The manufacturer that makes the popular—ubiquitous—Kalashnikov rifle is filing for bankruptcy. The problem is that the Soviet Union granted basically any socialist country a license to produce the assault rifle in order to make “freeing the people” easier. After the Soviet Union fell, the licenses were effectively null.

Except everybody kept making the guns. Most of the places where the AK is made do not entirely respect property rights, and since the gun is so effective and cheap to make—well, you see the problem. But what if we could take AKs off the streets of Mogadishu? (And the Pashtun heartland? And Chechnya? Etc, etc) Well, for one, it’d make COIN operations a whole lot more easier if there wasn’t a limitless stock of the best assault rifle ever made just waiting to be used in every conflict zone in the world.

So the United States should buy the rights to the Kalashnikov, and then pursue all the copycats with lawsuits! OK, so that wouldn’t exactly work. But local solutions to the small arms trade should be pushed wherever possible. It’s one thing to supply weapons to the side we prefer (like the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia). But we should also work on keeping guns out of the hands of insurgents, too—and that means taking on the manufacturers of the copycat Kalashnikovs.

Pakistan has a lot of problems. (How’s that for an understated opening?)

One of the major problems in the country, however, is the lack of credible state institutions. In fact, the only state institution that is universally recognized and respected is the Pakistani Army. So it comes as a bit of good news that the US Congress has passed a bill that would triple non-military aid to Pakistan, to $1.5 billion.

Most of the media focus on Pakistan—quite rightly—is on the threat of the Pakistani Taliban. Enough attention, however, is not given to just how much of a basket case the whole rest of the country has been, well, over its entire history. Civilian government never seems to last long enough to build real democratic traditions—and to be fair, it’s not as if Pakistani civilian government has ever been particularly squeaky clean. The army, meanwhile, can’t stop thinking that yet another war with India is inevitable and right around the corner, ignoring that the threat to the country is the militant ideology it fosters—to use someday in a potential war against India.

The bill requires that the Pakistani government actively go after militants operating inside its borders, and that it refuse to allow groups in the country to strike at foreign targets (India). The United States’ goal in the region, of course, is to contain the threat of a terrorist attack on American interests. A richer, more prosperous Pakistan can only help that goal.

So while all the attention is on militants operating out of FATA and the NWFP, a lot remains to be done in the rest of the country. Evidence of civil society—the lawyer’s protests against Musharraf were a prime example—certainly exists, but there remains a lot of work to be done before Pakistan can be considered a cohesive state. The dominant political parties—and their leaders—seem much too interested in power and enhancing their own and their followers personal fiefdoms than building a modern economy and society.

Pakistan isn’t the most dangerous place in the world. It’s nuclear installations are under no threat of falling into the hands of the Taliban or al-Qaeda. But the strengthening of democratic traditions, and economic enterprise, can only help it wean itself away from the constant insecurity felt by Pakistani Army generals.

In an aspect of parliamentary politics that many Americans simply can’t understand, Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) performed worse in general elections than they did four years ago—but this time, get to form their preferred coalition government. The Free Democratic Party (FDP) bested its 2005 total by nearly fifty percent, jumping to 14.5 percent of the vote. Together, the CDU and FDP will form a coalition government, leaving the junior partners of the Grand Coalition, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), in opposition.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s reelection was not surprising—it was always likely she would remain chancellor. The two most significant stories in this election were related: the dismal performance of the SPD, and the gains of Die Linke (The Left), a party composed of reformed Communists and former Social Democrats who believe the SPD has turned their backs on its typical constituency. The bleeding of support from the SPD to Die Linke (and to a lesser extent, Alliance 90/die Grüne, more commonly the Greens) is yet another symptom of the troubles befalling European Social Democrats. Worse for the SPD, in many quarters of Germany die Linke is not perceived as a possible coalition partner in any government, due to their history (born out of the ruling East German Socialist Unity Party).

