The whole point of the USA being in Afghanistan is precisely so the "neighbors", wont move in and solve the whole mess.

Today, this is called "nation building" and it used to be called "the white man's burden"; both of which are really weird names for "pipeline".

Well, Pakistan does seem to be readying a move into the Waziristans, with a military that has apparently finally got its legs, and in addition has been working diligently at cutting the al-Quaeda purse strings. This is a positive development, if for no other reason than that the Pakistani government sees its own stability as a worth goal, and destabilization in the tribal areas has a potentially nasty spillover.

And they have the advantage of adjacency. We, on the other hand, are looking at a landlocked Central Asian version of Vietnam, trying to prop up a corrupt and incompetent government (aka Hamid Karzai, the "mayor of Kabul") with no chance of standing on its own absent our direct support.

I'm not sure the war in Afghanistan is good 'ole Imperialism. I certainly believe the Iraq War falls into that category, but as many have noted, the Afghanistan conflict is fundamentally different. The ambivalence of Afghanistan's neighbors to engage in the conflict is probably a smart decision. Why stick your neck out when the U.S. military comes in with a baseball bat to shatter the hornet's nest that everyone has been doing their best to quietly avoid?

A more interesting question is what Obama's plans will be. McChrystal has asked for 40,000 more troops. Joe Biden, meanwhile, has subtly hinted that many U.S. forces should be withdrawn from the country and the strategy should be shifted to special operations against key targets.

Obama has all but nixed this latter proposal, but there are indications that Obama might opt to sent somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 more troops.

Of all his options, that seems to be the most misguided. Either give your top military commander what he says is necessary, or get together with your other advisers and come up with a different plan altogether. Maintaining the status quo while sending in a nominal amount of fresh troops seems to be the worst possible move the president could make.

Here is something to chew on.

1st, I'm really not sure many others in the world sees it as the US "doing the heavy lifting" in Afghanistan. e.g. Most Western nations really didn't want the US going in.

- Outside of a couple of economically significant projects or sectors (drugs, possible pipeline, some mines?) there really isn't much in Afghanistan. People can always name projects, but it has a GDP less than Brunei or Madagascar or Honduras. Christ, if people wanna get all spooked about pipelines, there are lots of other massive energy plays to finesse on the planet. And whatever projects are going on now (or not) would likely be put together and made to work (or not) with whoever else was running the show. One way or another, you're dealing with warlords et al. They're not going away. So stay for economic reasons? Not.

- This business about a "base for terrorism" just always struck me as absurd. Terrorists training to fly planes can be done in a lot of places - like Florida. Same with firing guns. Or playing with bombs and explosives. There are lots of collapsed countries, barely explored regions, countries we can barely access, houses on back lots and ranches that nobody pays attention to. The possibility that terrorists could function in a country does not mean we need to get in and fight decade long wars there.

- As for making some huge difference to neighbours in the region, Afghanistan has almost no net economic importance to them... but maybe could supply a small pool and remote base for militants to hassle Pakistan. But there are already plenty of those within Pakistan, and if we wanted, we could help Pakistan directly.

Ultimately, the US could haul ass out of Afghanistan, and simply say - we reserve the right to bomb anyone who even halfway looks like they're planning or training for terrorism. Same as it did in Iraq between the wars. It could then let the various Afghan groups beat the shit out of each other, warlords and narcobosses and religious freaks or all together, and periodically bomb the snot out of baddies from its list.

It'd be low cost... no assurances life for the average Afghan was better or worse than today... and the US would look - in the eyes of the world - just about the way they do today, maybe better.

There is nothing I can see that argues to continue war there, other than pile after pile of Imperial ideas and... moods. Phrases like "doing the heavy lifting" carry a worldview and sensibility which most of the rest of the world may not share.

And now... back to Buffalo Jumps! HUZZAH! (Kidding!)

To everybody with the patience to bear with me on this a little while longer. :-)

My main point is that the nations in the region are already allied on matters of counter-terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime through their SCO alliance. They also have the necessary organizations, resources, people, and the money to form a joint effort in stabilizing Af/Pak. They have a huge advantage just by virtue of their understanding of the region. Pak is giving money to the Taliban to hedge their bets with us. They won't be able to do that as an active part of the alliance.

India and Pakistan, as well as Iran, are all State Observers in the SCO and so are already allied in counter-terrorism efforts. Russia, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan are member nations. Apparently Turkmenistan has also agreed to join in this particular effort. And China and India work together under the BRIC alliance also, which conveniently happened to meet this summer at the same as the SCO.

The rewards for all of them are two fold - security fears are way less with a stable Afghanistan and there are some great energy deals with ready made markets just waiting for a secure enough environment to start the digging and mining. At some point, Iran and Afghanistan had a deal for a pipeline to run through it where Afghanistan stood to gain an enormous amount of easy money. Presumably, that is still waiting to happen, also.

And, as Kagan pointed out, we stand to gain nothing economically if we do get Af/Pak stable.

So once again, why is the discussion not about at least sharing the stabilization (war) activities with the countries that have both the most to lose and gain from them? It could be the start of offshore balancing, which offers the extremely attractive bonus of not being a main target for pissed off terrorists.

Is it simply about the US being the security and unipolar hegemon of the world, at least in its own eyes?

Thanks!

It appears some neighbors and their NATO buds, while discussing Afghanistan, are sometimes mainly interested in looking out for number one...an AP short in yesterday's New York Times:

Kazakhstan: Passage for French Forces in Afghan War along with a 25% stake for French cos. in a Caspian offshore natural gas project (a $1.4 billion deal.)

You can find more on it by doing a google news search.

A whining aside: I notice this kind of stuff is reported less and less (outside of venues like the Wall Street Journal,) and that one really have to seek it out in business news places. I think that's because the news junkies (a group for which I include the international blogosphere) have all become more interested almost exclusively in all politics and all inflammatory talking or blogging heads all the time, and trade and business deals are where some of the cuts in reporting are happening. And I don't think it's just an American phenom. Business and trade deals just don't get those juices flowing like talking about the latest outrageous antics of Glen Beck or his Asian or Mideast equivalent. But make no mistake, if you take time to seek it out, this kind of stuff is going down all the time and is the background framework for international politics. Unfortunately only investors seem to be interested in rewarding people to report on it with their subscriptions or their clicks. Lots of amateur reporter/bloggers have a lot of interest in complaining grandly on how money makes the world go round, but without more precise knowledge of how it's doing that in each instance, it's kind of silly to think that anyone is going to be able to do anything to counteract that...it's kind of sad that the availability of all kinds of news has has not broadened people's interests, but seems to promote more of the same.../rant :-)

Just ran across this, interesting that there's an awful lot of countries here, including most of the neighbors:

October 7, 2009

US Military Deaths in Afghanistan Region at 791

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 9:27 p.m. ET

As of Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2009, at least 791 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department. The department last updated its figures Wednesday at 10 a.m. EDT.

Of those, the military reports 611 were killed by hostile action.

Outside the Afghan region, the Defense Department reports 72 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, three were the result of hostile action. The military lists these other locations as Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba; Djibouti; Eritrea; Ethiopia; Jordan; Kenya; Kyrgyzstan; Philippines; Seychelles; Sudan; Tajikistan; Turkey; and Yemen....

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/07/us/AP-US-Afghan-US-Deaths.html

A note for the A.P. copyright police should they be around: When you pretty much just regurgitate a very short Pentagon press release, I would hope you'd have sense enough to be happy that I quoted your version rather than go to the source.