UPDATED Afghanistan Eyeball-to-Eyeball: Obama Administration v. Karzai

UPDATED 1740 GMT: "He's an SOB, but He's Our SOB." Spencer Ackerman picks out the most striking passage --- compromise or climbdown? --- from the US/NATO acceptance of the authority of Ahmed Wali Karzai:

"He is also one of the area’s biggest entrepreneurs, with business and real estate ventures across southern Afghanistan. 'One thing, he is a successful businessman,' the senior NATO official said. 'He can create jobs.'"

UPDATED 0745 GMT: Compromise, Climbdown, or Both? Another article by Dexter Filkins in The New York Times offers the latest in political manoeuvres and signals: "Despite Doubt, Karzai Brother Retains Power".

The gist of the piece is that the US and NATO want Ahmed Wali Karzai removed from Afghanistan's second city, Kandahar, where a US-led military offensive is soon expected but that they cannot force this:

“My recommendation was, remove him,” a senior NATO officer said this week, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “But for President Karzai, he’s looking at his brother, an elected official, and nobody has come to him with pictures of his brother loading heroin into a truck.”

So the spin now is that Ahmed Karzai, who has been on the CIA payroll for many years despite his alleged connections with drug distribution and insurgent movements, will now be used "to help persuade Taliban fighters to give up".

Afghanistan Special: Mr Obama’s Wild Ride — Why?

Finish the sentence: "Can't live with him...."

---
Remember how on Monday, as we were trying to sort out the Obama flying visit to Afghanistan, we concluded, "There is no more political space if Karzai continues to be a corruption/drug/ mismanagement/backroom-dealing problem."


Well, check out the spin, as both Americans and Afghans try to frame the outcome of the Obama encounter with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Tuesday's article by Dexter Filkins and Mark Landler in The New York Times:

This month, with President Hamid Karzai looking ahead to a visit to the White House, he received a terse note from aides to President Obama: Your invitation has been revoked.

The reason, according to American officials, was Mr. Karzai’s announcement that he was emasculating an independent panel that had discovered widespread fraud in Mr. Karzai’s re-election last year.

Incensed, Mr. Karzai extended an invitation of his own — to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, who flew to Kabul and delivered a fiery anti-American speech inside Afghanistan’s presidential palace.

“Karzai was enraged,” said an Afghan with knowledge of the events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue. “He invited Ahmadinejad to spite the Americans.”

The dispute was smoothed over only this week, when Mr. Obama flew to Kabul for a surprise dinner with Mr. Karzai. White House officials emphasized that the most important purpose of Mr. Obama’s trip to Afghanistan was to visit American troops there.

But the red carpet treatment of Mr. Ahmadinejad is just one example of how Mr. Karzai is putting distance between himself and his American sponsors, prominent Afghans and American officials here said. Even as Mr. Obama pours tens of thousands of additional American troops into the country to help defend Mr. Karzai’s government, Mr. Karzai now often voices the view that his interests and the United States’ no longer coincide.

Let's decode those opening paragraphs....

US Side: Karzai has been a naughty boy. We had to slap him down with the non-invite to Washington. (And, if you go by Monday's spin, President Obama went a step further with the warning to Karzai in their 20 to 30-minute meeting: No More Corruption.)

Afghan Side: You're trying to slap Karzai down? Didn't work.

The Times piece is laden with this conflict. Their chief US source, "a senior official", spoke in serious tones, “We’re trying to find this balance of keeping pressure on him, without setting up bluffs that can be called. We’re coming to terms with dealing with the Karzai we have.” Filkins and Landler add, however --- presumably reflecting the American officials --- "Mr. Karzai has resisted all but the most feeble gestures" in fighting graft.

Nothing new in that theme, however. Go back to Hillary Clinton's effort a year ago to clip Karzai with the warning that the Obama Administration would not accept continued failure in governance; if it continued, the US would be looking towards a more effective Government. (Newsflash: all that Washington pressure ended in a Karzai win in a suspect election.)

No, what distinguishes this article are the Afghan sources. Consider this picture:

In January, Mr. Karzai invited about two dozen prominent Afghan media and business figures to a lunch at the palace. At the lunch, he expressed a deep cynicism about America’s motives, and of the burden he bears in trying to keep the United States at bay.

