Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry (D-MA) and Ranking Member Dick Lugar (R-IN) welcome the nomination of a Administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

“I am pleased that the Administration has announced their nominee, Dr. Rajiv Shah, to be the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID),” said Chairman Kerry. “I have been very concerned about the lack of political leadership at USAID, especially in the face of critical foreign policy, humanitarian and development priorities in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and Sudan. I also believe having an Administrator will bring significant momentum to foreign aid reform. I look forward to a thorough nomination process.”

“For development to play its full role in our national security structure, USAID must be a strong agency with the resources to accomplish the missions we give it,” Senator Lugar said. “The issues that we face today – from chronic poverty and hunger to violent acts of terrorism – require that we work seamlessly toward identifiable goals. I look forward to discussing ways to improve and support the development mission that benefits our long-term security as we proceed with the confirmation process.”

“It’s terrific, we’ll move forward as soon as we can, I hope weeks,” Kerry said. He said he wasn’t aware of any objections on the Republican side. Kerry will meet with Shah in the coming days, he said.

It’s not obvious to me what Shah’s credentials are, but as Josh notes, the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network, a development-policy group, is firmly on board. I got a press release from them earlier this afternoon:

We applaud the reported nomination of Dr. Rajiv Shah to be Administrator for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). We are hopeful that his unique combination of knowledge about global health, agriculture, and other issues will allow him to provide a strong and indispensable development voice as major decisions are made about U.S. foreign policy. Congress should confirm Dr. Shah quickly.

MFAN wants to give the next USAID administrator a seat on the National Security Council. My question: what happens to USAID if Stuart Bowen’s USOCO proposal goes forward?

“In light of Iran’s continuing deception, the international community must step up its demands that Iran halt its enrichment and reprocessing work, answer the International Atomic Energy Agency’s questions, and provide IAEA inspectors with the full complement of access and transparency they require.

“President Obama has offered Iran every opportunity to open a constructive diplomatic dialogue on its nuclear program. To this point, there is no evidence that Iran intends to reciprocate. I continue to support engagement with Iran, but now is the time to supplement engagement with more robust international sanctions. That’s the only way to dramatically increase the economic and diplomatic pressure on Iran from the outside and help leverage pressure on the regime from its own population which wants a different relationship with the world. Tehran must make a fundamental decision on whether it wants to continue its pariah status or enter a more constructive relationship with the world.”

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) (WDCpix)

Most congressional hearings bring administration officials up for a grilling. Others present interest group-backed pseudo-experts to give canned analysis. Rarely do congressional hearings present eclectic analysts who address a given policy option from a first-principle perspective to an engaged group of lawmakers. Yet that’s exactly what happened Wednesday afternoon when the Senate Foreign Relations Committee began what chairman John Kerry (D-Mass.) described as a series of hearings about the war in Afghanistan.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Kerry assembled three experts to scrutinize the core issues at the heart of the war and the alternatives proposed to wage it: John Nagl, the president of the Center for a New American Security, a think tank that has provided significant personnel and intellectual heft to the Obama administration; Steve Biddle, an influential security expert with the Council on Foreign Relations who advised Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s recent review of Afghanistan strategy; and Rory Stewart, head of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, who wrote a widely read travelogue of his journeys through Afghanistan. Intellectual cleavages over both strategy and basic views of the war were apparent on the panel, with Nagl and Biddle supporting a more robustly resourced war with broader aims than Stewart endorsed. But both Nagl and Biddle grappled with the harder implications of such positions, with Nagl emphasizing the primacy of competent Afghan, not U.S., security forces, and Biddle equivocating on the overall importance of Afghanistan to U.S. interests.

This week, President Obama is expected to approve McChrystal’s strategy review, and McChrystal is expected to finalize a palette of options for resourcing the war, including the prospect of U.S. troop increases. Amid rapidly eroding public support for the war, one of the larger concerns roiling lawmakers is whether the counterinsurgency strategy fulsomely embraced by the administration is sufficiently tied to the administration’s stated objectives of eradicating al-Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan and preventing al-Qaeda’s return to Afghanistan. Kerry asked if this week’s successful commando raid in Somalia against an important al-Qaeda-linked figure — launched from offshore bases and requiring no on-land troop presence — might be a model for an alternative strategy.

