American Footprints » strategy

Well, One Out of Three Ain’t Bad

Eric Martin — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:59:01 +0000

At long last, the Obama administration has provided a draft of its objectives with respect to the ongoing military occupation of Afghanistan, as well as a series of metrics for gauging the success in terms of meeting those aims. Unfortunately, the enunciated objectives are themselves typical of the muddled and contradictory goals, tactics and strategies associated with a mission that has lost both its mooring and rudder. From Josh Rogin’s summary:

The draft document focuses on three main objectives: disrupting terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan, working to stabilize Pakistan, and working to achieve a host of political and civic goals in Afghanistan. Each objective has a list of metrics beneath it, although many of these are more goals than concrete milestones that could be measured in any factual way. [emph. added]

The metrics span just about every conceivable issue, including progress towards Pakistan’s civilian government and judicial system becoming stable, to support for human rights, to public perceptions of security, to volume and value of narcotics.

A partial list of the cross purposes is as follows: A continued military operation in Afghanistan that (even if inadvertently) weakens Pakistan vis-a-vis India is not going to stabilize the situation in Pakistan (nor garner the full support of the Pakistani government). Along those lines, operations against Pakistani Taliban elements in pursuit of eliminating supply lines and redoubts for Afghan Talibs is not going to stabilize Pakistan either. Quite the contrary, such activities are creating a sizable anti-US, anti-Pakistani government backlash – pushing moderates and religious extremists together in common cause – and provoking Pakistani Taliban to attack the Pakistani government.

In general terms, this radicalization and escalation are only logical: large foreign military occupations pursuing narrow, self-serving interests and in the process bending local powers to its purposes rarely bring about stability, peace and regional harmony. Absent an unrestrained brutality that we will not and should not unleash.

As for the metric of achieving “progress towards Pakistan’s civilian government and judicial system becoming stable,” again, this aim is undercut by the underlying policy of military occupation of Afghanistan. Consider the actual metrics:

Progress towards Pakistan’s civilian government and judicial system becoming stable and free of military involvement
Pakistan’s actions to take necessary steps to ensure economic and financial stability, job creation, and growth
Support for human rights
Development of an enduring, strategic partnership between the U.S. and Pakistan
Pakistani public opinion of government performance
Demonstrable action by government against corruption, resulting in increased trust and confidence of the Pakistani public

Our policy is wildly unpopular in Pakistan. We are viewed by large swathes of the population as, alternatively, an imperial power and a Western crusader intent on weakening a powerful Muslim nation (and seizing its nukes). The government in power is viewed as a quisling regime installed and/or controlled by us.

How is a continuation of the policy that gives rise to such sentiment going to aid the “[d]evelopment of an enduring, strategic partnership between the U.S. and Pakistan”? Further, in an environment like the one stoked by such policies, how can the US simultaneously support democracy and seek to ensure a compliant Pakistani government? After all, it is at least likely that any government that emerges from a fair democratic process, if representative of public sentiment, would reject these particular US policies in the region.

Even Hamid Karzai had to engage in massive fraud to achieve his “free and fair” electoral victory – a testament to the complications elections and democracy can bring about. A similar outcome (or perceived outcome) in Pakistan in order to preserve the opportunity to pursue an unpopular policy would directly undermine each and every one of the enumerated metrics above.

Legitimacy is not won that way. And if legitimacy is a prerequisite for success in counterinsurgency operations, well then, we’re doing it wrong.

You Probably Think this War is About You

Eric Martin — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 18:37:27 +0000

Despite President Bush’s post-9/11, manichean-tinged attempt to categorize other nations as either “with us or against us” with respect to those terrorist groups that the US government considers problematic, and despite an understandable impulse on the part of the US government to put US interests ahead of those of other states (a tendency that spans administrations from both parties), governments in foreign capitals haven’t necessarily been all that cooperative or obedient. This should come as no surprise, and yet our policies are often crafted with the expectation that our dictates will meet little resistance because we, the indispensable nation, have issued them.

Along these lines, much of our strategic class suffers from a persistent form of solipsism with respect to international affairs, a myopia that obscures the obvious truth that, just as we must pursue our interests first and foremost, other governments are, likewise, compelled to put their own respective interests first. Often times, this overriding motivation means that they will refuse to line-up along demarcations established, somewhat arbitrarily in their eyes, by the United States. It’s nothing personal.

The most pertinent recent example of this incongruity between US expectations and demands, and a foreign nation’s uncooperative and hesitant response, centers around our dealings with Pakistan and our policy agenda in Afghanistan.

After the attacks of 9/11, from the US perspective, the Taliban was an extremist religious faction that had seized power in Afghanistan, hosted a terrorist organization that had repeatedly attacked the US and US interests, and thus, a group that had to be deposed and shut out from power. That policy agenda is certainly reasonable enough, especially for an American, but there is another side to the story.

Whereas the United States is, quite understandably, concerned with the threat posed by al-Qaeda, and thus views the Taliban as a hostile element given its past support (and current cooperation) with al-Qaeda, Pakistan is not similarly disposed. For Pakistan, the foreign policy universe revolves around its regional adversary, frequent military opponent, and former co-inhabitant of a vast territory that each, in common, once called home: India. Everything from relations with China and Russia, to relations with the United States, are ordered on the principle of how to best counter India. In fact, this pervasive paranoia and monomaniacal focus has even warped Pakistan’s domestic political life, exacerbating a militarized culture, complete with a powerful and semi-autonomous intelligence apparatus (the ISI), with frequent military coups and a general disregard for civilian rule.

