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WWC: National Conversation Series-Henry Kissinger 1 5/6/23

National Conversation Series – Afghanistan: Is There a Regional Endgame?

Jane Harman:Good afternoon, and welcome to the --

Male Speaker:Just go around you.

Jane Harman:-- Wilson Center. I'm Jane Harman, Director, President, and CEO of the nation's living memorial to its 28th and first internationalist President. Let me welcome especially the chairman of our board, Ambassador Joe Gildenhorn and his wife Alma, our board member, Thelma Duggan, our counsel members, two ambassadors, Ambassador Jensen from Denmark and Ambassador Kern of Slovakia, and remind you that this is the fourth in our National Conversation series.

The National Conversation provides a safe political space for deep dialogue and informed discussion of the most significant problems and challenges facing our nation and the world. In short, it provides a level of discourse the nation deserves.

Today's discussion will focus on Afghanistan and ask this question: Is there a regional end-game? Our guest speaker and good friend is Dr. Henry Kissinger, who will present a strategic overview, and will then participate in a panel chaired by former and future senator scholar, award-winning journalist and author, Robin Wright, who is immediately to my left. She will introduce our panelists.

Few on our planet have missed the fact that Dr. Kissinger has just published a book on China. Experts agree that his is the most ambitious book on China ever, one that no one else could write. In the book, Dr. Kissinger quoted and excerpted whole sections of never before published documents from the Wilson's Center Cold War International History Project Archive of 80,000 declassified Russian and Chinese documents, and we appreciate, Henry, your acknowledgement of the Wilson Center in your book.

On today's topic, Dr. Kissinger has said, "Virtually no country within strategic reach of Afghanistan, or, certainly, in the region, has an interest in seeing a Taliban victory. The Prepared by National Capitol Contracting 200 N. Glebe Rd. #1016(703) 243-9696 Arlington, VA 22203


precedence of al Qaeda as a state within a state and the potential splintering of the country into Pashtun and non-Pashtun elements. Even Iran, as a Shiite country, " he continues, "should wish to prevent a virulently anti-Shiite fundamentalist regime returning to power in Kabul. For Pakistan, the ascendency of Islamic jihadists in a neighboring state would serve to destabilize the Pakistani regime. India has every incentive to prevent ignition of jihadist fervor and political victories for them. For Soviet republicans, republics, republicans, like Uzbekistan -- "

[laughter]

-- I can't help myself -- "like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan would be destabilized by ethnic unrest and irredentism that would be unleashed in Afghanistan should Pashtun fanatics succeed in seizing control of the country. The impact," he concludes, "of radical Islamism on Sinkiang defines a potential Chinese interest." As our director of programs, Rod Liffak [spelled phonetically], often says, "I am in violent agreement with these remarks."

Last month was the tenth anniversary of the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan, the longest war in American history. The mission, at least initially, was to defeat those who planned the terrible events of 9/11 from there. As a member of Congress, I supported the authorization to use military force, which I thought at that time would be limited in time and scope. As if any of us needs reminding of the enormous cost and difficulty of the situation, over the last few days, there have been a number of vicious attacks, including on a convoy in Kabul this weekend, which killed 17 people, including a dozen Americans, just months after the August shoot down of a Chinook helicopter, which killed a large number of Navy SEALS. In 10 years, there have been over 1,800 U.S. military deaths, 15,000 American service members wounded, and 1,000 coalition troops, and tens of thousands of Afghan civilians killed. The U.S. has spent almost $3 trillion.

No one thinks that kinetics alone will produce stability, and many, including me, question whether our coin strategy has been successful. Most hope the Afghan government and the region will come up with a better way forward. That is what we're discussing today. Tomorrow, 20 countries will meet in Turkey to map out Afghanistan's future and to discuss proposals, like Secretary Clinton's new Silk Road Project. We hope that today's conversation can provide context and some good suggestions for tomorrow's discussion.

Prepared by National Capitol Contracting 200 N. Glebe Rd. #1016(703) 243-9696 Arlington, VA 22203


So, please welcome the man whose name is on the door of our Kissinger Institute, run by the able former U.S. Ambassador to China, Stapleton Roy, who is here somewhere. Right there. Please welcome the most influential foreign policy player of his generation, and a man, who, like my late husband, refuses to slow down, Dr. Henry Kissinger.

[applause]

Dr. Henry Kissinger:Jane, thank you very much. I am a great admirer of the Woodrow Wilson Center. I've done a little fundraising for it over the years, and have attended some of its conferences, and I strongly support what Jane is trying to do here. I have to say, I admire her enormous tenacity in getting me here at, she cannot fail with the method she applied to me. I thought I was coming here to talk about China --

[laughter]

-- and then I was informed I was talking about greater Asia, and now I'm informed that I'm talking about Afghanistan.

[laughter]

And I'm glad she stopped here.

[laughter]

Well, it's an important topic, and it's important that the topic be discussed at this moment. I don't know how I would feel as Secretary of State if my predecessor held a conference on Afghanistan the day before I go off to Turkey. But, we are not here to criticize, we are here to analyze where we are.

The, if I look at the history of American involvement in the wars over the past decades, since World War II, there's a striking development is that we entered a series of wars with universal acclaim. There was almost always wide bipartisan support, no significant opposition to enter in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. And then, as the war developed, the domestic support for it began to come apart. And the point would be reached at which the dominant debate was exit strategy.

Now, I would state as a fundamental principle, if you go into a war for no other purpose than to have an exit strategy, you shouldn't be there to begin with. And, so, that the manner in which we ended the war, except for the first Iraq war, really in a way represented an abdication from the original goals that were stated as we ended the war, and this was true in all of the wars, Prepared by National Capitol Contracting 200 N. Glebe Rd. #1016(703) 243-9696 Arlington, VA 22203


in all of the administrations of both parties, that I have mentioned.

