RETHINKING SECURITY

Robert Caruso and Spencer Ackerman have both offered sharp takes on the issues of classification and secrecy in the drone war over Pakistan. I find Robert’s take especially compelling, as is Dan Trombly’s argument that capabilities like drones for discrete, under-the-table power projection have existed throughout American history and don’t really pose such a threat to democracy as their detractors claim (especially given that, as Dan argues, they are given an de facto acknowledgment in the Constitution).

But let’s suppose for the sake of argument, that the critics are right—it’s bad to have a covert war over Pakistan. It’s an open secret, yet it remains very opaque, and the people have a right to know. This may be true—but it’s also entirely irrelevant.

In my Infinity Journal article on covert operations, I argued that the “covertness” of an operation does not legally or politically make it covert. It was plainly obvious what the US was doing in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and as recounted in the book Charlie Wilson’s War it was also a subject of raucous Congressional debate. It’s also obvious what the Pakistanis are doing in Afghanistan today. This is because plausible deniability is only one part of covert ops. I describe it, within the context of Af-Pak and the Bin Laden operation:

Covert operations give policymakers an option to achieve objectives when disarmament of the enemy through direct military operations (or the threat of those operations) is undesirable. Covert operations often fall short of provoking a direct military response, or present enough ambiguity to constrain a target state from climbing to a higher “rung” of escalation dominance …There are many situations when states cannot, for political, material, or strategic reasons, use their most prominent strengths to achieve policy goals.

Does this sound familiar? Fast forward to May 2011, with SEALs doing their awesome SEAL thing in a certain suburb a few hours’ drive north of Islamabad.

The operation to kill Osama bin Laden is a prominent contemporary example. The leaders of al-Qaeda live unmolested in Pakistan. The United States cannot positively induce the Pakistanis to capture or kill al-Qaeda or the Taliban leadership. Threatening Pakistan with direct military action would be useless, as Pakistan controls a prominent North Atlantic Treaty Organization logistics route and possesses nuclear weapons. Any military strategy to destroy al-Qaeda and Taliban elements cannot be reconciled with other elements of the “Af-Pak” policy, such as nuclear stability or creation of a desirable Afghan state. However, unilateral covert action generated a strategy (the covert bypassing of the Pakistani state) and a set of tactics (surveillance, reconnaissance, and the kill operation itself) to achieve the policy goal of propelling bin Laden into the afterlife.

Covert operations are not covert because of plausible deniability. They are covert because one side wants to influence conditions indirectly, while using force. The other side is content to play back, creating a relationship of conflict at the edges, without escalating to open war.

To get down to brass tracks, the covert drone mission is simply a function of the politics of the Af-Pak conflict. The US and Pakistan cannot oppose each other directly.  Covert war is a mutually agreed upon mode of conflict between the US and Pakistan, in short a reciprocal relationship. Covert war provides both states a means to oppose each other while avoiding war and maintaining the (limited) ability for cooperation in other areas. Of course, the domestic politics of both countries do not support this violent relationship, hence it must be kept boiling beneath the surface .

Arguably, the politics of Af-Pak are entering a downward spiral, since such an arrangement is by definition politically risky and unsustainable. Contrast this with Israeli covert operations, which tend to enjoy wide public support. No one in Tel Aviv will cry foul if a Mossad team of kidon or their proxies blows away a Hamas or Hezbollah operative—or, for that matter, a nuclear scientist. There is a clear connection between the policy and the strategy and tactics that this policy animates.

The policy in Af-Pak is that al Qaeda must be denied the ability to operate. The strategy and tactics, however, are not aligned with the policy because the US is engaged in a state-building mission in Afghanistan. The state-building mission in Afghanistan creates the political, strategic, and operational parameters for the covert war. NATO needs to strike at predominately Afghan insurgents across the border, but can only do so on parameters agreed to by Pakistan. Pakistan wants to advance its “strategic depth” in Afghanistan, and does so in a manner that is sufficient to disrupt NATO but low-level enough to avoid explicit retaliation.

If you want the covert war to end, then the political and strategic conditions that set the stage for it have to end too. Otherwise, by either abandoning the covert mission or putting it out in the open, we unilaterally disarm ourselves in the cloak-and-dagger war. There is also, as Eli Lake mentioned on Twitter, the problem that bringing the covert war out into the open means acknowledging that we are fighting with Pakistan. Given the “passion of the people” in both countries, this may in fact escalate the conflict—a step that is most certainly not in either Washington or Islamabad’s interests.

When the US transitions out of Afghanistan, it can, as Christine Fair noted in her testimony, pursue a more transactional relationship with Pakistan which also opens up different options for resolving the issue of the covert war. The covert war, a creature of US involvement in Afghanistan, will be very much altered by structural changes in the conflict itself. It could end altogether, with the principal reason that the two sides fight resolved. It may shift into a less high-profile spy battle between US and the ISI, with primarily Afghan forces a la MACV/SOG and the Montagnards. Or it could turn into a covert war between the ISI, the Indian RAW, and possibly the Iranian Qods force, of which the US should have little interest.

There’s also the strong possibility that, with more limited interests and a better ability to coerce Pakistan, the US may not need covert tools altogether. If the US policy is simply that terrorism against the US not be tolerated, and no large troop presence exists for Pakistan to threaten, then it can set an easier redline for Pakistan not to cross and create a credible—and non-classified—deterrent.

The argument over covert operations is really one of tactics, when it should be about policy and strategy. Drones, classification, and SOF are just the means. Let’s talk politics.