"Obama's Report Card"

Op-Ed, Foreign Policy

April 2009

Author: Meghan O'Sullivan, Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Grade: B+

President Obama deserves the high marks for his treatment of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in his first 100 days. With his trip to Baghdad and his March 27 speech on Afghanistan, Obama has taken ownership of both wars and offered reasonable paths forward. On Iraq in particular, he deserves kudos and gets an A-.

While the rhetorical emphasis has been on bringing troops home, in practice, the avowed timeline of getting all combat forces out of Iraq by the end of August 2010 has the virtue of freeing the administration from President Obama's original campaign promise to withdraw one to two brigades a month. This modification gives U.S. commanders necessary flexibility to address tensions that will inevitably arise over the course of an Iraqi election year. To maintain top marks, the Obama Administration will need to pursue an active political strategy in Baghdad to help Iraqis overcome disputes, like that over Kirkuk and other disputed territories, which lie ahead in the near term. Marks for Afghanistan and Pakistan are still good at a B, but somewhat weaker in part due to my concern that the President's decision to make building the Afghan Security Forces -- rather than population security -- the centerpiece of the strategy is unlikely to produce meaningful results in the necessary timeframe. With this as the primary mission, the Afghan strategy for confronting an aggressive insurgency bears an uneasy resemblance to the failed U.S. effort in Iraq 2005-2006. The hardest piece of this challenge is Pakistan, where the administration will be hard pressed to change Pakistani behavior with inducements and threats, absent a successful diplomatic effort between India and Pakistan to ease core Pakistani insecurities. The Obama administration may have just such an effort underway, and if so, is right to keep it quiet and behind the scenes.

Meghan O'Sullivan was a deputy national security adviser in the George W. Bush administration and is now a senior fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

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