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Foreign Policy: Give The General What He Needs

Afghanistan
A car packed with explosives blew up beside the Indian Embassy on Thursday, leaving at least a dozen dead in what India's foreign secretary said was an attack on the embassy compound, the second in two years. The blast killed 12 and injured 83, according to the Afghan Interior Ministry. Indian authorities said none of the embassy staff had been hurt, but three guards outside had been injured. "The suicide bomber was directed against the embassy," India's foreign secretary, Nirupama Rao, told reporters in New Delhi. New York Times

If President Obama decides to endorse Gen. Stanley McChrystal's plan to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan, he'll find an unlikely assortment of allies...

In September, [Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin] joined Karl Rove, William Kristol, David Frum, Robert Kagan, and more 30 other conservatives in signing a letter that urges the president to "give our commanders on the ground the forces they need to implement a successful counterinsurgency strategy..."

And Obama would also receive the blessing of hawkish Democrats like Evan Bayh of Indiana and House Armed Services Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri, who said Sunday on CBS's Face the Nation that he supported additional deployments. All these voices representing vying factions across the political spectrum have a shared chorus: "Give the general what he needs." Newsweek

Sarah Palin writes: Our allies and our adversaries are watching to see if we have the staying power to protect our interests in Afghanistan. I recently joined a group of Americans in urging President Obama to devote the resources necessary in Afghanistan and pledged to support him if he made the right decision. Now is not the time for cold feet, second thoughts, or indecision - it is the time to act as commander-in-chief and approve the troops so clearly needed in Afghanistan. Facebook

A request from the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan for additional troops has been transferred to President Barack Obama for review and has started working its way through the military chain of command, the Pentagon said. The request, which General Stanley McChrystal submitted to Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month, recommends adding up to 40,000 additional U.S. and NATO troops next year, according to Congressional officials. Reuters

President Obama's national security team is moving to reframe its war strategy by emphasizing the campaign against Al Qaeda in Pakistan while arguing that the Taliban in Afghanistan do not pose a direct threat to the United States, officials said Wednesday. As Mr. Obama met with advisers for three hours to discuss Pakistan, the White House said he had not decided whether to approve a proposed troop buildup in Afghanistan. But the shift in thinking, outlined by senior administration officials on Wednesday, suggests that the president has been presented with an approach that would not require all of the additional troops that his commanding general in the region has requested. New York Times

David Ignatius argues: Is there an "Obama Doctrine" lurking among the zigs and zags of the president's foreign policy over these first nine months? I think there is, in his repeated invocation of global rights and responsibilities. The problem is that this lawyerly framework hasn't been applied to the really tough issues, such as what to do in Afghanistan. I have been looking for a "doctrine" because, frankly, strategic thinking has been this administration's weak spot. A pragmatic president has surrounded himself with pragmatic advisers - a retired Marine general as national security adviser, a former senator as secretary of state, a career intelligence officer as secretary of defense. None are grand strategists on the model of Henry Kissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski. Washington Post

Levant
George Mitchell, the U.S. Middle East envoy, will arrive in the region today to hold talks with Palestinian and Israeli leaders in a bid to breathe new life into the long-stalled peace process. The visit comes at a crucial time, particularly for the Palestinians. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president and head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, has endured an unprecedented barrage of personal criticism after the PLO's decision to support a deferral of a vote in the UN's Human Rights Council on the Goldstone report. The National

East Asia
President Barack Obama's first Asian trip as president will include Japan, Singapore, China and South Korea, but not Indonesia, where he spent four years of his life... Gibbs said the presidential tour was "to strengthen our cooperation with this vital part of the world on a range of issues of mutual interest." Gibbs said Obama's first stop will be in Japan Nov. 12-13, where he will have two meetings with new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. Gibbs said the visit with "this key ally" will cover economic, security and other issues. The AP

Americas
A senior American diplomat has held unannounced, high-level talks in Havana with the Cuban government, three State Department officials told The Associated Press on last week, raising hopes for a thaw in long-icy relations... Bisa Williams, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, met with Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Dagoberto Rodriguez, visited an area affected by hurricanes in the Western province of Pinar del Rio and toured a government agricultural facility during a six-day trip to Cuba this month, the officials told AP. The AP

Machine gun-firing militants on motorcycles attacked a prison on Wednesday, freeing a guerrilla commander who was accused of kidnapping two American journalists. One guard was killed and another sustained multiple gunshot wounds in the daring midday raid at the prison in the northeastern city of Arauca, which ended with the rebel chief, Gustavo Aníbal Giraldo, fleeing on the back of a motorcycle, the authorities said. The AP

