[Peace-discuss] Obama and the Great Game

[C. G. Estabrook]

[A paleo-conservative analysis of the US war in Afghanistan.  It doesn't go far 
enough -- it ignores, e.g., the primary US war aim, the control of Mideast 
energy resources -- but it's better that anything I've seen in the liberal 
press, like the recent Newsweek account.  Has anybody got a counter example?]
	
	Obama and the Great Game
	02/13/2009

The day before Richard Holbrooke arrived in Kabul, eight suicide bombers and 
gunmen attacked the Justice and Education ministries, killing 26 and wounding 57.

Kabul was paralyzed, as the Taliban displayed an ability to wreak havoc within a 
hundred yards of the presidential palace.

The assault came as President Obama is both conducting a strategic review and 
deciding how many additional U.S. troops to send.

Earlier, there was talk of 30,000, bringing the U.S. total to 63,000. Now, there 
are reports Obama may commit no more than the three brigades promised in 2008, 
and only one brigade now.

Clearly, the United States is checking its hole card. Can we draw to a winning 
hand? Or is this hand an inevitable loser -- and we must cut our losses and cede 
the pot? No longer, anywhere, is there talk of "victory."

Nor is the diplomatic news good.

Last week, Kyrgyzstan gave us six months to vacate Manas, the air base used to 
resupply U.S. forces. A week before, guerrillas blew up a bridge in the Khyber, 
cutting the 1,000-mile supply line from Karachi to Kabul. Before that, 
guerrillas bombed U.S. truck parks in Pakistan.

While in Pakistan, Holbrooke was told by all to whom he spoke that, while U.S. 
Predator strikes may be killing Taliban and al-Qaida, the deaths among tribal 
peoples are turning Pakistan against us.

What would winning Afghanistan for democracy profit us, if the price were losing 
a nuclear-armed Pakistan to Islamism?

The expulsion from Manas, after Kyrgyzstan received a reported $2 billion in aid 
from Moscow, raises a question.

Is Russia restarting "The Great Game" she played against Victoria's Empire in 
Central Asia, which ended in 1907 with a British-Russian entente, dividing Iran 
into spheres of influence, with both sides agreeing to keep hands off Afghanistan?

As Russia has as great an interest in preventing an Islamist Kabul, and has 
assisted NATO's resupply of its forces, why would Moscow seek to expel us from a 
base vital to the war effort?

Does Russia simply seek to be recognized by the United States as the hegemon of 
Central Asia, the sole great power that decides who can and who cannot use 
former Soviet bases?

For if Manas is closed and the Karachi-Khyber-Kabul supply line is compromised 
or cut, Obama would seem to have but three options.

First would be to go back, hat-in-hand, to Islam Karimov, the Uzbek ruler 
charged with grave human rights violations, and ask him to reopen the 
Karshi-Khanabad (K2) air base, from which we were expelled in 2005. And what 
would be Karimov's asking price?

Second is the Russia option. If Moscow now holds the whip hand in the old Soviet 
republics, what is Moscow's price to let us remain in Manas or use other Soviet 
bases over which it wields veto power?

The answer is obvious. Neither Georgia nor Ukraine is to be brought into NATO. 
The independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, won in the August war with 
Georgia, is not to be challenged. The U.S anti-missile missiles planned for 
Poland are not to be deployed.

In turn, Russia will cancel any missile deployment in Kaliningrad, recommits to 
the terms of all conventional forces agreements in Europe and assist in the 
effort in Afghanistan. Russia rejoins the West, and the West stays off Russia's 
front porch.

Be not surprised if the Russians come trolling before an overextended American 
empire an end to the Great Game in Central Asia like the one the ministers of 
Nicholas II offered the ministers of Edward VII.

And the third option? It is Iran.

Before 9-11, Iran was more hostile to the anti-Shia Taliban than we, and it has 
no desire to see them return. Indeed, Tehran was a supporter of the U.S. wars in 
Afghanistan and Iraq, as both were ruled by mortal enemies.

The long way for U.S. and NATO war materiel to reach Kabul via Iran would be 
through a Turkey-Kurdistan-Iran supply line. The shorter would be from Iranian 
ports straight into Afghanistan.

Price of an entente? An end to the 30-year U.S.-Iranian cold war and a strategic 
bargain whereby Iran is allowed to develop peaceful nuclear power, under 
supervision, the United States lifts its embargo, and regime change is left to 
the Iranian people.

President Ahmadinejad, no fool, and facing an uncertain election this year, is 
already signaling interest in negotiations with Obama.

A complication. How would "Bibi" Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman regard a 
U.S.-Iran rapprochement -- to prevent a Taliban triumph in Kabul?

Yet, if the Taliban's enemies in Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Central Asia will 
not assist us, this war cannot end well. And if they will not help, Obama should 
cut America's losses, come home and let their neighbors deal with a triumphant 
Taliban.

--Patrick J. Buchanan

Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, 
Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost 
the World, "The Death of the West,", "The Great Betrayal," "A Republic, Not an 
Empire" and "Where the Right Went Wrong."