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Introduction
Rand political scientist, Seth Jones, has called Afghanistan the graveyard of empires. John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago political scientist, compares Afghanistan to Vietnam and advocates that our withdrawal will be inconsequential to the national interest. Yet, it appears that despite sound analysis and limited resources, the United States is likely to commit more resources to a conflict that has no satisfactory conclusion in the foreseeable future. A quip by anti-war activists that if the United States leaves Afghanistan, the country will fall back from the 11th century to the 7th century, wittily captures this grim reality that is largely indifferent to our efforts. In Afghanistan, the game is not worth the candle.
The following essay will attempt to make this argument utilizing open source intelligence. By examining the history of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, geopolitics and the balance of power, the humanitarian case against escalation, and policy options, it will become clear that escalated involvement in Afghanistan will only cost the U.S. scarce resources and complicate our foreign policy without any measurable advantage being gained. It will also become clear how U.S. electoral politics and idealistic tendencies masking as pragmatism and realism within the Obama administration will make it difficult to avoid this unfortunate outcome.
The History of U.S. Involvement in Afghanistan
American involvement in Afghanistan began as a brief interlude in the fifties supporting forces of modernization, but was abandoned as policy makers became more inclined to accept a less progressive Pakistani strategy of supporting religious fundamentalists in the region. This assessment would be intensified during the Carter administration, as American policy makers, particularly national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, recognized that the Soviets could be bated into the “Afghanistan trap” to bolster an unpopular communist government and give the Soviet Union its own Vietnam.
The United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan cooperated in equipping the mujaheddin to fight the Soviets. This episode is presented as a heroic narrative of good versus evil in the film Charlie Wilson’s War and criticized as a cynical war against progressive forces in Afghanistan as a maneuver to advance American cold war interests in Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould’s Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story. Fitzgerald and Gould offer evidence demonstrating the desire of the Soviets to play the role of a fair broker in Afghanistan and are critical of interpreting the Soviet presence as a thrust to threaten the Persian Gulf.
Once the Soviets left Afghanistan, the United States loss interest in Afghanistan, allowing the country to descend into an unending civil war. During this time, the Taliban, a largely Pashtun, Islamic fundamentalist movement with support from Pakistan, took control of large parts of the country. With the capture of Kabul in 1996, the Taliban established the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. The United States viewed the regime with disdain for various human rights abuses associated with the application of a very strict interpretation of a hybrid of Sharia law and tribal tradition, but gave the regime millions of dollars of aid to support the suppression of opium production within the country.
The Emirate’s relations with Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network would pull the United States more decisively into Afghan affairs. William Jefferson Clinton authorized missile strikes into Afghan territory with the purpose of killing bin Laden. After the September 11th, 2001 terrorist strikes in the United States, the Bush administration coordinated U.S. military and intelligence assets with the Northern alliance adversaries of the Taliban to bring the regime down. The Taliban and bin Laden successfully retreated to the tribal lands of bordering Pakistan.
An Afghan government under the leadership of Hamid Karzai was established in 2001 and was later affirmed during elections in 2004. Afghanistan received less and less attention and resources from the Bush administration as it focused on strategic priorities in Iraq. Neglect of Afghanistan allowed problems of poverty, corruption, warlordism, poor infrastructure, narco-trafficking, and a resurgent Taliban insurgency to erode the legitimacy of both the Karzai regime and U.S. involvement in the region. Barack Obama, during his Presidential campaign, targeted failure in Afghanistan as an area needing immediate attention.
With the election of Obama to the Presidency, the success of the Taliban in both Afghanistan and Pakistan has added a sense of urgency to American policy in the region just as allegations of fraud in the re-election of Hamid Karzai has brought into question whether the United States has a legitimate partner in Afghanistan. The killing of civilians by American and allied forces including members of NATO has further brought into question what good does our intervention do as we become alienated from a justifiably angry civilian population. The cover up of the killing of some civilians is a scandal rumbling through the German government at the time of this writing.
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009, President Obama will outline his administration’s policy justifying a surge and a longer commitment of American forces in Afghanistan, while at the same time figuring out how the U.S. can gracefully remove itself from problems that have no solution on the horizon. The United States appears to be ready to make great sacrifices to bolster an illegitimate government that has little chance of winning the hearts and minds of the nation’s population. Afghanistan was a trap for the Russians who sought to build a coalition to govern the country and it will likely prove to be a similar trap for the United States. Why waste hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds if not thousands of lives to learn the same lesson?
Geopolitics and the Balance of Power
Afghanistan has been called the heart of Asia. It played a key role in protecting British India from incursions from the Russian Empire during the 19th century and later during the Cold War, the Reagan administration viewed it as a launching point for the Soviet domination of the Persian Gulf. More recent commentators such as Ahmed Rashid view Afghanistan as being an important gateway for Central Asian oil, the last unexploited oil fields in the world. Indian politicians view Afghanistan as a balance against Pakistan and Pakistani politicians view it as a territory necessary to secure in case of war with India or conflict with Iran. Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan fear it as a source of Islamic radicalism that could destabilize their regimes. The Saudis have viewed Afghanistan as a place where they can make a case for their brand of Sunni Islam. Iran views it as a place where it has interests in protecting fellow Shiite co-religionists and ethnic Persians and fears that the U.S. is using Afghanistan as a part of strategy against it. Americans fear that it may become a staging ground for the destabilization of Pakistan and a nuclear-armed Jihadists movement. Even the Chinese and the Turks perceive promise and peril within Afghanistan’s borders.