“He has developed a complete theory of American power,” said an Afghan who attended the lunch and who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. “He believes that America is trying to dominate the region, and that he is the only one who can stand up to them.”

Mr. Karzai said that, left alone, he could strike a deal with the Taliban, but that the United States refuses to allow him. The American goal, he said, was to keep the Afghan conflict going, and thereby allow American troops to stay in the country.

The description of the lunch was largely affirmed by two other Afghans who attended and who also declined to be identified. The person who described the meeting said some of the participants urged Mr. Karzai to reconsider his views and his plans to be more assertive with the United States. “We are a poor country,” he said. “We are depending on the United States.”

There are two theories racing amongst US observers of Afghanistan. One is that the sources are Karzai allies who are putting out the President's message that he is not bowing to Washington. The other is that the sources are not part of Karzai's inner circle and are talking to US reporters because they are worried the President will alienate the Obama Administration once and for all, leaving Kabul to face the insurgent threat on its own.

Pick either and the central message is still the same. Karzai is confident enough and angry enough (and arrogant enough?) that he is not necessarily going to carry out the repentance that was supposedly demanded by Obama on Sunday. On the eve of the reported US offensive to break the insurgency in Kandahar, he is going to complete the phrase for Washington, "Can't live with him....

....Can't live without him."

Afghanistan Special: CIA Memorandum "How to Sell the War to Europe"

Wikileaks publishes a CIA "Red Cell" memorandum (other sources have confirmed that it is genuine), outlining how to influence public opinion in France and Germany. The guidance was produced after the fall of the Netherlands Government over the issue of troop deployment in Afghanistan, indicating Washington's fears that other European countries could also withdraw political and military support for the intervention.

Marked Confidential/No Foreign Nationals, the document is distinguished by some sweeping assertions:

1. President Obama is a great salesman for the war.

2. "Women" are also great salespeople or, to be precise, the war can be presented as a fight for women's rights, especially to the French.



3. The prospect of disorder from drugs and refugees, as well as Germany's standing in NATO, should scare Germans into prolonging their support for the war.

Afghanistan: US Military Holds On to Detainees

Afghanistan: Sustaining West European Support for the NATO-led Mission—Why Counting on Apathy Might Not Be Enough (C//NF)

The fall of the Dutch Government over its troop commitment to Afghanistan demonstrates the fragility of European support for the NATO-led ISAF mission.


Some NATO states, notably France and Germany, have counted on public apathy about Afghanistan to increase their contributions to the mission, but indifference might turn into active hostility if spring and summer fighting results in an upsurge in military or Afghan civilian casualties and if a Dutch-style debate spills over into other states contributing troops. The Red Cell invited a CIA expert on strategic communication and analysts following public opinion at the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) to consider information approaches that might better link the Afghan mission to the priorities of French, German, and other Western European publics. (C//NF)

Public Apathy Enables Leaders To Ignore Voters. . . (C//NF)

The Afghanistan mission’s low public salience has allowed French and German leaders to disregard popular opposition and steadily increase their troop contributions to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Berlin and Paris currently maintain the third and fourth highest ISAF troop levels, despite the opposition of 80 percent of German and
French respondents to increased ISAF deployments, according to INR polling in fall 2009.

• Only a fraction (0.1-1.3 percent) of French and German respondents identified “Afghanistan” as the most urgent issue facing their nation in an open-ended question, according to the same polling. These publics ranked “stabilizing Afghanistan” as among the lowest priorities for US and European leaders, according to polls by the German Marshall Fund (GMF) over the past two years.

