Word: afghanistan
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That's one reason Obama may face such a tough sales job when he rolls out his Afghan strategy after nearly three months of debate. Following Obama's expected speech to the nation about his plan, General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, will testify before Congress with other members of Obama's national-security team. They'll have to convince skeptical Americans--as well as NATO allies at a Dec. 7 meeting--that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a solid partner in the war effort. That's a daunting task given the allegations of corruption enveloping...
Back on Capitol Hill, Obey is concerned that increased spending for Afghanistan could doom Obama's efforts to improve the U.S. economy. He says the domestic initiatives of both Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson stalled because of the wars in Korea and Vietnam. Says Obey: "We don't want that to happen again...
...Indian analysts believe Obama's foreign policy team imagines India mostly in the context of other regional challenges, particularly the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan. China, with its booming economy and position as America's primary creditor, now carries far more weight in U.S. strategy. "The ground reality is India at the moment does not count for the U.S. in the same way that China and Pakistan do," says Bahukutumbi Raman, a former top Indian intelligence official and head of the Centre for Topical Studies in Chennai. (See pictures of Barack Obama visiting Asia...
...India believe, is a downgrading of their own concerns. Singh's U.S. visit coincided with the anniversary of last year's Mumbai terror attacks, which were orchestrated by Pakistan-based groups traditionally associated with Pakistan's military intelligence organization, the ISI. Obama and his envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, have urged India to make concessions on the decades-old Kashmir dispute in order to help Washington's efforts to get Pakistan to finally deal with the Taliban. But little has been done to coerce Pakistan to crack down on extremists using its territory as a base for targeting...
...More troubling for the Indians than the Obama Administration's prioritizing of Afghanistan was a paragraph in the joint statement released during the President's Beijing visit: it welcomed Chinese involvement in South Asia and spoke of Beijing's ability to "promote peace, stability and development in that region." In New Delhi, this was read as a sign of U.S. acceptance of China viewing South Asia - India's neighborhood - as part of its own sphere of influence. Chellaney sees the statement as a "return to a kind of Cold War thinking where two great powers can dictate terms...