Viewing the Karzai government as the weak leg in the Obama administration stool, Michael Cohen reads the McChrystal strategy review’s exhortations for ISAF to confront Afghan government corruption and asks:

Hamid Karzai just brazenly stole the Afghan presidential election, right under the nose of the US and NATO – one in three ballots are in question. Color me crazy, but he doesn’t seem overly concerned about NATO’s upbraiding when it comes to abuse of power or corruption.

Precisely what leverage do we have over Karzai and the Kabul government to act responsibly when as far as McChrystal seems concerned, we have to stay in Afghanistan for the long haul?

We have billions of dollars of leverage. But Michael is right that we’re not using it if we’re promising, no strings attached, that we’ll just have an enduring commitment to Afghanistan. It defies reason to expect that a ruling coalition willing to steal an election it probably would have won anyway will somehow opt to confront corruption and improve its governing capacity. Yet when Margaret Warner pressed Secretary Clinton on Karzai’s will-to-reform, her response was, "I don’t think he was really tested in the prior administration."

I wondered earlier this month whether conditionalizing a political commitment to Afghanistan, coupled with providing a visibly enduring commitment to Pakistan, might provide the sort of leverage Michael is looking for. The implicit message there is We can influence as much of your affairs as we want, through Pakistan, so if we walk out the door, we won’t really be leaving, because the Pakistanis will have us covered. You don’t like that? Well, it’s not our first choice, either. Let’s deal.