• According to INR polling in the fall of 2009, the view that the Afghanistan mission is a waste of resources and “not our problem” was cited as the most common reason for opposing ISAF by German respondents and was the second most common reason by French respondents. But the “not our problem” sentiment also suggests that, so for, sending troops to Afghanistan is not yet on most voters’
radar. (C//NF)

. . . But Casualties Could Precipitate Backlash (C//NF)
If some forecasts of a bloody summer in Afghanistan come to pass, passive French and German dislike of their troop presence could turn into active and politically potent hostility. The tone of previous debate suggests that a spike in French or German casualties or in Afghan civilian casualties could become a tipping point in converting passive opposition into active calls for immediate withdrawal. (C//NF)

French and German commitments to NATO are a safeguard against a precipitous departure, but leaders fearing a backlash ahead of spring regional elections might become unwilling to pay a political price for increasing troop levels or extending deployments. If domestic politics forces the Dutch to depart, politicians elsewhere might cite a precedent for “listening to the voters.” French and German leaders have over the past two years taken steps to preempt an upsurge of opposition but their vulnerability may be higher now:

• To strengthen support, President Sarkozy called on the National Assembly—whose approval is not required for ISAF—to affirm the French mission after the combat deaths of 10 soldiers in August 2008. The government won the vote handily, defusing a potential crisis and giving Sarkozy cover to deploy approximately 3,000 additional troops. Sarkozy, however, may now be more vulnerable to an upsurge in
casualties because his party faces key regional elections this March and the already low support for ISAF has fallen by one-third since March 2009, according to INR polling in the fall of 2009.

• Political fallout from the German-ordered Kunduz airstrike in September 2009 which killed dozens of Afghan civilians, demonstrated the potential pressure on the German Government when Afghanistan issues come up on the public radar. Concern about the potential effects of Afghanistan issues on the state-level election in North Rhine-Westphalia in May 2010 could make Chancellor Merkel—who has shown an unwillingness to expend political capital on Afghanistan—more hesitant about increasing or even sustaining Germany’s ISAF contributions. (C//NF)

Tailoring Messaging Could Forestall or At Least Contain Backlash (C//NF)

Western European publics might be better prepared to tolerate a spring and summer of greater military and civilian casualties if they perceive clear connections between outcomes in Afghanistan and their own priorities. A consistent and iterative strategic communication program across NATO troop contributors that taps into the key concerns of specific Western European audiences could provide a buffer if today’s apathy becomes tomorrow’s opposition to ISAF, giving politicians greater scope to support deployments to Afghanistan. (C//NF)

French Focused On Civilians and Refugees. Focusing on a message that ISAF benefits Afghan civilians and citing examples of concrete gains could limit and perhaps even reverse opposition to the mission. Such tailored messages could tap into acute French concern for civilians and refugees. Those who support ISAF in INR surveys from fall 2009 most frequently cited their perception that the mission helps Afghan civilians, while opponents most commonly argued that the mission hurts civilians. Contradicting the “ISAF does more harm than good” perception is clearly important, particularly for France’s Muslim minority:

• Highlighting Afghans’ broad support for ISAF could underscore the mission’s positive impact on civilians. About two-thirds of Afghans support the presence of ISAF forces in Afghanistan, according to a reliable ABC/BBC/ADR poll conducted in December 2009. According to INR polling in fall 2009, those French and German respondents who believed that the Afghan people oppose ISAF—48 percent and 52
percent, respectively—were more likely than others to oppose participation in the mission.

• Conversely, messaging that dramatizes the potential adverse consequences of an ISAF defeat for Afghan civilians could leverage French (and other European) guilt for abandoning them. The prospect of the Taliban rolling back hard-won progress on girls’ education could provoke French indignation, become a rallying point for France’s largely secular public, and give voters a reason to support a good and
necessary cause despite casualties.

• The media controversy generated by Paris’s decision to expel 12 Afghan refugees in late 2009 suggests that stories about the plight of Afghan refugees are likely to resonate with French audiences. The French government has already made combating Afghan human trafficking networks a priority and would probably support an information campaign that a NATO defeat in Afghanistan could
precipitate a refugee crisis. (C//NF)

Germans Worried About Price And Principle Of ISAF Mission. German opponents of ISAF worry that a war in Afghanistan is a waste of resources, not a German problem, and
objectionable in principle, judging from an INR poll in the fall of 2009. Some German opposition to ISAF might be muted by proof of progress on the ground, warnings about the potential consequences for Germany of a defeat, and reassurances that Germany is a valued partner in a necessary NATO-led mission.

