Military

By Peter Feaver

President Obama has said that he is very angry about the leaks coming out of Afghan Strategy Review 2.0:

"I think I'm angrier than Bob Gates about it," Mr. Obama replied. "We have deliberations in the situation room for a reason; we're making life and death decisions that affect how our troops are able to operate in a theater of war. For people to be releasing info in the course of deliberations is not appropriate."

"A firing offense?" Reid inquired.

"Absolutely," Mr. Obama responded.

His anger is understandable, and I have some sympathy for it. It is hard enough to decide what to do without having these internal deliberations play out on the front pages of the papers. Frustration over leaks is an occupational hazard of working in any administration. Every member of Shadow Government can cite multiple times when the president or other principals expressed similar anger during the Bush years.

Still, my sympathies are not unqualified. The longer the review drags on, the more unrealistic it is to expect that the process can continue to be leak-free. The president is right to want to deliberate leak-free, and the president has the right to extend the process as long as he wants, but at some point -- and I don't know when that point is, but now that we are around day 92 82 since McChrystal initially filed his report, we can safely say we are past that point -- the blame for the leaks must be a shared matter. (Editor's Note: It is 82 days as of today and won't be 92 days until after the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday, which is when the White House hints it will announce a decision ... unless they decide to spring the announcement on the ultimate of late-Friday dumps, Black Friday, in which case it would only be slightly less than 92 days.)

And speaking of assessing blame, with the exception of the original leak of the McChrystal report (the provenance of which is still debatable and I am losing confidence in my own hunch that it was Holbrooke or someone connected to him), it is not too hard to tell who is doing most of the leaking: very senior White House folks (I am thinking assistant-to-the-president-level, and higher). The most informative stories have outlined in some detail the objections raised by VP Biden and Chief of Staff Emanuel to the bigger footprint options. Those stories frame the Biden/Emanuel objections in very favorable terms. Most of the leaks (again with the exception of the initial McChrystal report leak) have had the effect of making it slightly more difficult for Obama to pick the option most favored by McChrystal and the other senior military brass.

I suspect that the president, the vice president, and the White House chief of staff have a pretty good idea who are the unnamed SAO's (senior administration officials) in many of the more detailed stories. And I am very confident that the more junior level officials on the Obama national security team believe that the top rank folks (who have the widest latitude for talking to the press) know who are those SAO's.  

So my bottom line is that I expect that the Obama SAO's will not be deterred from leaking, despite the president's strongly expressed outrage.

Pete Souza/White House via Getty Images

By Peter Feaver

For nearly a week, I have been thinking about a comment my friend and fellow civil-military relations specialist Eliot Cohen made in a Washington Post story about President Obama struggling to come to terms with his role as "commander-in-chief." I am quoted in the story, too, but the part that really gripped me was this quote from Cohen:

With this decision, he's really going to own this war, and he's going to be sending young men and women to their deaths. And when that realization sets in, it's a very grim thing. He may have known it intellectually before, but what I think is happening is he's learning it viscerally."

Cohen's larger point, and the general thrust of the article, is spot-on. Throughout the painfully long and awkward Afghan Strategy Review 2.0 -- with all of the back-stabbing leaks and blame-throwing -- it is increasingly clear that the president is visibly wrestling with his commander-in-chief duties, and doing so at a gut level (vice an abstract intellectual level) for the first time.

I also think that Cohen captures accurately the president's own thinking about the gravity of the choice before him: with his decision, Obama will acknowledge that he "owns this war." I have probably said something similar myself in commentary about the strategy review process.

But the more I think about it, the more I think that this insight is misleading in a fundamental way. Obama may well think that he does not yet own the Afghan war and will only own it once he finally decides this issue. But in truth he has "owned" the war for many months now, and it is a dangerous conceit for the president or his team to think otherwise.

