FPI Overnight Brief: December 2, 2009

Afghanistan

President Barack Obama announced Tuesday a surge of 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, along with plans to begin withdrawing the reinforcements in 18 months -- a potentially high-risk political and military strategy. Such a firm date for troop drawdowns was unexpected. Administration officials hope that will pressure Kabul to reform its notoriously corrupt government. At the same time, it allows the White House to begin bringing soldiers home ahead of the 2012 elections… By increasing U.S. forces to nearly 100,000 -- while limiting their deployment -- Mr. Obama appeared to be trying to thread a middle path between a plan proposed three months ago by his commander in Kabul, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, which sought an open-ended commitment, and proponents of a more limited engagement. – Wall Street Journal

FPI Executive Director Jamie Fly writes: There will be time to criticize various inflection points and question details, but the fact of the matter is that Barack Obama has accepted the mantle of wartime president and even overcome his aversion to American exceptionalism to employ some rhetoric that is worthy of George W. Bush.  General McChrystal will get most of the troops he requested and the time required to implement a counterinsurgency strategy that offers the best chance of success. Now the president must speak regularly and frankly to the American people about the difficult road ahead, something he has been unwilling to do thus far.  If he does that, fewer conservatives will question his commitment to a war that we all agree needs to be won. – National Review

FPI Director William Kristol writes:  There were unfortunate aspects of Obama’s speech: the foolish eagerness to tell us he’s as eager as can be to get us out of Afghanistan as soon as he can; the laying down of a pseudo-deadline for beginning a process of transitioning our forces out in July 2011, combined with the claim that the pace and duration of the withdrawal is to be conditions-based – a typical example of Obama trying to be too cute by half… Still: By mid-2010, Obama will have more than doubled the number of American troops in Afghanistan since he became president; he will have empowered his general, Stanley McChrystal, to fight the war pretty much as he thinks necessary to in order to win… – Washington Post

First it was Karl Rove praising President Obama's upcoming announcement to send more troops to Afghanistan. Now it's [FPI Director] Dan Senor.  Senor, a former senior adviser and spokesperson in Iraq during the Bush administration, said he applauds Obama on the decision he has made on the way forward in Afghanistan. His only question is why it took so long.  Senor, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said in a conference call sponsored by the Republican National Committee that the White House decision to delay a new Afghanistan strategy until after the country's presidential elections had been a "worrying sign," especially after Obama had declared the conflict a "war of necessity" this past August. He said, however, that he's now "pleasantly surprised" and "quite encouraged by the president's decision" to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. – MSNBC

Iran

In a sign of the increasing divide among Iranian leaders, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani did not attend a meeting aimed at creating political “unity” on Tuesday, news agencies reported. The meeting, which was held in Parliament, was delayed by 40 minutes because Mr. Ahmadinejad did not notify the legislature that he would not attend until the last minute. Mr. Rafsanjani’s office cited a busy schedule for his absence. Only 30 of the 199 invited guests participated, according to the Web site Parlemannews. Analysts view the failed meeting as illustrating a continuing rift within the country’s ruling establishment five months after the disputed June 12 presidential election. The opposition has accused Mr. Ahmadinejad of rigging the vote. – New York Times

Iran released five British sailors on Wednesday, ending a week of detention after their yacht accidentally entered Iranian waters. The release eased concern over a fresh diplomatic incident between Tehran and Britain, amid increasingly difficult negotiations between Iran and Western powers over its nuclear ambitions. – Wall Street Journal

Russia

Russia's envoy to NATO has expressed frustration at the military alliance's unwillingness to discuss Moscow's proposals for European security and said it could affect prospects for increased cooperation on Afghanistan. Ambassador Dmitry Rogozin today accused some NATO countries of blocking Moscow's calls for a Russian security plan to be discussed in the NATO-Russia Council (NRC), a body in which the two sides discuss cooperation. – Reuters

Iraq

President Barack Obama's administration on Tuesday sought to allay fears in Baghdad that a dramatic upping of the war effort in Afghanistan would come at the expense of its Iraq commitment. Just hours before Obama was to announce a surge of 30,000 more troops to the Afghanistan, the White House said Vice President Joe Biden had called Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in a bid to assuage Iraqi concerns. "The Vice President stressed that US actions to reinforce Afghanistan will not come at the expense of the US-Iraq bilateral relationship," a White House statement said. – AFP