• Underscoring the contradiction between German pessimism about ISAF and Afghan optimism about the mission’s progress could challenge skeptics’ assertions that the mission is a waste of resources. The same ABC/BBC/ADR poll revealed that 70 percent of Afghans thought their country was heading in the right direction and would improve in 2010, while a 2009 GMF poll showed that about the same proportion of German respondents were pessimistic about ever stabilizing Afghanistan.

• Messages that dramatize the consequences of a NATO defeat for specific German interests could counter the widely held perception that Afghanistan is not Germany’s problem. For example, messages that illustrate how a defeat in Afghanistan could heighten Germany’s exposure to terrorism, opium, and refugees might help to make the war more salient to skeptics.

• Emphasis on the mission’s multilateral and humanitarian aspects could help ease Germans’ concerns about waging any kind of war while appealing to their desire to support multilateral efforts. Despite their allergy to armed conflict, Germans were willing to break precedent and use force in the Balkans in the 1990s to show commitment to their NATO allies. German respondents cited helping their allies as one of the most compelling reasons for supporting ISAF, according to an INR poll in
the fall of 2009. (C//NF)

Appeals by President Obama and Afghan Women Might Gain Traction (C//NF)

The confidence of the French and German publics in President Obama’s ability to handle foreign affairs in general and Afghanistan in particular suggest that they would be receptive to his direct affirmation of their importance to the ISAF mission—and sensitive to direct expressions of disappointment in allies who do not help.

• According to a GMF poll conducted in June 2009, about 90 percent of French and German respondents were confident in the President’s ability to handle foreign policies. The same poll revealed that 82 percent of French and 74 percent of German respondents were confident in the President’s ability to stabilize Afghanistan, although the subsequent wait for the US surge strategy may have eroded some of this confidence.

• The same poll also found that, when respondents were reminded that President Obama himself had asked for increased deployments to Afghanistan, their support for granting this request increased dramatically, from 4 to 15 percent among French respondents and from 7 to 13 percent among Germans. The total percentages may be small but they suggest significant sensitivity to disappointing a president seen as broadly in sync with European concerns. (C//NF)

Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the ISAF role in combating the Taliban because of women’s ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory. Outreach initiatives that create media opportunities for Afghan women to share
their stories with French, German, and other European women could help to overcome pervasive skepticism among women in Western Europe toward the ISAF mission.

• According to INR polling in the fall of 2009, French women are 8 percentage points less likely to support the mission than are men, and German women are 22 percentage points less likely to support the war than are men.

• Media events that feature testimonials by Afghan women would probably be most effective if broadcast on programs that have large and disproportionately female audiences. (C//NF)

Afghanistan: Getting the Real Point Of The Marja "Offensive"

Gareth Porter has an excellent piece up on Inter Press Service, "Fiction of Marja as City Was U.S. Information War," in which he breaks down the media disinformation campaign on the size of Marja:

Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers' homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley.

"It's not urban at all," an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPS Sunday. He called Marja a "rural community".

"It's a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds," said the official, adding that the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghan standards.

Porter is right on, and you should read the whole thing for an idea on exactly how these disinformation campaigns are spread, but I'm afraid in the case of Marja, we might be missing the point. We're complaining that Marja is only an excuse for a propaganda victory while at the same time complaining that the victory won't be worth anything because it's not a city.

As Woody Allen said on a much different topic, "This food is terrible, and such small portions!"



This shouldn't be news to anyone, but Afghans live in rural communities. We're supposedly there to protect Afghans from the Taliban after all. Rajiv Chandrasekaran described the strategy last year in the Washington Post:

The U.S. strategy here is predicated on the belief that a majority of people in Helmand do not favor the Taliban, which enforces a strict brand of Islam that includes an-eye-for-an-eye justice and strict limits on personal behavior. Instead, U.S. officials believe, residents would rather have the Afghan government in control, but they have been cowed into supporting the Taliban because there was nobody to protect them.

Great, so if the plan is to protect Afghans from the Taliban, then you'll want to go where Afghans actually live, right? That would be in "a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds," just like the anonymous ISAF official told IPS.