Of course, Obama legally "owned" the Afghan war on Inauguration Day. One could also say that Obama has politically "owned" the Afghan war ever since he decided to base his presidential campaign foreign policy platform on the premise that the Bush team had taken its eye off of the ball of the "necessary" war in Afghanistan.  

But in policy terms, President Obama took ownership of the war when he announced the results of his Afghan Strategy Review 1.0 back in March. That decision, announced with great fanfare and some too-clever-by-half spin, was an ownership moment. At that moment, Obama was "sending young men and women to their deaths," to use Cohen's evocative language.

When it became Obama's war in policy terms, he took responsibility for the success or failure of the war. Regardless of what the president decides in the coming weeks, if America ultimately prevails in Afghanistan, Obama will deserve credit and if we do not, Obama will deserve blame. Historians will endlessly debate how much, but inescapably some credit or blame must belong to the current president.

I think the president is more likely to make a wise decision if he confronts the Afghan situation with eyes unclouded by wishful thinking. One such wishful thought would be if the president convinced himself that he only "owns" the Afghan war once he renders his decision on the current review -- or even more wishfully, only if he authorizes McChrystal's escalation. The truth is Obama owns this war right now, and the sooner he accepts that, the more effectively he will be able to lead the country.  

The world is waiting for America's commander-in-chief, but unlike Godot, he is already here.

MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AFP/Getty Images

By Thomas G. Mahnken

One topic that is likely to arise during President Obama's trip to Asia, if not in his meetings in Beijing, is the continuing modernization of the Chinese military. Asian leaders are privately, and increasingly publicly, concerned about China's growing military might and what they see as a failure of the United States to respond. This year's Australian defense white paper, for example, portrays a future in which China contests American primacy in Asia and beyond. When one of the United States' closest allies expresses such concerns, Washington should listen.

According to at least one high-ranking official, the United States has systematically underestimated the pace and scope of Chinese military modernization for years. On Oct. 21 in an interview with the Voice of America, the incoming Commander of U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM), Admiral Robert F. Willard, USN, told reporters that, "In the past decade or so, China has exceeded most of our intelligence estimates of their military capability and capacity, every year. ... They've grown at an unprecedented rate in those capabilities. And, they've developed some asymmetric capabilities that are concerning to the region, some anti-access capabilities and so on." Willard should know. Prior to becoming the USPACOM commander, he was in command of all U.S. naval forces in the Pacific; before that, he was Vice Chief of Naval Operations.

Willard's observation should be cause for concern, but is not a surprise. Intelligence organizations have a tendency to underestimate rising powers. As I discuss in my book, Uncovering Ways of War, U.S. Army and Navy intelligence in the period between the two world wars underestimated the growth of the Japanese military power not because of racial bias or ethnocentrism, but rather because of the very real tendency to look back on Japan's modest military capabilities and project them into the future. As a result, American intelligence organizations overlooked a number of areas where the Japanese military innovated, failures that cost the United States and its allies dearly in World War II.

I suspect that the same pathologies may be at work today regarding China. The People's Liberation Army of the 1980s and 1990s was hardly first-rate. In recent years, however, China has made real strides, including the testing of an anti-satellite weapon in July 2007 and the development of an anti-ship ballistic missile designed to attack U.S. carrier strike groups. Outside a small circle of cognoscenti, however, perceptions of Chinese military power have failed to keep pace with this reality.

If we are in danger of underestimating Chinese military power, China's leaders are in danger of overestimating it. Some portions of the Chinese military have not seen action since China's 1979 war with Vietnam; others have not seen combat since the Korean War. Although China is in the process of fielding increasingly capable weapons, the military effectiveness of the PLA is very much an open question.

The United States needs to do more to understand the Chinese military. The PLA intently studies the U.S. military; the U.S. military lacks a similar curiosity about them. That needs to change. It would be worthwhile, for example, to translate and make available to scholars a broader array of Chinese writings about military affairs. In addition, the U.S. military needs to devote greater attention to understanding the Chinese military, as well as the strategic and operational challenges it poses. Doing so will not, as some assert, preordain conflict with China. To the contrary, a better understanding of the Chinese military should help us avoid misperception and bolster deterrence. Such an effort should include our allies and friends in the region, who have their own perspectives and their own concerns with China's military expansion.