And the reason -- there's been a number of reasons for this. One reason is that we selected objectives beyond the capacity of the American domestic consensus to support over the period required to implement them. It was particularly true, well, it was partially true already in Korea, maybe extended out objectives as the war developed. It was true in Vietnam, also in Iraq, and now in Afghanistan. Secondly, there has been a tendency throughout to separate military and diplomatic message for dealing with this to in the American mind, there was always a military phase that operated by its own momentum. And the theory was that when that military phase had been completed or accomplished, there would be diplomacy. But, those two were not considered to be organically related to each other, so that our military efforts generally did not have enough diplomatic framework, and our diplomatic efforts lacked military support.

And I want to stress this -- it's not a criticism of any one conflict. This is a bipartisan difficulty that has existed. Of course, it fell to me in an inherited role to attend to liquidated and to navigate our policy through the shore of Vietnam with these considerations. But, I'm not here to discuss the adequacy or lack of it in which it was done but to get to how these principles apply to Afghanistan.

We entered Afghanistan as a reaction to the fact that bin Laden used Afghanistan as a base for an attack on the United States, but, somewhere along the road, starting in the Bush administration and then accelerated in the Obama administration, the concept developed that the outcome for which we were finding in Afghanistan was a government whose government ran all over the country into whose hands we could leave the administration of the country and the remnants of its security, and that that government was not only an all-Afghan government but that it would represent some of the fundamental democratic values in which we believe -- women's rights, education, all of these important and noble objectives. The issue was whether they were achievable by American military effort in a time period that the American public would support. That is the key objective, key issue. And, of, and Afghanistan was a particularly difficult country in which to attempt this because it really isn't a state. It is a sort of a nation. Well, it is a nation that ironically comes together primarily when there are foreigners in the country to expel the foreigners.

[laughter]



So, we supplied cohesion with an objection to remove the element of the cohesion. It's a country that otherwise has been governed by a series of balances between various feudal entities.

So, and, of course, a religious orientation and a cultural tradition, which was not compatible, at least with the rapid achievement with our objectives. It was compounded by the fact that it was bordered by Pakistan, whose strategic objectives in Afghanistan were not identical with our own and could not be, from their point of view, identical with our own. The result of this was the existence of sanctuaries along the border that were not only tolerated by Pakistan, but, to some extent, encouraged. In a region where the exercise of Pakistan authority would have been difficult even under the best of circumstances, because, even under British rule, there was not complete control of the border regions.

Now, in all [unintelligible] in which we have been engaged and which others have been engaged, it's, [unintelligible] where it was one when there were sanctuaries within reach of the guerrillas. And that's in the nature of things because guerrillas don't have to fight unless they feel they're ready. So, it enables them to conduct their classical strategy of high point supply and get resupplied, and they cannot be worn down. We went through this in Vietnam and it's enshrined in the endless debate about Cambodia. But, when somebody mentioned, when you, that we had 1,800 casualties in 10 years in Afghanistan, the Nixon administration had 1,800 casualties in one month in, when they came into office, in the first three weeks in office, more than 1,800 causalities, and then decided to go after the sanctuaries in Cambodia.

But, the problem is -- I'm not arguing now which measures were right. I'm talking about the strategic dilemma. So, the fundamental political objective that two American administrations of both parties had announced it's, in my view, not achievable under those conditions, and I think has been recognized by President Obama by, in effect, setting a deadline of 2014 for the withdrawal of our combat forces, and, also, that's been the attitude of NATO.

But, the extrication from a war like this is extremely difficult. For one thing, during the combat phase, one has accumulated commitments to people who, in reliance of others, have thrown in their lot with us, and who one should not abandon, and who has certain obligations. This is inherent in the problem. It was true in Vietnam. I'm sure it's true in Iraq and perhaps some merit here.



But the question is, “How does one extricate oneself from such a situation, without a complete collapse of the American position?” And the collapse of the position is not a question of indifference. In Vietnam, which I know best, there was the belief that the defense of the free world against Cold War pressures depended to some extent on American credibility. In Afghanistan the judgment is bound to be that whatever one may think about the original decision, at this moment, history will not stop at American withdrawal, and that the evolution of what Jane called “greater Asia,” will be importantly affected by how the Afgan crisis of the Afghan war ends. And then I’m sure it’s very much on their minds of our policymakers, as they’re approaching this problem, the -- it’s of course possible to withdraw our forces. But the issue that one has to address as a policymaker is what restraints will there be if once our forces are withdrawn, and who are the principle actors going to be involved? Now there we have a different situation in Afghanistan than what we had in Vietnam and Europe. It’s different in two ways. One, all the surrounding countries are immediately affected by the outcome in Afghanistan. And one could say even more directly affected than the United States will be. And therefore, if this were a class in political science and not in general discussions of strategy, one would say in a normal outcome all the surrounding countries should be participants in the outcome. And because whether they agree to participate in the outcome or not, they will be affected by the outcome. And I will even go a step further, I would say the less they participate in the outcome, the more they will be affected. So nobody can simply withdraw. Pakistan of course wants Afghanistan at a strategic rear area, and it can never be oblivious to a group like the Taliban -- religiously based, which is also the basis of its own state and its own position vis-à-vis India. So, they will always be somewhat sympathetic to the Taliban. But they face the risk that if there is -- if withdrawal of American forces becomes the only objective -- that others will be affected. Will begin to intervene on their part. And one of those countries is bound to be India. One of the countries will be fully be affected if the outcome of the Afghan war is a tremendous impetus behind Jihadism. And if the lesson that people accept the countries like the United States, who stand for stability and the rules-based system, are forced to withdraw from Afghanistan after Iraq, after Vietnam, that therefore to challenge international order as defined by is not a great risk. And that those countries like India, who in a way participate in the same system, can also be tackled and therefore one could expect, and surely the Indians will expect, that a collapse of Afghanistan would lead to a greater pressure on Kashmir and also