Big cities like Kabul and Herat don't speak for the entirety of all Afghans, so focusing all of our attention on the major urban centers doesn't do anything to extend the legitimacy and credibility of the government, much less provide security from the Taliban. President Karzai's derisive nickname as the "Mayor of Kabul" was one small indicator of just how well the strategy of focusing on city centers, at the cost of conceding rural territory to the Taliban, was working. That is, not working at all. We also can't discount the effect concentrating on cities had on the Taliban propaganda narrative of western-occupied Kabul (or Islamabad) oppressing the mostly-rural Pashtuns.

In this case, Marja being a small farming community might actually be a positive step. So, ISAF finally went to the population, but are they protecting them? From Military.com:

At least 35 civilians have been killed in the operation, according to the Afghan human rights commission. Spokesman Nader Nadery said insurgent bombs killed more than 10 people, while NATO rocket fire killed at least 14.

Not only are we failing to protect the civilians from the Taliban, but we seem to have killed more Afghans than the militants themselves. Perhaps the Afghans will show their legendary patience, and accept that the government had to massacre 14 of their friends and relatives with rockets in order to have a more peaceful, prosperous Afghanistan. Will they side with Karzai? From the same article above:

"Are you against me or with me?" Karzai asked the elders. "Are you going to support me?"

The men all raised their hands and shouted: "We are with you. We support you."

But...

[Tribal Elders] complained - sometimes shouting - about corruption among former Afghan government officials. They lamented how schools in Marjah were turned into military posts by international forces. They said shops were looted during the offensive, and alleged that innocent civilians were detained by international forces.

But they still said they said they support Karzai, right?

Mohammad Naeem Khan, in his early 30s, said his loyalty is to whoever will provide for him.

"If the Taliban tap me on the shoulder, I will be with them, and if the government taps me on my shoulder I will be with them," Khan said.

So we wind up with the exact same bloody stalemate we've had since about 2002. They'll side with the government, except for when they side with the Taliban. That's not a victory, propaganda or otherwise.

The problem is not the size of Marja, it could be a teeming industrial metropolis of millions, it still wouldn't matter as long as we continue using military force and propping up a corrupt, illegitimate government. Until we have a strategy that doesn't involve violently imposing our pet gangsters' will on the Afghan people, we'll have a hard time even distinguishing ourselves from the Taliban, much less convincing the citizens to take our side against them.

Had enough? Become a fan of the Rethink Afghanistan campaign on Facebook and join our fight to bring the Afghanistan war to an end.

Josh Mull is the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. You can read his work on The Seminal or at Rethink Afghanistan.

The "Violent Semi-Peace": Elections in Iraq, Escalation in Afghanistan

This weekend Iraqis turned out in the millions to vote in their 2010 parliamentary elections. By most accounts, it was a relative success. There were very few instances of fraud or polling issues reported. Several prominent religious leaders, including Moqtada al-Sadr, issued calls for Iraqis to defy "the enemies of Iraq" and cast their vote. And by mid-day, the government eased security restrictions, such as the ban on vehicles in Baghad, although security at polling centers remained tight.

The Day After the Iraq Election: “Politics Takes Over”
Iraq LiveBlog: Election Day

Oh yeah, and 38 people were killed by violence and 73 were injured:

Baghdad bore the brunt of the violence, with around 70 mortars raining down on mostly Sunni muslim areas as Iraqis headed to the polls in the second parliamentary vote since US-led forces ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

A Katyusha rocket flattened a residential building in northern Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 10, officials said, adding that a second blast killed four when another building was targeted by a bomb.

Eight people were killed by mortar attacks or bombs in Baghdad that between them wounded 40. Thirty more were wounded in attacks in the capital and elsewhere in the country.

That's only on election day. On Friday 14 people were killed, 27 two days before that. That's what success looks like in the US occupation of Iraq. That's what we got for the bargain price of $710 billion, 4700 dead Americans and 30,000 wounded, 100,000 dead Iraqis, and millions of displaced refugees.



And that cost is still rising. We still have more 100,000 troops in Iraq until at least 2011, maybe longer, and every day Iraqis are ripped to shreds by car bombs, suicide attacks, rockets, mortars, and IEDs. This is what a New York Times op/ed piece by Michael O'Hanlon and others referred to as a "violent semi-peace":

As 2008 and the Bush presidency conclude, Iraq has settled into a kind of violent semi-peace. The population-protection strategy initiated by Gen. David Petraeus has been a remarkable success on balance. Its logic continues even though American force numbers in Iraq have nearly returned to pre-surge levels.

