Experts Call for Lowered Expectations in Afghanistan
My colleague Ryan Powers spoke to international relations scholar Steven Walt earlier this week (i.e., before Obama’s mini-surge of forces into Afghanistan was announced) and their conversation touched on Afghanistan policy. I think the most important part is this:
Out ultimate objective is basically not allowing that part of the world to be used as a haven for people to plan attacks on the American homeland. That’s our only really vital strategic interest . . . I think one of the things we’re going to have to do is lower expectations . . . what we shouldn’t be is in the business of trying to govern Afghanistan ourselves. And you just see some hints in the debate, including some hints from Secretary Gates that he gets this. That lowering our goals is going tobe necessary.
Video of a longer swathe of Walt on Afghanistan is here:
This is also an important theme in the National Security Network’s new set of principles on Afghanistan:
Larger than Iraq, with a population close to 32 million, Afghanistan suffers from one of the world’s lowest development levels, scant economic opportunity, crude infrastructure, and a dependence on the opium trade – interrelated problems that go beyond the near term issue of worsening security. Humanitarian and governance goals to which Afghans and many Americans rightly aspire will be better-served by a smaller-scale effort which can enable local, regional and non-governmental efforts than a massive one which cannot be sustained. [...] Any strategy must make a clear break with the past by announcing our intentions and objectives. It must place direct responsibility for Afghanistan’s future with its people and their government. It must clearly differentiate between many goals we might like to work toward in the long term and the relatively few foundational steps that the US must take along with its allies to secure our safety in the short term.
To some extent, I would even resist the idea that this constitutes “lowering” goals or expectations for Afghanistan. Rather, I would say it involves realigning expectations with initial goals. I think that when U.S. forces initially engages in Afghanistan, people understood clearing out al-Qaeda and creating a situation where Afghanistan wasn’t being actively governed by an entity that was proudly hosting anti-American terrorist activities was the goal of the operation. If the Bush administration hadn’t held back crucial military and intelligence resources during the first six months of the war in order to lay the groundwork for Iraq, perhaps we could have swiftly killed or captured the top al-Qaeda leadership as well as booting the Taliban from Kabul, people would have deemed that a success. But because Bush failed in the war’s basic aims, he started redefining the war in terms of our alleged nation-building successes.
Thus, what initially became a kind of moral obligation to be helpful to the people of Afghanistan as a sideline to our strategic objectives, became the strategic objective. But we didn’t commit a proper level of resources to that, either. So we wound up not doing a particularly great job of being helpful. And Afghan public opinion has no become much more skeptical about us, to a point that calls into question how helpful it’s realistic for us to be. It’s one thing for a foreign military to help people who want its help, and another thing entirely to “help” people who want it to leave. Under the circumstances, and unconstrained by the need to pretend that the winter of 2001-2002 didn’t constitute a major screw-up, we can refocus on core aims.
45 Responses to “Experts Call for Lowered Expectations in Afghanistan”
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February 19th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Funny how we presume we have the right to continue to occupy Afghanistan. A “democratic” polling of the citizenry would likely express a desire we leave. The U.S. wants other nations to become democracies (so it says). Put it to a vote. Let the Afghans decide if we stay.
February 19th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
Is this all just a roundabout way of saying we’re throwing Hamid Karzai to the wolves?
February 19th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
I mean, if our spokesman for the Proletariat doesn’t dare go out in the streets of Kabul while our military occupies the country, then what will happen to him when we leave?
February 19th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Also, how do you run in a green dress?
February 19th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Seen the latest polling?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/05_02_09afghan_poll_2009.pdf
Page 10:
Q18. Do you strongly support, somewhat support, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose the presence of the following groups in Afghanistan today?
U.S. military forces
_____________2009___2007___2006
Str Support___12%____20%____30%
Some Support__51%____51%____48%
Some Oppose___21%____15%____15%
Str Oppose____15%____12%_____6%
No opinion_____2%_____2%_____1%
February 19th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Matt, you keep talking about lowering expectations and realigning expectations, but you don’t talk about what your new expectations are. For the third time in as many days: what do you think the United States is supposed to be accomplishing in Afghanistan? You’ve described other people talking about how we shouldn’t be nation-building; you’ve described how an initial “get-them-bad-guys” mission turned into a “nation-building” operation; what you haven’t described is an actual, practical goal that NATO forces can accomplish in Afghanistan. Hunting down and killing every last Taliban, everywhere, is not a practical goal; neither is turning Afghanistan into a stable liberal democracy; neither is turning it into a reliable puppet of the United States. So once again: why is the U.S. in Afghanistan? What are we doing there? Why don’t we just leave?
