The lead-in by the interviewer was the killing of a high-ranking Al-Qa'ida-linked commander in Pakistan by a U.S. missile strike — undoubtedly fired from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) — and whether this, as well as the arrest of a senior Haqqani network leader, would “help” the Obama administration or have no impact. I answered that it would give a very short-term boost but their impact would fade very quickly — and it would have no impact on Obama’s re-election chances, which would be determined by the state of the economy in a year.
I emphasized in the interview that the Obama administration’s policies were not so different, in many ways, from the previous Bush administration’s policies, and I hopefully explained the reasons for this. I also tried to give some insights into how U.S. foreign policy decisions are made in the real world, which involve imperfect and conflicting information and where the choices are usually not between good, better, and best but between bad, worse, and worst. In the case of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the choices are usually between worse and worst. Right-wing and left-wing ideologues take note.
