FPI Overnight Brief: December 3, 2009

Afghanistan

President Obama has authorized Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to deploy several thousand additional troops, as needed, beyond the 30,000 that Obama on Tuesday said he would send to Afghanistan, according to a Pentagon official. Gates can increase the number by 10 percent, or 3,000 troops, without additional White House approval or announcement, the official said, adding that "this authority is designed to give him the flexibility to better manage the force and provide the commander with additional resources." A senior military official said that the final number could go as high as 35,000 to allow for additional support personnel such as engineers, medevac units and route-clearance teams, which comb roads for bombs. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss understandings between the Pentagon and the White House. – Washington Post

Senator John McCain, the elder statesman of the Republican foreign policy establishment, joined colleagues on the Senate Armed Services Committee in ritual expressions of support for much of the strategy on which Mr Obama’s presidency and US prestige abroad may depend. He then asked pointedly, of the July 2011 deadline: “You either have a winning strategy, and once it has succeeded then you withdraw, or you have an arbitrary date. Which is it?” Recalling the successful US troop surge in Iraq, announced with no end date, Senator McCain said that Mr Obama’s deadline sent “exactly the wrong message to both our friends and enemies”, and came close to accusing the President of misleading the American people in his address at the West Point military academy last night. – Times of London

Mr Sarkozy praised the “courage, determination and clear-sightedness” of President Obama’s speech in New York and offered him his “full support”. He also reiterated that France would remain “firmly committed” with its allies for “as long as necessary, alongside the Afghan people”. Mr Sarkozy did not disclose whether more French troops would be made available, however, saying only that “the nature of our involvement” would be discussed at a forthcoming Nato meeting and during an international summit on Afghanistan, which is due to take place in London in January. – Irish Times

The Obama administration began the tough job of selling its new Afghanistan strategy to skeptical lawmakers, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other top officials arguing that success there was essential to preventing attacks on the U.S. Mr. Gates appeared before the Senate Armed Services Committee with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as part of a broad administration effort to win public and congressional support for its limited surge of new troops to Afghanistan… Appearing before lawmakers, Mr. Gates, Mrs. Clinton and Adm. Mullen, echoing a central point from Mr. Obama's speech last night, said the administration would reevaluate the troop surge next December with an eye toward beginning to withdraw the additional forces in July 2011. – Wall Street Journal

The U.S. has said that it may rethink its plan to begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by July 2011 if conditions on the ground prevent a security handover to the Afghan government. Pressed on Wednesday by Republicans skeptical about fixing a timeline for withdrawal, Robert Gates, defense secretary, said that the strategy unveiled by President Barack Obama on Tuesday was narrower than past U.S. objectives for Afghanistan and achievable within the timespan the president had set out. – Financial Times

Editorial: Gen. McChrystal and Mr. Obama endorsed the same goals: reversing the Taliban's momentum and creating a space in which the Afghan government can assert itself while U.S. forces train the Afghan army to take over the fight. Mr. Obama's supposedly stripped-down plan still includes tripling U.S. civilian personnel. It will include, according to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, "delivering high-impact assistance and bolstering the agriculture sector." There will be a big effort to build up new governing structures in the provinces. This is nation-building, regardless of what the administration calls it -- and Mr. Obama is right to do it. – Washington Post

Pakistan

Pakistan's government expressed confusion and concern Wednesday about President Obama's new Afghan strategy, which calls for Pakistan to step up its cooperation against terrorism in exchange for a pledge of a long-term partnership "after the guns fall silent."… A major worry here is that the surge of 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan announced by Obama will send thousands of Afghan insurgents fleeing into Pakistan... – Washington Post

Iraq

Iraq's scheduled January elections may be postponed by more than a month because of a dispute over an election law, officials said Wednesday, a delay that could threaten the planned U.S. withdrawal of combat troops. Iraqi lawmakers have been working for months to pass a law needed to reform the election process, seeking to make it more representative of Iraq's ethnic and religious groups. It is unclear what a long delay would mean for the United States, which is scheduled to end combat missions in August. Former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who heads a small bloc in parliament, said a preliminary proposal from various political factions calls for moving the election to Feb. 27, but it also could be further pushed to March 1. -- The AP

Australia

Australia's plans for an emissions trading system to combat global warming were scuttled Wednesday in Parliament, handing a defeat to a government that had hoped to set an example at international climate change talks next week. The Senate, where Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government does not hold a majority, rejected his administration's proposal for Australia to become one of the first countries to install a so-called cap-and-trade system to slash the amount of heat-trapping pollution that industries pump into the air. – The AP

