{"product_id":"the-dispensable-nation-isbn-9780345802576","title":"The Dispensable Nation","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA \u003ci\u003eFinancial Times\u003c\/i\u003e Best Book of the Year\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eForcefully persuasive, \u003ci\u003eThe Dispensable Nation\u003c\/i\u003e is a game changer for America as it charts a course in the Muslim world, Asia, and beyond. Vali Nasr shows how the Obama administration missed its chance to improve U.S. relations with the Middle East by continuing to pursue its predecessor’s questionable strategies there. Nasr takes readers behind the scenes at the State Department and reveals how the specter of terrorism and the new administration’s fear of political backlash crippled diplomatic efforts to boost America’s foundering credibility with world leaders. Meanwhile, the true economic threats, China and Russia, were quietly expanding their influence in the region. Nasr argues that, as a result of the U.S.’s flawed strategy, a second Arab Spring is brewing—not a hopeful clamor for democracy but rage at the United States for its foreign policy of drones and assassinations.\u003c\/p\u003e“A brave book. . . . Nasr delivers a devastating portrait of a first-term foreign policy that shunned the tough choices of real diplomacy. . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Dispensable Nation\u003c\/i\u003e constitutes important reading. . . . It nails the drift away from the art of diplomacy—with its painful give-and-take—toward a U.S. foreign policy driven by the Pentagon, intelligence agencies and short-term political calculus. It holds the president to account for his zigzags from Kabul to Jerusalem. . . . Its core message is: Diplomacy is tough and carries a price, but the price is higher when it is abandoned.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“An original, powerful, and provocative critique of American foreign policy under President Obama.”\u003cbr\u003e—George Packer, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Nasr delivers a sharp, sober, fast-paced and absolutely riveting critique of President Obama’s policies in the Middle East and Afghanistan.”\u003cbr\u003e—Robert Kagan, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution and author of \u003ci\u003eThe World America Made\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“An indispensable book. Taking us into the secretive world of high-level American foreign policy, Vali Nasr shares astounding, previously unrevealed details about the Obama administration’s dealings with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. Nasr doesn’t just spill secrets—he also charts a path forward, advancing an insightful prescription for how the United States can regain its lost influence. This provocative story is a must-read for anyone who cares about America’s role in the world.”\u003cbr\u003e—Rajiv Chandrasekaran, author of \u003ci\u003eLittle America\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eImperial Life in the Emerald City\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A pugnacious book. . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Dispensable Nation\u003c\/i\u003e is strongest when Nasr lays into the Obama administration’s policies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, three countries he knows exceptionally well, and on which he worked day-to-day at the State Department.”\u003cbr\u003e—\u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Vali Nasr was in the room during key moments of the Obama administration’s first two years as it faced some of its most important foreign policy challenges. His portrayal of strategic confusion inside Obama’s White House is devastating and persuasive. Nasr writes with the dispassion of one of the United States’ leading experts on the Middle East and South Asia and with the insider knowledge he gained as a senior adviser to Richard Holbrooke, the legendary diplomat. Nasr asserts that the Obama White House didn’t really believe in diplomacy in its dealings with the Afghans and Pakistanis and he makes his case with great cogency and clarity in this indispensable book.”\u003cbr\u003e—Peter Bergen, author of \u003ci\u003eManhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden, from 9\/11 to Abbottabad\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Dispensable Nation \u003c\/i\u003eis an important wake-up call by a thoughtful, astute and deeply knowledgeable scholar and policymaker. Anyone interested in the Middle East, China, or the future of American power should read it immediately and think hard about its message.”\u003cbr\u003e—Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bert G. Kerstetter ‘66 University Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and former Director of Policy Planning, U.S. Department of State, 2009-2011\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An impressive \u003ci\u003etour d’horizon\u003c\/i\u003e which includes a personally frank eulogy to Richard Holbrooke’s failed efforts to shape U.S. policy in Afghanistan, revealing insights into White House vs. State Department collisions over U.S. strategy, and a sweeping review of the escalating geopolitical challenges the U.S. needs to address more intelligently in the Middle East, the Far East, and especially Iran. Gutsy, intriguing, and challenging.”\u003cbr\u003e—Zbigniew Brzezinski\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Vali Nasr is without peer in explaining how and why political order is crumbling across the Middle East, and how and why China may reap the spoils. Along the way, he lays out in never-before-told, granular detail why President Obama’s first term was such a disappointment regarding foreign policy.”