So a successful "population-protection strategy" leads to the "violent semi-peace." That sounds exactly like the new NATO/ISAF strategy for Afghanistan, premiered in their latest incursion into the village of Marjah in Helmand province. The Christian Science Monitor reported last month:

Top American officials say the two-day-old operation is going well, despite a setback Sunday in which a dozen Afghan civilians appear to have been killed during a rocket strike. That is significant because current US-NATO strategy puts the protection of the civilian population ahead of killing enemy fighters.

Note that slaughtering 12 Afghan people is only a "setback" to the population-protection strategy, which doesn't mean thatthe strategy of  General David Petraeus --- er, I mean, General Stanley McChrystal --- can't still be a success.

And what is that success going to look like? President Obama's envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, told us last week in his press conference:

McChrystal, yesterday in Marjah, in effect said the military phase was coming to an end. But there are always going to be IEDs. There’s always going to be terrorist attacks. Those happen in the middle of Kabul and, for that matter, they happen in the middle of major cities all over the world these days. I have a feeling, however, that some of the energy has gone out of this approach to warfare.

Just as O'Hanlon predicted, the successful military operation winds down into a "violent semi-peace". Oh, but Holbrooke has a feeling that the violence will go away. Good for him. Afghans will still languish through insufferable violence and terrorism, corruption, and a lack of basic human services (we need the schools we built for military operations) while the US Government's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan basically wishes upon a star that the Taliban will follow his gut feeling and abandon the "approach to warfare" that has led to them commanding most of Afghanistan, as well as huge swathes of Pakistani territory.

And just like Iraq, we're paying for every bit of that "violent semi-peace". The current cost is $257 billion, 1700 dead ISAF soldiers, tens of thousands of dead civilians, countless wounded, and millions displaced, and the price just continues to climb. And for what? A "violent semi-peace" where we congratulate ourselves for only 38 people dying in a fiery explosion on voting day, and only 12 people were killed by a rocket attack for the crime of driving their truck on a road in Afghanistan.

This doesn't seem like a good deal at all.

Had enough? Become a fan of the Rethink Afghanistan campaign on Facebook and join our fight to bring the Afghanistan war to an end.

Josh Mull is the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. You can read his work on The Seminal or at Rethink Afghanistan.

Europe Watch: French Warships to Russia

On Wednesday Russia, fulfilling an agreement in principle reached four weeks ago, announced that it plans to buy four Mistral-class warships from France.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that, with the first deal between a NATO member and a former Soviet state, he wanted to turn the page on the Cold War; Russia must be a partner, not a threat. Sarkozy added that the deal will build trust at a time when West is seeking Russian support on issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme:

Can we say to President Medvedev in the morning, "Ah, I trust you, vote with us at the Security Council, work with us on the same resolution against Iran," then in the afternoon, tell him, "No no, excuse us, as we don’t trust you and we don’t work together — we won’t send you the Mistral?

The Mistral-class ships can deploy 16 helicopters, four landing barges, and up to 70 armoured vehicles, including 13 battle tanks, and 450 troops.

Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania expressed their concerns about Russia’s intentions. Estonia’s military chief of staff, Lieutenant General Ants Laaneots, said, "We don't know what they are going to do with a Mistral, are they going to keep them in the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, the northern fleet?" Harri Tiido, the undersecretary for political affairs at the Estonian Foreign Ministry, argued, “Definitely, it would not add to the security of the region. And I think the nations around the Baltic Sea in that case would have to see what they have to do to change their defense planning, maybe; but also, it could influence the defense planning of NATO." Georgia’s President Mikhail Saakashvili declared that the sale is a threat for his country and Eastern Europe.

Some concerns emphasized Russia's new strategic doctrine on NATO, which labels the expanded alliance a threat, and a Baltic war-games scenario last year that included a pincer operation cutting off Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Francois Heibourg, an adviser at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris, while noting that Russia's demand is understandable, assessed, “The Mistral is a considerable strategic tool: Russia's power projection capability will be much increased in the Black Sea, the Baltic, and even far into Asia."