If the SPD is to ever regain the Chancellorship, it will have to perform significantly better (its 2009 result was the worst in the party’s history). Furthermore, it will either need the Greens to gain a more significant share of the vote, or die Linke to moderate itself (or install new leaders) so that German reservations about the party in government are lessened. (While an SPD-Greens-FDP coalition could theoretically work, the political problems of such an alliance would likely cause the SPD to shed more of its base to die Linke—and that is even if the Greens and the FDP would agree to join a government with the other.)

The best thing for the SPD, likely, is a spell in opposition, where it can regain its voice and purpose. Whether it can accomplish those two goals is unknown. For now, Germany will press forward with a government bent on cutting taxes and reforming the tax code to make it more business friendly. If those policies prove unpopular, the SPD will become more popular—and so will die Linke.

General Stanley McChrystal’s request for more troops is, of course, expected. Military commanders are always going to want more resources to utilize, regardless of whether they know how to use them or not (McChrystal’s insistence on a population-centric strategy in rural Afghanistan seems to make little sense).

As reported in today’s New York Times, President Barack Obama is “exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday.” This is the chance for President Obama to decide why we remain in Afghanistan—is it to quell a Pashtun insurgency, to eliminate the chance of a “safe haven” for al-Qaeda, to build a liberal democratic society, or something else entirely.

The problem is that we’ve already been there for eight years. Frankly, those eight years were mismanaged from the very beginning, and largely ever since. Afghans have recognized that very little has been done that has bettered their living conditions under eight years of foreign occupation. Of course, the Taliban were a noxious, barbaric regime—but how much has changed? Villagers are still afraid of cooperation with ISAF because the West has done a spectacularly bad job of eliminating the Taliban—when it had a chance to do so—as an effective social force.

It isn’t possible to make up for lost time in foreign occupations. Those eight years, and all the chances and opportunities we had during them, are gone. We can’t build a liberal, democratic government (let alone society) that respects women’s rights and minority rights, or, for that matter, runs elections fairly, anymore. (The Karzai regime, our great big hope, is clearly a failure in that last regard.) More troops in the interim may help push back against the losses in territory we’ve incurred over the last five years. But it won’t change the reality we face in Afghanistan—we lost over the last eight years.

Of course, if we were willing to raise huge amounts of taxes to pay for the war, triple the military forces we have in Afghanistan today, and curtail all domestic political programs, we might have a shot at stabilizing the country. Then, after stationing hundreds of thousands of troops for at least a few decades in order to oversee the generational changes required to build a liberal society, then we’d have a fighting chance. But we aren’t willing to do so, and shouldn’t be, either.

Kigali is nearing completion of a link to an underseas fiber optic Internet connection, reports the BBC. This is a big development for Rwanda, and the greater region. President Paul Kagame—a leader of the Tutsi rebels that drove the genocidal Hutu militias (and their government sponsors) out of the country—is making an effort to turn Rwanda, one of the poorest African countries, into an information economy success story.

Mr. Kagame’s assumption—that bypassing the traditional route to development is possible through IT—raises questions, not the least of which is how many Rwandans will be adequately skilled in computers and information technologies to use the new broadband connection to their advantage. Rwanda remains one of the poorest countries in Africa, as nearly 90% of its population is involved in agricultural work, according to the CIA World Factbook.

Fifteen years on, Rwanda is still dealing with the aftermath of the 1994 genocide and the vicious regional war that followed. Mr. Kagame, the “hero” of the genocide, doesn’t display very strong democratic tendencies. Reporters Without Borders ranked Rwanda the 147th (of 169) country in the world for press freedoms in 2007, political dissidents have a nasty habit of disappearing, and Human Rights Watch has accused the police of numerous extra-judicial killings. The horrors of the genocide may be gone, but a steady banality of repression remains.

I’m a firm believer in the power of the information economy to help poor countries out of their plight. Broadband can help encourage entrepreneurship in ways that foreign aid has difficulty accomplishing. But these advances must be an accompaniment to an open, civil society, and not an alternative.

General Stanley McChrystal, the Obama Administration’s guy in South Asia, has warned that without more troops the war in Afghanistan “will likely fail”, reports the Washington Post.