\u003cbr\u003e—Robert D. Kaplan, chief geopolitical analyst, Stratfor, and author of \u003ci\u003eThe Revenge of Geography\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[A] vivid firsthand account of White House policymaking...Nasr’s shrewd, very readable analyses of byzantine Middle Eastern geo-politics are superb.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Publishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“An informed, smoothly argued brief that will surely rattle windows at the White House.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e—Kirkus Reviews,\u003c\/i\u003e starred review\u003cp\u003eVali Nasr is Dean of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Shia Revival\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eForces of Fortune\u003c\/i\u003e. From 2009 to 2011, he served as Senior Advisor to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. A Nonresident Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributor to Bloomberg View, he lives in Washington, D.C.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eExcerpted from the hardcover edition.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfghanistan\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Good War Gone Bad\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn late 2011,  fighting in Afghanistan and frozen relations with Pakistan were  endangering the president’s plans to wrap up the Afghan war. The  administration decided that it could use China’s help. After all, the  Chinese should want a stable Afghanistan, and should be worried about  Pakistan, too. Beijing had made fresh investments in Afghanistan’s  mining sector, which appeared set for massive growth after the 2010  discovery of vast new mineral riches.1 And China had long and deep  economic ties with Pakistan. So the administration asked a veteran  diplomat, an old China hand, to reach out to the Chinese leadership. The  diplomat made the rounds in Beijing, meeting with the Chinese  president, premier, foreign minister, and a host of other political  players. Their answer was clear and unequivocal: “This is your problem.  You made this mess. In Afghanistan more war has made things much worse,  and in Pakistan things were not so bad before you started poking around.  We have interests in this area, but they do not include pulling your  chestnuts out of the fire. We will look after our own interests in our  own way.” In short, “You made your own bed, now lie in it.” Once they  were done pushing back, they invariably asked, “What is your strategy  there, anyway?”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAfghanistan is the “good war.” That was what  Barack Obama said on the campaign trail. It was a war of necessity that  we had to wage in order to defeat al-Qaeda and ensure that Afghanistan  never harbored terrorists again.2 Obama took up promoting the Afghan war  at least in part as an election-year tactic, to protect himself against  perennial accusations that Democrats are soft on national security  issues. Branding Afghanistan as a “war of necessity” gave him cover to  denounce the Iraq war as a “war of choice” that must be brought to an  end.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eObama’s stance was widely understood at home and abroad to  mean that America would do all it could in Afghanistan—commit more money  and send more troops—to finish off the Taliban and build a strong  democratic state capable of standing up to terrorism.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFour years  later, President Obama is no longer making the case for the “good war.”  Instead, he is fast washing his hands of it. It is a popular position at  home, where many Americans, including many who voted for Obama in 2008,  want nothing more to do with war. They are disillusioned by the ongoing  instability in Iraq and Afghanistan and tired of eleven years of  fighting on two fronts. They do not believe that war was the right  solution to terrorism and have stopped putting stock in the  fearmongering that the Bush administration used to fuel its foreign  policy. There is a growing sense that America has no interests in  Afghanistan vital enough to justify a major ground presence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt  was to court public opinion that Obama first embraced the war in  Afghanistan. And when public opinion changed, he was quick to declare  victory and call the troops back home. His actions from start to finish  were guided by politics and they played well at home. But abroad, the  stories we tell to justify our on-again, off-again approach to this war  do not ring true to friend or foe. They know the truth: that we are  leaving Afghanistan to its own fate. Leaving even as the demons of  regional chaos that first beckoned us there are once again rising to  threaten our security.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen President Obama took office, the  Afghan war was already eight years old. America went to Afghanistan in  October 2001, less than a month after 9\/11, to eliminate al-Qaeda. A  quick victory made it possible to imagine a hopeful future there after  more than two decades of civil war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith international help,  Afghanistan got a new constitution, a new government, and a new  president whom the West celebrated as an enlightened partner in the  effort to rebuild the country. President Hamid Karzai cut a dashing  figure, debonair and progressive, the avatar of America’s goal to free  the Muslim world from the clutches of extremism. Even the designer Tom  Ford had something to contribute, anointing Karzai “the chicest man on  the planet today.”3\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMeanwhile, the Taliban and al-Qaeda had  retreated to Pakistan,4 seeking refuge in the country’s northwesternmost  region: the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), an uncertainly  governed and ruggedly mountainous region the size of Massachusetts that  is home to about 4 million Pashtun tribespeople. Consequently, while  Washington was looking to build a new democratic and forward-looking  Afghanistan to act as a bulwark against terrorism, it also relied on a  close relationship with Pakistan to hound al-Qaeda in its FATA lair.  