Annie Lowrey of Foreign Policy and I discuss the recent capture of a top Taliban operative in Pakistan, India and Pakistan’s use of Afghanistan as a proxy battleground, the Winter Olympic games, and the fight over the conservative soul on bloggingheadstv. Enjoy!

Back in September I puzzled over the disconnect between international relations academics and the Washington foreign-policy establishment. Back then, I wrote that

the two groups have been wildly at variance in terms of their views on important public policy issues. Take the Iraq war, for example. As anyone who was in Washington at the time knows, the [Foreign Policy Community] was extremely fond of the idea of invading Iraq. To oppose it was to marginalize oneself for years. Indeed, those who promoted the disastrous adventure have prospered, while those who (bravely or stupidly, depending on your point of view) opposed it remain huddled in the chilly, dusty alcoves of popular debate.

In the academy, meanwhile, there was hardly any debate over Iraq–almost 80 percent of IR academics opposed the war. [.pdf] To the extent academics did enter the public debate on the issue, it was to pay for an advertisement in the New York Times warning against the war. [.pdf] The only academics who spoke out in favor of the war (to my knowledge, anyway) were IR liberals like Anne-Marie Slaughter, who sought policy positions in Washington. (Slaughter, of course, was rewarded with a spot as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department, while to my knowledge none of the academic opponents of the war have gained Washington policy jobs.)

Today, Daniel Drezner describes his experience at

a small conference devoted to the idea of getting scholars and policymakers in the same room to talk about U.S. policy towards a Great Power That Shall Remain Nameless. The idea was that policymakers could highlight issues that professors might have overlooked and vice versa.

Everything was going along swimmingly until one of the policymakers in the room complained that some of the academic memos that had been prepared for the conference were too long to be read by policymakers — which was true, except that wasn’t the purpose of these memos. In response, a Smart and Well Respected Political Scientist went off on a serious and righteous rant. Why didn’t policymakers or staffers in DC actually read what experts thought about a particular issue? It wasn’t just that political scientists were being put on the sidelines — we were being completely ignored.

While Drezner’s post centers on the blame senior academics deserve for stigmatizing policy pronouncement from untenured political scientists, I think it’s worth revisiting the fact that policymakers and IR academics just don’t agree about much, as I highlighted above. And, as if on cue, Steven K. Metz of the Army War College crops up in comments (you have to scroll down), writing in part that:

I really believe the key is for academics to learn how to express themselves in a policy relevant way rather than expecting policymakers to work through academic style analysis and writing. Heck, I remember participating in a workshop early in the Bush administration that brought together the elite of security studies professors. The stated purpose was to develop policy relevant analysis. But all I heard over two days was that the Bush administration needed to jettison its worldview and adopt the one advocated by the speaker. (emphasis mine)

That is, when you got “the elite of security studies professors” in a room with senior policy people in DC, they wanted to use the opportunity to warn the DC people that their expertise led them to the conclusion that the policies we were following were, in fact, dumb. I think everybody complaining about the gulf between the fields needs to come to some sort of grips with the fact that there are just big disagreements between the Beltway consensus and the IR academic views on many, many issues. And unless and until either a) policymakers feel inclined to listen to scholars on those subjects or b) academics lose their interest in warning the policy community about their policies, just pushing them together in various arenas is not going to do much good.

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The capture of the Taliban’s top military commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is a success in the broader war on terror; however, only time will tell whether it signals Pakistan is convinced that its future security no longer lies in its support for Islamist proxies.

It is important to recognize that this apprehension was not a result of blunt military force, but a direct result of diligent intelligence gathering by the military and CIA, in close cooperation with Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence. This fact serves to further question our objectives in Afghanistan, where blunt military force is the main solution. Indeed, over 100,000 U.S. and coalition troops are deployed, large amounts of resources are expended, and lives are continually lost for what President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, noted in October, “is less than 100 [al-Qaeda] operating in [Afghanistan].”

