Afghanistan

There’s something futile about Gordon Brown’s and, now, David Miliband’s speeches on Afghanistan.  After all, the world is still waiting to hear what Obama’s strategy is for the country.  Will he increase troop numbers – and by how much?  What does he actually want to achieve with them?  Until that’s known, it’s a little premature to talk about a “comprehensive political framework” for handing security responsibilities over to the Afghan army. Worse, though, the PM’s statements may actually be damaging.  Sure, it’s frustrating that the US President is leaving his allies hanging.  But, in the meantime, any international talk about handovers and withdrawal – even if Downing Street maintain that

Armistice Day suits Brown down to the ground. When everyone is obliged wear funeral-director garb, his grey hair and sombre jowls fit the mood perfectly while Dave’s polished and youthful glow looks a trifle out of place.  Gordon performed confidently at PMQs today. So did Dave, as it happens, but the skirmish came to nothing because neither was prepared to fight on the ground chosen by the other. Dave led on the youth unemployment figures. He wanted Brown to admit that his promise ‘to abolish youth unemployment’ had failed. Brown ignored this and took comfort from the thought that without Labour’s policies even more youngsters would be out of work.

Gordon Brown says Britain must not walk away from NATO’s Afghan mission. Yet 73 percent of Britons told YouGov that they want British troops withdrawn. Even more probably think they will fail even if they are allowed to stay on. Yet what to do if you believe, like I do, that the allies cannot simply withdraw without creating a catalytic effect on worldwide Islamist extremism and a regional vortex of violence, which will end in sectarian strife, refugee flows, President Karzai’s toppling, Pakistan’s further destabilisation and irreparable damage to NATO? One last heave, won’t do. Clever initiative, like my own idea of creating an ANA Army Corps of Engineers, will

Whatever happens in Kabul now, the next couple of months will be hard going. Hamid Karzai will form a new government, perhaps with Abdulllah Abdullah. But nobody expects the Karzai III government to be any better or less corrupt than versions I and II. Quite the opposite. In his bid for re-election, President Karzai surrounded himself with chequered figures who could bring him votes: warlords suspected of war crimes, corruption and drug trafficking. None is as influential as Marshal Fahim, his running mate, who has long been suspected of drug-running and other crimes. Expect to look back at the Afghan government’s past performance as a model of probity and efficiency.

Today, two of my colleagues, former senior MoD official Nick Witney and US analyst Jeremy Shapiro, issued a hard-hitting report about transatlantic relationships. Their message is simple. Europe has the US president it wished for, but Barack Obama lacks the strong transatlantic partner he desired. With EU leaders heading to Washington for their transatlantic summit on 3 November, Shapiro and Witney caution European governments: an unsentimental President Obama has already lost patience with a Europe lacking coherence and purpose. In a post-American world, the United States knows it needs effective partners. And if Europe cannot step up, the US will look for other privileged partners to do business with. Unfortunately,

I have just returned from DC, where the talk of the town, or at least of the foreign policy community, is how long Richard Holbrooke has left in the Obama administration. A well-connected friend suggested The Bulldozer has, at most, two months left. Perhaps most telling has been Holbrooke’s absence in the recent efforts to persuade Hamid Karzai to accept a second round of voting in the presidential election. The Economist hailed John Kerry’s impromptu diplomacy, which secured Karzai’s consent and gave Holbrooke the epithet “now-absent”. Diplomats I have spoken to say President Karzai is currently refusing to see Holbrooke at all, possibly sensing a chance to divide and weaken