While Pakistan views its alliance with the US as valuable, it is not because it necessarily sees eye to eye with the US on most matters. Quite the contrary: Pakistani elites, as well as the general population, have long had a suspicious view of the United States and its motives, opposing key aspects of its international policies (these attitudes have worsened dramatically in recent years). This alliance, like most others for Pakistan, passes through the India-lens; Pakistan values the military and economic aid it can obtain via cordial relations with the US in order to counter India, and it has an interest in preventing too close an alliance forming between the US and India (which could tilt the balance of power too heavily in India’s direction). But the US alliance is – at best – of a second order importance, and subsumed by the India imperatives.

With respect to Afghanistan, Pakistan has long sought to cultivate a proxy and ally in that territory in order to achieve several objectives: expand its regional reach, influence and alliances in order to better balance India’s larger territorial space and population, and create a strategic redoubt in case of conflict. In fact, the US facilitated this process somewhat with the funneling of massive amounts of financial and military aid destined for anti-Soviet Afghan mujaheddin through Peshawar and other Pakistani hubs, leaving it to the Pakistanis (mostly the ISI) to determine the recipients of this largess (a valuable perch from which to cultivate influence, as well as enrich itself). Peshawar, it turns out, was also where Osama bin Laden set up his operations, and the point from which he coordinated aid from Gulf donors to his favored groups of foreign fighters.

After the withdrawal of the Soviets, and the eventual fall of the regime that it had backed, the US withdrew its presence from Afghanistan. But Pakistan, obviously, continued its involvement with its neighbor. As the dust settled after years of post-Soviet conflict, Pakistan made sure that the eventual victor – the Taliban – was the horse that it had backed with money, arms and other forms of support. Pakistan, at last, had what it deemed vital in terms of countering India, its most serious threat.

Fast forward to the events of 9/11 and George Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan. The leader of Pakistan at the time, by dint of a prior military coup in 1999, was Pervez Musharraf and he was faced with a significant strategic setback for Pakistan: it’s proxy and ally had been replaced by a government that was establishing friendly ties (and accepting millions in aid from)…India. While the US was focused on neutralizing al-Qaeda and the Taliban (notwithstanding the massive diversion of resources away from this effort and to the unrelated theater in Iraq), Pakistan was trying to contain the fallout from the loss of its valuable regional ally.

Musharraf did his best, as any Pakistani leader would, to juggle the various imperatives: placate the United States by saying what they wanted to hear and making a show of cooperation, extract massive amounts of aid under the pretense of fighting al-Qaeda and the Taliban (aid that was converted into conventional arms better suited for conflict with India, and rushed to that front), surreptitiously support (or, at least, keep alive) its Taliban allies, and destabilize the India-friendly Karzai regime. All in preparation for the day when the United States, again, withdraws and Pakistan can, again, fill the void.

But the tightrope walking has had its perils. In the process of, at least partially, complying with the war on terror as envisioned by the United States, the Pakistani government has had to support the anti-Taliban mission in Afghanistan which has, at times, involved cross border incursions and air strikes on Pakistani territory along the border regions. This support and acquiescence to infringements on its sovereign territory has, in turn, greatly stoked anti-Americanism as well as anti-government sentiment within Pakistan.

Pakistani Taliban elements have been radicalized, choosing in recent months to launch attacks against government forces. During the years that the Afghan Taliban were in power, the Pakistani government had little problem with its indigenous Taliban elements. The heightened tensions are a recent phenomenon, and are directly related to the Pakistan government’s complicity in the US war on terror, and they are a symptom of a pernicious underlying unrest.

By pushing Pakistan even further, by forcing US prerogatives on the Pakistani government (interests that run counter to Pakistan’s in many respects), the US is actually destabilizing Pakistan and forcing disparate groups of religious zealots and secular elites, extremists and moderates, together in common cause in opposition to the current government and its pro-US tilt - ironic, considering that one of the arguments for ongoing US military operations in the region is the supposed stabilizing effect those military operations will have on Pakistan, crucial to safeguarding that country from potential hostile coup. From a McClatchy article (via Kevin Drum):

For weeks now, the Pakistani media have portrayed America, its military and defense contractors in the darkest of lights, all part of an apparent campaign of anti-American vilification that is sweeping the country and, according to some, is putting American lives at risk.

Pakistanis are reacting to what many here see as an “imperial” American presence, echoing Iraq and Afghanistan, with Washington dictating to the Pakistani military and the government. Polls show that Pakistanis regard the U.S., formally a close ally and the country’s biggest donor, as a hostile power. [...]

The lively Pakistani media has been filled with stories of under-cover American agents operating in the country, tales of a huge contingent of U.S. Marines planned to be stationed at the embassy, and reports of Blackwater private security personnel running amuck. Armed Americans have supposedly harassed and terrified residents and police officers in Islamabad and Peshawar, according to local press reports.

Much of the hysteria was based on a near $1 billion plan, revealed by McClatchy in May and confirmed by U.S. officials, to massively increase the size of the American embassy in Islamabad, which brought home to Pakistanis that the United States plans an extensive and long-term presence in the country. [...]

A survey last month for international broadcaster al Jazeera by Gallup Pakistan found that 59 percent of Pakistanis felt the greatest threat to the country was the United States. A separate survey in August by the Pew Research Center, an independent pollster based in Washington, recorded that 64 percent of the Pakistani public regards the U.S. “as an enemy” and only 9 percent believe it to be a partner.

“The Ugly American of the sixties is back in Pakistan and this time with a vengeance,” said Mazari, the defense analyst whose newspaper column was the subject of the American complaint. “It’s an alliance (U.S.-Pakistan) that’s been forced on the country by its corrupt leadership. It’s delivering chaos. We should distance ourselves. You can’t just hand over the country.”

While the anti-US sentiment appears genuine, it is uncertain whether the current storm, and the particular stories that it thrived on, was orchestrated by a pressure group or even an arm of the state. In the past, Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, part of the military, has very effectively used the press to push its agenda. [...]

