Amateur Hour in Chicago - By Arif Rafiq

As last weekend's NATO summit made clear, President Barack Obama's Hamlet-like indecisiveness on Pakistan plagues his administration's relationship with the country and its president, Asif Ali Zardari. Obama remains unable to effectively manage the need to both apologize to and reengage Pakistan, while at the same time moving the country away from supporting militant groups that destabilize it and the region.

Since November, the Obama team has agonized over whether it should apologize for the deadly U.S. air attack on a Pakistani Salala military base along the border with Afghanistan. Twenty-four Pakistani soldiers died as U.S. helicopters fired on the Salala base for two hours, including more than an hour after Pakistani liaisons pleaded for the attacks to stop. The Wall Street Journal reported this month that planned apologies to Pakistan were aborted numerous times -- including once after Qurans were found to be desecrated by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Washington has expressed "regret" and offered its condolences for the incident.

For all the importance Obama claims to place on Pakistan, he has taken a back seat in directing the sinking partnership with Islamabad. In the extensively sourced Wall Street Journal report, the president is missing from the narrative. The internal administration debate on whether to apologize to Pakistan seems to be one among principals, deputies, and senior aides. But the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is too important for Obama to delegate.

As a candidate, Obama argued not only that the war in Afghanistan, not Iraq, was the real post-9/11 war, but also that Pakistan holds more strategic importance for the United States than Afghanistan. In a June 2008 address, Obama said, "as president, I will make the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban [in Afghanistan and Pakistan] the top priority that it should be." He added, "The greatest threat to that security [in Afghanistan and the United States] lies in the tribal regions of Pakistan." In Obama's first two years as president, his administration reviewed America's AfPak strategy not once, but three times, with numerous course corrections along the way. Numerous press accounts portray the president as deeply and very personally involved at key points in the decision-making process.

Contrast that with his behavior at the NATO summit: Initially, the White House told reporters the president would not meet with Zardari, a clear snub. But this clashed with the administration's strategy of enhancing and maintaining support with Pakistan's civilian democrats while taking the military to task. By summit's end, the administration backtracked -- realizing that a complete snub of Zardari could hurt Pakistan's fragile democratic transition -- and Obama held two "brief" meetings with the Pakistani president. The White House highlighted these interactions, yet emphasized that they were not especially substantive. Obama then awkwardly avoided mentioning Pakistan in his press conference at the summit's close. (He referred to NATO's commitment to bringing "peace and stability to South Asia, including Afghanistan's neighbors," but Pakistan is the only South Asian state that borders Afghanistan.) Finally, Obama gave an extensive response to the first question from the media, which was on Pakistan, giving the impression that his discussions with Zardari were wide in scope. The Obama administration's behavior was not carefully calibrated diplomatic messaging, but tactical maneuvering that was imprecise, difficult to decipher, and verging on passive aggression. It was amateur hour.

The president's refusal to apologize has kept U.S.-Pakistan relations frozen at last winter's nadir, and the spring has seen no thaw. Relations could have been back on track had the president swallowed his pride and allowed his diplomatic team to bring Pakistan on board to secure a lasting peace in Afghanistan.