within India. China is concerned about Sin Cheng [spelled phonetically]. Russia has already demonstrated its concern by invading for 10 years and the only restraint on it is its previous experience. The two likely outcomes of an unconstrained disintegration of Afghanistan, mainly that the pressures on surrounding countries will increase, and that the national actions of surrounding countries will magnify and you could therefore get a line running through Afghanistan on ethnic lines with the Pakistan and Pashtun each going to Pakistan and India, Russia and whoever else -- China -- and even Iran has a parallel interest. So those are the realities and the question is not whether these countries will assert their interests, but whether they will do it in a vacuum or whether they will do it as part of a political settlement. That gets me to my last point. I keep reading in the newspapers that the negotiations -- that we are trying to negotiate with the Taliban. And I have no objection in principle with negotiating with the Taliban. But I will point out, for the purpose of ending the war, it is the wrong sequence of events. That for the purpose of ending the war the first negotiation ought, in my view, to be with surrounding countries because the Taliban, of all the possible negotiating partners, has the greatest interest in getting us out and the least interest in maintaining the subsequent agreement. And it’s the country, if it’s a group on which we have the least pressures available after an agreement. And so I think if there is a negotiation with the Taliban, it should be in the framework of a multilateral, regional negotiation in which all the surrounding countries accept terms. And those terms should concern the interests they all have in common, which is to prevent terrorist activities and whatever common interests they could generate -- maybe drug trade. That would be my view as to the best way to proceed. I would, however, also say having been involved in the termination of a war, whatever administration is doing it should be given some scope and some sympathy in its effort, because if you negotiate while your forces are withdrawing, you’re not in a great negotiating position. And if the expectation of everybody is that you are leaving, it makes it that much tougher and so one does not accelerate the process by bring pressure on the government to move even faster. And I would address this injunction to my party’s candidates as much as to anyone else. The fundamental principles should be the same regardless of which party, namely to create a framework that can be sustained by some group that has an interest in preserving it. To remember that if you don’t create that framework, history will not stop but it will lead to the interaction of all these elements that I’ve described. Out of which then the same framework will be distilled, except at a higher cost. This seems to be a lesson



humanity is incapable of learning. But it is the basic lesson to be drawn. And having once in twenty times that I would talk no longer than ten minutes, I approve that this is a physical impossibility for me. Thank you very much.

[applause]

Jane Harman:You are an extraordinary man. Thank you very, very much. You could have heard a pin-drop in this room, we were so rapt. I haven’t taken so many notes since I was in college. I want to introduce our three next panelists, who have the unenviable task of responding to this extraordinary assessment. Frank Ruggiero is the Deputy Special Representative and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is a career civil servant and has served in several positions in the State Department and at Commerce. He holds a degree in Middle East affairs, which prepared him well obviously for South Asia, from American University. And Frank why don’t you take the next step and kind of assess where we are in this negotiating track, and kind of respond, looking forward and beginning tomorrow, and up through 2014.

Frank Ruggiero: Sure. What I thought I could do was just talk a little bit about the Secretary’s diplomatic strategies she laid out in February, and where we are in that process and what looks like going through at least to Chicago with the NATO summit in May of 2012. I would just go back for a quick second to what the core US objectives were when the President announced the military surge in December of 2009. It was to go after the sanctuaries in Pakistan against Al-Qaeda and to roll back the momentum of the Taliban so that the Taliban would not take power in Afghanistan and allow Al-Qaeda to come back in. But I think that the administration has decided that at least the core objective in Pakistan -- the killing of Bin Laden and the tremendous success we’ve had over the past couple months against more junior leadership of Al-Qaeda, that we’re on track against Al-Qaeda there. In Afghanistan the military forces went in 2009 and in 2010 and I think we’ve successfully pushed back the momentum of the Taliban and reversed it in some areas, and really set the stage for two things. One is increasing Afghan sovereignty through a transition process that was agreed upon by our NATO colleagues enlisted in 2009, and then to begin a reconciliation process and a regional diplomatic effort to bring the conflict to a conclusion in our interest. On the transition question, the first tranche of provinces and districts in Afghanistan have transitioned Afghan security lead, and we expect another tranche



to be announced shortly. I take Dr. Kissinger’s point completely that the transition of security lead is a challenge, because underlying that are the political realities in Afghanistan, the political conflict in Afghanistan, so we think that you have to have a reconciliation process to make the transition, that’s going to happen on the security side, irreversible and permanent. But it’s a very distinct challenge, to be able to transition security and come up with a political solution to some of the underlying problems at the same time. In terms of where we are in the diplomatic track, the Secretary was very clear in her testimony when she was in Afghanistan just 10 days ago, that the United States now is in the position to fight, talk and to build. What the Secretary’s trying to get at again is the problem that Dr. Kissinger has raised, is how do you marry diplomatic and military activities in a conflict in an effort to end the conflict. In terms of the diplomatic track, we kind of see it in four aspects. There’s the internal Afghan conversation that has to happen, and this is a conversation that has to happen among Afghans that are currently not in the insurgency, and Afghans in the insurgency. So this is basically a conversation that needs to happen within the Karzai government and the Taliban. US efforts to have open dialogues to the Taliban are ongoing. The Secretary of State talked about recent contacts the United States have had with the Haqqani network for example. We continue to talk to a range of people in the region to try to get the Afghans together, so the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan. At the same time we have an effort to try to get the Pakistanis, the Afghans and the United States in the room to start talking about trilateral level, about some of the basics of the conflict, the safe haven issue. So the Secretary was in Pakistan and in Afghanistan she was very clear that we had to put additional network on the Haqqani network on both sides of the border. I think it’s a good sign that, after the fallout in the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan after the killing of Rabbani that President Karzai and President Zardari will meet each other today, I think they’ve already met, in Istanbul, preparing the way for the Istanbul conference tomorrow. The third element of the diplomacy is really the regional track that Dr. Kissinger has pointed to. Tomorrow in Istanbul will be the first aspect of this and I agree completely with Dr. Kissinger that no state in the region is going to benefit from a government in Kabul that’s dominated by the Taliban. That is not in anyone’s interest. What we want to come out of Istanbul is a regional agreement to support the transition process in Afghanistan, to reiterate their support for Afghan sovereignty and for political resolution. I think the US decision announced the president in June to begin the withdrawal of American forces



has crystallized for the neighbors that this is a problem that is theirs. That they need to start taking actions to address the conflict in Afghanistan. That’s difficult to do, they have to overcome a lot of old suspicions, but this is what we’re working for in Istanbul. And then later on this year we’ll have an event in Bann, in Germany, which will really be an effort by the German government with the Afghan government to try to bring the international community together to show its long-term commitment on the civilian side to Afghanistan. So I would just leave it there.