A widely believed conspiracy contends that America is deliberately destabilizing Pakistan, to bring down a “strong Muslim country”, and ultimately seize its nuclear weapons. Pakistanis, especially its military establishment, also are distrustful of U.S. motives in Afghanistan, seeing it as part of a strategy for regional domination. Further Pakistanis are appalled that the regime of Hamid Karzai in Kabul is close to archenemy India. [...]

Many also blame the U.S. for “imposing” a president on the country, Zardari, who is deeply disliked and who last year succeeded an unpopular U.S.-backed military dictator. So democrats resent American interference in Pakistani politics, while conservatives distrust American aims in Afghanistan.

“You used to find this anti-Americanism among supporters of religious groups and Right-wing groups,” said Ahmed Quraishi, a newspaper columnist and the leading anti-American blogger. “But over the past two to three years, young, educated Pakistanis, people you’d normally expect to be pro-American modernists, and middle class people, are increasingly inclined to anti-Americanism. That’s the new phenomenon.”

There are two main takeaways from this McClatchy piece, and the background laid out above: First, Pakistan will, ultimately, look out for Pakistan’s interests and address threats to Pakistan which involve, above all else, India. Our efforts in Afghanistan run directly counter to Pakistan’s regional/India-related concerns. Thus, Pakistan will only provide half-hearted cooperation, while key elements of its security establishment work at cross-purposes. The recent anti-American media blitz is either the result of grass roots sentiment, or an ISI funded campaign, but neither alternative should prove comforting.

With a population so suspicious of our motives, and with a military/elite/intelligence apparatus in vehement opposition to an agenda that is weakening Pakistan vis-a-vis India, forcing our mandate on Pakistan will serve to destabilize a country that is far more important to the US than Afghanistan. In that sense, it should be possible to line-up US interests and Pakistani interests: ultimately, destabilizing a nuclear armed nation such as Pakistan is riskier than withdrawing from Afghanistan and disrupting al-Qaeda from afar. And by doing the latter, we reduce the risk of the former. Perhaps if the Obama administration took full measure of Pakistan’s position and interests, it could further seek to craft a compromise acceptable for all.

I’m Creepin’ and I’m Creepin’

Eric Martin — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 18:47:05 +0000

Marc Lynch makes a very good point:

Suppose the U.S. succeeded beyond all its wildest expectations, and turned Afghanistan into Nirvana on Earth, an orderly, high GDP nirvana with universal health care and a robust wireless network (and even suppose that it did this without the expense depriving Americans of the same things). So what? Al-Qaeda (or what we call al-Qaeda) could easily migrate to Somalia, to Yemen, deeper into Pakistan, into the Caucasas, into Africa — into a near infinite potential pool of ungoverned or semi-governed spaces with potentially supportive environments. Are we to commit the United States to bringing effective governance and free wireless to the entire world? On whose budget? To his credit, McChrystal adviser Steve Biddle raises all of these questions in his excellent American Interest article from last month — but in my view goes wrong by limiting the policy options to either full withdrawal or full commitment to COIN.

Right. It’s not like al-Qaeda is confined to this little sliver of land in South Asia such that, once that narrow stretch of land is magically pacified and completely reordered, al-Qaeda will cease to exist. Thus, as Lynch points out, the game of nation build-a-mole will have to continue in a new setting. And at a couple trillion dollars a pop, we don’t have the money. Further, al-Qaeda (and its viral ideology) has penetrated Western Europe and other regions not in need of nation building. So even if at the end of a century and $50 trillion dollars or so, we managed to purge the globe of potential havens, the problem would persist.

This, for my money (taxpayers too), is the right approach:

Another option which used to be on the table, as I understood it, was a much more narrowly focused policy of keeping the pressure on al-Qaeda while letting Afghan politics sort itself out. But from my distance, at least, it seems that this approach is being overwhelmed by those arguing for a much more expansive mission (as Michael Cohen has been documenting for a while under the category title “Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch”). And that worries me. I see why keeping al-Qaeda on the ropes matters. But I just don’t really see why trying to build an Afghan state is a significant American national interest, or that it can be done at a price commensurate to its significance.

I fear that the escalation of the war in Afghanistan is following a dangerous path of least resistance. Given the assignment to win the war in Afghanistan, of course a military which has been reshaped by its experience in Iraq will turn to COIN doctrine. Once the decision is made to apply a COIN approach, of course the military is going to ask for more troops there, and a long commitment, since it’s always been obvious that really doing COIN in Afghanistan would require vastly more troops than are currently deployed. And then, at each step of the way, there will be a strong tactical argument for expansion and a very difficult sell for any attempt to argue for restraint. Once that iron logic has been accepted, all else follows — and it becomes extremely difficult to reverse course.

But I remain far from convinced that COIN is the right approach, especially when compared not to total U.S. withdrawal but to a more minimalist strategy. The attraction of COIN seems to derive from learning only partial lessons from Iraq — conveniently forgetting that the “surge” and COIN were only one of a number of factors contributing to the changing conditions there, along with the Sunni turn against al-Qaeda which long predated the “surge” and the near-completion of sectarian cleansing in many urban areas, and that its long-term success in Iraq is far from guaranteed. And Afghanistan, as should be obvious, is very different from Iraq. Its advocates argue that this simply means that the approach needs to be adapted to the local conditions and the mission adequately resourced. I’m not at all convinced.

No, neither am I. This is something to think about given a couple other pertinent news items of the day. First, Anthony Cordesman (who is acting as one of McChrystal’s advisors) is recommending a substantial escalation:

Anthony Cordesman, an influential American academic who is a member of a team that has been advising General Stanley McChrystal, now in charge of Nato forces in Afghanistan, also said that to deal with the threat from the Taleban the size of the Afghan National Army might have to increase to 240,000.