Why have all these states taken an interest in Afghanistan? Largely they are concerned about their security. Various ideological hostilities permeate the region and Afghanistan appears to be the key to gain a marginal advantage against potential opponents. A real politick mentality has led all of these states into a game that can only bring misery to the Afghan people who would certainly be able to create enough misery for themselves if they did not have the extra help of external powers vying for their perceived interest. The United States is the one actor who is so far away from Afghanistan and the rest of the states concerned about Afghan affairs that it could safely count on all of the other complexities of the region to prevent Afghanistan from threatening any substantial interests of the United States.
Why would the United States be so committed to trying to play a role in Central Asia? According to the heartland theory, a variant of geopolitical theory developed by Halford Mackinder, a nineteenth century geographer, any state actor that can dominate the Eurasian land mass will have sufficient resources to dominate the world. It appears that Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was the architect of America’s original Afghan strategy, may have had some sympathy with this line of reasoning, but the diverse influences on the Eurasian land mass appears to make it ridiculous for the United States to intervene to prevent any actor from dominating this land mass. Those Americans who are embracing our Afghan policy for a realist strategy to protect the Eurasian land mass and assure American hegemony are deluded. The adumbrated list of interests that began this section should be sufficient to demonstrate the impossibility of getting the complexity of Afghanistan under control, much less using it as a springboard for global domination. Those hoping to do otherwise should express their naïve desire for global domination by playing Risk where only plastic pieces are consumed and not American soldiers.
The Humanitarian Case for Escalation
If Afghanistan is not a springboard for dominance of Eurasia, maybe it is valuable because of its resources? Afghanistan has 40% unemployment rate, only 12% of its land is arable, its most notable export is opium, and per capita GDP is roughly 800 dollars. The real GDP of Afghanistan is 11.7 billion dollars. This level of affluence has occurred because of a large influx of foreign aid. The country has negligible natural gas reserves. It is not clear Afghanistan is a prize even if it could be conquered and it is unlikely to be dominated by any single faction because of its geography. The cost of the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan ranges from 200 – 300 billion dollars per year.
The Hindu-Kush Mountains split Afghanistan and make it difficult for the country to be controlled by a central government. This rugged-terrain has allowed for a variety of cultures to emerge in the country making it possible for all the powers that have security and material interests in the region to have potential points of influence. This factor has contributed to the region being immersed in war for the past forty years. Too many neighbors with interests have been a curse for Afghanistan.
Afghanistan has 28 million people with an average life expectancy of 44 years. The immensity of this human tragedy is perhaps the greatest bait for the Afghanistan trap. How can a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal allow so many of our fellow human beings to suffer under such severe conditions? Because large parts of the Afghan population believe that we are trying to steal what little they have and therefore instead of greeting us as angels sent from heaven to lighten their earthly burdens, they view us as conquerors and occupiers. American willingness to use force in the Middle East has made this narrative a credible narrative.
At present approximately 56 billion dollars have been promised to the Afghan people as aid. If all of it were delivered, each Afghan would receive approximately 2000 dollars. We are spending anywhere from 200-300 billion dollars per year to provide these development funds. Instead of wasting our and our allies’ resources in ways that will require us to kill people to save them, why not use these resources where poor people are not inherently suspicious of our motives. More lives could be saved with less damage to our soft power credibility by directing global resources to charter cities, micro credit, or other development projects with greater promise.
A balance of power will exist in Afghanistan whether we are there or not. It is imprudent for us to contribute to a narrative that we are occupying Muslim lands and involve ourselves in the deaths of innocent civilians when our presence exacerbates a situation that justifies greater and greater levels of violence. The idealism of the Obama administration makes it difficult for it to assess what American interests are and how good intentions may not always win the day. It is a frailty of decision makers that they are willing to lose twice what they would be willing to lose to stay in a game than they would be willing to lose to play the game in the first place. America’s scarce diplomatic, military, and intelligence assets can be better deployed than by trying to bring Afghanistan to a stalemate so we can graciously extradite ourselves and watch the country fall apart four or five years later.
The Al Qaeda Threat
The proximate cause of the present discussion of what our policy should be in Afghanistan is the U.S. destruction of the Taliban regime after that regime refused to turn Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network to the United States. The refusal to turn bin Laden over was equivalent to an act of war and the immediate U.S. intervention into Afghanistan destroying the Taliban regime was a prudent strategy. The Al Qaeda network needed to be disrupted and a strong signal needed to be sent to states not to cooperate with networks that conspire against U.S. interests. After chasing the Taliban out of Afghanistan into the tribal lands of Pakistan, the U.S. would have been justified in withdrawing from Afghanistan. Pulling out of the region would have sent a message that the United States was hostile to those who conspire against it but would have reduced the collateral damage to American soft power associated with an apparent occupation of Islamic lands.
