Opinion: How best to get things done in Afghanistan and elsewhere

Or, the art of speaking loudly behind a door firmly closed.

Mort RosenblumNovember 19, 2009 12:35Updated May 30, 2010 12:14

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talks with UAE's Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan at Afghanistan's foreign affairs ministry after Afghan President Hamid Karzai was sworn in for another term, in Kabul, Nov. 19, 2009. (Omar Sobhani/Reuters)

PARIS, France — If Hillary Clinton’s Kabul visit was what it seems, hard talk with the door closed, it was just what a superpower should do in Afghanistan. And elsewhere.

She told reporters Hamid Karzai is not doing nearly enough against corruption, and Washington wants “measurable results.” With luck, she told him a lot more.

Economists use moral suasion to convince people in private to do the right thing. They outline benefits and allude only subtly to the .45 in their briefcases.

In statecraft, this works far better than public posturing. Carrots are fine for rabbits or horses. Sticks, even if nuclear-tipped, get proud people’s backs up.

Leaders at the top of unruly societies get there by mastering Machiavelli and the Wizard of Oz. Their power base is illusory, based on fear of other alternatives.

They might need strong outside support yet they cannot be seen to be subservient.

Karzai is way up on the humanity scale from, say, Saddam Hussein or Kim Jong Il. Iran and Zimbabwe pose different challenges. Yet the principle is the same.

Take Saddam. Had successive U.S. administrations privately delivered a clear, constant message after Iraqi troops fled Kuwait in 1991, we’d have a better world.

Instead, Saddam laughed off public threats while growing fat on the U.N. Oil for Food program that enriched many of the same Americans and Europeans who denounced him.

No fool, Saddam knew he had to dismantle his egregious biological and chemical arsenal while curbing his thirst for nukes. Still, he desperately needed his badass image.

Since no one made good on dire public threats, he assumed they were empty enough to ignore.

When George W. Bush pushed him into schoolyard chest bumping with a whole world watching, he chose spectacular suicide, condemning Iraq to the fate that followed.

In Afghanistan, the game is different, a free-for-all with elements of chicken and dodge ball. And Barack Obama, happily enough, understands it is no schoolyard.

For a more apt metaphor, think sinking ship. No one can float a hull with rotted timbers. It is a pointless chase after mutinous crewmembers and overturned deckchairs.