If Mr Cordesman’s recommendation reflects the view of General McChrystal, who recently presented the findings of a 60-day review of Afghanistan strategy to Washington, it would mean sending another nine combat brigades, comprising 45,000 American troops, in addition to the 21,000 already approved by President Obama. This would bring the total American military presence in Afghanistan to about 100,000, considerably closer to the force that was deployed for the counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq.

Here’s Steve Hynd on another:

Forty more years of occupation – that’s what the next head of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, is predicting. And he also predicts that US and British troops will be actively fighting there for “the medium term”, i.e. about 15-20 years…

Before American readers dismiss Richards’ prediction as “not invented here”, I’ll remind them that back in 2004 everyone in the U.S. was talking about a possible pullout from Iraq after elections in 2005 – but that the British Army said it was planning to be there until at least late 2008. They turned out to be more honest about prospects then than any American politician, pundit or general. The British Army finally left Iraq in mid-2009.

I expect the same on current timelines for Afghanistan, where American officials have been notoriously averse to estimates of how long the “long war” will actually take. Even now, they’re hedging their bets – but the estimate of David Kilcullen…that the U.S. will be enmired for at least a decade at a cost that will eventually eclipse even the trillion-plus spent on Iraq has become one they cannot ignore.

Imagine how much more incredibly costly in both blood and treasure FORTY years will be. And for what?

And then imagine what it will cost when we have to do it all over again in Somalia, Yemen, deeper into Pakistan, into the Caucasas, other parts of Africa, etc. This is not an efficient or effective way to fight terrorism. But it is what Osama bin Laden had in mind when he set out a strategy to bleed America dry and induce our decline. Maybe we should consider an alternative to Osama’s playbook?

Oh Afghanistan, Went Too Far Again, Crashed Our Car in the Rain

Eric Martin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:01:46 +0000

Quote of the day material from Rory Stewart who cleverly sums up the mindset of our "strategic class" – an echelon of "experts" that establish a disturbing level of continuity in outlook from one administration to the next, Republican or Democratic:

Since arriving at Harvard in June last year, [Stewart]has been consultant to several members of Barack Obama’s administration, including Hillary Clinton, and is a member of Richard Holbrooke’s special committee for Afghanistan and Pakistan policy. “I do a lot of work with policymakers, but how much effect am I having?” he asks…

“It’s like they’re coming in and saying to you, ‘I’m going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?’ And you say, ‘I don’t think you should drive your car off the cliff.’ And they say, ‘No, no, that bit’s already been decided – the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.’ And you say, ‘Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.’ And then they say, ‘We’ve consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says …’”

Well, that and we’ve got a better driver for the plummet. Stewart continues:

On the day we meet, the New York Times reports that it looks as if Obama’s policy of increasing troops in Afghanistan will work. Stewart has a different take. “The policy of troop increases will look ridiculous in 30 years,” he says. “They’re not going to make America safer from al-Qaeda. The theory of state-building is suspect. I’m not sure that the state they aim for is conceivable, let alone achievable. We should be pursuing a much more conventional development strategy in Afghanistan. And, if you want to combine that with a Special Forces unit that would make things uncomfortable for Osama bin Laden, then so be it.” He sighs. “But you can’t say that sort of thing to the policymakers. They’re grand, intelligent, busy people who have no interest in this kind of abstraction. They’re not interested in values, virtue, outlook …

Or "Very Serious People," to use the parlance of our times.

Our Midas Guns

Eric Martin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:24:32 +0000

Stephen Biddle’s recent piece on Afghanistan seeks to probe the question asked in the title, Is It Worth It? Biddle’s answer is a tepid, tentative "yes." In his words, our ongoing military campaign in Afghanistan represents "a war effort that is costly, risky and worth waging—but only barely so."

As suggested, Biddle is certainly no optimist about our prospects for "victory" in Afghanistan – although, to his credit, he narrows down the criteria to two modest goals when compared to some of the other more grandiose designs associated with the mission since its inception.

The United States has two primary national interests in this conflict: that Afghanistan never again become a haven for terrorism against the United States, and that chaos in Afghanistan not destabilize its neighbors, especially Pakistan. Neither interest can be dismissed, but both have limits as casus belli.

Biddle quickly abandons the first rationale, however, describing it as the "weakest" reason to wage a war considering the fact that: (a) there is no guarantee that the Taliban would welcome al-Qaeda back if the US departs and the Taliban dominates; (b) we can disrupt so-called safe-havens by taking measures far short of all out war; and (c) there are more attractive safe havens available in several other settings, and waging war to shut them down as they crop up is unrealistic in the extreme (also: a key part of Osama Bin Laden’s strategy of bleeding our resources by goading us into costly campaigns across the globe) – arguments that this site has been making with some frequency.

Which leaves us with the second rationale alone, about which Biddle has this to say:

Pakistani state collapse, moreover, is a danger over which the United States has only limited influence. We have uneven and historically fraught relations with the Pakistani military and intelligence services, and our ties with the civilian government of the moment can be no more efficacious than that government’s own sway over the country. The United States is too unpopular with the Pakistani public to have any meaningful prospect of deploying major ground forces there to assist the government in counterinsurgency. U.S. air strikes can harass insurgents and terrorists within Pakistan, but the inevitable collateral damage arouses harsh public opposition that could itself threaten the weak government’s stability. U.S. aid is easily (and routinely) diverted to purposes other than countering Islamist insurgents, such as the maintenance of military counterweights to India, graft and patronage, or even support for Islamist groups seen by Pakistani authorities as potential allies against India. U.S. assistance to Pakistan can—and should—be made conditional on progress in countering insurgents, but if these conditions are too harsh, Pakistan might reject the terms, thus removing our leverage in the process. Demanding conditions that the Pakistani government ultimately accepts but cannot reasonably fulfill only sets the stage for recrimination and misunderstanding.

If we cannot reliably influence Pakistan for the better, we should at least heed the Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm. With so little actual leverage, we cannot afford to make the problem any worse than it already is.