STR/AFP/Getty Images

By Will Inboden

The leaked cables from U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry this week add a new wrinkle to President Obama's protracted decision-making over his Afghanistan strategy. Eikenberry's cables apparently urge against increasing the US troop posture because of his concerns about Afghan President Karzai's corruption, competence, and legitimacy. Eikenberry and Karzai have long had a poor relationship, so while Eikenberry's concerns are no surprise, the public airing of them at this juncture is. The timing of the cables as well as their leak this late in the process is curious, given that Gen. McChrystal's request for more troops has been known since August, the senior Obama team's deliberations have been going on for a couple of months, and by many accounts the Administration plans to announce its decision within weeks. The cables and the leaks might represent some new front in the administration's internal battles, although there are hints that they might also reflect Obama's own search for an exit strategy. 

This is a further negative side effect of Obama's prolonged and increasingly public indecision on Afghanistan: it exacerbates internal administration divisions as they become more visible and thus less easy to gloss over or repair. It is also fraying relations with allies, especially America's most important NATO partner in the mission, as British leaders experience growing frustration with Obama's delays while facing declining public support for their own troop deployment.    

But the greatest damage may be in Kabul where the Obama administration has taken their Karzai challenge -- the difficulty of working with an erratic and corrupt leader -- and turned it into their Karzai crisis, as the Afghan president becomes increasingly uncooperative and increasingly vocal in his criticisms of American intentions. Criticisms which, as Jackson Diehl notes, may just be reflecting some of Obama's own words. Which is why the White House needs to remember that Obama's rhetoric on Afghanistan has at least four important yet different audiences: the American public; leaders in allied nations; American troops deployed to Afghanistan; and the Afghan people and government. His rhetorical efforts to assuage American domestic anxieties about the Afghan mission might inadvertently also signal lack of resolve to allied leaders and U.S. troops, and needlessly alienate Karzai even further.     

If there is one overriding lesson from Iraq, it is that security precedes political progress. As Peter Feaver observed, the Bush administration faced similar acute concerns about Prime Minister Maliki in Iraq. But then (as now in Afghanistan) it was neither right nor feasible for the United States to forcibly install another leader. And as important, the Bush administration realized that the first step needed in Iraq was to restore basic security with a new counterinsurgency strategy and troop surge. This eventually created the space for political progress and substantially improved performance by Maliki. The parallels with Afghanistan are hardly exact, but the principle remains the same: The first step towards a more honest and effective Afghan government will be protecting the Afghan population and defeating the Taliban.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

By Peter Feaver

Our sister blog, The Cable, reads the tea leaves and has concluded that President Obama has made his decision on Afghan Strategy Review 2.0 and is preparing for a roll-out sometime around the 19th or 20th of November. Senior officials are clearing their schedules, giving heads-up to allies, and generally girding their loins for a major public relations push. But a push for what?

McClatchey reports that, as expected, the president will split the difference between his warring advisors. He will embrace the counterinsurgency approach recommended by General McChrystal and other military advisors. He will reject the narrower approach favored by Vice President Biden and other political advisors. But he will not authorize the upper-bound of military resources McChrystal requested. If the McClatchey report is accurate, the final choice comes close to resembling the option dubbed "McChrystal light," but probably not light enough to avoid a political battle with the anti-war faction at home.

As slow and painful as the review process has been, the hard part is just beginning and the Obama team seems fully aware of this. According to the McClatchey report:

Administration officials also want time to launch a public relations offensive to convince an increasingly skeptical public and a wary Democratic Congress -- which must agree to fund the administration's plan -- that the war, now in its ninth year and inflicting rising casualties, is one of "necessity," as Obama said earlier this year.

