4 June 2018

Optimizing America’s Interests in Afghanistan

Thomas P. Cavanna

President Trump’s August 2017 decision to increase U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan alleviated the prospect of an immediate meltdown of Kabul’s government and security forces. However, it risks luring Washington again into its recurrent temptation to apprehend this campaign as a mere question of capabilities and dedication, thereby perpetuating the appeal of military occupation and eluding much deeper problems. For this decision to yield strategic results, the U.S. must clearly signal it does not envision any permanent military presence in Afghanistan, initiate direct negotiations with the Taliban, and capitalize on its regional competitors’ interest in countering radical Islamism.


Trump’s 3,000-troop surge—for a total of 15,000 in the region—aims to bolster Afghanistan’s security forces, and allows the U.S. to more forcefully degrade the terrorist movements that sprawl along the Af-Pak border, buttress its ability to conduct drone strikes in Pakistan, and optimize its response to potential contingencies that could compromise the safety of Islamabad’s nuclear arsenal. Numerous observers welcomed Trump’s new conditions-based timeline—which would supposedly project enough credibility to force the Taliban into negotiations with Kabul—and his plainspoken denunciation of Pakistan’s double game. 

This approach builds upon and extends the mainstream reading of the war in Afghanistan as a “lost opportunity.” According to this narrative, the U.S. had a golden opportunity to stabilize and transform the region in the fall of 2001 but lost the initiative due to its reluctance to invest more troops and money during the early years of the campaign. Along similar lines, the Bush Administration increased its footprint over the years but still considered the Iraq war as its priority. President Obama committed to a surge, but the deadline that immediately circumscribed the latter hurt both America’s military prospects and credibility. This narrative captures important insights, especially regarding the beginnings of Operation Enduring Freedom, tarnished by Osama bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora and by the Afghan warlords’ abuses against local civilians. Yet it is also misleading.

Though the fall of the Taliban was welcome in many parts of Afghanistan, over time, the occupation of the country was bound to ignite more and more resentment among a significant number of locals, due to the military blunders, cultural insensitivity, and nationalist and religious pushback that inherently characterize such campaigns. The reaction was particularly virulent among the fiercely independent and conservative rural Pashtuns of eastern and southern Afghanistan. As the intervention dragged on, U.S. leaders also became more dependent on Pakistan’s logistical support even as Islamabad predictably hosted and backed the Taliban, its old proxies. Meanwhile, the war on terror contributed to the destabilization of Pakistan’s northwestern areas.

As for the attempt to build a Western-like central state, a modern economic system, and a liberal society in Afghanistan, Washington glossed over the country’s massive underdevelopment and corruption, its deep religious conservatism, its history of successful jihad against foreign interferences, its people’s traditional hostility to centralization of power in Kabul, and the fact that, all things considered, the international community’s sudden commitment to the Afghan people was largely opportunistic (hence unsustainable). The result was a bottomless pit symbolized by the Taliban’s resurgence, Kabul’s dismal governance and dependency on U.S. taxpayers and military support, and Pakistan’s enduring duplicity and instability.

The extension of the war drained America’s resources, restrained its strategic flexibility, and antagonized regional competitors. But financial costs and the troops’ sacrifices provided incentives to inflate “progress” and to double down, albeit with no clear strategic purpose.

Barring a clear exit strategy, the ongoing buildup virtually guarantees the same self-sustaining overreach.

The Taliban want direct negotiations with the U.S. and the withdrawal of American troops. Having withstood much more intense military pressures in the past, they are unlikely to pursue genuine talks with an Afghan regime that they consider illegitimate, especially as they still enjoy asylum in neighboring countries and steady sources of funding.

Second, though President Trump officially repudiated the term “nation-building,” the latter is embedded in the very logic of its surge, which aims to turn Afghanistan’s security forces into a reliable counter-terrorist partner. Yet such efforts are unlikely to deliver any breakthrough. Even after years of training, the general performance of the Afghan army and police remains abysmal.

More broadly, despite massive flows of assistance in the post-9/11 era, Kabul is as weak, dependent, and divided as ever. President Ghani’s government is crippled by personal rivalries, ethnic tensions, bureaucratic infighting, and rampant corruption. The Afghan campaign will cost the U.S. about $45 billion in 2018, more than twice Afghanistan’s GDP.

Third, however unprecedented, Washington’s recent sanctions on Pakistan are in and of themselves unlikely to modify the latter’s long-standing strategic calculations: acquiring enough “strategic depth” in Afghanistan, located on its western flank, to better resist the existential threat raised by India in the east. The country’s ability to resist U.S. pressure is accentuated by China and Russia’s rising support, let alone America’s enduring logistical dependency on Islamabad.

Finally, while technically speaking more troops will kill more terrorists in AfPak, 16 years of war have shown that U.S. military power cannot address the multidimensional roots of the problem.

Though maintaining some sort of ISR-strike (Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance) capabilities could help disrupt potential plots against the U.S. mainland, the endless military occupation of Afghanistan risks creating more regional tensions and pinning down too many of America’s resources, thereby weakening its ability to stem a threat that has proliferated across dozens of other countries, and to address the return of great power geopolitics worldwide.

From that perspective, as long as it does not clearly signal its unwillingness to maintain a permanent large-scale military presence in Afghanistan, the U.S. will incite regional competitors to freeride its delusional stabilization efforts (China) or even aggravate its entanglement (Iran, Russia), with rising costs over time, given the relative decline of Washington’s overall capabilities. Meanwhile, the war continues to take a tragic toll on the Afghan people, with alarming attrition rates among local security forces and 10,500 civilian casualties in 2017.

To optimize U.S. interests in the region, Trump has a few options: 
Acknowledge once and for all that nation-building has compromised America’s strategic interests due to its formidable costs and to the corruption, dependency, and pushback that it caused in Afghanistan; the U.S. should maintain sufficient assistance levels (with strings attached regarding governance and inclusiveness) to sustain Kabul’s ability to resist the Taliban, but its large-scale military occupation must end soon 
Signal to neighboring powers (especially China, Russia, and Iran) that the US does not seek a permanent military presence (beyond possible ISR-strike capabilities), and leverage their concern about regional terrorist activities to convince them to press the Taliban and Pakistan into genuine direct negotiations 
Launch direct negotiations with the Taliban and offer a path that could realistically lead to withdrawal provided they break with terrorist movements and tolerate the Afghan Constitution 

In an era of increased challenge to American economic dominance and resurging great power competition, the U.S. must streamline the ends, ways, and means of its grand strategy. Accepting the limits of its power and appeal in certain parts of the world will enable it to better address its paramount national security and economic interests in other regions.

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