That is a very accurate, objective analysis of the situation: our influence in Pakistan is limited; we are extremely unpopular; the use of our military assets engenders resistance and radicalization; Pakistan is more pre-occupied with India; and the Pakistani government is not fully committed to combating those Taliban elements and radicals that it has used, and continues to use, as anti-Indian proxies in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Given those factors, one could easily see that, since our primary mission should be to "do no harm" in terms of destabilizing Pakistan, we should cease our US-centric (which runs counter to Pakistan’s focus), heavy-handed, military interference in the region. After all, our influence is limited, and due to our lack of popularity, and the radicalizing effects of our presence and military campaign, we aren’t furthering our goals but undermining them. Biddle, however, comes to the opposite conclusion:

If the Taliban regained control of the Afghan state, their ability to use the state’s resources to destabilize the secular government in Pakistan would increase the risk of state collapse there. Analysts have made much of the threat that Pakistani Taliban base camps pose to the stability of the government in Kabul, but the danger works both ways: Instability in Afghanistan also poses a serious threat to the secular civilian government in Pakistan. This is the single greatest U.S. interest in Afghanistan: to prevent it from aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems and magnifying the danger of an al-Qaeda nuclear-armed sanctuary there.

But Biddle overstates the quality of the threat posed by Afghan Talibs in terms of destabilizing the Pakistani state. The Taliban have long been on the receiving end of Pakistani government largess. They have been cultivated as a proxy and ally useful in terms of creating a strategic redoubt in case of conflict with India, and in further establishing an anti-Indian front in the region. In fact, much of their tenacity and success in Afghanistan today (and previously) is attributable to the ongoing support of their Pakistani patrons.

That is the nature of the Afghan Taliban: a local phenomenon benefiting from the generosity of foreign benefactors. As such, the Afghan Taliban enjoys limited reach and power – especially if it were to actually turn on those same foreign benefactors. Along those lines, what exactly are the Afghan "state’s resources" that are supposed to threaten Pakistan (whose military and security forces are far more numerous, vastly better equipped, well trained, etc)? The Afghan state (and various militant factions) have limited economic and military resources – and much of what they have comes from…Pakistan.

This tail is just not capable of wagging the dog, and the Pakistani government knows it. That is why that government continues to support those same Afghan Taliban factions that we are, according to Biddle, supposed to be protecting Pakistan from. Maybe they know something we don’t?

Further, Biddle takes it as a given that our ongoing military operations in Afghanistan serve to stabilize the situation in Pakistan without even acknowledging – let alone discussing – the obvious counterpoint: what if our seven+ year military campaign in neighboring Afghanistan (targeting Pakistan’s longtime ally), with US forces frequently striking Pakistani territory itself, was actually "aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems."

What if, in asking the Pakistanis to cooperate in the neutralizing of their proxies and in the empowerment of a new regime friendly to India, we were "[d]emanding conditions that the Pakistani government ultimately accepts but cannot reasonably fulfill only set[ting] the stage for recrimination and misunderstanding." Is there any chance that bending the Pakistani government to our agenda – which cuts against its own interests – could cause political problems for that same government?

Shouldn’t we at least acknowledge the possibility that wars and occupations often have a radicalizing, destabilizing effect with myriad unintended consequences throughout the war zones? The Pakistani government is certainly sounding the alarm: [more after the jump]

Pakistan is objecting to expanded American combat operations in neighboring Afghanistan, creating new fissures in the alliance with Washington at a critical juncture when thousands of new American forces are arriving in the region.

Pakistani officials have told the Obama administration that the Marines fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will force militants across the border into Pakistan, with the potential to further inflame the troubled province of Baluchistan, according to Pakistani intelligence officials. [...]

The country’s perspective was given in a nearly two-hour briefing on Friday for The New York Times by senior analysts and officials of Pakistan’s main spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence…The main themes of the briefing were echoed in conversations with several military officers over the past few days.

One of the first briefing slides read, in part: “The surge in Afghanistan will further reinforce the perception of a foreign occupation of Afghanistan. It will result in more civilian casualties; further alienate local population. Thus more local resistance to foreign troops.”

One obvious rebuttal is that the Pakistani government is exaggerating these threats because it is trying to cut short US operations against the Pakistan-friendly Afghan Taliban, and it is wary of an India-friendly Karzai government consolidating power in Kabul. But the implications of that possibility should offer no comfort: it would mean that the Pakistani government is more intent on protecting the Taliban, and preserving its influence via the Taliban in Afghanistan, than it is in advancing US interests (which are diametrically opposed). If that’s the case (and it seems likely), and our success in terms of stabilizing Afghanistan is dependent on the Pakistani government’s cooperation with our agenda instead, then we are pursuing a lost cause.

The Pakistani account made clear that even as the United States recommits troops and other resources to take on a growing Taliban threat, Pakistani officials still consider India their top priority and the Taliban militants a problem that can be negotiated. In the long term, the Taliban in Afghanistan may even remain potential allies for Pakistan, as they were in the past, once the United States leaves.

The Pakistani officials gave views starkly different from those of American officials regarding the threat presented by top Taliban commanders, some of whom the Americans say have long taken refuge on the Pakistani side of the border.

Recent Pakistani military operations against Taliban in the Swat Valley and parts of the tribal areas have done little to close the gap in perceptions.

Even as Obama administration officials praise the operations, they express frustration that Pakistan is failing to act against the full array of Islamic militants using the country as a base.

Instead, they say, Pakistani authorities have chosen to fight Pakistani Taliban who threaten their government, while ignoring Taliban and other militants fighting Americans in Afghanistan or terrorizing India.

Right. And that’s not going to change any time in the near future, or thereafter.