Billions of dollars went into Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Bush  presidency, supporting not only counterterrorism efforts but also  democracy promotion, schooling for women and girls, and rural  development.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut the investment failed to pay the hoped-for  dividends. Long before President Obama took office, things had begun to  change. By 2006 the Afghan government’s stride had slowed, and there was  little doubt that war and instability had returned. In that year the  number of attacks by returning Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters rose 400  percent and the number of those killed in such attacks was up by 800  percent.5 In June 2006 more international troops died in Afghanistan  than in the Iraq conflict, more than in any other month since the war  started.6 The Taliban were making a ferocious comeback against what they  saw as an American occupation and a vulnerable puppet government in  Kabul.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy 2008 the fighting had morphed into a full-blown  insurgency. The United Nations used to issue security maps for aid  workers on which green marked safe areas and yellow those areas with  some security problems, and red was used for dangerous areas under  insurgent control. By 2008 large areas of the maps were in red. Many  Afghans thought that the Taliban looked poised for victory, and when it  comes to insurgencies, what the locals think often dictates the outcome.  One Western observer back from Kabul in mid-2008 said every shopkeeper  in the city (the most well-protected part of Afghanistan) thought that  Taliban fighters would be in the capital by the year’s end. Afghanistan  was fast slipping into chaos.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEverything about Afghanistan was a  challenge—its rugged geography, its convoluted ethnic makeup,  labyrinthine social structure, and jealous tribalisms, its byzantine  politics, and the bitter legacy of decades consumed by war and  occupation. But the biggest problem lay across the border: Pakistan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe  Taliban operated out of the FATA, but its leadership had set up shop  farther south in Quetta. They used the Pakistani city’s relative safety  to regroup and orchestrate the insurgency in Afghanistan. Taliban  commanders recruited foot soldiers from seminaries across Pakistan’s  Pashtun areas and ran training camps, hospitals, and bomb-making  factories in towns and villages a stone’s throw from the  Afghanistan-Pakistan border.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMoreover, since the Taliban’s  formation in 1994 the insurgent organization has maintained close ties  with Pakistan’s intelligence agency and received financial and military  support from Islamabad. Pakistani support sustained Taliban military  offensives throughout the 1990s, and even after the U.S. offensive broke  the Taliban’s hold on Afghanistan that relationship continued.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePakistan  has viewed the Taliban as a strategic asset that could keep India out  of Afghanistan and under Pakistan’s control. That makes the Afghan  insurgency a regional problem. It is hard enough to fight an insurgency,  but one that has a safe haven to retreat to within a sympathetic  population and can rely on the financial, intelligence, and military  support of a neighboring country is a tougher challenge still, by orders  of magnitude. The Taliban and al-Qaeda would fight in Afghanistan, and  when things got too hot, they would hasten south across the border to  tend their wounds, recruit and train fresh fighters, and plan for more  war. Indeed, the collective leadership of the Taliban became popularly  known as the Quetta Shura, after the city where it met. The Afghanistan  fight was starting to eerily resemble Vietnam, with Pakistan acting  roughly like Laos, Cambodia, and Maoist China all rolled into one. The  war was taking on a new, expensive shape, one that needed urgent  attention.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBy the time President Obama moved into the Oval  Office, the Taliban juggernaut looked unstoppable. They had adopted a  flexible, decentralized structure that reported to the leadership in  Pakistan, but organized locally. There was a national political  infrastructure in place too, with shadow governors and district leaders  for every Afghan province. In some cases, this Taliban presence was  nominal—the Taliban are almost exclusively a Pashtun phenomenon and do  not reach into every corner of multiethnic Afghanistan—but elsewhere the  Taliban were in control.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Taliban had a strength that belied  their numbers. The U.S. government estimated that in 2009 the Taliban  were no more than 35,000 strong. Of these, only a core of at most 2,000  were battle-hardened veterans of Afghanistan’s earlier wars. A larger  number, maybe 5,000 to 10,000, were in the fight to avenge government  abuse or the death of kith and kin in U.S. raids and aerial bombings.  