This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, January 16, 2009. I'm Kila Brown.

Given America's toxic embrace in Pakistan, how should an Obama administration approach

the region?

And just how vital is our mission in Afghanistan to national security.

And why does Obama insist upon a surge strategy there?

Cato Institute Foreign Policy analyst Maloo Innocence says the United States must navigate

between making the mistake of abandoning the region as we did in the 80s and 90s and making the mistake of Since he clinched the presidency, Barack Obama has said very little about foreign policy in general.

And it's not too surprising since it seems that the economy will be the major preoccupation of the incoming

administration at least for the next several months. So what we can go off of is

are his campaign pledges for the region and I think most of us remember his pledge to hunt down Al Qaeda and Taliban hunting in the

hills between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

And logistically speaking, he's moving exactly in that direction. Just this week the Washington Post

reported that Barack Obama intends to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan

between 20 to 30,000 that would augment the 50,000 US and NATO troops already

already presently deployed. Essentially this rests on the assumption that

everything in Iraq will go swimmingly because the assumption is that he'll be able to within 16 months of his administration and he has some wiggle room with that

But to withdraw US combat forces within 16 months and then possibly leave according to to some estimates, as much as 60,000 in Iraq

behind for Iraqi security forces, making sure the region doesn't descend into genocide and

chaos, and at least in theory that cut would free up troops for Afghanistan.

So again it depends on a lot of things but I think you do make an interesting point in the sense

who does he have around him and luckily at least he has two critical holdovers from the Bush

administration, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and of course Chief of Central

...