February 19th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
I think the principle reason the Bush administration went to war with Afghanistan is that it would look very silly to go to war with Iraq and not go to war with Afghanistan.
February 19th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
I don’t think Americans were given any expectations for Afghanistan. There is no there there. It is totally irrelevant to Americans just like all those other Stans and Gulf states would be, if they didn’t have oil. Not only doesn’t it have oil, it doesn’t have anything but an odd sort of tribal warlord culture. No economy. No art or intellectual tradition. Nothing.
As a nice liberal I hoped somehow a beginning of the end of that culture could effected. I wasn’t holding my breath.
February 19th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
No rapier Afghanistan does not look like MidWest America and with any luck never will.
Is it your ignorant racism about a culture and people you obviously know nothing about which led you to such a brilliant ethnographic observation?
February 19th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Jim W Says:
I agree that Bush screwed up initially in not capturing bin Laden. However, even given that the war was still a success: the Taliban was toppled and severely punished for hosting al-Qaeda.
And so Jim you no doubt now support the invasion and occupation of Pakistan yes?
I mean now that the war in Afghanistan has “succeeded” and all.
February 19th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Yes, probably a bit over the top, but the Iraq war was on the Agenda immediately after Bush v. Gore was decided. Afghanistan was a real inconvenience.
February 19th, 2009 at 3:00 pm
February 19th, 2009 at 3:26 pm
So much of Matt’s understanding of how we got here is just wrong.
The Bush administration didn’t “hold back” anything in the first few months of the war, and no one has alleged that they did. They went with a small footprint, which is a different thing entirely. Some have said that later, after the first six months that Matt referred to and which he thinks of as the crucial period, the Bush administration didn’t provide enough resources because of the possibility of Iraq. But that’s a different charge that Matt simply runs into the one he’s making.
Now, it is possible that if the US had gone with a larger footprint the US would have captured bin Laden. (I take it that the failure to capture him is Matt’s principal complaint.) But going with a larger footprint would have meant going later–there are tradeoffs between size of the force and speed of response. It also would likely have meant that the US forces would have met a different reaction from the populace–and perhaps not a positive one. As we spin on the counterfactuals, it seems easy to imagine that Matt’s preferred military response would have meant that bin Laden escaped, many additional US troops were killed or injured, and the US occupation met more local resistance.
On the state-building side, Matt doesn’t do much better. Of course the immediate goals included removing the Taliban. But removing the Taliban doesn’t help if the replacement isn’t an improvement. So naturally there’s some nation-building that must occur, and that’s always been recognized.
Matt suggests that those efforts too would have benefited from a greater number of US troops on the ground (and perhaps other unspecified additional resources). But he doesn’t give us any reason to think that’s true. A greater number of US forces might mean that there are fewer enemy attacks, or it might mean that there are more. It might lead to more negative interactions with the population at large. And even if the underlying security situation were improved, Matt still hasn’t addressed the issue of culture.
All in all, remarkably wrong-headed and shallow, even for a blog post here.
February 19th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
We’ve been there over seven years. Why don’t we just go home?
February 19th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
And that’s a total fantasy. What, do we try to occupy Pakistan next? That will make Iraq look like a walk in the park.
They’re ALWAYS going to find some place to “plan”. That’s reality. So focus on good international law enforcement to make sure their plans don’t succeed, and oh yeah, a foreign policy that doesn’t stupidly send thousands of new recruits into their arms would help too.
Jesus, the “serious” “experts” are dumbasses.
February 19th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
The enemy was never the Taliban, it was always al-Qaeda, and our political leadership forgot that. Otherwise, we would have invaded when the Taliban was blowing up ancient Buddhist works of art in Spring of ‘01. But now that we’re there, sure, they’ll fight us because they ain’t got nothing else to do. And that government we installed? It’s a hell of a lot like the government that the Taliban toppled in order to come to power in the first place. We keep getting our military objectives mixed up with our political objectives. First, it’s kill bin Laden-a military goal. Then, destroy the Taliban-a political goal. Then, wipe out the opium trade-a political goal masquerading as a military goal. Then, root out corruption-purely a political goal, but we only have military tools to fight it. Meanwhile, we get further and further away from our original goal while raising the stakes at the same time. All this rebuilding stuff only came after we didn’t catch bin Laden, and it’s not our strength. I just don’t see a modern, U.S.-allied, Iranian-unfriendly, economically and politically stable dream state suddenly rising from Afghanistan, and I question those expectations in the first place. I’m not saying it’s the greatest outcome, but what do we care if a politicized Taliban takes back portions of Afghanistan? Maybe, things just might stabilize-and that’s what will allow Afghans to rebuild their country.
