Afghanistan Exposing Huge Limits on American Power
The Obama administration has made a major mistake in allowing a sleight-of-hand shift in its overall framing of challenges in Afghanistan.
Rather than focusing on al Qaeda and Arab jihadists as "the threat" the US is trying to quash, the "Taliban" now seems to be the overwhelming focus.
The Taliban and al Qaeda are now used interchangeably -- and frankly, we are hearing the words "al Qaeda" less and less. We now seem to be fully at war with the Taliban -- a now huge indigenous group embedded in Afghan society.
Is America's objective to quash al Qaeda? If so, then it would seem that there are many ways other than full scale war with the Taliban to possibly achieve that objective.
Is it to annihilate the Taliban? to contain the Taliban? If so, what are the compelling national security reasons to do so? The case has not been clearly made. What is the alternative if this goal is not reachable?
And is Karzai -- the likely winner of the Afghan elections fraudulent or not -- a friend or foe? How does our relationship with him fit with any of the other objectives above? Or is our goal in Afghanistan a functioning ballotocracy of corruption-free elections?
One really can't tell what our overall goal is at this point -- and the calls by some, like Brian Vogt at Across the Aisle, that we not do Afghanistan "on the cheap" make little sense when we ought not to be neck deep in problems of this sort without knowing why we are there and what constitutes failure and success.
Afghanistan, like Iraq, is sending the impression to the rest of the world that America is at a "limit" point in its military and power capabilities. This prompts allies not to count on us as much as they did previously and prompts foes to move their agendas.
Limits are very, very, very bad in the great power game -- and Afghanistan is yet again, an exposer of monumental limits on American power.
-- Steve Clemons publishes the popular political blog, The Washington Note and directs foreign policy programs at the New America Foundation
We face a very difficult time in Afghanistan, mostly because even trying to invade, let alone occupy, a landlocked, mountainous, backward nation very far from our own borders would be difficult in any case. This one, with a hostile population bent on dislodging us and tending toward more religious fundamentalism with the passage of time (to say nothing of the recruitment potential of every civilian "collateral damage" death) has proven again and again to be the graveyard of empires.
I suggest a Vietnam-style "say we won and leave" strategic shift. Turn our attention to Pakistan, where there is at least a semblance of a government to work with, and the nukes that need constant watching.
Find someplace else to run the pipeline. Afghanistan isn't worth it.
September 9, 2009 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Trudeau at Doonesbury was raising other powerful questions last week.
I am pretty sure I am not alone in wondering if there isn't a significant amount of truth in charges made by a Republican commentator recently that Obama is committed to Afghanistan as "the good war" he needs to fight to give himself more political latitude to phase out of Iraq and avoid fighting more bad wars.
We went in, as I understand it, to prevent al qaeda from relocating there from Pakistan and try to help build up the country well enough so it would not be constantly vulnerable to that happening on account of a "sovereignty vacuum" (George Will's recent phrase, which works for me).
Al qaeda is not now there. What are the prospects of building up the country effectively so as to achieve the second objective? I would need to know what "the plan" is for that. I don't know what "the plan" is, or even if there is one. There are so many countries and international organizations there now. Are they all more or less on the same page in terms of what they're trying to do? Does what they are trying to do make sense? Is it achievable at some non-astronomical expenditure of resources?
I haven't heard anything which is persuasive to me on why we should continue in the direction, such as it is, that we are pursuing there.
BTW, Steve, I picked up a copy of America and the World and wrote a 5-star amazon review on it. It was a very well-executed project and kudos to you and the NAF for your role in it. This is not to say I agree with each of the analyses Scowcroft and Zbig offer--I don't. But it is most useful to know what these two powerful and influential members of the US foreign policy establishment think. I'd recommend the book to cafe denizens looking for a good primer on some of the major foreign policy issues our country now faces and a clearer understanding of how these two influential figures think about the world. Anyway--thanks.
September 9, 2009 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
It is a continuation of the Bush policy of ill-advised conventional wars, that have no clear objectives being waged against a non-conventional force.
It degrades our hard power by letting every two bit regime know it can 'beat' the mighty American military by going non-conventional. Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. The only way to win a 'war' like this is with brutal force and massive civlian casualties, which is something we are not predisposed to do...our enemies have recognized that fact and exploit it.