Europe
Italy's Constitutional Court struck down a law protecting Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and other top officials from criminal prosecution, in a politically explosive ruling that paves the way for the reopening of two suspended trials against Italy's billionaire leader. The decision, which can't be appealed and allows prosecutors to restart pending criminal trials against the premier right away, could further undermine a government already rattled by embarrassing disclosures over Mr. Berlusconi's personal life... Mr. Berlusconi quickly made clear he had no intention of stepping down. "We're moving on," Mr. Berlusconi told TV cameras as he walked, smiling, into an art exhibit after the ruling was issued. Wall Street Journal

Russia
The Obama administration's new missile-defense scheme was not designed to appease Russia, but if the Russians like it, that would be a great side benefit, the State Department's top arms-control official said Wednesday. Ellen O. Tauscher, under secretary of state for arms control and international security, defended plans to overhaul Bush administration design for missile defense in Eastern Europe in a speech today at the Atlantic Council, a transatlantic-themed Washington think tank. "There was no attempt to curry favor with the Russian government or to secure some kind of tradeoff in our negotiations for a START follow-on treaty," said Tauscher, responding to mostly conservative critics who have tried to frame the Obama missile-defense plans as a unilateral concession to the Russians. The Cable

Intelligence Community
This summer, as the Obama Administration prepared to confront Iran with proof of its undisclosed uranium-enrichment plant in Qum, CIA Director Leon Panetta ordered his staff to work with European intelligence agencies to compile a comprehensive presentation about the facility. Although the Iranians had taken great pains to keep the facility a secret, building it into a mountain 100 miles southwest from Tehran, the CIA had known about it for three years. TIME

Editorial: When it comes to politicized intelligence in the Bush years, the critics may finally have a point. Perhaps the work of America's intelligence agencies was manipulated to suit the convenience of a small group of willful officials, intent on getting their way against the better judgment of their colleagues. Except the intelligence was about Iran, not Iraq, and the manipulators weren't conniving neocons but rather the Administration's internal critics on the left. That's one way to look at last month's revelation that Iran is building a secret second site to enrich uranium, among other emerging intelligence details...

But the more telling detail, as a recent White House "guidance paper" acknowledges, is that the U.S. has been "carefully observing and analyzing this facility for several years." That timeline is significant, because it was less than two years ago, in December 2007, that a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear programs asserted with "high confidence" that Tehran had "halted its nuclear weapons program" in the fall of 2003... Getting it wrong on Iran the most crucial intelligence question of the decade would be no small footnote in the CIA's history of intelligence blunders. Wall Street Journal

Postscript
Japan wants to set just the right mood to get its people to make more babies. But forget dinner and candlelight: The government's plan depends heavily on large amounts of cash. With a worried eye on declining birth rates and an aging population, Japan's new leaders propose offering new parents monthly payments totaling about $3,300 a year for every new child until the age of 15. Other initiatives include more state-supported day care, tuition waivers and other efforts designed to make parenthood more appealing. Wall Street Journal

Announcement
A distinguished group of foreign policy experts today urged President Barack Obama to reiterate America's commitment to its Central European allies and improve the U.S. defense relationship with the Czech Republic, Poland and those countries' neighbors. In an open letter to President Obama, the bipartisan group of signatories echo concerns expressed by a group of Central European leaders earlier this year about growing perceptions of U.S. disengagement from Central Europe.

Events
Resolving Religious and Ethnic Tension in the PRC: Time for a New Paradigm?
Heritage Foundation
October 8

U.S.-Israeli Relations at a Crossroads? Challenges to the Special Relationship
Hudson Institute
October 8

NATO One Year after Georgia
Atlantic Council
October 8

Zhivago's Children: The Last Russian Intelligentsia
Woodrow Wilson Center
October 9

Putting Smart Power to Work
U.S. Global Leadership Coalition
October 14

Aggressive Secularism, Multiculturalism, and the Islamist Threat
Ethics and Public Policy Center
October 14

Democracy that Delivers: An international conference on improving the quality of democratic governance and economic growth
Center for International Private Enterprise
October 27

Overnight Brief is a daily product of the Foreign Policy Initiative, which seeks to promote an active U.S. foreign policy committed to robust support for democratic allies, human rights, a strong American military equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century, and strengthening America's global economic competitiveness.