February 19th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Thomas (#17), I think the tactical boo-boo the Bush Administration made in 2001 was to get too focused on limiting US casualties by leaving it to the locals and the USAF to deal with OBL when he was cornered in Tora Bora.
If we had committed the US forces we already had in country, it’s likely we wouldn’t even be talking about Afghanistan right now. Once that emotional impediment was out of the way, we could have had the Talibs and the Northern Alliance work their best deal and get on with life.
February 19th, 2009 at 4:45 pm
Re Thomas at 17: “All in all, remarkably wrong-headed and shallow, even for a blog post here.”
—————–
What is remarkably wrong-headed is Thomas’s long-winded bullshit.
Bush , Commander of the most powerful military power on the planet, went into Afghanistan and FAILED to capture/destroy the entity that killed 3000 Americans on Sept 11.
Even though he ran up a huge debt over 8 years by spending more on the military than the rest of the world combined and even though he was dealing with a group of extremists whose trivial military power ranks somewhere between the Crips and the Mexican drug cartels.
And we know WHY — General Tommy Franks told Senator Gramn why: because Cheney wanted to go hunting for oil in Iraq.
February 19th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Our opponent was and is the Taliban and the warlords. Be it a liberal or a conservative if we could wave a magic wand and bring about a political economy and a culture where the maximum amount of people were free to live their lives without poverty and repression backed by violence and coercion we all would. It isn’t racism to want that. It certainly is based upon my cultural prejudices but one has to draw some lines somewhere.
What I want for Afgani’s is I know perfectly irrelevant. It sure wasn’t likely to come from an invasion and occupation. We have made them an enemy in that context because of their ill advised cooperation with Osama. That will probably pass. It seems likely when it does the Taliban or whoever will go back to closing barbershops, engage in blood feuds, blow up antiquities, close the schools to women etc.
February 19th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
Matt is just once again demonstrating his total lack of comprehension of how the world works – especially ass-end parts of the world like Afghanistan.
And he’s babbling what he calls “liberal internationalism” which sounds suspiciously like “liberal interventionism” when he says the US has some responsibility to remake a section of the world into some place “safe”.
Afghanistan has never been “safe” and never will be. That’s just rhetorical bullshit. If you replace the Taliban with the Northern Alliance, you have a narco-state. The Taliban at least cleaned up the drug trade (albeit only to horde the drugs until the price went up).
Yglesias just doesn’t get it and probably never will.
There was never a need to invade Afghanistan and overthrow the Taliban, regardless of what their relationship was with Al Qaeda. That’s just bullshit. And Bush’s goal was always to get a pipeline, restart the heroin flow for the CIA, and make it look to the domestic rubes like he was doing something about “terrorism” after he totally blew it off before 9/11.
And anybody who can’t see that – like Matt – is a total idiot.
Then to spend seven years bumbling around and end up in a position where if the war isn’t won in the next six or seven months, according to Nagl, the US military presence will be irrelevant, is just fucking stupid.
Matt has absolutely no clue when it comes to Afghanistan and Pakistan. None. He has zero knowledge and zero interest in enlarging his knowledge.
February 19th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
Had the Bush administration done a proper investigation of 9/11, gotten enough evidence to indict someone, and cooperated with other nations, none of this would be an issue. War as a response to terrorism is just daft.
February 19th, 2009 at 5:34 pm
“War as a response to terrorism is just daft.”
So is the domestic legal process. That’s what the Clinton Justice Department tried after the first WTC bombing, and the blind sheik used his lefty lawyer as a tool to orchestrate terrorist attacks overseas. The initial phase of the war in Afghanistan was brilliant. The idea of putting a functioning state there was daft. Better to support the strongest non-Taliban tribe as our proxies, and continue providing air support and special forces aid while they fought a war of attrition against the Taliban. We could have kept that war going at minimal cost in money or American lives indefinitely.
February 19th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
War as a response to terrorism is just daft.”
I dunno. They didn’t see it that way back in 1914. How’d that one turn out, by the way?
So is the domestic legal process. That’s what the Clinton Justice Department tried after the first WTC bombing, and the blind sheik used his lefty lawyer as a tool to orchestrate terrorist attacks overseas.
Yeah, but then again, we caught all the bad guys, convicted them in public and put them all away. What’s the results of Bush doing his ‘drowning in a bathtub’ act. Where’s Waldo has been replaced by Where’s Osama.