The largest number of fighters, 20,000 or more, were mercenaries, in it  for a few dollars a day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Taliban had become politically more  savvy and militarily more lethal.7 Gone was their objection to pictures  and music, and in came the use of both in their recruiting videos. In  their statements, the new Taliban claimed to be open to women going to  school. Talk of chopping off hands and lopping off heads in public was  put aside.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOther beliefs, more ominously, were put aside as well.  Steve Coll, the journalist and longtime observer of Afghanistan, writes  that in the 1980s, when Afghan warriors were battling Soviet  occupation, the CIA was desperately seeking someone to set off a massive  vehicle bomb inside the 1.6-mile-long Salang Tunnel. The tunnel is a  crucial north-south link running beneath a difficult pass in the  towering Hindu Kush mountain range, and blowing it up would have cut the  main Soviet supply route. In order to be effective, the bomb would need  to go off mid-tunnel, meaning certain death for its operator. In  effect, the CIA was looking for an Afghan suicide bomber.8 No one  volunteered. Suicide, said the Afghans, was a grievous sin, and quite  against their religion. And yet, fast-forward to 2009, and there had  been more than 180 suicide bomb attacks in Afghanistan.9 The Taliban had  evolved to make Afghanistan an even more dangerous place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShortly  after he took office, President Obama appointed Richard Holbrooke as  his point man on Afghanistan—his special representative—to help him  quickly gauge the situation in that country and come up with a strategy  to deal with it. At the time the military was urgently lobbying the new  president for more troops, needed to hold the line against the Taliban  while Washington thought through the problem. Obama asked for a quick  strategy review—a quick read of the situation—and tapped former CIA and  Clinton White House Pakistan point man Bruce Riedel to lead the  effort.10 The review took sixty days, and its findings (popularly known  as the Riedel Report) argued for beefing up American troop presence in  Afghanistan, “fully resourcing” counterinsurgency operations there, and  getting tough with Pakistan. Holbrooke, who served on Riedel’s  commission, disagreed. He did not favor committing America to fully  resourced counterinsurgency and thought America would get more out of  Pakistan through engagement.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRiedel met the president alone to  brief him on his report’s findings. Holbrooke thought the president  should have heard from more people. Absent a proper debate on the  report’s findings and recommendations, thought Holbrooke, the president  moved too quickly to deepen the war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn February 2009, Obama  announced that he was sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan, buying  enough time for the president and his advisers to determine their next  steps. Soon after, he also asked his commander in Afghanistan, General  Stanley McChrystal, to review the war strategy and outline what we  needed to do to win.11 As General McChrystal prepared his review, the  National Security Council (NSC) pulled together facts, figures, opinion,  and analysis from across the government (mostly from the Pentagon,  State Department, CIA, and U.S. Agency for International Development) in  order to prepare the president to evaluate McChrystal’s  recommendations. The goal was to place before President Obama a set of  clear options from which he could choose.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Obama  administration was facing a bedeviling two-headed problem. Even as the  Taliban were regrouping and growing more formidable, our local partner,  the Karzai government, was proving to be weak and ill suited for the  task of democracy building.12 The shine had come off Hamid Karzai even  before Obama took office. In the administration and Congress’s minds the  smartly dressed, enlightened leader of a new Afghanistan had somewhere  along the line been reduced to a venal, corrupt, and unreliable partner,  and as such a chief reason why the Taliban were doing so well. Whatever  the “new” Afghanistan was supposed to look like, in the real, existing  Afghanistan, clans and extended families mattered. Karzai’s clan,  unfortunately, looked a lot like the Sopranos. The president’s brother  Ahmad Wali was actually the fixer in Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold. He  worked notoriously with both the CIA and the Taliban and had his hand in  every deal and all the political wrangling in that wayward city. Karzai  also patronized an array of corrupt local grandees with ties to the  drug trade. They bolstered his rule and he gave them the means to line  their pockets while abusing the local population.13\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAid workers,  members of Congress, ordinary Afghans, and ordinary Americans alike were  angry and frustrated, but the situation regarding corruption tended to  be misunderstood. Yes, there was waste and graft, and millions were  embezzled. But it was also true that Afghanistan was still a tribal  society in which tribal leaders and local bigwigs saw it as their duty  to take from the state resources for their community. Karzai felt the  need to satisfy that demand to survive at the top. That sort of  corruption is not alien to politics, and certainly not in Afghanistan.14","brand":"Anchor","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304322912485,"sku":"NP9780345802576","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345802576.jpg?v=1767739034","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-dispensable-nation-isbn-9780345802576","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}