Q: An example of a reasonable objective would be what?

A: First of all, the key objective is to significantly weaken al-Qaida. That has to be the core objective. Beyond that, I don't think we should try to micromanage Afghanistan's political or social or economic affairs. We don't have to have Afghanistan as a nice, liberal democratic society. I don't think it's going to become that any time in the foreseeable future in any case, no matter how long we stay. But what we need is for Afghanistan not to be a safe haven for al-Qaida in the way it was before 9/11.

Q: Leslie Gelb said recently on NPR that we should make the distinction between the Taliban, which nobody likes, and al-Qaida. He thinks we should lean on the Taliban and say, "Look, if you help al-Qaida we'll cut off your money from Saudi Arabia, wipe out your poppy fields, or worse." Are those sensible threats?

A: It's not just the Taliban. I think our attitude toward any significant player in Afghanistan, and that includes a number of the regional warlords, ought to be that we're willing to hold our nose in terms of dealing with you, but the one thing we cannot tolerate is you being in bed with al-Qaida. As long as you refrain from doing that, we're not going to try to interfere in the various political infighting and maneuvering that goes on inside Afghanistan. That is a tremendously complex political environment and we barely begin to even understand the dynamics in play. So I think that needs to be the bargain we make with the Taliban -- and with other players. We have core objectives we insist on. Beyond that, we can deal.

Q: It seems that Afghanistan is always a sideshow to what is going on in Pakistan. Is Pakistan really the big problem in that region?

A: The two are very intimately related. It's very difficult to address our security objectives in Afghanistan without dealing with some of the problems across the border in Pakistan. A lot of this involves the Durand Line, the boundary imposed by the British foreign ministry better than a century ago, which basically cut the Pashtun population in half - half in Afghanistan and half in Pakistan. A lot of what we are seeing now is an ongoing effort by the Pashtuns to form some kind of cohesive political entity that crosses that artificial border. That's going to be trouble. But again, I don't want the United States getting down in the leaves on that kind of dispute. We have to keep our objectives focused.

Clearly, we're concerned about stability in Pakistan, considering the fact the country does have several dozen nuclear weapons. But I don't see the Pakistani government on the brink of falling or Pakistan becoming a failed state any time soon. Those are exaggerated. They are not entirely beyond the realm of possibility. But I also think they are being exploited by skillful political operatives who want to get a lot more aid out of the United States.

What better way to do that than to raise that specter -"Oh my God, if you don't pour tens of billions of dollars into our country, our country could implode and nukes could leak out into the hands of terrorist organizations." That risk is real enough that I think U.S. policymakers tend to over-rate the danger and start writing blank checks to the Pakistani government. That to me is a mistake. I think we again have to take a nice sober assessment of the extent of the risk and the extent of the danger we are facing. It's serious, but it's not that kind of cataclysmic danger.

Q: Do you consider the results of our six years in Iraq to be a success that will last or do you think it's a temporary state that will unravel once we pull out most of our troops?

A: Iraq is certainly still a very fragile political entity. In reality it is already divided into two states. No one wants to admit that publically, but Kurdistan is an independent country in everything but name and official international recognition. The question is whether the rest of the country can hold together or whether that will ultimately fragment at least into two parts - a Sunni-dominated area that will be resource poor and a Shia-dominated area with rather close ties to Tehran. I think the jury is still out on what happens there and what happens between that "rump Iraq" and a de-facto independent Kurdistan. We still have a dispute over Kirkuk, which could create a tremendous surge of violence at some point. The U.S. has stabilized the situation to some extent in Iraq. But that country is still a very long way from being a stable, united, much less secular, liberal country. And that was the original U.S. goal when we went into Iraq in 2003.

Q: Are you and optimist or pessimist about how the Afghanistan situation and our presence there will evolve?

A: I remain at least somewhat of a pessimistic. Afghanistan did not get the name "The Graveyard of Empires" for nothing. The U.S. is trying to accomplish a vague and at least implicitly rather ambitious agenda yet. I think we're still going to have to scale back that agenda even more than the Obama administration has done to this point before we can have a realistic hope of achieving success.