Jane Harman:Thank you very much. Vali Nasr’s next. In all fairness, I might have to admit that both of us have done blurbs for each others’ books. Vali is one of the really great scholars on Islam in this country. He’s Iranian-American, his father is one of the great scholars on Islam as well. He served for two years as the special senior advisor to Richard Holbrook on Pakistan and Afghanistan. And I’d like you to look a little bit at the regional issues that Dr. Kissinger so thoughtfully analyzed, and what else needs to be done that isn’t being done, why we haven’t gotten further in this process after a decade and any reaction you have to his thoughts.

Vali Nasr:Sure. Well thank you very much and thank you for inviting me here. It’s a pleasure being here. You know the initial discussion about regional engagement and diplomacy which the Secretary laid out in February, I actually was then in the State Department and was part of the thinking about this issue. But let me sort of take it as to where we are and then what other problems I see with going forward. If I could pick up on what Dr. Kissinger said, the imperative and importance of talking to the region first. In many ways talking to the region first as Dr. Kissinger said is very key for two reasons. One is that we need the region’s help for any kind of a final framework for Afghanistan and our exit. And secondly if we are leaving, we need the region to agree to enforce whatever it is agreed upon. The problem I see, and this is sort of reflected even in the reactions you see in the region already to the conference in Istanbul, is that we made a decision on our strategy first, we decided we’re leaving, we decided on a set of goals and then we are informing the region about what we want to do and that's essentially putting the cart before the horse and you're already seeing certain resistance to it. Iranians, they don't want to come actually to Istanbul at all, the Pakistanis have been voicing their concerns about the agenda, even Karzai has been



trying to sort of gerrymander the agenda in a way that would fit his needs. Secondly, when we say the region, essentially, yes countries like Turkey, Saudi Arabia et cetera matter, but there are two countries that are really important because of their proximity to Afghanistan and the side of the border. One is Iran and one is Pakistan. We started this war and particularly this administration started this new strategy with having not good relations or a conversation with Iran but at least having stable relations and a positive trajectory with Pakistan. We're leading the region with having bad relations with both of them and that really makes -- leaves open to question as to what it is to achieve in the kind of regional engagement where the strongest relationships you have are with the countries that matter least in this regional engagement and the two countries that matter most, you have actually right now the most difficult relationship.

Secondly, as Dr. Kissinger said, the pulling troops out ahead of a settlement essentially means that we don't have leverage. In other words, the region already believed that COIN was not working, we have a much more positive view of the COIN's achievement than people in the region have and with troops being taken out it's very clear that COIN is not going to be doing any better than it did with more troops and more than likely we're actually have really declare to the region that we're winding down COIN, after a year of subscribing to it. And we're shifting to this policy, although it's not official, it's very clear in the region of a CT plus as they call it, a counter terrorism plus, which is using Special Forces and drones, et cetera to achieve counter terrorism goals. Now this is an untested strategy, it's feasibility on the ground, it's contribution to stability in the region is not seen and already it is probably one of the more larger problems we have with Pakistanis over pursuing this strategy, so in fact it's counterproductive to create, to try to create a regional engagement and that's a problem.

So there is a certain confusion in the region about what exactly is our strategy. What it is that we're trying to sell in these regional forums, so there's a perception there's a lack of strategy and there's a lack of trust in the strategy that we want to implement. And I think in this problem in credibility and trust means that most of the countries in the region, particularly the case of Iran and Pakistan, they are beginning to sort of plan for their own post-American scenario in the region. You're not vesting in our strategy and they don't see our strategy as a vehicle for the realization of their goals. In the



early part of this administration we made a very hard effort to convince Pakistan that whatever it wants to achieve in Afghanistan it can do on the back of an American strategy and we sort of made some tentative gains in that regard, I think that moment is lost and largely I think that the Iranians are divided between disliking the Taliban but also really wanting the United States to leave the region. And the Pakistanis essentially deciding that whatever it is that they want to gain in Afghanistan they probably better off realizing those after we have left. So my sense is going into these forums, these countries are ready to help us leave but they're not ready to support our strategy and that's a very different agenda.

Jane Harman:Thank you very much, thank you. Last but never least, Raji Chandrasekaran, who is former colleague of mine at the Washington Post and has had extraordinary experience on the ground in Afghanistan and is at the Woodrow Wilson Center working on a book on Afghanistan so he is best known for his extraordinary reporting in Iraq and his wonderful book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City.” Obviously, I like to get your thoughts on all of this but also if you could take us a little bit into the military side too, because you've been on the ground watching what the United States has managed to achieve or not achieve and when we look at what happens over the next three years and how do the two, as Dr. Kissinger pointed out, how these two different military and political strategies play out?

Raji Chandrasekaran:I think what we're -- part of our strategy for the past couple years has been plagued by exactly what Dr. Kissinger was talking about, this lack of synchronicity between the diplomatic effort and the military effort, the COIN strategy on the ground really hasn't been lashed up with what the State Department trying to do, what the late ambassador Richard Holbrooke was pushing and now his successor. And I still feel from talking to people who are involved in the fight on the military side in Afghanistan, those in the State Department, despite broader claims of a whole of government approach, there remain some very significant differences among key actors here and that plagues this effort on the US end and it sort of symptomatic of how everybody is sort of plagued by these differences and that remains a significant impediment moving forward with reconciliation. We all know the significant differences within the Pakistani establishment on this, within the ISI, the political leadership in Islamabad. There are significant differences among the Taliban leadership, among senior officials in the Quetta Shura, the degree to which



they have an interest in pursuing talks, even talks about talks, with the United States and with the Afghan government and of course there's significant differences within the Afghan government, between the Northerners, the ethnic Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras and the ethnic Pashtuns.