Start Another Fire and Watch It Slowly Die

Eric Martin — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:57:35 +0000

Peter Bergen penned a piece in the Washington Monthly in which he argues that, with a substantial dedication of time and resources by the United States and the international community, Afghanistan could, eventually, become a "relatively stable and prosperous Central Asian state." In short, Afghanistan is a "winnable" war.

The entire first half of Bergen’s piece is dedicated to shooting down "facile" historical comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam and between the Soviet experience in Afghanistan and ours (Bergen contrasts the tactics and professionalism of the respective armies), as well as correcting the history of other imperial efforts in the region. But Bergen’s is an unnecessary and, ultimately, irrelevant exercise.

Clearly, Afghanistan is not the same as Vietnam, and the argument that they are parallel episodes is as misguided as any prior argument that the Iraq war was a replication of our Vietnam campaign. But so what? The Iraq war wasn’t the Vietnam war, and it didn’t have to be Vietnam in order for it to be a grievous foreign policy debacle whose costs (in terms of human suffering and US interests) are almost immeasurable. Proving Iraq and Vietnam were different did little to inform us of the wisdom of invading or perpetuating the occupation of Iraq.

In fact, the same metrics that Bergen uses to show why our Afghan effort has a better chance of succeeding than our prolonged Vietnam mission (less costly as a percentage of GDP, fewer casualties, no support for insurgents from a powerful foreign benefactor, insurgent force relatively small and lightly armed) could have just as easily been used by those arguing that Iraq wasn’t Vietnam, going on to suggest our prospects in Iraq were thus brighter. They wouldn’t have been correct, of course.

Further, there is little comfort to be had from acknowledging that the US military is more professional than, and tactically superior to, the Soviet version that suffered a crushing blow in Afghanistan decades ago. While this is true, it was the US military, not the Soviet military, that was dropped in the middle of Iraq and asked to do the near impossible to little avail. So a superior military is not exactly a sufficient condition to success as there are just certain obstacles that even the most professional army, employing optimal tactics and rules of engagement, cannot overcome. Pacifying foreign populations is like eating soup with a knife, even if the knives come in different shapes and sizes, and no two soup recipes are the same.

So, points conceded to Bergen: facile historical comparisons distract from the more germane analysis of the scenario at hand, and in general lead to sloppy reasoning by analogy. Oddly enough, after scoring these points rather deftly, Bergen goes on to make a couple of…equally facile historical comparisons!

Skeptics of Obama’s Afghanistan policy say that the right approach is to either reduce American commitments there or just get out entirely. The short explanation of why this won’t work is that the United States has tried this already—twice. In 1989, after the most successful covert program in the history of the CIA helped to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, the George H. W. Bush administration closed the U.S. embassy in Kabul. The Clinton administration subsequently effectively zeroed out aid to the country, one of the poorest in the world. Out of the chaos of the Afghan civil war in the early 1990s emerged the Taliban, who then gave sanctuary to al Qaeda. In 2001, the next Bush administration returned to topple the Taliban, but because of its ideological aversion to nation building it ensured that Afghanistan was the least-resourced per capita reconstruction effort the United States has engaged in since World War II.

But the US has not, in fact, tried this twice. In Bergen’s first example of the US having previously withdrawn tens of thousands of troops from Afghanistan after a 7 year military campaign, the US didn’t actually have any troops in Afghanistan at all to withdraw – just funding for insurgent groups squaring off against the Soviets. So it’s hard to see how this is analogous in even the most strained sense. And withdrawal (or reduction) of military forces does not necessitate shutting off all forms of aid (far from it). In fact, Bergen is using this as a rebuttal to those that merely want to "reduce American commitments" (to quote him), not eliminate them.

In Bergen’s second prior example of the US ending a prolonged military campaign in Afghanistan, the US actually invaded Afghanistan and kept tens of thousands of troops in that country for over 7 years (and counting). Somehow that counts as a military withdrawal? Only in a world in which US military intervention is the norm, and the only question is to what extent and how deep the military commitment should manifest.

In another segment, Bergen seemingly continues under the rhetorical framework of "military intervention as the norm":

Another possible objection to the introduction of more U.S. soldiers into Afghanistan is that, inevitably, they will kill more civilians, the main issue that angers Afghans about the foreign military presence. In fact, the presence of more boots on the ground is likely to reducecivilian casualties, because historically it has been the overreliance on American air strikes—as a result of too few ground forces—which has been the key cause of civilian deaths. According to the U.S. Air Force, between January and August 2008 there were almost 2,400 air strikes in Afghanistan, fully three times as many as in Iraq. And the United Nations concluded that it was air strikes, rather than action on the ground, which were responsible for the largest percentage—64 percent—of civilian deaths attributed to pro-government forces in 2008.

While Bergen might be right that more boots on the ground will lead to fewer civilian casualties from coalition forces because of the reduction in the reliance on air strikes (at least in as much as the increase in overall military operations don’t negate those reductions), there is a third way that is guaranteed to reduce civilian casualties from coalition forces: withdraw coalition forces from Afghanistan. That option, and its impact on deaths by coalition forces, is ignored, however.

Regardless, it is unclear to what extent those same airstrikes will, in fact, be scaled back on an appreciable scale. There has long been talk about the negative impact of these tactics, especially from senior commanders such as General Petraeus who has been overseeing CENTCOM for several months now. And yet the airstrikes have persisted. Not that it’s Petraues’ fault – there are internal divisions, institutional biases and other complicating factors that lead to resistance from various military actors. Yet it is this inconsistent application of counterinsurgency doctrine, as blended with counterterrorism and conventional tactics (which often work at cross purposes), which calls into question the overall likelihood of success.

Cognizant of the importance of the issue of civilian casualties, in his Senate confirmation hearing in June the new commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, testified that their avoidance "may be the critical point" of American military operations, adding, "I cannot overstate my commitment to the importance of this concept." McChrystal, generally regarded as one of the most effective officers of his generation, has now put the avoidance of civilian casualties at the core of his military strategy in Afghanistan, and that message will undoubtedly filter down the chain of command.