"This is not going to be an easy sell, especially with the fight over health care and the (Democratic) party's losses" of the governors' mansions in New Jersey and Virginia last week, said one official.

Persuading the public to support his new strategy will be hard, and the clumsy review process has made it harder.  But it is not impossible.  President Bush faced far more daunting political odds in January 2007 when he opted for the Iraq surge. Some of the lessons the Bush team learned could be of value to the Obama team as they plan their roll-out:

• The media will focus on the numbers, but the President should focus on explaining the strategy and demonstrating his commitment to seeing it through because the numbers are likely to change. President Bush opted for the upper-most bound of the recommended surge of troops -- 5 Brigade Combat Teams (BCT) -- and yet when General Petraeus took over, he actually requested additional troops beyond those. Because Bush never publicly discussed the 5 BCT surge as the "uppermost bound," he could finesse these additional requests without triggering whole new "surge debates" each time. Obama should be careful not to paint this as the "last and final time we will send additional troops." That may be his fervent hope, but he should not handcuff himself to a hope.
• The president will need a convincing answer for why he is authorizing a smaller surge than McChrystal requested. It is the president's call to make, but the experience of the Iraq war is a painful one in this regard. Secretary Rumsfeld still faces scathing criticism for trimming the troop requests of the original invasion -- for appearing to have authorized a bit less than needed rather than a bit more than was required. Obama must persuade the public not to view him as a latter-day Rumsfeld.
• The president and his political appointees, the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of State, should carry the lion's share of the political water in persuading Congress and the American public. But they cannot do it alone, because polls indicate that the public trusts the military far more than the president to "make the major decisions on overall military strategy and the number of troops needed" -- by a whopping 62-25 percent spread. That means that Obama will need General McChrystal to validate publicly Obama's decision, just as General Petraeus validated publicly Bush's surge decision. The Obama team must be ready to call the critics to account if the anti-war faction attempts to smear McChrystal the way they tried to smear Petraeus. As much as possible, the generals should be left to focus on the military fight and kept out of the political fight.
• The president should spend the political capital to preserve bipartisan support for the new strategy. Unfortunately, support for the Iraq surge came down to the slimmest of Republican-only margins (plus Senator Lieberman). Here Obama has a decided advantage and he should exploit it. Republicans are far more committed to a robust approach in Afghanistan than were Democrats in Iraq and Obama could bring them on board. To do so, he should drop the partisan trashing of the previous administration and finally deliver on his campaign promise to seek a genuine partnership with Republicans. On this issue, he will need robust support from the center and the right and he should take the requisite steps to secure it.
• The president will have to accept the unfairness of the media, which will scrutinize his proposal with excruciating rigor while giving a breezy pass to the alternative strategies promoted by his critics. The media never rigorously evaluated the proposals of the Iraq surge critics and so the political debate over the surge was never on a level playing field.  President Obama and his team should expect the same kind of treatment, and indeed may be facing the same chorus of critics. The opponents of the old Iraq surge are girding their loins to fight a new Afghan surge. The Obama team must do more than simply whine about it. Instead, they must take upon themselves responsibility for explaining the myriad problems with off-shore counter-terrorism, McChrystal Super Light, or any of the other alternatives that arm-chair generals promote. By and large, the watchdog media will likely give the critics a free pass.

Of course, the most important lesson is the most obvious one: pick the right strategy. President Bush was able to prevail politically over the surge opponents because, at the end of the day, the surge produced dramatic results on the ground. Had the surge not reversed the trajectory in Iraq, then no amount of domestic political resolve could have saved it.

If President Obama's choice is a similarly wise one, and if he devotes the concentrated effort to explaining his choice to a skeptical Congress and American public, Obama can reverse his Afghan slide. If not, our wartime Commander-in-Chief will face even more daunting decisions down the road.

NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP/Getty Images

By Kori Schake

The Iraqi Parliament has passed a law that will allow elections to proceed in January, and on terms that will make Iraqi politicians more accountable to Iraqi voters and foster continued stabilization of the Iraqi political landscape. This is a huge step forward in the democratization of Iraq; what a pity our own government sees it largely in terms of facilitating our withdrawal from the country.

The United Nations had said last Thursday was the deadline for a law to be passed if elections were to remain on schedule. Many Iraq watchers feared once the deadline had been breached, no law would be forthcoming and elections indefinitely postponed. Some even argued Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was seeking to derail an election law to remain in power in a "soft coup."  But the Parliament acted and Faraj al-Haidari, the head of Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission, has now confirmed to the Associated Press that the election will be held within a week of the original Jan. 16 date (the Constitution requires only that national elections be held in January).

Two thorny issues required solutions before the law could be passed: how to account for changing demographics in Kirkuk, and whether voters would cast ballots for parties or individuals. Both came to solutions that strengthen democracy in Iraq.

Kirkuk is a northern city from which Kurdish residents were purged during Saddam Hussein's rule. They have returned in large numbers since. Kurdish leaders explain the influx as displaced people returning to their homes.  Others, especially local Turkmen and Arabs, suspect Kurds are "creating facts on the ground" for an eventual claim on Kirkuk's oil, should they secede from Iraq. There has not been a census to establish voter roles, increasing suspicions. But Iraqi legislators found a principled compromise: Kirkuk will be treated just like all other places, with a review only in the event of a large voter increase. There will be no seats assigned to sectarian communities (a proposition that had figured prominently in the negotiations). Both Kurds and Arabs are claiming victory, which has to be a good sign.

Many successful democracies have "closed list" elections, where voters cast their ballots for a political party rather than a candidate. Germany, for example, has a two ballot system, the first for an individual candidate, the second for a party to which additional seats will be allotted. But in countries with ethnic or sectarian divides, such as Iraq, this structure of voting deepens divisions rather than encouraging candidates to broaden their political appeal.

The Iraqi Parliament chose open lists so voters choose candidates rather than parties. Significant credit for this outcome goes to Grand Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's central religious figure, who supported this tighter accountability. His beneficial shaping of the Iraqi political landscape from its margins stands in stark contrast to the dictatorship of Ayatollahs in Iran. Iraqi voters can decide whether party standard bearers merit office, weakening parties and rewarding good governance at the local level. An open list will likely extend the time of government formation, but it is crucial in helping Iraq's nascent democracy get beyond sectarian voting blocs an into a more fluid and policy-based governing coalition.

When I was in Iraq a few weeks ago, it was striking how proud Iraqis are to have held free and fair elections, especially the Jan. 2009 provincial elections in which incumbents were tossed out in large numbers. Nearly all mention the contrast to Iran's elections last summer and Afghanistan's this fall. Passage of the election law and the positive political dynamic that has Iraqis opting in to political wrangling as the means of addressing their disputes bodes very well for Iraq's future.

What is less clear is whether the Obama administration understands the value of a long-term strategic partnership with a democratic Iraq that will be the lodestar of representative government in the Middle East. On the basis statements made by the president and Ambassador Hill, I believe they do not. Instead of playing the end game of our military presence in Iraq in ways that stabilize Iraq and make us a valuable long-term partner, the administration seems only to see the value of getting out of Iraq.

President Obama said, "This agreement advances the political progress that can bring lasting peace and unity to Iraq and allow for the orderly and responsible transition of American combat troops out of Iraq by next September." Ambassador Hill went even further in emphasizing the importance of the election law for our timetable. "What is important is that with the election law, we are very much on schedule for the drawdown," Hill said. This denigrates the importance of Iraq's achievement for Iraqis.

