Obama Won't Rule Out Military Move to Secure Pakistani Nukes

I'm trying to give President Obama the benefit of the doubt on his Afghan policy (see, "Obama's Neoconservative Pragmatism"). It's hard, considering his lame national security appointments, such as Rosa Brooks as a top Defense Department advisor. But it's becoming increasingly clear that realpolitik has imposed caution on this president, and you get a feel for it in Jon Meacham's interview with the president at Newsweek.

Obama offers the obligatory handwringing on the decision to authorize a surge of troops in Afghanistan, but in an especially crucial admission, Obama confirms that he will not rule out the use of force to secure Pakistan's nuclear weapons arsenal in the event of political instablility in that country:

Moving to Pakistan, would you be willing to keep the option alive to have American troops secure those nuclear weapons if the country gets less stable?

I don't want to engage in hypotheticals around Pakistan, other than to say we have confidence that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is safe; that the Pakistani military is equipped to prevent extremists from taking over those arsenals. As commander in chief, I have to consider all options, but I think that Pakistan's sovereignty has to be respected. We are trying to strengthen them as a partner, and one of the encouraging things is, over the last several weeks we've seen a decided shift in the Pakistan Army's recognition that the threat from extremism is a much more immediate and serious one than the threat from India that they've traditionally focused on.

Read the entire interview at the link, via Memeorandum.