Ex-adviser criticizes Obama on Afghan war

WASHINGTON — A newbook by a former senior State Department policy expert paints a sharply critical picture of the Obama administration’s handling of foreign policy, detailing destructive turf battles and policy debates that challenge the White House’s claim that its management of the Afghan war is a vital accomplishment.

Written by Vali Nasr, an academic who was recruited by the envoy Richard C. Holbrooke to work in the State Department, the book, “The Dispensable Nation,” is to be published next month.

Part diplomatic memoir, part policy analysis, the book is a survey of foreign affairs during the Obama administration. Nasr portrays the White House’s handling of foreign policy as overly cautious, sometimes disengaged and at times even politicized—an approach he asserts has led to a general waning of US influence abroad.

His chapters on Afghanistan and Pakistan are likely to receive special attention, as they cover the two years when Nasr had a ringside view of the administration’s policymaking as a senior adviser for Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s first special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Power struggles exist in all ad- ministrations. But Nasr writes that the ones between what he describes as politically minded aides at the White House and the State Department were particularly pernicious, especially since they centered on decisions about an Afghan conflict that Obama once called a “war of necessity.”

Some of the disputes took the form of bureaucratic maneuvers. Turf-conscious White House aides, Nasr writes, excluded Holbrooke from video conferences that President Barack Obama had with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan and he was left behind on a presidential trip to Kabul, undermining his credibility with the Afghans.

After Holbrooke’s death in 2010, he writes, White House officials made it clear that John Podesta, President Clinton’s chief of staff, was not an acceptable choice for envoy. Hillary Rodham Clinton, then secretary of state, had been eyeing him to fill Holbrooke’s post. Podesta was considered to be too high-profile and potentially difficult for the White House to manage, Nasr states.

The subtext for the squabbling was a deeper battle for influence over policy on Afghanistan and Pakistan.