The initial phase of the war in Afghanistan was brilliant.
In the sense of just handing out suitcases full of cash and a bit of air support? Yeah, suppose so. But it weren’t going to last.
The idea of putting a functioning state there was daft. Better to support the strongest non-Taliban tribe as our proxies, and continue providing air support and special forces aid while they fought a war of attrition against the Taliban. We could have kept that war going at minimal cost in money or American lives indefinitely.
Yeah, and I’m sure that endlessly prolonging the Afghan civil war was going to win friends and influence people throughout the Arab world.
February 19th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
The trouble with all this armchair generaling is that the civil war in Afghanistan was essentially based in tribal conflict. The Taliban represented the Pashtun or Pathan, the biggest most powerful tribe in Afghanistan. That’s still the problem that we have. We can back the Uzbeks, Tadziks, Uighars, Hazara and whoever else till we’re blue in the face. But the nature of the conflict is that the Pashtun are still going to win out.
February 20th, 2009 at 2:00 am
Another Russian general who was there just said it doesn’t matter how many troops you put in there, you’re going to lose.
A former Taliban government official says the same thing. He can’t understand why the US is trying to throw more troops in, when the Taliban have 40 million Pashtun to draw on.
And guess what? Obama wants to “eradicate the drug trade”. Yeah, the 8,000 Marines he’s sending are going into South Afghanistan to machine gun the peasants, just like they did in Fallujah. That’s really going to win hearts and minds.
Obama is a fucking idiot.
February 20th, 2009 at 9:32 am
Matt writes a post titled “Experts Call for Lowered Expectations in Afghanistan,” and he’s rudely and profanely taken to task by someone who thinks Matt doesn’t realize that ambitious military objectives are going to be impossible to accomplish.
That’s just brilliant. What a wonderful contribution.
February 20th, 2009 at 10:22 am
That’s just brilliant. What a wonderful contribution.
Matt’s being taken to task because he refuses to say why he supports the Afghan occupation at all. In nearly identical circumstances, he called for withdrawal from Iraq; in Afghanistan, though, it’s as though his analytical abilities are entirely suspended. So Matt Yglesias notes that we’ll have to “lower expectations,” but he doesn’t say what we’ll have to lower those expectations to. For the umpteenth time: what does Matt Yglesias imagine the United States is going to accomplish in Afghanistan?
February 20th, 2009 at 11:07 am
In nearly identical circumstances, he called for withdrawal from Iraq;
The existence of international jihadist with the desire and, prior to the invasion, capability of launching mega-terror attacks against Americans in our own country is a rather significant difference in circumstances.
There was never any possibility of bin Ladenists taking over Iraq, while they actually had taken over Afghanistan, and were using its territory as their home base, from which to coordinate a global campaign.
For the umpteenth time: what does Matt Yglesias imagine the United States is going to accomplish in Afghanistan?
I don’t understand why you keep asking this. Look here:
Rather, I would say it involves realigning expectations with initial goals. I think that when U.S. forces initially engages in Afghanistan, people understood clearing out al-Qaeda and creating a situation where Afghanistan wasn’t being actively governed by an entity that was proudly hosting anti-American terrorist activities was the goal of the operation… Under the circumstances, and unconstrained by the need to pretend that the winter of 2001-2002 didn’t constitute a major screw-up, we can refocus on core aims.
We should be doing what we said we were doing in 2001: deny al Qaeda a territorial base of operations where they enjoy the patronage and territory of a sovereign government.
February 20th, 2009 at 11:08 am
Oops, that last paragraph is me, not a quote.
i am teh Lord ov teh tagz.
February 20th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Assuming we’re in, have been, Afghanistan to protect ourselves from future attacks by Al Quaeda/Bin Laden is wrong, if not preposterous. We have no business attacking, eestroying, killing, and occupying foreign lands to go after whom we assume to be some bad guys. That is imperial arrogance. It was a convenient opportunity to go into Afghanistan, and the American public, spurred on by a crass media, wanted vengeance post 9/11. The ulterior motives were not so different from those which led us into Iraq. We have geostrategic interests in Afghanistan, and wish to control the region. Ever hear of pipelines through that country? Oil and gas remain are always in the minds of our “leaders”. Afghanistan is next to Iran, Pakistan, China, and the underbelly of the former Soviet Union. It has been and continues to be a kind of crossroads. This “lowered expectations” crap is an excuse to exercise our war machine for self serving ends without worrying about reconstruction and reparations.
February 20th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Really?
Secretly, deep down, I don’t actually want to see bin Laden’s head on a pike, but rather, I lust after the geopolitical fulcrum that is Afghanistan?