“Sir, it tells us you can conduct counterterrorism with a light footprint, not counterinsurgency,” Nagl replied. Kerry was unsatisfied with the answer: “That’s exactly my point,” he said. Nagl parried that the presence of neighboring Pakistan was the crucial difference, as the absence of U.S. forces would contribute to the destabilization of Afghanistan’s neighbor, while their presence inspired Pakistani resolve. “I am convinced that American counterinsurgency and counterterrorism in Afghanistan have contributed to the more effective Pakistani counterinsurgency campaign” of the spring, when Pakistani troops finally evicted Taliban insurgents from the Swat valley.

Stewart disagreed, contending that the United States tended to underestimate Afghan and Pakistani will to make decisions in their own interests and overestimated the impact of Afghanistan to Pakistani stability. “It’s very dangerous to mount an argument about Afghanistan based on Pakistan,” he said, comparing weak, poor Afghanistan to a cat and nuclear-armed Pakistan to a tiger. “We’re beating the cat,” Stewart continued, “and when you say, ‘Why are you beating the cat?’ you say, ‘It’s a cat-tiger strategy.’ But you’re beating the cat because you don’t know what to do about the tiger.”

A better strategy, Stewart argued, would be to use special forces to “identify a narrow group of people called al-Qaeda and then eliminate them.”

Later in the hearing, Biddle addressed some of the problems with the so-called “offshore” option, whereby U.S. forces launch the occasional raid, mostly from the skies or with special forces, on selected al-Qaeda targets, dissenting from Stewart’s prescriptions. “Safe havens do not [offer al-Qaeda] real estate for construction of tent farms for training seminars,” he said, but instead they protect al-Qaeda from “human-intelligence penetration on the ground,” upon which such targeted counterterrorism strikes depend. With regard to the drone strikes in Pakistan against al-Qaeda — which the CIA claims has seriously eroded al-Qaeda’s freedom of movement in the tribal areas and which some counterinsurgents fear will ultimately alienate Pakistanis — “control of the government underneath the drones” was an additional prerequisite for success, Biddle said. Take away human intelligence and host-government complicity through an offshoring strategy, and counterterrorism would be a non-starter.

Nagl, an Iraq war veteran and longtime advocate of prosecuting counterinsurgency largely through the cultivation of partner military forces, was agnostic in his remarks about whether to send additional U.S. combat forces to Afghanistan. Instead he advocated, as Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has proposed, an accelerated deployment of Afghan security forces, and proposed increasing the dedicated U.S. force for training Afghan forces from 4000 to 10,000. Since the U.S. method of training counterinsurgent forces involves mentoring in combat, not academic settings, “No one should think because we’re sending over trainers that we’re not putting them in harm’s way,” Nagl cautioned.

All three panelists agreed on the need to distinguish among what McChrystal has called the “Taliban-led syndicate” of insurgent groups, particularly the small core that fights for ideological conviction and those who fight for more transactional reasons, like money or status. Most insurgents in Afghanistan “are not particularly interested in international terrorism,” Stewart said, and the “small proportion who are don’t have the resources to carry out whatever ambition [is] in their fantasies.”

But Biddle and Nagl responded that such distinctions could not drive splits within the Taliban absent more aggressive fighting and sustained U.S. and Afghan governmental commitment. So-called reconciliation efforts could be successful only “if the military tide begins to turn and perceptions of long-term trajectory” are on the side of the Afghan government, Biddle said. And if the U.S. couldn’t protect defectors from the Taliban coalition from reprisal, “It’s very difficult to convince a ten-dollar Taliban to side with us.”

It was difficult to read the impact the testimony had on the assembled senators. Most, including Kerry, posed skeptical questions to all panelists, indicating a more open debate than the congressional debate over the Iraq war, which often devolved into questioning designed to elicit politically-useful responses. Kerry, for instance, has described the struggle against al-Qaeda as a “global counterinsurgency,” yet he aimed most of his more pointed questions at Nagl, who mostly agrees with that analysis.

Kerry said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had agreed to testify before the panel next month, after President Obama made a decision on whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan. Another hearing, on how to avoid failure in Afghanistan, is scheduled for Thursday morning, when the panel will hear from ret. Gen. Bantz Craddock, the former NATO commander; development expert Clare Lockhart; novelist Khaled Hosseini; and Ryan Crocker, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Pakistan.

