Missions Critical

Although Iraq is hardly at peace yet, the real focus of the Obama team and its allies who deploy forces there will be the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. Obama has tapped Richard Holbrooke, who brokered the Dayton peace agreement ending the war in Bosnia, to be the special envoy for this task. Many Europeans complained that the Bush administration mistakenly made Iraq its top priority, but now Holbrooke is likely to challenge them to allocate more troops and resources to Afghanistan. But as a recent Financial Times poll of EU voters showed, most Europeans are strongly opposed to upping their involvement.

Already, the Taliban has expanded its territorial reach and attendant violence by about a third and the government of President Hamid Karzai is struggling to keep things from spinning completely out of control. Afghan experts are warning that, without fast progress as the U.S. deploys more troops, Holbrooke could find himself piloting a plane going down fast. To avert such an outcome, much more than fresh troops are needed. The international community needs to pour in more aid to deal with a food and water crisis and encourage longer-term economic development, monitor internal political tensions as the country prepares for presidential elections later this year, and somehow get Pakistan to crack down on the extremists there. "There is no answer in Afghanistan that does not confront the Al Qaeda and Taliban bases along the border, and there will be no lasting peace unless we expand spheres of opportunity for the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan," Obama declared as he announced Holbrooke's appointment.

If there's a silver lining in the Afghanistan situation, it's Russia's declared willingness to help NATO with alternate supply routes through its territories and neighboring states as a way of reducing dependence on Pakistan. True, the signals were decidedly mixed last week. After receiving a promise of $2 billion in Russian loans, Kyrgyzstan announced its intention to close the U.S. airbase on its soil. Nonetheless, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev pledged "full-fledged" cooperation with Washington in fighting terrorism in the region. While the Kremlin clearly dislikes any U.S. military presence nearby, it doesn't want the Taliban back in power, since that could destabilize Tajikistan and fuel Islamic militancy. It should be in the interests of both sides to keep that from happening.

The other big challenge facing the Obama team and its allies is what to do about Iran. This, of course, is tied closely to the future of the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, the subject of so much angry rhetoric from the Kremlin. If the object is to deal with a possible nuclear threat from Iran and find a way for Russia and NATO to cooperate, the debate could be reframed to focus on one key question: what is Iran's real nuclear capability, both in terms of producing weapons and delivering them?

If the missile shield is examined in that light rather than viewed as a demonstration of Poland's mistrust of Russia and vice-versa, there might be a chance to defuse the tensions surrounding this project. This is where the Obama team could use a Polish pilot—a political leader willing to try to calm the heated emotions swirling around the entire gamut of issues fueling Russian-Polish tensions. Like the intrepid Polish pilots in the Battle of Britain, any volunteer for this assignment would have to know that he could easily crash and burn.

But there's reason to believe that the Putin-Medvedev team also sees new incentives to tone down some of its rhetoric and cooperate with the West on far more than just Afghanistan. The sharp decline in oil prices and the global slowdown has exposed the weaknesses of the Russian economy—in particular, the squandering of much of the oil revenue of the recent past and the failure to establish the basis for a more diversified economy. That has led to the first small signs of social discontent, although quickly suppressed. And the more fundamental question remains unanswered: if many Russians feel that there has been a direct trade-off between dwindling political freedoms and economic prosperity, how will they feel in the long term if the economic picture doesn't improve?