The decision to go to war in Iraq intensified the perception that the United States had an interest in Islamic lands and further compounded damage to American soft power. The Al Qaeda network fed off this tactical blunder in the war on terror, but its interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan became embedded in the same sorts of tribal conflicts that have defined these regions. In effect, Al Qaeda and its ideology of restoring the Islamic caliphate became one more actor in the highly complex environment of tribal politics. U.S. presence in these regions strengthened the ideological appeal of Al Qaeda while at the same time contributing resources to the various factions involved in these conflicts. In Iraq, the United States was eventually successful in pulling tribes that had allied with Al Qaeda out of their alliances and into a U.S. led coalition. The likely strategy to be used in Afghanistan is to apply the American Iraq lessons to Afghanistan and bring about some modest level of stability to that country.
Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize winning economist, has estimated the Iraq war will cost the United States roughly 3 trillion dollars. Removing Al Qaeda from Iraq reduced this disruptive presence in region that accounts for 60% of the world’s oil reserves. Most would view the war in Iraq as an unnecessary war, but the importance of this region to global markets warranted substantial resources to stabilize the region. Allowing Al Qaeda to maintain a modest presence in Afghanistan or the borderlands of Pakistan is a perfect solution to containing the threat of this terrorist organization. Possible disputes between factions of the Taliban and Al Qaeda acts as a containing agent in this region. The Pakistani state acts as a containing agent. Four of the world’s major great powers surround Afghanistan and Pakistan. China, Russia and its former central Asian republics, India, and Iran have no interest in the success of Al Qaeda.
It is clear that Al Qaeda as a problem is not urgent and our ability to contain it if it became an urgent problem would be aided by the various great powers that would be threatened by the success of Al Qaeda’s ideology. Containing the Al Qaeda threat does not require a 300 billion dollar per year investment in Afghanistan since Al Qaeda’s aggressive ideology generates instant opposition. If Al Qaeda is successful at state formation then a war of decapitation similar to the initial phases of our first invasion of Afghanistan could be launched without requiring the U.S. to become an occupying power.
Policy Suggestions
So if we do not escalate our involvement in Afghanistan, how can we avoid another 9/11 from catching us by surprise? A careful mix of public diplomacy, covert operations including the development of robust human intelligence capabilities, foreign aid and or bribes as appropriate, multilateral diplomacy, and an aggressive financial embargo of Al Qaeda including the destruction of money generating activities such as opium production and sales. These tactics in combination are the best strategy for fighting a war on terror without bankrupting the U.S. by engaging it in costly and ineffective nation-building efforts.
We spend roughly 30 billion dollars a year to find out what the world is thinking about us, but we spend only 1 billion dollars to shape the way the world views us. A more robust public diplomacy program that could better articulate U.S. principles and how prosperity is dependent upon embracing these principles would go a long way toward changing public opinion about the exploitative nature of U.S. prosperity. It is also important to establish our credibility in resisting aggressive attacks to our interests, but expressing how prosperity can only be achieved through embracing rationality and industry. It is also important that the United States establish it is not an enemy of Islam, but an opponent of extreme interpretations of Islam that are strongly rejected by the majority. Doubling the public diplomacy budget and targeting programs that work would be a fraction of our present nation building efforts. If societies want prosperity, they need to reject overly aggressive and intolerant approaches to domestic and international politics.
By developing better human intelligence networks and utilizing special operations units to attack Al Qaeda cells, the U.S. can avoid the long term deployments that weaken the moral of troops and cause tensions among local populations. Precision strikes, bribes of key tribal leaders, and tracking events with attention to what is related to tribal politics and what threatens the national security interest of the United States will assure that military assets will generate more benefits than costs.
Cooperating with the great powers in the region that share U.S. interests in containing Al Qaeda can enhance intelligence capabilities. The United States should seek to cooperate with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to contain threats from terrorist organizations that threaten stability of global order. The United States should also strengthen bilateral relations with the Chinese, Indians, Russians, Pakistanis, and Iranians. These moves will reduce the likelihood that Al Qaeda or its permutations will be able to slip out of the area of its containment within the borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Improving relations between India and Pakistan should be an important goal of American diplomacy in South Asia.
These improved relationships will enhance our capabilities for interdicting financial assets of Al Qaeda and destroying money generating activities of the organization. By cutting Al Qaeda off from financial resources, the organization will be less attractive as it will have fewer resources to spread its message and train its operatives.
None of these activities will build a functioning state in Afghanistan. The limited goal of fighting Al Qaeda does not require us to build an Afghan state and the cost of doing so is clearly greater than the benefits of such an activity. The United States needs to begin to behave as a normal state if it is not to bring about its own collapse by multiplying enemies unnecessarily and undertaking Sisyphean tasks that not even the wealthiest state in the world can bring to completion.