So what are we doing in Afghanistan?
September 9, 2009 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Our goals are hopelessly muddled because the situation is hopelessly muddled, and reading the 'Integrated Civilian-Military Plan' for Afghanistan reads like the neo-colonial document that will make our nominal ally (Pakistan) paranoid about our planned Empire-building in the region.
The muddled situation comes about in part because we allied with the local anti-Taliban forces (Northern Alliance), who were being supported by the Bush (and current?) Administration's favorite scapegoat, Iran, while the Taliban was (and is?) supported by our nominal ally, Pakistan. The situation actually is somewhat like that in Lebanon, where external nations (Israel, Syria, Iran) seek to exploit fissures in the indigenous population, and use it as a proxy battleground.
We should know this- after all we used it as a proxy battleground against the Soviets mere decades ago. The problem is that our natural ally here would be Iran, which was the Taliban's greatest foe, instead of Pakistan. The situation, in short, is incoherent and intractable. We are torn between worrying about Pakistan's actual nukes and Iran's not-yet-extant ones. We rely on Pakistani intelligence that is infested with pro-Taliban operatives. We evidently want to turn Afghanistan into Valhalla in the Hindu Kush (contrary to Gates' wise formulation of a year ago), which feeds Pakistani paranoia about our intentions in the region.
All in all, the Afghan policy Obama is pursuing is a leftover from the previous Administration's incoherent one, albeit with inflated expectations and troop levels.
September 9, 2009 12:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
The picture is also complicated by the ethnic composition of Afghanistan: (Pashtun 42%, Tajik 27%, Hazara 9%, Uzbek 9%, Aimak 4%, Turkmen 3%, Baloch 2%, other 4%) as well as the religious composition: (Sunni Muslim 80%, Shia Muslim 19%, other 1%).
The Northern Alliance was mainly non-Pashtun ethnics, while the Taliban is almost exclusively Pashtun. The takeover by the Taliban was in part a successful attempt by the Pashtuns to reassert their traditional hegemony over the country, even though the Pashtuns in Afghanistan are not a majority. This included both racial discrimination and religious persecution of the non-Pashtuns, especially the descendents of the Mongols on the one hand and the Shia on the other.
By supporting the Northern Alliance and rolling back the Taliban, we had the opportunity to establish a secular/moderate multi-ethnic Afghanistan. Pressure from Pakistan presumably caused the Bush adminstration to blow this opportunity and to instead establish the Pashtun Karzai and a Pashtun leaning adminstration in Kabul.
At this point, the only outcome that looks feasible would be to break Afghanistan into two parts, a multi-ethnic northwest and a Pashtun southeast. We could also blow up the Salang tunnel.
The best thing to come out of Afghanistan will be the demise of NATO. NATO has outlived its purpose, and in a few years it will be dismantled.
September 9, 2009 1:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Breaking Afghanistan in two may be feasible, but the Government is hell-bent on nation-building (one,pseudo-democratic,Westernized) as a solution to the insoluble dilemmas.
This will be Obama's graveyard. He will not be able to sustain the political damage that will result from a "war of necessity" gone wrong.
September 9, 2009 3:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
Deep in the American political psyche is embedded the idea that the only moral solution to multi-ethnic/linguistic/racial/religious strife is to establish a secular democratic multi-ethnic polity. This reflects our own troubled history of assimilation.
So our only foreign policy solution is to turn up the heat on every pot until it melts.
But this will not work in Afghanistan, because the Taliban are not an external force that can be kicked out of the country, nor are they a marginal internal force that can be so reduced that they give up. The Taliban are a little more fundamentalist and a little more regressive in their social views than the average Pashtun villager, but not much. They are really a mainstream religious revival of Pashtun tribal customs and religious views with a Wahhabi and Deobandist overlay. But the latter are mainly a reinforcment of indigeous attitudes, rather than a foreign intrusion.
So the melting pot strategy is doomed in Afghanistan. The US adventure there is also doomed, since we are too inflexible to adopt a more realistic course than that pursued in Bosnia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
September 9, 2009 4:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
"The only way to win a 'war' like this is with brutal force and massive civlian casualties, which is something we are not predisposed to do...our enemies have recognized that fact and exploit it."