And so you've got these four principle actors, all of whom are riven by their own internal differences, which makes this an enormous hurdle to cross. I have to agree with everybody on the panel about the lack of leverage, it just seems to be so difficult to conceive of how you really achieve a successful negotiated outcome when you have telegraphed your exit as clearly as we have, particularly with the next trenches of the draw down, plus the 2014 date, which on one hand and I appreciate what Frank was saying and what the administration’s position is in terms of it crystallizing for the Afghans, as well as for the region, a sense of urgency about this, but it also creates this great ambiguity. You know, in a classical sense, the party that sort of most wants negotiations is almost always the loser. How do you get over that hump in this context? And how do you -- on the Pakistani side, a new big part of the administration’s effort is to try to get the Pakistanis to deliver up the Haqqani network and potentially senior officials of the Quetta Shura. Interesting questions emerge as to the ability of the Pakistanis really to deliver them. Is -- you know, are they in fact the veritable arm -- is the Haqqani network the veritable arm of the ISI, as Admiral Mullen asserted shortly before he left office or is the relationship far more ambiguous. And what is the general commonality of interest between what the principle insurgent groups want and what the Pakistani government wants and I assert that in a Venn diagram, there is a large commonality of interest but the circles are not entirely overlapping, which produces another complication and wrinkle for this process.

And just last, before I sort of swing to what might be sort of helpful steps going forward, nobody's really doing an awful lot to generate confidence at this point. Obviously we have actions that have been just the opposite, the killing of former President Rabbani. The fight and talk approach, at this point, it seems to be more about the stick than the carrot and how do you prevent, even if you can get to a point where you can get maybe a local or regional cease-fire, preventing it from being spoiled by various actors in this who have a different outcome. Now all that said, I don't want this to be overly depressing because every discussion on Afghanistan seems to wallow in depression. Let me at least highlight a couple of things that I think might be done going forward and the first -- you know we're starting to see the



sparks in the wake of the Secretary's recent trip to the region and that is a more active American role.

The United States needs to sort of get rid of this fiction that this has to be an Afghan-led process. You know, we cling to this fiction with regard to Afghanistan. These are joint mission -- you know this is an Afghan-led mission, no it's really not. It's an American-led mission with a few Afghans, you know, but in the front of it. This is Afghan local governance. No it's really American money that's paying for all of you people and so we need to make it clear and I think the region wants a clearer American role. It wants the United States to stand up and say “We're going to play a more engaged, assertive role in this.” I think the Taliban would prefer to have more direct negotiations with the United States and I think it also speaks to the degree -- while all the regional players need to be involved -- I'm not trying to suggest the opposite by any stretch of the imagination. They each have such deep suspicion of each other that only I think the United States playing a more active role sort of has a chance with sort of brokering some of this. I think it's been -- I think it's a smart move to offer the Pakistanis a much larger role in all of this. I think even though it will breed concern among the principle Taliban groups, as well as the Afghan government, any sort of attempt at a break out strategy. Try to say look, we're going to deal directly with the Taliban, allows Islamabad to play a disruptive spoiler role, so giving them a clear seat at the table I think is an important step forward.

I think the United States needs to wrap up the strategic partnership agreement with Afghanistan with alacrity and if that means being willing to accept a less than ideal outcome, you know, perhaps softening up on some anti-corruption measures, so be it. We can let the perfect be the enemy of the good in this. And a strategic partnership deal is important in terms of making clear to the region what the US long-term commitments and equities are, in this region. I think the United States has been very clear about what we're taking out of Afghanistan on a military side we probably need to be clearer on what are long-term troop commitment is. Can we make any articulation? Look, now we're going to pulling out but we'll keep 20,000 troops there, 25,000 troops there for some period of time and to make a note of what percentage might be special operators. The few guys that actually are causing the real hurt on the Taliban and giving them whatever incentive that might exist, small as it is today, to actually want to explore potential discussions.



Reintegration, which is sort of the step below grand reconciliation, that is the sort of taking the junior level commanders and bringing them back in, which is very much favored by the military, needs to be synchronized with higher level reintegration. This is part of the Civ/Mil problem that we've been facing where the State Department is looking at the high-level picture, the military's been looking at the sort of the ground level picture. How do we get this commander back in with some of his guys. Now admittedly, bringing in people at the lower level and the mid level creates pressure that helps to leverage your higher level actions but thus far these two steps have been sort of not properly linked and going forward and this is where a better whole of government approach gets you to sort of a better linkage so your efforts to leverage some of these military gains that have occurred over the past year to 18 months, principally in the south, start to put pressure on Quetta, to take more affirmative steps in terms of reintegration and the last point is I'd like to make is think about regional involvement also as a potential lever, particularly on Pakistan. And it's interesting, all the regional players want to have a degree of involvement and in many cases it's a degree of one-upsmanship and how do you more carefully calibrate that.

The Indians, for instance, are very interested in providing more resources for police training. It was brought up in Karzai's recent visit to New Delhi, of course they would like their greater tentacles into the Ministry of the Interior and the National Director for Security. How does -- how do offers like that, how can that be used, to greater -- to compel Islamabad to take more affirmative steps. On the Iran front, getting over the sort of squeamishness in dealing with Iran. All this talk of the new Silk Road strategy, I'm sort of reminded of a trip I took last year and a Marine Osprey flying over the busiest road, at least I've ever seen in Afghanistan and it's a road you've probably never heard of. It's called Highway 606 and it goes from Zaranj, the city in Nimruz province, so sort of kind of out of the way that we don't really have many troops there. It's on the Iranian border in far southwestern Afghanistan. Between that and the ring road, the highway one and it was built by the Indians and it's seen as an alternative strategy for the Indians and the Iranians to connect up to central Asia so they can bypass Pakistan. And you know, that gets one thinking all right, these regional players, they're two steps ahead, in terms of where all this is going. But how do you take interest like that and investments like that and then leverage that in terms of trying to get these players to sit down and meaningfully discuss the path forward.



Jane Harman:Thank you very much. Excuse me, I want to go back to Dr. Kissinger and give him a chance to weigh in on the other three panelists and particularly how you get to this issue of getting the circle so that they're all overlapping, at least enough to produce something. You know, we've been trying and I've, as a reporter, had covered many of the meetings at the United Nations and elsewhere where you try to get the Iranians to the table and to get everybody on the same page and they just never took off. How would we do that? What would you do if you were Secretary of State?