Iran

The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said Wednesday that his nation would produce a higher grade of nuclear fuel on its own, escalating its war of words with the international community over its disputed nuclear program. His declaration continued a daily drumbeat of defiant proclamations from the Iranian leadership, which has vowed to expand its nuclear plants and hone its capability to enrich uranium despite strong warnings from the United Nations and Western powers that its program violates its commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. – New York Times

In recent months, Iran has been conducting a campaign of harassing and intimidating members of its diaspora world-wide -- not just prominent dissidents -- who criticize the regime, according to former Iranian lawmakers and former members of Iran's elite security force, the Revolutionary Guard, with knowledge of the program. Part of the effort involves tracking the Facebook, Twitter and YouTube activity of Iranians around the world, and identifying them at opposition protests abroad, these people say. Interviews with roughly 90 ordinary Iranians abroad -- college students, housewives, doctors, lawyers, businesspeople -- in New York, London, Dubai, Sweden, Los Angeles and other places indicate that people who criticize Iran's regime online or in public demonstrations are facing threats intended to silence them. – Wall Street Journal

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, has rejected as "illegal" a UN nuclear watchdog resolution over the country's disputed nuclear activities. "Under pressure of a few superficially powerful countries ... the International Atomic Energy Agency passed an illegal resolution against the Iranian nation," Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday in a televised speech in the central city of Isfahan… The IAEA resolution criticised Tehran for defying a UN Security Council ban on uranium enrichment and rebuked it for secretly building a uranium enrichment facility near the city of Qom. – Al Jazeera

Andrew Apostolou writes: Half a year after Iran’s disputed presidential election, the Islamic regime is suffering from partial paralysis. Despite thousands of arrests, scores of killings, widely publicized show trials, and the closure of independent-minded newspapers, the regime is seemingly reluctant to launch the kind of full-scale purge that could remove its opponents, who demand a new election and an investigation into the deaths and torture of detainees. The hesitancy of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” and his ally, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is understandable. While a purge to uproot supporters of Mir Hussein Moussavi, Ahmadinejad’s main challenger in the June 12 election, could restore a semblance of stability, it might also damage the regime’s viability. For as much as they portray Moussavi as a sore loser and a saboteur trying to destabilize the Iranian state, he is a regime insider, with supporters throughout the religious and educational establishments and within Iran’s most dangerous programs. – City Journal

Russia

American and Russian negotiators are racing to solve the remaining obstacles to a new arms control treaty that would cut the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals by up to a third and replace a cold war-era pact that expires Saturday. The delegations are working marathon hours in Geneva to resolve differences over verification and to finalize other details of an agreement that would reduce the number of deployed strategic warheads, missiles, bombers and submarines to their lowest levels in a half century. A mostly complete text has been written and translated, and there have been discussions about where to hold a signing ceremony. But it appears unlikely that they will complete their work by the time the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991, known as Start, expires, or that it can be ready for President Obama to sign when he visits Europe next week. – New York Times

Syria

Six years ago, President Bashar Assad looked weak, stumbling and isolated. In the words of the neoconservatives dominant in Washington after the conquest of Iraq, his regime was “low-hanging fruit”. Its fall would complete a circle of Western influence in the area, with Turkey, a NATO member, to the north-west and Israel to the south. The decline of Syria seemed to hasten when, after it was widely blamed in 2005 for the murder of Lebanon’s five-times prime minister, Rafik Hariri, it ignominiously lost its place as master of its small neighbour. Only Iran, among Syria’s friends, stood fast against the West. Yet now the position has drastically changed. Mr Assad is increasingly viewed as an essential part of the region’s diplomatic jigsaw. He is fast coming back into the game. Even America would like to embrace him. – Economist

Honduras

The Honduran Congress voted Wednesday night against restoring the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya, to office to serve out the last two months of his term, throwing into further disarray an American-backed plan to end the country’s political crisis. – New York Times

Venezuela

President Hugo Chávez threatened to nationalize his country's entire private banking system, even as he reassured Venezuelans their money was safe in local banks. Addressing the nation Wednesday, two days after the government shuttered two small banks and temporarily took over two others, the populist president said his government was looking into potential problems at other private banks, rattling Venezuelans and markets. – Wall Street Journal