Another important point is that for years the United States and Pakistan were not on the same page at the strategic level. Pakistan’s cooperation in this recent operation could signal a shift in its strategic thinking; however, U.S. policymakers must recognize that along with an increased push toward negotiating with ground insurgents, they must also acknowledge how Pakistan’s strategic orientation and its regional tensions with India impact Afghanistan. Only by developing a comprehensive South Asia strategy and moderating the strategic competition between India and Pakistan will there be hope for anything more than temporary peace in Afghanistan. In this respect, while Mullah Baradar’s capture is great news, it might do little to compel regional belligerents to alter their policies as it impacts Afghanistan—the underlying source of the Afghan mission’s vulnerability.

In short, the broader policy prescription of remaining in Afghanistan without addressing Pakistan’s use of extremist proxies vastly oversimplifies the conditions that exist between Pakistan and India and the ability of present solutions to influence their policies. Long-term stability will only come about when all countries in the region are on the same page, but judging from history, that prospect looks unlikely.

The U.S. remains stuck in Iraq, as the country moves toward a potentially messy and not so democratic (lots of disqualified parliamentary candidates, etc.) election. Iran’s refusal to back away from its nuclear program has intensified calls for an American military strike — which, Sarah Palin assures, would even help the president politically. North Korea unsurprisingly is showing reluctance to rejoin international talks over its nuclear program: renewed proposals for a U.S. military build-up in South Korea and even war against the North are likely to follow. And then there is Afghanistan.

Even though President Barack Obama talks about deadlines and drawdowns, there is little in present policy to suggest that the U.S. will be able to leave Afghanistan in even the mid-term. Afghan President Hamid Karzai certainly doesn’t think so. He figures on U.S. military support for at least another decade, with continuing international financial support for years after that.

Reports the Associated Press:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai warned Thursday that foreign troops must stay in his country for another decade, as world powers agreed on an exit map including a plan to persuade Taliban fighters to disarm in exchange for jobs and homes.Divisions emerged between the U.S. and its partners over Kabul’s willingness to offer peace to Taliban leaders who once harbored al-Qaida, instead of the more limited deal for lower-ranking fighters emphasized by the Americans.

All agree that reconciliation means bringing on board what Mark Sedwill, NATO’s newly appointed civilian chief in Afghanistan, called “some pretty unsavory characters.”

The conference was called to help the U.S. and its allies find a way out of the grinding Afghan war amid rising U.S. and NATO casualties and falling public support. NATO has agreed to accelerate the training of Afghan security forces and gradually transfer more combat responsibility to them.

“With regard to training and equipping the Afghan security forces, five to 10 years will be enough,” Karzai told the BBC. “With regard to sustaining them until Afghanistan is financially able to provide for our forces, the time will be extended to 10 to 15 years.”

It sounds a bit like the Afghan equivalent of the Eagles’ Hotel California. Defeat or bribe the Taliban and keep Karzai in power, and we will have “won” — but we still won’t be able to leave. And the Afghan government, assuming it achieves a modicum of honest competence, will still have little incentive to meet even President Karzai’s distant check-out date. Who in Kabul will want to do without abundent Western cash 10 or 15 years from now?

In 2001 the U.S. had a simple, important, and achievable mission in Afghanistan: disrupt al-Qaeda and oust the Taliban. American military forces succeeded. Alas, we’ve spent the succeeding eight years attempting to build a nation state where none exists. It’s time to draw down our forces and again focus on combatting terrorists.

The story that images of a film star produced by whole-body imaging were copied and circulated among airport personnel in London are a little too good to be true for critics of the technology. It may yet be proven a joke or hoax, and airport officials are denying that it happened, saying that it “simply could not be true.”

But if Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan was exposed by the technology, it validates more quickly than I expected the concern that controls on body scanning images would ultimately fail.

Here’s how I wrote about the fate of domestic U.S. proscriptions on copying images from whole-body imaging machines in an earlier post:

Rules, of course, were made to be broken, and it’s only a matter of time — federal law or not — before TSA agents without proper supervision find a way to capture images contrary to policy. (Agent in secure area guides Hollywood starlet to strip search machine, sends SMS message to image reviewer, who takes camera-phone snap. TMZ devotes a week to the story, and the ensuing investigation reveals that this has been happening at airports throughout the country to hundreds of women travelers.)

I have my doubts that this incident actually happened as reported, but it is not impossible, and over time misuse of the technology is likely. That’s a cost of whole-body imaging that should be balanced against its security benefits.

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