[laughter]

Jane Harman:Now, going to Istanbul and going forward. Really.

Dr. Henry Kissinger:I don't want to second guess what I would do because also I have not been as deeply involved in the details of the issue as my colleagues here on the panel. I would probably put the issue before all the governments simultaneously, but I don't know enough about the situation as it is now. I would probably, I mean I would try to bring about a situation of saying here is the regional problem, and here is what needs to be done and if you people don't step up to it in any case we are going to withdraw but we are going to try to make the withdrawal as constructive as we can and if we can't, with your cooperation, you will have to take the consequences as your own, but I'd say this not having been part of any of the discussions.

Jane Harman:Let me ask you one other question and I want to get to the other panelists, maybe not Frank on this one but was -- do you think looking back on it that the surge was the right thing to do, or was it a mistake?

Dr. Henry Kissinger:No I think the surge, I supported the surge and I think it was the right thing to do. Perhaps there was, during the campaign, too much of a rhetoric that implied that a victory was more easily possible in Afghanistan and so perhaps in the execution of the surge expectations were raised. But I think for all the points that have been made here, the surge will make it easier if we know how to handle the withdrawal. I would -- my tendency would be to put the bigger withdrawals at the end of the process and not at the beginning of the process and I would try to keep



our capability of acting for as long as possible because our principle adversaries primary objective will be to get our forces out and when I was negotiating there was one haunting question that my adversary put before me at the beginning of the process which was “What makes you believe you will be more successful with constantly declining forces than you have been with the forces from which you're starting your withdrawal?” There was no good answer to that. Well we thought we had an answer but the issue is that we have none now. But that is what the Taliban are thinking now and an answer has to be given to that the advantage that we have vis-a-vis Taliban compared to the Vietnam negotiation it's that it might be possible to get other countries to exercise the additional pressure, for which there was not the same incentive in Vietnam, nor in Iraq. I could imagine that if China is worried about jihadism in [unintelligible] that they have an interest that the outcome in Afghanistan is not the most jihadist version. And I would even say that even to Iran, and it's surely true of India, so I don't -- I don’t know. I have not followed the detailed debate. This is what I think we should try to bring about to turn [spelled phonetically] this into a -- an effort of the regional countries, to constrain what they most fear, which is the jihadist terrorist thing [spelled phonetically]. But it's a tactical question, whether you do that by taking a series of little steps towards it, which is what you indicate, or whether you put it forward as a general program [spelled phonetically]. The risk you take with the general program is that if it's turned down, you are then left in a publically more difficult position. The advantage is that it's harder to turn down a general program than a series of little steps, but I want to make clear, I am not here to argue the tactics which are being pursued; I'm discussing the general strategy. And I don’t think we differ very much on the general strategy.

Male Speaker:[inaudible]

Robin Wright:Let me do one quick question, then I want to open it up for all of yours, but so -- if you can keep it short. When you look at this question of reintegration, both military and political as Rajiv pointed out, can you give us kind of a status report and kind of what are the plans to accelerate that, press that, because given the divisions among the Taliban, given the fact that they are armed or supported by outside players, you know, the prospects of that being viable in the timeframe.



Frank Ruggiero: Reintegration thus far has, I think produced around 2,500 or 2,000 Afghans have reintegrated Taliban fighters back into Afghan society.

Robin Wright:Out of how many?

Frank Ruggiero: The estimates vary on how large the Taliban is. I've heard 4,000; I've heard 20,000. It's -- the estimates vary [spelled phonetically].

Robin Wright:So it may be meaningful and it may not.

Frank Ruggiero: The number is -- has grown. There's a significant effort to try to get this done. I think the -- I think the Taliban clearly understands that narrative that if -- they understand the -- what the reintegration would do to their ability to fuel [spelled phonetically] the fighting force, that if you can get large-scale reintegration going -- and we have all tried to support this, from the State Department, in the field, to the -- with acting partners [spelled phonetically] in the U.S. military and there's money for this. The problem is, is how many can you get? And so 2,000, is it meaningful? Yes. If you could get more, you would put more pressure, as Rajiv said, on the Quetta Shura, on the Haqqanis to negotiate because they're losing their fighting force through a reintegration process at a lower level.

Robin Wright:Vali, can I ask you about the -- we'll go back to this -- the regional players, and again, the point of the circles and how you get them in, I mean, we're focused on Iran and its potential nuclear capability which is, you know, a separate issue, but when the Iranians get to the issue of Afghanistan, they think they've got some leverage over us, that they want to kind of -- a grand bargain or some bigger deal. The Pakistanis obviously have their own, you know, political turmoil, political incentives and so forth. I -- you know, I'm just not convinced that that as appealing as it is, that it's doable. Is it?

Vali Nasr:Well, it's difficult, largely because as we mentioned, it's a question of leverage and it's a question that we're already leading [spelled phonetically]. And one of the issues that



actually has happened over the -- since January is that the rising tension between U.S.-Pakistan relations has actually pushed them closer to each other. For all of those people who criticize our engagement of Pakistan between 2009 and 2011, one of its great benefits was to keep the Pakistanis away from the Iranians. They're talking about a pipeline deal; Iran hosted a -- its own reconciliation meeting in Tehran inviting Taliban and also Pakistan. They're -- in other words, you know, this is sort of a moving chess board and we maybe sort of have not been as attentive to this. You know, one of the issues is that we sort of are talking about the regional engagement being about Afghanistan. But actually going forward, Afghanistan is going to be least important piece of this because there are two issues that matters for the United States; one is Iran's nuclear weapons, the other one is al Qaeda. Al Qaeda is in Pakistan and the nuclear issue is on Iran. So, you know, if you look at U.S. strategy going forward, the counterterrorism plus this aggressive counterterrorism is going to be focused on Pakistan. And there is talk of redeployment of U.S. troops along the Persian Gulf to contain Iran. So for these two countries, the issues at the table is not just about what do you plan for Pakistan, the issue is that once the United States is able to actually wash its hands of Afghanistan, what it would mean for them. So it's actually much more about, you know, that's why the Iranians are so focused on no U.S. bases in Afghanistan. They're deadly opposed to this strategic partnership; they would like to see an Iraq scenario. In other words, the political system will make it enviable [spelled phonetically] to have any troops outside of an embassy in Afghanistan and the Pakistanis would not like the United States to have capability to strike at will inside Pakistan after the troops are gone. So this is much more about us rather than about Afghanistan going forward and that actually makes it much more difficult. And as I said, they're very happy to help us leave. They have said this, and in fact, the Iranians have said, "We're willing to support you any which way to go," --

[laughter]

-- but they're not necessarily going to support a -- our sort of vision for Afghanistan which includes a footprint. And as was mentioned by Rajiv and Dr. Kissinger, we're coming to this with already having played our trump card. And then that's why I think what Dr. Kissinger said is very important that we actually push the troop withdrawal as far back as possible, as they call it, "slow and shallow" in the military, because at least that way, you give more incentive to them -- to Iranians and



Pakistanis to be cooperative if they want to see, you know, some of their interests protected.