I did not know that. I thought I wanted to see bin Laden’s head on a pike.
I have no doubt that you are accurately describing the mindset of the Bushies, who took advantage of the need to destroy al Qaeda’s home base, deny them the territory and resources of a sovereign state, and take out as much of their leadership and fighters as possible, in order to launch an imperialist war. I’ve argued as much myself – that the Bushies have a pre 9/11 mindset (heh) that cannot comprehend the security challenges of stateless terrorism, and leads them to try to fight al Qaeda by trying to overthrow governments and seize territory and resources. This is why they had 30,000 troops garrisoning Kabul on the day the Talibuddies we hired escorted bin Laden from Tora Bora. It’s why the invaded Iraq.
But this observation, that the Bushies exploited the need to fight the bin Ladenists in order to make the imperialist dreams come true, doesn’t refute or even address the point that we really do need to fight the bin Ladenists.
February 20th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
The problem with your approach is that it DOES NOT succeed in fighting Al Qaeda, who happen to be in PAKISTAN at the moment. You want to throw 100,000 US troops into Pakistan? Because that’s where Al Qaeda IS – not in Afghanistan.
And if you support trying to establish a “stable” state in Afghanistan, it would be nice if you had some precise idea HOW that can be done in a country full of drug smugglers and warlords.
Neither does trying to fight Al Qaeda with military forces WORK in any event, because terrorists do not stand around waiting for the US military to move in, as Tora Bora proved.
It was STUPID to invade Afghanistan when a more subtle approach might have enabled the US to keep tabs on Al Qaeda and take out their leaders over time and use normal counterintelligence methods to deal with their plots.
More importantly, once again, without adjusting US policies in the Middle East, the US will REMAIN a target for terrorists. The most effective approach to neutering Al Qaeda vis-a-vis the US is to change US policies that make the US a target.
Your problem is that you assume the goal is its own plan. It isn’t.
February 20th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
The problem with your approach is that it DOES NOT succeed in fighting Al Qaeda, who happen to be in PAKISTAN at the moment.
Two points here. First, preventing the Taliban and their Afghan Arab buddies from retaking Afghanistan, or a part of it, is indeed an important part of fighting al Qaeda. Sure, they are ensconced in a remote part of Pakistan, and occasionally fighting the government of that country. That’s a far cry from having free reign in Afghanistan, and having the sovereign government of that country at their disposal.
2, they cross into Afghanistan all the time from Pakistan. Having a ground force in Afghanistan most certainly does allow us to fight them.
And C, we’ve established our biggest bases, including air bases, in Afghanistan. Giving that up would greatly constrain our ability to act against al Qaeda in the region under any scenario.
You want to throw 100,000 US troops into Pakistan? Because that’s where Al Qaeda IS – not in Afghanistan. No, I don’t. On the other hand, as I explained above, routing the Base and the Students in the rugged areas of Pakistan – taking that territory and denying it to al Qaeda – isn’t as important as driving them out of Afghanistan and overthrowing the Taliban, because they don’t have the resources of a sovereign government to support them in Pakistan.
And if you support trying to establish a “stable” state in Afghanistan, it would be nice if you had some precise idea HOW that can be done in a country full of drug smugglers and warlords. It ain’t me, babe. I’m with Matt, we need to lower our sights.
It was STUPID to invade Afghanistan when a more subtle approach might have enabled the US to keep tabs on Al Qaeda and take out their leaders over time and use normal counterintelligence methods to deal with their plots. I disagree, for the reasons I’ve described. As al Qaeda had the open support of the Afghan government – indeed, was a virtual partner of that government – they became much more dangerous than your typical covert terror group. In general, I agree with your position (similar to John Kerry’s from his book) about intel/law enforcement being the most important element of a counter-terror policy. I consider the al Qaeda/Afghanistan/Pakistan situation to be a narrow, unusual exception to that general rule.
More importantly, once again, without adjusting US policies in the Middle East, the US will REMAIN a target for terrorists. The most effective approach to neutering Al Qaeda vis-a-vis the US is to change US policies that make the US a target. You’ll get no quarrel from me on that score.
Your problem is that you assume the goal is its own plan. It isn’t. No, I don’t, actually. Obama and his team need to come up with a plan. They are working on one now. The recent injection of troops is just an effort to buy time in order to formulate that plan, without the military situation there going critical.
Personally, I think that plan needs to put a whole lot of emphasis on a timeline for withdrawal, and the use of the promise and reality of our withdrawal to change the political situation in Afghanistan in a manner that advances our goals.
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