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There are lessons in Haiti's collapse that seem starkly relevant to the "larger" foreign-policy issues of our day, particularly postwar Iraq and Afghanistan. These lessons should reduce partisan finger-pointing and remind us that the secret to success in U.S. overseas interventions is mustering the will to stay until the job is done right.
In the past few weeks we have witnessed remarkable changes in some of the most difficult and dangerous global nuclear proliferation threats. Rather than heading toward military conflicts, the United States seems to be moving toward negotiated solutions that could end the nascent nuclear weapons programs in Iran, Libya and possibly also North Korea.
Like an investor watching his returns plummet, President Bush is rebalancing his proliferation portfolio. The huge cost of the Iraq war and his sinking poll ratings seem to have convinced the president that he has invested too heavily in military operations and unilateral initiatives and that it is time to move some political capital to international organizations and cooperative ventures.
So far, efforts to unravel why both British and American intelligence were so wrong about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have ignored one crucial fact: while governments on both sides of the Atlantic were getting the picture wrong, United Nations inspectors were getting it largely right.
In early January, my Carnegie Endowment colleagues and I released a report detailing systemic flaws in U.S. intelligence and decision-making regarding weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq.
It's been a poorly kept secret for several years that Pakistan helped develop nuclear programs in Iran, North Korea and probably in Libya. For the United States, however, Pakistan's help in the war on terror has been more important than its peddling of nuclear technology to rogue states.
The Taliban are regrouping in the lawless tribal region in the Afghan-Pakistan border. Poor strategy in Afghanistan is partly to blame but a key part of the problem is Pakistan. U.S. support for Musharraf who has helped capture most Al-Qaeda operatives, has meant that jihadi terrorists which the regime employs against India have been ignored. This will aggravate the problems in Afghanistan.