This is the Kedro Daily Podcast for Friday, August 29, 2008. I'm Caleb Brown, a nuclear

armed nation in an unstable region without its longtime military leader and a ruling

coalition that has just collapsed.

What's the effect of these upheavals in Pakistan on U.S. security?

Malu innocent of foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, comments.

Well, what's interesting is that both of the presidential contenders, both John McCain and

Senator Barack Obama have said that they

want to deploy at least two to three battalions, additional battalions into

Afghanistan. That would be roughly 7,000 to 15,000 additional troops. The problem

with that is that we might get similarly

bogged down as the Soviet Union did less than 20 years ago and it's important to

keep in mind that any sort of resolution to the instability within Afghanistan

must be reached through political

reconciliation and unfortunately president Afghan president Hamid

Karzai his writ doesn't extend beyond Kabul so there needs to be some sort of

political reconciliation there to sort of get more of the

post-Tune tribes into the political settlement and not just exclude them and sort of just

integrating the Northern Alliance, which is mostly composed of Tojex and Uzbex.

Also within the Tribal areas which have been experiencing several heavy infiltration into Afghanistan,

it's important to keep in mind that any sort of heavy U.S. combat

military presence in the tribal areas only exacerbate the crisis right now.

The post-tune tribes that inhabit the tribal areas have ethos of sort of goodwill and swift justice, but they also use

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