Emphasizing the president's timeline for drawdown does not stabilize Iraq's political landscape. It was important for Iraqis that we meet our obligations in the Security Agreement President Bush signed in 2008. Withdrawing from the cities last June confirmed for Iraqis we respect their sovereignty and abide by our obligations to them. But the bombings of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in August, and the bombings of the Iraqi Interior and Justice Ministries in October have given many Iraqis pause to reconsider whether their security forces can handle the threats the enemies of a successful Iraq pose. Now is a time to reassure Iraqis we will support them as they want to be supported, and will be a partner in their long term success.

The September 2010 end of combat operations is an American deadline, committed to by President Obama but not obligated in any agreement with Iraqis. Conditions in Iraq should be the basis for determining the pace of our drawdown, but the president's comments today reinforce yet again his is a timeline not a conditions-based withdrawal. In a delicate political season for Iraqis, our government should be reinforcing Iraq's success, not subordinating it to the president's political convenience.

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images

By Peter Feaver

Surprise?

I am surprised at how quickly President Obama lost confidence in the Afghan strategy he announced to great fanfare in March and how slowly and publicly (with daily read-outs and extensive tick-tock backgrounders) he is conducting Afghan Strategy Review 2.0. I expected that he would find it politically very challenging to maintain support for his war policies, but I did not expect he would make the job so much harder in this way. If this review results in (a) a sound strategy that (b) President Obama wholeheartedly commits himself to so (c) he spends the political capital necessary to forge a domestic and international coalition behind it, then the do-over will have done some good. But it feels like such a positive outcome is slipping away.

Praiseworthy?

The best decision President Obama made in the foreign policy arena is one of the first decisions President-elect Obama made: keeping Secretary Gates. This step took some political courage on his part, because he had based his electoral campaign on a scorched-earth critique of President Bush. Keeping Secretary Gates and some other key figures (such as Iraq/Afghanistan czar Lt. Gen. Doug Lute) ensured a stable transition and meant that for the first half of the year there were very few transition-related hiccups. Given how difficult it is to change commander-in-chief horses in midstream, this is a great accomplishment.

Constructive criticism?

The aspect of Obama foreign policy that most concerns me may be the flip-side of the praiseworthy piece: how long it is taking for Obama to settle into the role of wartime commander-in-chief. It could be that the decision to continue the bulk of President Bush's war council (and thus its policies) reflected a decision to delay taking ownership responsibilities for the war. To my reading, that is the connective thread that stitches together various problematic aspects of Obama's foreign policy thus far: peddling stale campaign rhetoric long after its sell-by date; repudiating his own comprehensive Afghan Strategy Review and launching a new one; developing a tin ear for civil-military relations and wartime alliance relations; spending so little time explaining his national security policies to the American people; giving his political team such a prominent role in national security; etc.

Prediction?

I think it is highly unlikely that the national security team that is in place today will be in place one year from now. I would not want to bet which principal will leave, but the betting money is someone will leave. Personnel transitions tend to be associated with friction and other mischief, and the causal arrow can go in both ways: intra-team friction leads to early departures and new arrivals disrupt established modus vivendi. So my prediction is that the "no drama Obama" mantra will have proven unsustainable by November 2010. This is not something to celebrate nor is it something to dread. Every administration has to deal with shake-ups and I wouldn't be surprised if President Obama proves he can deal with it better than most.

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

By Michael J. Green

In opinion polls, Americans now rate Japan as one of the United States' most reliable allies -- usually behind only Britain, Canada, and Australia. The relationship between President George W. Bush and Japanese Prime Minister Junchiro Koizumi was particularly close, and Koizumi's successor Shinzo Abe often described recent years as the "golden age" of the U.S.-Japan alliance. So it was probably something of a surprise for most readers of The Washington Post and The New York Times to see front page stories on October 22 describing an open spat between Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Japan's new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, over U.S. bases in Japan and the future of the U.S.-Japan alliance.

