Clinton and Gates Join Forces in Debate on Afghanistan Buildup

Clinton and Gates Join Forces in Debate on Afghanistan Buildup
By MARK LANDLER and THOM SHANKER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: October 12, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/13/world/13cabinet.html?th&emc=th


WASHINGTON — The last time the Obama administration arrived at a moment of truth in the debate over what to do about Afghanistan, Hillary Rodham Clinton and Robert M. Gates delivered a one-two punch in favor of a more ambitious approach.

Now, as President Obama leads yet another debate on whether to deploy tens of thousands of additional troops there, the secretary of state and the secretary of defense will once again constitute a critical voting bloc, the likely leaders of an argument for a middle ground between a huge influx of soldiers and a narrow focus aimed at killing terrorists from Al Qaeda, according to several administration officials.

That swing vote would put them at odds with the bare-bones approach still being pushed by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., as well as the most aggressive military buildup recommended by the American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

All of them have chosen to play their cards close to the vest, even holding back in the marathon meetings of recent weeks of the National Security Council, according to officials who attended the sessions.

But as the Afghanistan assessment moves from a broad strategy review to a detailed and potentially contentious debate on how exactly to proceed, the two secretaries are expected to carry great weight as they begin to express specific advice.

In fact, given that the president puts particular stock in Mr. Gates’s view on military matters, the alliance between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Gates, two moderate pragmatists, may be the deciding factor in a remarkably public debate that will determine the future course of the war.

It is a surprising evolution for two very different — and effective — bureaucratic players who started out wary of each other.

Their most visible public encounter came in July 2007 when, as a senator, Mrs. Clinton lashed out over what she viewed as a dismissive letter sent to her by one of Mr. Gates’s deputies; she had asked whether the Pentagon planned to brief Congress about its plans to withdraw troops from Iraq. Mr. Gates’s effort to mollify Mrs. Clinton came in a letter rushed by messenger to her office, and the defense secretary later said to aides that he regarded Mrs. Clinton as very tough. But their relationship had already warmed up by the time of the Obama administration’s first debate over sending troops to Afghanistan.

At a White House meeting in mid-March, in which the counterinsurgency policy was initially presented, Mr. Biden famously began to stake out his position that a larger military presence in Afghanistan could breed resentment among Afghans and would be politically untenable at home.

Mrs. Clinton, who weighed in next, disagreed, according to people who took part in the session. She threw her support behind the counterinsurgency policy and more troops, saying she believed the American people could be won over. Mr. Gates, immediately following her, also endorsed it, though he granted Mr. Biden’s point that there were risks of a backlash among the Afghan people.

“There is a very close meeting of minds between them,” said Bruce Riedel, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who led the policy review on Afghanistan and Pakistan. “They both believe there is a threat, the threat is serious, and that we need to take the appropriate steps to respond.”

Though their backgrounds are very different — Mrs. Clinton a product of electoral politics who is still looking to her future, and Mr. Gates from the world of intelligence at the end of a long government career — they have found common cause on issues well beyond Afghanistan.

Last spring, several administration officials said, Mrs. Clinton backed Mr. Gates when he appealed to the president to fight the release of a trove of photographs documenting the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan by military personnel.

The White House initially did not oppose the release of the photos. But after top military commanders and local leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan objected, Mr. Gates asked Mr. Obama to reconsider. Mrs. Clinton added her voice to the effort, these officials said, having just returned from a visit to Baghdad, during which the commander in Iraq, Gen. Ray Odierno, warned her that a fresh uproar over photos would subject the troops to reprisal and endanger the mission.

Mr. Obama changed his mind and has appealed to the Supreme Court to keep the photos from being released.

Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Gates are also in tune on Iran, sometimes to an uncanny degree. On Sept. 27, they appeared on rival Sunday morning talk shows, both warning Tehran that if it did not negotiate over its nuclear program, it would face harsh sanctions. In their hard line toward Iran, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Gates differed from senior National Security Council officials, who were initially more optimistic about the prospects for engagement, according to a senior official.

Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state who witnessed the caustic relations between his boss, Colin L. Powell, and the former Pentagon chief, Donald H. Rumsfeld, during the Bush administration, said Mr. Gates had told him he found Mrs. Clinton “tough-minded, clear and focused.”

“I wouldn’t suggest that they agree on every issue,” Mr. Armitage said. “But what it does do is eliminate some of the intramural tensions between the secretary of defense and the secretary of state.”

Those tensions have often been epic, whether it was the feuding between Caspar W. Weinberger and George P. Shultz during the Reagan administration or the sniping between Mr. Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice in the latter part of the Bush administration.

For all the solidarity, the partnership between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Gates is based on pragmatism rather than personal affection. "Secretary Gates is very businesslike and in Secretary Clinton he has found someone he can do business with,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary.

Mr. Gates has called for a reinvigorated, better-financed State Department, so that diplomats can pick up some of the nation-building tasks that have fallen to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is consistent with Mrs. Clinton’s vision of a more muscular American diplomacy, not to mention her own ambitions as the chief diplomat.

Mr. Gates, officials note, is in a position to be magnanimous with little left to prove. And he is the indispensable man, since his department controls so much money and so many troops. Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, runs a department that is fighting to regain its stature after years in eclipse. She may also hope for a political future.

Seated next to each other on a stage at George Washington University last week, the two looked like comrades-in-arms as they discussed the Iranian nuclear threat, the war in Afghanistan and the blossoming ties between the State Department and the Pentagon.

“Bob has a lot of experience, which I certainly appreciate, and also a good sense of humor, which makes everything a little bit better,” Mrs. Clinton said of their frequent meetings.

Nobody seemed more pleased than Mr. Gates, a survivor of decades of Washington’s bureaucratic battling. “Most of my career, secretaries of state and defense weren’t speaking to each other,” he said. “And it could get pretty ugly, actually.”

After their very public joint appearance, the two decamped secretly to the Blue Duck Tavern, a sleek restaurant nearby, where, according to people close to both, they kicked around policy options on Afghanistan over a long private dinner.