At most, arming the crew should be only one component of a comprehensive plan and approach to combat piracy. To the extent we go forward in this direction, it would be my personal preference that only the four most senior ranking officers aboard the vessel have access to effective weaponry and that these individuals receive special training on a regular basis. I realize that even this limited approach to arming the crew opens up a very thorny set of issues. I’ll let others sort out the legal and liability issues but we all must understand that having weapons on board merchant ships fundamentally changes the model of commercial shipping and we must be very cautious about how it is done. Nevertheless, I do believe that arming the crew, as part of an overall strategy, could provide an effective deterrent under certain circumstances and I believe that a measured capability in this respect should be part of the overall debate about how to defend ourselves against criminals on the sea.

Philips went on to say that he wonders about the breakdown in command that could result if a protection force was placed aboard a commercial shipping vessel in the event of a pirate attack. “In the heat of an attack, there can be only one final decision maker,” he said.

Based on the information I have … these are fundamentally two separate issues. I’m not going to say that there’s no possibility that there would be a connection or there wouldn’t be a connection at some point, but the piracy issue and the potential role of al-Qaeda are both a result and a continuing problem if you do not have a successful, comprehensive government in Mogadishu, in Somalia.

In other words, previous governments have been able to limit the piracy, And, of course, a legitimate government that is inclusive — but does not include al-Shabab and al-Qaeda sympathizers — would be able to minimize the role of al-Qaeda in Somalia.

So both problems are major issues for the United States. I would put the al-Qaeda one number one, and piracy certainly is important as well.

But the answer here is for this administration to — not just the members of Congress … — now the administration needs to step in and reach out to try to help this government that they’ve put together succeed. It’s time to try to see if it’ll work.

And this all makes sense. Like Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines, the Somali pirates appear to be motivated by cold hard cash, not ideological fervor. The good news is that, as Feingold says, the revival of Somalia — both political and economic — would surely temper the attraction of piracy, which tends to have a higher mortality rate than other professions. The bad news, of course, is that stability remains a long ways off.

In late 2007, Kiriakou became the first CIA official to publicly acknowledge the treatment of Abu Zubaydah. Abu Zubaydah was a member of al-Qaeda — whom author Ron Suskind claims is mentally challenged — whom the CIA captured in Pakistan in 2002. Kiriakou was a member of the team that captured Abu Zubaydah, whose interrogation became abusive after Kiriakou no longer handled him. CIA officials waterboarded Abu Zubaydah, and while Kiriakou told ABC News and The Washington Post that he was not present for that abusive technique — he had left the Abu Zubaydah interrogation by that time, and declined to be certified in the CIA’s interrogation techniques — he has said he considers the waterboarding to be both necessary but immoral.

He told The Post:

“Maybe that’s inconsistent, but that’s how I feel,” he said. “It was an ugly little episode that was perhaps necessary at that time. But we’ve moved beyond that.”

Kiriakou did not respond to messages left at his office at McLarty Associates, a consulting firm where he maintained an office as of Monday, though he was never employed there. Staffers for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee declined comment.

It’s likely that the foreign relations committee will not be the only committee Kiriakou deals with. Last month, as first reported by The Washington Independent’s Daphne Eviatar, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) directed the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation” program. While Kiriakou inquires about the direction and scope of U.S. foreign policy efforts in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, other investigators may well question his role in the Abu Zubaydah affair.

Update: This post was initially filled with factual errors. Kiriakou was a CIA counterterrorism official from 1998 to 2004, but only served in Pakistan in 2002. He was never certified in the CIA’s interrogation program. While he shared office space with McLarty Associates, he was not an employee. The last sentence of this post has been changed for lack of clarity as well. I apologize for the errors.

John Kerry was one of the first party leaders to endorse Barack Obama. (wdcpix)

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the Democratic nominee for president in 2004, has emerged as a leading candidate for secretary of state — should Sen. Barack Obama win the presidency Nov. 4.

Obama campaign advisers declined to comment on the record for this story. Nor would many Democratic foreign-policy experts who might join an Obama administration. But off the record, Obama aides made clear that Kerry’s name is on a very short list of contenders to become the country’s top diplomat. Another person talked up by the great mentioner is Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a Vietnam War veteran whose foreign-policy views align surprisingly well with Obama’s.

Kerry would bring strong credentials to an Obama administration. His Vietnam experience instilled in him a sense of the tragic and a gravity about committing U.S. forces to peripheral conflicts. He has a well-established place in the Senate as a foreign-policy expert, stemming from his seat on the Foreign Relations Committee. His first book, “The New War,” published in 1998, was a prescient look at threats to national security from non-state actors like terrorists and narco-traffickers.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Furthermore, longtime observers say, Kerry’s political instincts could be an asset. Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, a grant-making foundation for non-proliferation studies, said Kerry’s experience in the Senate — and as a presidential nominee — taught him the importance of building domestic support for an administration’s foreign policy. “He combines foreign-policy expertise with political instincts,” Cirincione said. “He understands it’s not enough to have the right policy, but to deliver the policy and build support for that policy.”

