Speakers: Richard L. Armitage, Task Force Co-Chair, Former Deputy Secretary of State, and President of Armitage International, L.C.;
Daniel Markey, Task Force Director and Senior Fellow For India, Pakistan And South Asia, Council an Foreign Relations (CFR)
Presider: David Ignatius, Columnist for The Washington Post
November 12, 2010
Council on Foreign Relations
DAVID R. IGNATIUS: Good morning. Let me ask you to take your seats and we will begin. I'm David Ignatius. I'm a columnist for The Washington Post, and I'm here to moderate a discussion about a new Council on Foreign Relations task force report -- (audio break).
Here with me to give you a sense of what's in that report -- you have copies and can read it soon enough, but for a catalogue raisonne, we have Richard Armitage, on my -- on my far left, who, as you know, is a former deputy secretary of State, is now president of Armitage International, and Daniel Markey, who is the council's senior fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia studies, and who was the project director for this report.
We had hoped to have Sandy Berger with us as well, but unfortunately, for personal reasons, he was not able to be with us this morning.
So my hope is that in the -- this first half-hour, we can give you an idea of the report and then ask you to put your own questions to Mr. Armitage and to Dan Markey.
Let me begin by the -- with the usual injunction that you turn off your cell phones. The ISI has been asked to follow this question carefully -- (laughter) -- and intervene immediately.
I note that this session, unlike some, is on the record. So, journalists in the audience and others, feel free to take notes and report.
Let me begin, Mr. Armitage, by asking you the baseline question. What's the headline for this study you've done? What's the big take-away that you'd like us to start with?
RICHARD L. ARMITAGE: Well, after acknowledging that President Obama got a bad lie from the Bush administration regarding Afghanistan, we do salute his attempt at the surge to rectify the situation. But we support him conditionally. We feel that the president and his administration should take the time from December right up through July 2011, if necessary, to have a very deep and clear-eyed review of the situation. And if real progress is not deemed to have been made, we suggest -- a majority of us suggest that we change the mission to a much different mission, one of strict counterterror and continued training of the AN security forces.
I would note that our report has significant dissent in it, something that make Sandy Berger and I quite proud, as we had the kind of debate among ourselves that the Congress should have, the American public should have on a matter that's so important, as it involves the lives of our men and women in service, and civilian organizations.
IGNATIUS: Let me begin with the Pakistan sections of the report. You talk about the need to help Pakistan, devastated by the flood, in addition to all of its other problems, through greater humanitarian assistance. You talk about the need for greater economic engagement and economic development of Pakistan. You talk about seeking a shift in Pakistan's own strategic calculations. And the question that I was left with -- these are things that we're trying to do today. They're elements of American policy as it currently stands.
What leverage do we have to achieve more in this regard? How would you get more out of the policy machine in these ways?
ARMITAGE: Well, one could suggest this is what we're doing now and -- but the question is how effective we are.
For instance, the very excellent Kerry-Lugar-Berman bill, which votes $750 billion over five years, is good if we follow through on it and develop big infrastructure projects to really help a lot of the people. But what we're suggesting is a shift in our approach to Pakistan. First of all, rather than focusing on appropriated monies in the U.S. government, we think the most -- single most efficient thing we can do for Pakistan is to give them greater access in the textile industry, which is their largest single industry. It can be done at very limited expense to us and, frankly, no harm to our own textile producers.
Second, I don't believe it's possible to get -- and I'll use the phrase "Pakistan on side" -- unless they have a pretty good understanding of what our end state is. And without understanding that end state, I think it's going to be very difficult to get them to come the distance that we want them to come.