Well, they also know that that won't work either. That's what we did in Vietnam. More total tonnage of bombs dropped than in WWII, between 3-7 million people killed (will we ever know how many?), and it still didn't work. The reality is that the US is no longer a significant military power. It has tons of weapons and such, but they don't count for anything. All this talk about how the US has the greatest military machine ever, but it turns out it's the weakest. Who knew?
September 9, 2009 1:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
The administration's and NATO's stated goals in Afghanistan have ranged from eliminating the threat posed by al-Qaeda, to fighting the Taliban, to building a stable democratic state.
On March 27, 2009, "the President announced a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan that is the culmination of a careful 60-day, interagency strategic review. . .The strategy starts with a clear, concise, attainable goal: disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its safe havens."
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Whats-New-in-the-Strategy-for-Afghanistan-and-Pakistan/
In April, General Stanley McChrystal, the military commander in Afghanistan, led a review of war strategy for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen with the aim of improving the effectiveness of the Afghan strategy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124173359782198081.html
Six weeks after the White House announced that elimination of al Qaeda was Job One, on Sunday, May 10, 2009, General Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, said that Al Qaeda is no longer operating in Afghanistan.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/10/petraeus-al-qaeda-longer-operating-afghanistan/
General McChrystal, on July 26, 2009, stated that fighting the Taliban, not al Qaeda, was now Job One. "Practically speaking, there are areas that are controlled by Taliban forces," he said. Over time, McChrystal said, the command will "reduce" those areas, but the first priority will to be to make sure populated areas are free of insurgent influence.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-interview26-2009jul26,0,5576419.story
Then on August 31, 2009 General McChrystal said, in an assessment of the war, that a new strategy was needed to fight the Taliban, while NATO officials disclosed he is expected to separately request more troops.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/08/31/world/main5276135.shtml
NATO’s stated main role in Afghanistan, by the way, is "to assist the Afghan Government in exercising and extending its authority and influence across the country, paving the way for reconstruction and effective governance."
http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_8189.htm
In September, 2009 President Barack Obama is slated to send Congress a new plan for measuring progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The finished version is to be delivered to Capitol Hill by Sept. 24, a congressionally mandated date for a report on Afghanistan.
September 9, 2009 1:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks. I normally don't do non-substantive comments but you did a lot of work pulling this information together.
September 9, 2009 1:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
news report: German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be jointly writing, along with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon to convene an international conference on Afghanistan at an early date.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KI09Df03.html
The idea of a possible UN conference on Afghanistan is interesting.
First, the United Nations and its Seceretary General Ban Ki-moon, a US lackey, have always had a "hands-off" policy in Afghanistan, no doubt due to US pressure. The issue is not listed anywhere on UN websites as a matter of interest by anyone in the 40,000 person UN Secretariat, an organization supposedly concerned with peace in the world. Ban would, I'm sure, come under intense pressure from his US handlers to stay away from any review of US war policy. While the US currently uses the UN to pursue its Iran policy, the UN has definitely not been seen by the US as potentially useful in Afghanistan.
Secondly, it has been US policy to use its reliable European allies, not the United Nations, to pursue its war aims in Afghanistan. However these allies are now disenchanted with this US war. from atimes: . . ."a pall of gloom descended on the two-day European Union (EU) foreign ministers meeting in Stockholm over the weekend. According to reports, the EU ministers showed "no optimism or idealism" in their speeches, which were laced with depressing and "occasionally grisly anecdotal evidence" of the war that is going horribly wrong. The disputed presidential elections in Afghanistan and growing Afghan intolerance toward foreign involvement - and now the Kunduz incident - dominated the Stockholm discussions." So any UN conference would include not only negatives from the Third World and the Islamic World, but also from US European allies. Merkel herself is facing opposition on her Afghanistan strategy (particularly since Kunduz) from her opponent in the upcoming federal election on September 27. This is another reason why the US would not agree to a UN conference on Afghanistan.
September 9, 2009 3:12 PM | Reply | Permalink