Robin Wright: And I want to get back to this question of the surge, because the Iranians and the Pakistanis know how vulnerable we are, was it a mistake?

Rajiv Chandrasekaran:Well, I think with -- I think one key misstep was not syncing the diplomatic surge and the military surge. You know, we -- President Obama announced the troop surge on December 1, 2009 at West Point. The real -- the start of the American diplomatic strategy on reconciliation really wasn’t articulated until was it February of 2011 in the speech that Secretary Clinton gave at the Asia Society as a eulogy for Richard Holbrooke that was, you know, crafted in part by these two men sitting to my right. It was a very good speech; it was missed by most people because we were all focused on Tahrir Square at that moment, but, you know, so we had an 11-month gap. And so, you know, you lose this window of great leverage. I think that, you know, if the surge came with the condition, that all those troops had to be back by a date certain, it really deprived -- I mean, yes, you created some additional, you know, white space on the battlefield, but long term, you know, you were sending the message that this wasn't sustainable and you were going. You know, a lot of smart people I talk to have advocated what the United States needs to do is advocate a sustainable go long strategy, recognizing the political support issue at home, recognizing the cost, but telegraphing what those long-term equities are. And if it simply is delaying the remainder of those troops coming home until the end or whatnot, making that clear. Otherwise, you really aren't able to capitalize on the security gains of the surge in the diplomatic sphere.

Robin Wright: Great. I want to open it up now to questions. Let's start in the -- way in the back here. You want to wait for the mic, please? Please identify yourself and your organization.

Randall Doyle:I'm Randall Doyle, I work for the State Department in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. I'd like the gentlemen, particularly Dr. Kissinger, but the other gentlemen as well because you're quite good -- is to talk more about Pakistan.

[laughter]



Robin Wright:[inaudible]

Randall Doyle:It seems like all the strategy, the troop surge, diplomatic, all these things you're talking about -- none of it's going to succeed unless Pakistan somehow is stabilized and becomes somewhat of a reliable partner in this effort in this area. As long as Pakistan is not, you know, on the same page as the rest of us, the relations hip with India, Afghanistan, United States, Central Asia, is going to be completely volatile and unstable. Could you talk a little bit more about Pakistan and what has to be done there because to me, the key player in this whole situation is Pakistan. If Pakistan's not on board, nothing's going to work in that region.

Robin Wright:Thank you.

Dr. Henry Kissinger:Well, first of all, let me say I have not thought about the details of this as much as about other areas. I don't think there's any way of getting Pakistan on board in the time frame relevant to this -- to these issues. The problem of Pakistan seems to me a much more long term issue, namely how they can find a national identity not based on primarily on fear of India. As long a Pakistan policy is dominated primarily by the obsession with India it is impossible to get it into a truly cooperative relationship on our notion of Afghanistan. Now, if Afghanistan theoretically were calm, is it possible over a period of time to bring about a reconciliation between Pakistan and India? It would certainly be highly desirable and would certainly be in our interest. But it is a long term process because the existence of Pakistan came about through that part of British India that did not want to be ruled by Hindus so on both sides of the dividing line huge obstacles have to be overcome and then there's the Kashmir issue. So I don't look at that as a short-term objective of American policy.

Robin Wright:Rob Litwak.

Henry Kissinger:But if any of my colleagues here have a different view of --



Robert Litwak:Robert Litwak from the Woodrow Wilson Center. A question for Dr. Kissinger. A fundamental issue that you've addressed in your scholarly writings, as well as that you dealt with as a statesman, has been how great powers think about peripheral areas.

Henry Kissinger:Think about?

Robert Litwak:Peripheral areas.

Robin Wright:Peripheral areas.

Robert Litwak:Center and periphery and Afghanistan was certainly not -- was considered peripheral area for the United States as a base for Al Qaeda to attack the United States. When you were Secretary of State, you dealt with the issue of retrenchment and the post-Vietnam period and a changed US domestic context at a time of an ascendant Soviet Union. Today, the scene is quite different. There is post-Iraq fatigue, the budget crisis but at a time when there are rising powers, the BRICs, you've just completed a book on China. As we look ahead, where threats can come from peripheral areas, even stateless zones, where the United States has traditionally provided sort of public goods through it's security role, will become increasingly less able to do it. how do you see this rising powers as potential partners for the United States in terms of managing threats that I think, as you argued, are common threats in the coming era, in particular the role of China?

Henry Kissinger:First you have to define what you mean by a peripheral area. And that depends on your general perception of the role of the United States. If you believe that it is the role of the United States to push democratic governments in every part of the world simultaneously, then there are no peripheral areas.

