Robert D. Kaplan, the neocon’s neocon, admits that it’s time to throw in the towel on Afghanistan in an op-ed in the New York Times:
No other country in the world symbolizes the decline of the American empire as much as Afghanistan. There is virtually no possibility of a military victory over the Taliban and little chance of leaving behind a self-sustaining democracy — facts that Washington’s policy community has mostly been unable to accept.
While many American troops stay behind steel-reinforced concrete walls to protect themselves from the very population they are supposed to help, it is striking how little discussion Afghanistan has generated in government and media circles in Washington. When it comes to Afghanistan, Washington has been a city hiding behind its own walls of shame and frustration.
I won’t analyze the op-ed in detail but I would like to highlight a few passages.
The total cost of the war could reach as high as $2 trillion when long-term costs are factored in, according to Brown University’s Cost of War Project. All that to prop up an unstable government that would most likely disintegrate if aid were to end.
which is exactly what anyone who actually knew anything about Afghanistan was saying in 2002. Afghanistan cannot support the sort of military structure we are building for it and they will never be capable of defending their own borders. Since those borders were drawn by the English, why not leave it to the English to defend them? There is a barely defensible argument for retaining a small, lethal force in Afghanistan with a mission of counter-terrorism but none whatever for a mission of counter-insurgency.
It did not have to be like this. Had the United States not become diverted from rebuilding the country by its invasion of Iraq in 2003 (which I mistakenly supported), or had different military and development policies been tried, these forces of division might have been overcome.
or, in other words, blame it on Bush. Sorry, Mr. Kaplan. The blame belongs solidly on those who wanted the U. S. to occupy Afghanistan in the first place, e.g. you. Afghanistan would not have been less warlike or less divided. The last conqueror to successfully pacify Afghanistan was Alexander and he did so by settling a population there. Which brings up another important fact: the people who actually fight America’s wars have no interest in the sort of American Empire you have espoused.
According to the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, there was simply too much emphasis on the electoral process in Kabul and not nearly enough on bread-and-butter nation building — in particular, bringing basic infrastructure and agriculture up to the standards that Afghans enjoyed from the 1950s until the Soviet invasion of 1979.
because Pakistan is such a good example of a country in the region that has become a peaceful liberal democracy. This is a free flight of fancy. I wonder if it’s occurred to him that Pakistan was one of the reasons for our failure in Afghanistan? Advice from Pakistanis about Afghanistan is questionable at best. And dare I mention that the ongoing acts of terrorism in Afghanistan made the sorts of programs he envisions futile? For every school or road built there were 100 terrorists ready to blow them up or burn them down.
Can anyone cite an example of that strategy having been effective anywhere but in Germany, Japan, and South Korea? Those societies are much more cohesive than Afghanistan ever was. The real past in Afghanistan was one in which only Kabul and its immediate environs experienced “the standards that Afghans enjoyed” prior to the Soviet invasion.
Do we owe it to the Afghan people to stay? Not if the ideals that we claim to represent appear unachievable. Spending billions and stationing thousands of troops there with no end in sight to stem a deepening chaos is simply not sustainable policy.
But that policy hasn’t just been invented in the last few years. It was the policy from the outset and a foreseeable outcome as soon as we put “boots on the ground”.
I think that those who say that some show of force was necessary in the aftermath of the attacks in 2001 are, sadly, correct. However, the political leadership simply did not have the stomach for the level of airpower that would have been necessary to accomplish the objective of rooting the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan.
“However, the political leadership simply did not have the stomach for the level of airpower that would have been necessary to accomplish the objective of rooting the Taliban and Al Qaeda out of Afghanistan.â€
In other words, scorched earth. I don’t know if that would have worked, but once you decide it is imperative to go to war, you have to get medieval, collateral damage be damned. Get it done and over. Otherwise it’s not really imperative, so stand down. I don’t know that we have the stomach or understanding for that. Somehow, by some strange calculus, small, metered doses of American casualties seems acceptable.