President Barack Obama, not surprisingly, is worried about becoming embroiled in an escalating situation, where victory only requires an ever-increasing number of ‘just a few more (thousands) troops”. Worse, the aftermath of the Afghan election leaves little doubt that the Western-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai engaged in widespread voter fraud—little different than the daily corruption undermining confidence in the Afghan government. McChrystal’s report stated, “The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF’s own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government”.

One wonders whether President Obama is confident that, were ISAF still stalemated a year from now, withdrawal from Afghanistan would be politically popular. Building the necessary state structures—in Afghanistan, with a roaring insurgency—will take years of blood and treasury, and distract from Obama’s domestic goals (and any other foreign policy ideas he might have). I am skeptical any typical COIN strategy can possibly have the desired effect in a country where seventy-five percent of the population lives in a rural area.

The Obama Administration needs to decide what it wants out of Afghanistan. If it wants to check al-Qaeda, that is certainly possible without thousands of boots on the ground (and may even be easier). If they want, however, to commit themselves to building a modern state, they’re envisioning a project which will take more years than they have in office (regardless of a successful reelection). They need to decide, and soon.

Because really, there’s never enough guns in Somalia.

If you looked up failed state in the encyclopedia, a picture of a khat-chewing Somali toting an AK-47 he purchased off the street for a hundred dollars—if that—would be plastered front and center. The government controls a few blocks of Mogadishu—at best—while raging Islamist insurgencies have claimed most of the south and west of the country. Al-Shabaab, a hardline group comprised of the core of the former Islamic Courts Union, and suspected of ties to al-Qaeda, regularly engages African Union peacekeepers in gun battles and, on occasion, suicide attacks.

Somalia poses several problems to the internationalal community. Piracy is ripe off Somalialand’s (an autonomous northeastern region of the country) shores, and it is widely assumed Al-Qaeda militants are relocating to the region as South Asia becomes an increasingly more difficult place to operate. Refugees from the widespread fighting are pouring into countries in the area (particularly neighboring Kenya), positing a possible threat to the stability of the hole of the Horn of Africa.

Yes, the transitional federal government needs greater supply and better quality of weapons. But even then, success against the militants is not guaranteed. Only more African Union peacekeepers (with a much greater mandate to pursue militants), and, perhaps, an intervention by a coalition of interested parties in the region (Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda) will make the security situation in the country more manageable. Somalia has been in a state of open conflict for nearly twenty years, and it doesn’t look to end anytime soon.

The Obama Administration released yesterday its list of 50 metrics, under three objectives, to designate progress in the war in Central Asia. While it’s important to have a cohesive set of tactics for the war itself—and this document makes our goals much more lucid than before—what strategy does the war itself fit? Are we once again confusing tactics for a larger strategic purpose?

I can’t really argue with any of them (”Objective 2a: Assist efforts to enhance civilian control and stable constitutional government in Pakistan”), but there’s a catch. There’s no detail into how any of these metrics, or larger objectives, are going to be achieved. It would be great for the United States to magically “Defeat the extremist insurgency, secure the Afghan populace, and develop increasingly self-reliant Afghan security forces that can lead the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fight with reduced U.S. assistance,” as objective 3a states. And yes, certainly the “Ability of the ANSF to assume lead security responsibility” and “Effectiveness of Afghan border security efforts” are fine metrics (12 and 8, respectively, under the objective) of things to work on. But how do we know when we’ll have made progress on them? And how are we going to make progress on them? (Note that 3a and its metrics are representative of every other objective—a list of things that need to happen, but without any input on how we get there or how long it will take.)

Afghanistan (and this can not be said strongly enough) is not Iraq. It has never been run by an effective, modern central government for any sustained period of time. It is overwhelmingly a rural country (24% of the population lives in an urban area—nowhere near the 67% of Iraqis that do). Taking and holding large population centers wouldn’t seem to be an effective COIN strategy in a large, rural country. But that’s what the United States is trying to do.

Ultimately, I believe Afghanistan will become a lesson in hubris for the United States. No, America will not collapse because of failure in the Pashtun heartland (regardless of our recent economic problems, we’re not on the verge of societal collapse). But you can’t force a state to change into a liberal, democratic society overnight (or in eight years). A little humility would go a long way in showing us the right policy on Afghanistan.