[laughter]

Then your moral obligation is the same everywhere. All you would say then, that strategic considerations of national interest are not important. The only significance thing is whether you're pushing democracy then you will pick the areas in which the most



undemocratic governments are operating as the principle focus of your activity. So I would say first of all there's that question. Secondly, the issue with rising countries. It's -- first to get an assessment of what you mean by how you define their rise, but secondly to get used to one proposition for United States. We have been used to believing that every problem that exists has its solution and that solution can be achieved in a finite period of time. So when you take rising countries like China or India or Brazil, you have -- we have to get used to the proposition that this is not a process that can be terminated and that it will not end with a grand reconciliation, that is the essence of rising countries, that they will step on our toes in parts of the world. That we are not used to having our toes stepped on. So our problem is can we achieve a coexistence and in some cases cooperation with these countries, even while they're rising or even when they level off, become more powerful. What do we conceive it as, need to interrupt their rising and to reduce them to a more manageable level. This is the fundamental strategic issue which we will face, not just in relation to China, but in relation to the world, that we are now engaged in a long-term process that has no end, that brings about constant adjustments, in which of course we will try to gain a maximum benefit for the United States but also understand that the best definition of benefit is one that the greatest number of especially rising countries can share, because [unintelligible] an incentive to maintain the peace. But that is a new challenge for the United States, we've never had it before, because we've been materially so dominant that we could overwhelm most of our problems, or thought we could with resources.

Robin Wright:On the issue of resources, one of the questions from our overflow room is what's the role of US aid in both the short-term but also in the long-term in helping build Afghanistan, in dealing with Pakistan, so forth.

Frank Ruggiero:On the Afghanistan side I would say that prior to this job I was the senior American in southern Afghanistan where Rajiv and I actually met and traveled throughout southern Afghanistan quite a bit. USAID was fairly instrumental, I think Rajiv has a different take on this, on some of the stability operations that were done to bring about, underneath the COIN theory, some stability to some of the areas that the US military cleared in southern Afghanistan. So I think in that portion of what their role was in the conflict that they did a good job. In terms of longer term engagement with Afghanistan, I think we're focused how we can get



Afghanistan integrated back into the regional economy, this is the new Silk Road effort that my boss, Ambassador Grossman has put forward. With Pakistan we have, you know, an aid program that is designed to move the Pakistani economy along by providing infrastructure support. Aid programming is carefully reviewed by Congress and we'll continue to plug away at it.

Robin Wright:Rajiv?

Rajiv Chandrasekaran:I'm not going to litigate the issues of aid in terms of its role with the counterinsurgency campaign but it does face a challenge going forward in terms of how do you really build sustainable long term development and I think what's interesting is some of the biggest investments of late have come from regional players. I mean we all know that it was the Chinese that bid for and got the very large copper mine south of Kabul. More recently, the Chinese have also got rights to some of the Sheberghan gas fields, up in the north and so you're seeing the regional players see if -- looking at the long-term play over there and as yet, a lot of the US efforts still seem to be very short term focused and not looking at over the long-term how do you actually create jobs, lasting employment and prosperity and hopefully the new Silk Road strategy will start to bring some of that about.

Robin Wright: Great. I want to get a woman in here. Go ahead. Wait for the microphone, please.

Female Speaker: Thank you. I heard that speech of Ahran Kham [spelled phonetically] in Lahore, in front of hundreds of thousands, and his main points, we don't want to be the Army of United States in Afghanistan, we don't want to accept strikes on the civilians, and do you think this is a big part of you, of most of the Pakistani?

Vali Nasr:Well, generally, US drawn strikes have been very unpopular in Pakistan, for two reasons. One is that the perception that they do have collateral damage involved of innocent people being killed around targets, and secondly, because it's a national sovereignty issue. And any time you can fly at will into another country, and carry out military operations, it does generate



popular unrest. The rise of Amrahan [spelled phonetically], regardless of what one thinks of him, is actually a warning sign to the United States, largely because our policy with Pakistan is pushing essentially towards a major popular opposition in that country. The economy is not doing well, there's a lot of anger at the civilian government, and this growing anger at the United States policy, regardless of the merits of the arguments, points to the fact that actually domestically, there might be a major reaction, and the Amrahan, only about a year ago, failed to win a seat, about two years ago, failed to win a seat to the Parliament, his party was nowhere on the map. He has come up on a specifically anti-American populist platform, and the fact that he could draw such a larger crowd, that is actually the most important story about Pakistan of the last week, not what we read about the Hacomies [spelled phonetically], et cetera, et cetera. And typically, we tend to miss the big stories, this is one we ought to pay attention to.

Robin Wright: I want to thank you all, I want to go to the panel for one last thought, if they have anything else to add, and we'll end this time with Dr. Kissinger, So Rajiv, have a final thought? Final comment?

Rajiv Chandrasekaran: I think it's low odd on reconciliation, but, I guess don't give up hope.

[laughter]

Robin Wright: Oh yeah. Vali?

Vali Nasr: I think to Dr. Kissinger's point about our obsession with solutions in finite time, I think is a mistake to be drive by the timelines that we arbitrarily oppose on ourselves, within our own domestic, political debates.

Robin Wright: Frank?

Frank Ruggiero: I would say on the issue of leverage, that we've tried to signal that the President announced in December of 2009 the surge forces would come in, he said when they would come out. And then we would try to signal to all the parties in the conflict in the United States will remain engaged, beyond 2015, in a military sense in Afghanistan, and I can't imagine at least to our Prepared by National Capitol Contracting 200 N. Glebe Rd. #1016(703) 243-9696 Arlington, VA 22203


opponents, while they certainly discount the decreasing US presence, that we could continue to put pressure on them on decreased force, beyond 2015.

Robin Wright: And Dr. Kissinger with the last word?

Dr. Henry Kissinger: Well, I've fated my tactical point, but I really think this country needs, needs is a reconciliation at home, and to stop this debate of total self righteousness on each side, the national interest and debating value of this country, don't change every eight years. And the assumption is to be that the basic direction of foreign policy ought to be settled at some point, rather than become the subject of extreme policy and issues, when we have a plain lack of [unintelligible] of the few Americans that have heard of, but it divides people on that issue, and how can we create a framework, in which we will still have practical differences, when at least we can agree on the direction which we are going to go. That in all the debates that I've seen, has been, in several of the conflicts, extrication would have been a lot simpler if everyone could've assume the good faith of the participant, and agreed on the basic objective, there still would have been a lot of practical disagreements. That is what I think the key issue is on this, and all comparable problems. Robin Wright: That's a profound way to end this, very, very interesting session. I want to thank Dr. Kissinger, the panelists, and the great Jane Harmon for organizing this today. Thank you very much.

[applause]

[end of transcript]


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