Hatoyama came into office a month ago vowing to pull Japanese ships out of the coalition effort in Afghanistan; to oppose the U.S.-Japan agreement realigning U.S. bases on the island of Okinawa; to investigate U.S.-Japan secret agreements on nuclear weapons dating back to the 1950s and 60s; and to increase Japanese independence by establishing a new "East Asia Community" that would exclude the United States. Gates' message in Japan this week was no-nonsense: The Obama administration is not interested in renegotiating previous base agreements and needs the new Japanese government to get behind the alliance. Hatoyama's response was defiant: He would not rush to decisions just to accommodate Obama's visit to Japan on Nov. 11.  But Gates' tough stance sent shudders through Hatoyama's Democratic Party of Japan.

So much for the "golden age" in U.S.-Japan relations.

Many Japan experts had urged the Obama administration to be patient so that the new Japanese government would have time to figure out its policies. Some of the same experts are now berating Gates on blog sites for provoking an "unnecessary" crisis with Japan. To be sure, there were good reasons to start off with a gentle posture toward the Hatoyama government. The DPJ won its landslide victory because of the economic crisis and the mounting unpopularity of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) -- not because of the unpopularity of the alliance (supported by 76 percent of the public in recent government polls) or because the Japanese people wanted changes in foreign policy (only 3 percent in exit polls said those issues shaped their choices). Moreover, the DPJ's main purpose is to move toward a more redistributive economic policy in order to steal constituencies away from the LDP before a critical first test at the polls in next summer's elections for the Upper House of the Diet. There is little interest in expending political capital on foreign affairs or defense, where the DPJ is badly divided internally to begin with. It therefore seemed likely that the DPJ would move away from some of its more extreme positions on security policy after coming to power -- just as the Obama administration did. A gentle stance would give Hatoyama the "face" to begin that shift.

However, it has become increasingly apparent that the Hatoyama government cannot -- or will not -- move to the center. The Socialist coalition partners are exerting too much control; Hatoyama is afraid of opening a split within his own party by adopting pragmatic governing policies; and the DPJ has interpreted Washington's gentle touch as a green light to continue slapping around the United States for domestic political purposes while loosely associating with Obama's idealistic visions for a nuclear-free world.

On the Okinawa basing issue, Hatoyama has said he will postpone a decision until next year (presumably after the Upper House elections), but his dithering will only increase opposition to U.S. bases on Okinawa, causing the whole deal to unravel -- whether that is ultimately what Hatoyama intends or not. The half-baked East Asia Community idea has the Chinese and South Koreans as perplexed as it has the Obama administration unhappy, but still sends unhelpful signals to the region at a time when the United States needs its closest ally in Asia on its side. The investigation of secret nuclear agreements may end up a big bore, particularly since the United States has not had tactical nuclear weapons in Asia since 1991. But the special committee of outside academics being established to "investigate" the government's past understanding with the United States could also turn into a witch hunt against the traditional managers of the alliance within Japan's Foreign Ministry.

With the U.S. president heading to Tokyo in less than a month, Gates had no choice but to splash cold water on the DPJ on Wednesday. There is some risk that the ever-populist DPJ will now try to use a spat with the United States to increase votes before the election next year.  But Gates is a shrewd judge of his counterparts. He knows that a crisis in the U.S.-Japan alliance would split the DPJ and turn much of the media against Hatoyama, particularly given the strong public support for the alliance and the growing menace from North Korea and China.  Meanwhile, Hatoyama was letting the DPJ leadership play with firecrackers in a room full of dynamite. Letting the alliance drift posed the greater risk.

On the whole, this could be a rough year for managers of the alliance with Japan. But the future looks brighter. The Upper House election next year will probably flush the Socialists out of the coalition and allow the DPJ to move to the center. The next generation of leaders in the DPJ is made up of realists who want a more effective Japanese role in the world and are not afraid to use the Self Defense Forces or to stand up to China or North Korea on human rights.  Gates did the DPJ a favor by forcing the debate on national strategy that the party was never willing to have while in opposition, and that Hatoyama was eager to avoid for his first year in power.

Song Kyung-Seok-pool/Getty Images