A succinct statement of the Jacksonian point of view. When Wilsonians (Kaplan is one) are in charge the emphasis will always be on nation-building and creating goodwill.
Although I certainly don’t consider myself a scholar on such classifications, I certainly understand themes and history. So, I know.
I would say I firmly believe we can be a force for good, and that isolationism simply may not be an option in a complicated world full of despots proceeding whether we exercise influence or not. But that’s a rare set of circumstances. Much like the vast majority of domestic policy debacles I rail about, well intentioned foreign intervention has an abysmal track record. Many Middle Easterners don’t want to align with us or our ideals. That’s just reality. Just as many poor or social malcontents here are not susceptible to do gooderism.
I was flat damned wrong on Iraq, and in no small measure changed my views based upon essays and views expressed on this very site. I actually find myself more Reaganesque (a pragmatic Jacksonianif you will) than anything else. I wonder how many have the intellectual honesty to admit that Obama was a (Libya,Afghan etc) neocon through and through. And isn’t it amazing, on the issue of Syria, how many Democrat born again warmongers/nation builders, dare I say neocons, we have simply because…….Trump.
I don’t think that isolationism is practical, either, but I think I do disagree with the punditry on what is or is not isolationist. I don’t think that any country with among the lowest tariffs in the world can reasonably be considered isolationist and I don’t think that trying to promote liberal democracy at the point of a gun is non-isolationist.
If memory serves, the Russians were pretty aggressive in their occupation of Afghanistan. We bombed the hell out of North Korea. Neither of those more aggressive approaches got the results we wanted, or at least . I think that we really don’t know how to “fix” Afghanistan. A long term, large scale occupation might have eventually worked (maybe after bombing), but I doubt it. They hold grudges for a long time there.
If Obama was a neocon through and through he would not have pulled out of Iraq, he would have insisted on leading and actually invading Libya, would have put a lot more troops in Syria. On Afghanistan, which I followed pretty closely at the time, I think he just acceded to the advice of the military advisers. Too many people thought we could repeat the Surge. That said, I think he had too many neocons in his admin and appeased the neocons running the GOP way too much. I dont recall him actively espousing neocon beliefs.
Steve
Neocons and liberal interventionists aren’t strictly identical but hold many of the same views. Obama wasn’t a neocon. He was a liberal interventionist.
Too many people misunderstood what had happened in Iraq. There was more than one thing happening and any success in Iraq was less due to the Surge than in the Sunni tribes just getting fed up with the headchoppers.
I almost said that Obama was a liberal interventionist, but not sure he fits that either. He didn’t really make any effort to go intervene in Africa like a real liberal interventionist would have. I think hi scoring policy was more tied in with his domestic politics than many prior presidents. I think that he generally figured out what was the minimum he could do to keep the foreign policy establishment of both parties relatively happy. So we didn’t get a full scale invasion of Syria like we would have had Bush, McCain or Graham been in charge (or the neocons on the left) but we didn’t get zero involvement like the less interventionist groups on the left or the libertarians on the right would have preferred.
Steve
As I said, I’m not a scholar of the various morphing and intertwined philosophical threads. However, if you focus on Afghanistan and Libya, (and no, Obama wasn’t into battling Russia or China’s influence) you end up with a very neoconservative stance. Iraq II in the case of Libya.
I’m reminded of a line from the Whitey Bulger based character in The Departed. “Call us cops or criminals, but when you’re looking down the barrel of a loaded gun, what’s the difference?â€
I dont think everything is ideologically driven. In the case of Afghanistan I think that our professional military leadership pushed hard for a Surge in Afghanistan. I think they wrongly assumed it could work in Afghanistan because they thought it worked in Iraq. Surely you are aware that we all too often try to refight the last war? You can make a better case for Libya, but even there the real neocons wanted us to put boots on the ground.
Steve