Over this year, Kerry has developed a close relationship with Obama. In January, he lent high-profile support to the Illinois senator in the Democratic primary, endorsing him immediately after Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses. At a time when many leading party figures were still withholding endorsements, Kerry intended his support to help Obama win the New Hampshire primary and end Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s (D-N.Y.) front-runner bid for the nomination.

While that didn’t happen, Kerry still remained active as an Obama surrogate on the campaign trail. Aides who do not wish to be quoted said that Kerry often implored Obama to draw sharp distinctions with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on foreign policy — a lesson perhaps born of Kerry’s own reluctance in 2004 to renounce the invasion of Iraq.

“John Kerry has consistently pursued liberal internationalist positions in the Senate, which are in accord with expectations about an Obama administration foreign policy,” said Robert Farley, a national-security professor at the University of Kentucky’s Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce, in an email. “Notably, Sen. Kerry spearheaded initiatives to engage with two nations viewed as hostile to the United States. In 1985, Kerry visited Nicaragua and met with President [Daniel] Ortega, then under heavy pressure from the United States and its Contra proxies. In the early 1990s, Kerry (along with Sen. John McCain) worked to lay the ground for normalization of relations with Vietnam, including hearings that put to rest the idea that Vietnam continued to hold U.S. POWs. To the extent that a President Obama would seek engagement with Iran, North Korea or other nations hostile to the United States, Kerry would seem an ideal choice for secretary of state.”

During the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Kerry gave one of the most forceful speeches, directly attacking McCain on his perceived foreign-policy strengths. “When John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and proclaimed, ‘Next up, Baghdad!’” Kerry said, “Barack Obama saw, even then, an occupation of ‘undetermined length, undetermined cost, undetermined consequences’ that would ‘only fan the flames of the Middle East.’ Well, guess what? Mission accomplished.”

Kerry, of course, famously offered McCain a place on the 2004 Democratic ticket.

Since losing the presidency in 2004, Kerry’s foreign-policy positions have assumed a bolder cast. He repudiated the Iraq war in 2005; opposed President George W. Bush’s 2007 troop surge with vigor and set to work overturning the media caricature of him as a politician without convictions.

In an off-the-cuff talk in Denver just before his convention speech, Kerry argued for vigorous U.S. re-engagement to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace; an end to the Iraq war that includes a negotiated reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites; and reframing the war on terrorism as a “global counterinsurgency” requiring a fundamental “rethink” of U.S. strategy. In a July Op-Ed for the Financial Times, the Massachusetts senator argued for making “a nuclear-free world” a central goal of U.S. foreign policy.

“Kerry would be a great secretary of state,” said Cirincione. “One of the best things that ever happened to him was to realize he’s not going to be president. It freed him up, and let Kerry be Kerry. His insights and statements over the last couple of years are some of the best work he’s ever done.”

Bob Mackey, a recently-retired Army officer, agreed. “Given his views on Iraq and the war on terror, [Kerry] would be of substantial benefit to the U.S. image overseas,” Mackey said. “Few, if any, senior leaders in the U.S. would do a better job. Many would do a lot worse.”

Rachel Kleinfeld, executive director of the Truman National Security Project, an organization advising progressive candidates on foreign policy, called Kerry’s foreign-policy instincts “excellent” but pointed out that a successful secretary of state had to be “someone close enough to Sen. Obama to make that department stronger.”

Advisers caution that Kerry isn’t a certainty to be Obama’s pick for Foggy Bottom. For one thing, his skill set as a senator with extensive foreign-policy experience and a perch on the Foreign Relations Committee matches that of Joe Biden, the vice-presidential nominee. For another, Kerry is running for his fifth term in the Senate, and if Biden wins the vice-presidency, the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be open.

In addition, other members on the short list for secretary of state offer their own strengths: Hagel, for one, would allow Obama a high-profile gesture to moderate Republicans.

Aides to Kerry did not return requests for comment. Similarly, many Democratic foreign-policy hands were reluctant to comment for publication. “People don’t want to do anything to hurt their chances of getting an appointment,” Cirincione observed. “This is Washington, man, everybody except for maybe four or five people wants to go into the administration. And I’m one of them — so I’m talking to you.”