When General David Petraeus reports to Washington next week, the most important question he'll have to answer is, What happens in Iraq after the surge?

Ganar en Irak y Afganistán, ganar la guerra global contra el terrorismo, disponer de las armas y hombres para reaccionar a una crisis nueva, son tareas que Estados Unidos y su ejército afrontarán en los próximos años. Descargar PDF

If Gerald Templer was the face of Britain in Malaya, David Petraeus is now to be the face of America in Iraq: Perhaps as soon as Tuesday, the Senate will confirm Petraeus's promotion to four-star general and he will assume command of "Multi-National Force-Iraq" in Baghdad. But generals, wrote John Keegan in The Mask of Command, "may be many things besides the commander of an army." A general may, Keegan continued, "carry both society and army farther than they believed they wished to travel."

But the main recommendation of the Baker- Hamilton "Iraq Study Group"--withdrawal by early 2008, covered by negotiations with Iran and Syria--has little value outside Washington, and none in Baghdad or the region.

Will America’s partnership with India fall victim to politics? The Bush administration's proposed agreement on civil nuclear cooperation with New Delhi -once predicted to win approval from Congress as early as June- is under a growing cloud.

An unstable nuclear state poses a novel conundrum for American strategists. Through five decades of the Cold War, we thought we knew how to deter the massive nuclear force of the Soviet Union, yet the unanticipated collapse of the Soviet empire and the resulting nuclear instability suggests that the principles of deterrence may have rested on a weaker foundation than we understood at the time.

The Pentagon has more or less been in "QDR mode" for more than a decade; the services maintain semi-permanent QDR offices where activity peaks every four years but never ceases. It’s time to call an end to an exercise that isn’t producing the desired result.

The preservation of Pax Americana, against the ambitions and aggressions of adversaries present and potential--powers that are rising at different rates, in different ways, and in differing regions--is not simply the continuation of the American security perimeter.

It is also clear from the president's speech that the quality of Iraqi army training has been vastly improved since the early days.

If India, like early America, is essentially still an inward-looking democracy with regional strategic priorities, the United States today is the inverse: a confident democracy striving to manage a global order that is fundamentally strong but coming under increasing strain.

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