintain significant forces in Iraq, Afghanistan or anywhere else.

To Be Continued... (0) opinions -- Add your opinion