Let’s see if it does.

While Bergen does raise some reasons to be encouraged about the game plan (the switch from poppy eradication to targeting the drug lords themselves for one), he saves the biggest obstacle for the very end – the one that renders much of his prior optimism arguably moot.

This brings us to the one skunk at this garden party, and it is a rather large one: Afghanistan’s nuclear-armed, al-Qaeda- and Taliban-headquartering neighbor to the east. The Pakistani dimension of Obama’s Af-Pak strategy is his critics’ most reasonable objection to his plans for the region. It is difficult for the United States to have an effective strategy for Pakistan when Pakistan doesn’t have an effective strategy for Pakistan. There is a set of interwoven problems that the country must face if it is to effectively confront the militants in its own territory. If it fails to do this, the regional insurgency that encompasses both sides of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border will continue to gather strength.

So, in a nutshell, everything that we are trying to achieve is dependent on Pakistan getting its house in order. In order to do so, it must tackle a series of long-standing, fundamental, interwoven and fraught problems that call into question the nature of Pakistani society/government structure, that have withstood myriad prior efforts to address, that have proven resistant to outside pressure from the US (its chief benefactor) and that threaten to plummet the nation into civil war. What could possibly go wrong?

The nuclear-armed unstable Pakistani specter looming right across the border is another way in which our present Afghan war is different than Vietnam. But does that make you feel any better about our chances?

We Chiseled and We Switched

Eric Martin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:01:58 +0000

I don’t envy President Obama’s predicament in Afghanistan. It’s hard to think of a region that has been less hospitable to foreign interlopers throughout ancient and modern history (earning itself the moniker "Graveyard of Empires"). And yet despite this foreboding track record, it is unclear that President Obama is willing to deviate from that familiar, if tragic, path traveled most recently by Britain and the USSR. Not that Obama’s options are all that attractive. Bush left him with a mismanaged and directionless occupation to unwind (or not). The exact nature of the hoped-for success via a continued military occupation is hard enough to define, let alone achieve, yet withdrawal has its downsides as well – including the potential for an intense civil war and the return of repressive elements such as the Taliban.

While entirely too much has been made of the importance of Afghan safe havens in terms of conducting successful terrorist attacks (just as too little has been made of the ability to replicate similar safe havens elsewhere and our ability to disrupt any such haven from afar now that we are making such interdiction a priority), there is little doubt that Obama would pay a steep political price if he were to withdraw and an attack occurred that had some traceable connection to Afghanistan. While an attack emanating from hubs in, say, Europe or Yemen may be just as (or more) likely, those connections would not prove as damaging despite the underlying reality of the terrorist threat.

So it is that Obama seems to be trading Bush’s muddled vision of Afghanistan for his own, with a vague yet grandiose (if often contradictory) recitation of implausible goals and exaggerated fears, all buttressed by a refusal to acknowledge the costs of continuing our occupation. As if they were trivial (think trillions of dollars – less than the costs of health care that has Washington in a tizzy, but then wars never seem to count as spending). As Rory Stewart suggests, it’s almost impossible to decipher an actual policy direction from the pomp and flourish:

When we are not presented with a dystopian vision, we are encouraged to be implausibly optimistic. ‘There can be only one winner: democracy and a strong Afghan state,’ Gordon Brown predicted in his most recent speech on the subject. Obama and Brown rely on a hypnotising policy language which can – and perhaps will – be applied as easily to Somalia or Yemen as Afghanistan. It misleads us in several respects simultaneously: minimising differences between cultures, exaggerating our fears, aggrandising our ambitions, inflating a sense of moral obligations and power, and confusing our goals. All these attitudes are aspects of a single worldview and create an almost irresistible illusion.

It conjures nightmares of ‘failed states’ and ‘global extremism’, offers the remedies of ‘state-building’ and ‘counter-insurgency’, and promises a final dream of ‘legitimate, accountable governance’. The path is broad enough to include Scandinavian humanitarians and American special forces; general enough to be applied to Botswana as easily as to Afghanistan; sinuous and sophisticated enough to draw in policymakers; suggestive enough of crude moral imperatives to attract the Daily Mail; and almost too abstract to be defined or refuted. It papers over the weakness of the international community: our lack of knowledge, power and legitimacy. It conceals the conflicts between our interests: between giving aid to Afghans and killing terrorists. It assumes that Afghanistan is predictable. It is a language that exploits tautologies and negations to suggest inexorable solutions. It makes our policy seem a moral obligation, makes failure unacceptable, and alternatives inconceivable. It does this so well that a more moderate, minimalist approach becomes almost impossible to articulate. Afghanistan, however, is the graveyard of predictions. [...]

Policymakers perceive Afghanistan through the categories of counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, state-building and economic development. These categories are so closely linked that you can put them in almost any sequence or combination. You need to defeat the Taliban to build a state and you need to build a state to defeat the Taliban. There cannot be security without development, or development without security. If you have the Taliban you have terrorists, if you don’t have development you have terrorists, and as Obama informed the New Yorker, ‘If you have ungoverned spaces, they become havens for terrorists.’

These connections are global: in Obama’s words, ‘our security and prosperity depend on the security and prosperity of others.’ Or, as a British foreign minister recently rephrased it, ‘our security depends on their development.’ Indeed, at times it seems that all these activities – building a state, defeating the Taliban, defeating al-Qaida and eliminating poverty – are the same activity. The new US army and marine corps counter-insurgency doctrine sounds like a World Bank policy document, replete with commitments to the rule of law, economic development, governance, state-building and human rights. In Obama’s words, ‘security and humanitarian concerns are all part of one project.’