Europe/Russia

European dignitaries converged on Lisbon on Tuesday to celebrate the 27-member bloc's new reform treaty.  The ceremony, which was rounded off by a fireworks display, took place at a specially built temporary venue next to the River Tagus in the Portuguese capital, near where the treaty was signed two years ago. After years of wrangling with skeptical voters and politicians, the EU now has a treaty that rewrites all the previous treaties and agreements, starting with the 1957 founding Treaty of Rome, into one document. – Deutsche Welle

The Roman poet Horace might have been summing up today’s European Union when he wrote that “the mountains will be in labor, and will give birth to a ridiculous mouse.” By choosing two virtual unknowns, with paltry political experience, as the first permanent president of the European Council and as the new EU foreign-policy supremo, Europe’s leaders have made their union look ridiculous. Both Belgium’s Herman Van Rompuy and Britain’s Catherine Ashton are decent in their way. Mr Van Rompuy has been a surprisingly effective Belgian prime minister, holding his fissiparous country together well enough for some to fret over his departure from domestic politics. Lady Ashton piloted the Lisbon treaty through the British House of Lords and has handled the European Commission’s trade portfolio without falling out with her colleagues (unlike some predecessors), even if she has no foreign-policy background and has never been elected to anything. Both are suited to the endless rounds of consensus-building that the EU loves and lives by. – The Economist

North Korea

Chaos reportedly erupted in North Korea on Tuesday after the government of Kim Jong Il revalued the country's currency, sharply restricting the amount of old bills that could be traded for new and wiping out personal savings. The revaluation and exchange limits triggered panic and anger, particularly among market traders with substantial hoards of old North Korean won -- much of which has apparently become worthless, according to news agency reports from South Korea and China and from groups with contacts in North Korea. The currency move appeared to be part of a continuing government crackdown on private markets, which have become an essential part of the food-supply system in the chronically hungry North. – Washington Post

Ideas

The global revolt keeps building against carbon cap and trade, not that you'd know it from the U.S. media. First the U.S. Senate postpones its bill, next countries meeting in Copenhagen this month can't agree on emissions cuts, then emails among climate scientists reveal rigged peer-review, and now comes a political uprising in Australia that may doom a carbon tax down under. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has made a sweeping cap-and-trade bill the centerpiece of his legislative agenda, and for two years his climate alarmism has gone almost unchallenged. The conservative Liberal Party, which embraced a cap-and-tax scheme before losing the 2007 election, first said it would oppose any legislation that hurt the economy. Then last week, under then-party leader Malcolm Turnbull, the Liberals threw in with Mr. Rudd and agreed to carve out as many handouts as possible for big business. Given that Australia accounts for only 1.5% of global emissions, the bill would pile on economic costs with no environmental benefit. The conservative wing of the party revolted on Thursday, with six MPs stepping down from the front bench in protest—an unprecedented event in the Liberal Party's more than 50-year history. And yesterday the party ousted Mr. Turnbull as party leader in favor of Tony Abbott, an MP from Sydney. Mr. Abbott has spared no time in setting out his views. Yesterday he called cap and trade "a great big tax to create a great big slush fund to provide politicized handouts, run by giant bureaucracy." – Wall Street Journal

No political entity has pushed harder for the Copenhagen conference on climate change to succeed than the European Union. But just days before the opening of the United Nations-sponsored meeting, the Europeans have been largely pushed to the sidelines, watching as the world's two largest emitters of greenhouse gases, China and the United States, seek to set the rules of the game. “That’s of course the unfortunate situation for Copenhagen,” said Jo Leinen, a German member of the European Parliament who is leading the chamber’s delegation to the conference that is intended to follow up on the soon-to-expire Kyoto Protocol. “It’s turning into a bit of a ping-pong match between China and the United States, with each just looking at the other,” he said. – New York Times

Venezuela

Venezuela said U.S. President Barack Obama, after recognizing Honduran election results, joins earlier presidents who had “violent relations” with the continent such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry reiterated it won’t recognize the “farce” elections in Honduras on Nov. 29, and condemned other governments in the region that have done so, including Colombia, Panama and Costa Rica. – Bloomberg

Central Asia

Uzbekistan today is expected to officially leave the Soviet-era regional power grid that unites the country with its three Central Asian neighbors. The move could leave Uzbekistan’s impoverished neighbors, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, facing severe electricity shortages during the winter months. Khusrav Ghoibov, a top official at the Tajik Foreign Ministry, criticized Uzbekistan’s decision as an effort to put pressure on neighbors. – Radio Free Europe