This policy rests on misleading ideas about moral obligation, our capacity, the strength of our adversaries, the threat posed by Afghanistan, the relations between our different objectives, and the value of a state. Even if the invasion was justified, that does not justify all our subsequent actions. If 9/11 had been planned in training camps in Iraq, we might have felt the war in Iraq was more justified, but our actions would have been no less of a disaster for Iraqis or for ourselves. The power of the US and its allies, and our commitment, knowledge and will, are limited. It is unlikely that we will be able to defeat the Taliban. The ingredients of successful counter-insurgency campaigns in places like Malaya – control of the borders, large numbers of troops in relation to the population, strong support from the majority ethnic groups, a long-term commitment and a credible local government – are lacking in Afghanistan.

He continues, highlighting some points that I have been making regarding the mythic importance of "safe havens":

Even if – as seems most unlikely – the Taliban were to take the capital, it is not clear how much of a threat this would pose to US or European national security. Would they repeat their error of providing a safe haven to al-Qaida? And how safe would this safe haven be? They could give al-Qaida land for a camp but how would they defend it against predators or US special forces? And does al-Qaida still require large terrorist training camps to organise attacks? Could they not plan in Hamburg and train at flight schools in Florida; or meet in Bradford and build morale on an adventure training course in Wales?

Furthermore, there are no self-evident connections between the key objectives of counter-terrorism, development, democracy/ state-building and counter-insurgency. Counter-insurgency is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for state-building. You could create a stable legitimate state without winning a counter-insurgency campaign (India, which is far more stable and legitimate than Afghanistan, is still fighting several long counter-insurgency campaigns from Assam to Kashmir). You could win a counter-insurgency campaign without creating a stable state (if such a state also required the rule of law and a legitimate domestic economy). Nor is there any necessary connection between state-formation and terrorism. Our confusions are well illustrated by the debates about whether Iraq was a rogue state harbouring terrorists (as Bush claimed) or an authoritarian state which excluded terrorists (as was in fact the case).

It is impossible for Britain and its allies to build an Afghan state. They have no clear picture of this promised ‘state’, and such a thing could come only from an Afghan national movement, not as a gift from foreigners. Is a centralised state, in any case, an appropriate model for a mountainous country, with strong traditions of local self-government and autonomy, significant ethnic differences, but strong shared moral values? And even were stronger central institutions to emerge, would they assist Western national security objectives? Afghanistan is starting from a very low base: 30 years of investment might allow its army, police, civil service and economy to approach the levels of Pakistan. But Osama bin Laden is still in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. He chooses to be there precisely because Pakistan can be more assertive in its state sovereignty than Afghanistan and restricts US operations. From a narrow (and harsh) US national security perspective, a poor failed state could be easier to handle than a more developed one: Yemen is less threatening than Iran, Somalia than Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan than Pakistan.

Yet the current state-building project, at the heart of our policy, is justified in the most instrumental terms – not as an end in itself but as a means towards counter-terrorism.

With so convoluted a policy, with its mosaic of cross-purpose justifications and strategies, it is no surprise that Obama’s choice of McChrystal (a noted counter-terrorism practitioner – aka, a "killer") was curious given the underlying rhetoric and nod in the direction of counterinsurgency ("COIN", noted for its population centric concern and restraint in terms of the use of force). As Judah Grunstein suggests to explain this apparent contradiction:

…[It seems that] the COIN rhetoric is simply a scaffolding that’s been slapped over a strategy that has neither the resources, the political will, nor the local support necessary to succeed.

Those limitations are real. Even the Afghan optimists (the COIN experts that think that we must "succeed," and that we have a shot at succeeding) think that our only hope is to commit tens of thousands more troops for at least the next decade at a price tag (when combined with non-military outlays) in the neighborhood of several trillions of dollars. Oh, and even then we’ll only succeed if we also eradicate the poppy crop and reorder Pakistan’s society while we’re creating a stable Afghanistan.

As unrealistic an allocation of resources (and set of goals) as that may seem, it actually gets worse. Back to Stewart:

In pursuit of this objective, Obama has so far committed to building ‘an Afghan army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000’, and adds that ‘increases in Afghan forces may very well be needed.’ US generals have spoken openly about wanting a combined Afghan army-police-security apparatus of 450,000 soldiers (in a country with a population half the size of Britain’s). Such a force would cost $2 or $3 billion a year to maintain; the annual revenue of the Afghan government is just $600 million. We criticise developing countries for spending 30 per cent of their budget on defence; we are encouraging Afghanistan to spend 500 per cent of its budget.

Some policymakers have been quick to point out that this cost is unsustainable and will leave Afghanistan dependent for ever on the largesse of the international community. Some have even raised the spectre (suggested by the example of Pakistan) that this will lead to a military coup. But the more basic question is about our political principles. We should not encourage the creation of an authoritarian military state. The security that resulted might suit our short-term security interests, but it will not serve the longer interests of Afghans.

Given the unappetizing, politically unpalatable menu of options available in terms of crafting an Afghanistan policy, Obama seems to be picking and choosing ala carte, while vastly overselling the risk of starvation, as well as the sumptuousness of the feast – a meal that is doomed as much by the basic ingredients as by their haphazard combination. If the recent escalation is part of one last push to try to set a decent stage for fuller withdrawal, so be it. But mission creep is an omnipresent concern with so amorphous and ambitious a set of goals (already there is talk that McChrystal will request thousands more troops from Obama in the near future – one wonders what the response will be and under what rationale?).

Unless and until Obama scales back his goals, and takes a more measured reckoning of the actual costs of withdrawal (total or partial), the policy manifestations will continue to be plagued by an incoherent blend of counterterrorism and counterinsurgency, targeting segments of the Afghan population while ostensibly under the rubric of population centric protection, air strikes and hearts and minds, nation building and piecemeal aid, erecting a centralized state and showing sensitivity to the local culture of decentralization, etc., all sold using the ominous rhetoric of an existential threat and the resource allocation of a middling concern.