I'm increasingly nervous about what an Obama foreign policy might look like.
It may just be campaign posturing, but Obama’s support of NATO membership for Georgia reveals both flawed thinking as well as an inability to break free from the deadly Washington foreign policy consensus, which stifles any fresh thinking on such important issues as Israel-Palestine, Iran, and how to deal with Russia. Along similar lines, his desire to rebuild Georgia’s economy with “emergency economic loans” prompts the obvious rejoinder: with what money!? Don’t we need all the money we can possibly borrow from China to help rebuild OUR economy?
The good news about the financial crisis is that it’s increasingly obvious that the country can’t economically afford Bush-style adventurism—even if we wanted to have such an aggressive foreign policy. Barney Frank, the go-to Congressman on all things financial crisis-related, said today that we should pay for all these bailouts and economic stimuli, in part, with money we could save by pulling out of Iraq more quickly than currently planned. Sounds like a decent idea to me.
But there is a hitch, which brings me to another major problem with Obama’s future foreign policy: Afghanistan. I don’t see much progress on the money-saving front, or on the less- aggressive-foreign-policy front, if many of the troops Obama plans on pulling out of Iraq simply redeploy to Afghanistan. Such a redeployment of troops would be a welcome move if there was a real possibility of accomplishing important strategic objectives. But a bigger footprint in Afghanistan will likely make things worse—in both Afghanistan and, more importantly, in Pakistan.
Brig. Mark Carleton-Smith, the outgoing commander of British troops in Afghanistan, offered the first clue that more troops might not be the best way to go when he said: “We're not going to win this war. It's about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that's not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army…We all know that we cannot win it militarily. It has to be won through political means.” Although quickly dismissed as “defeatist” comments by Defense Secretary Gates, Carleton-Smith’s statements strike me as having the clear ring of truth, particularly in light of…um…all of Afghan history. Take it from the former head of the KGB in Kabul during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, who knows a few things about trying to defeat an Afghan insurgency:
One of our mistakes was staying, instead of leaving. After we changed the regime, we should have handed over and said goodbye. But we didn’t. And the Americans haven’t, either…We abused human rights, including the use of aggressive bombardment. Now, it’s the same, absolutely the same. Some Soviet generals gave instructions to wipe out the villages where the mujahedeen were entrenched with the civilian population. Is that what your generals are going to do?...The more foreign troops you have roaming the country, the more the irritative allergy toward them is going to be provoked.
Transforming Afghanistan into anything acceptable to Westerners from a human rights/democracy standpoint was a fool’s errand from day one. Ramping up the military campaign will only get us farther away from that impossible objective while further destabilizing the country and the region. As the indispensible Anatol Lieven says in this piece, our military objective in Afghanistan should be limited to preventing international terrorists from re-establishing safe havens. America should rely on soft power in Afghanistan, not on an Obama-ordered military escalation.
2 comments:
A few quick thoughts:
- not worried about Obama's support for Georgia's NATO membership. First of all, Obama doesn't support membership, he supports a Membership Action Plan, and the difference there is extreme. Among the criteria for "passing" the MAP process is not having any territorial disputes. Also, we need to remember NATO decides things on a consensus basis. Combine those two facts and there is NO WAY Georgia will ever become part of NATO (France, Spain, Germany - essentially all of Western Europe - will put the hatchet in that dream). So if Obama wants to "talk tough" on this issue, I have no problem with it.
- I agree Afghanistan is a tricky issue, but Obama's position here is more nuanced than simply adding troops. He wants to add troops so that they can avoid the kind of heavy, aerial bombardment your KGB source cites. The resistance to the U.S. is real; then again, many Afghans don't relish a return to the rule of the Taliban. There is more room here than in Iraq to play a constructive role. Not sure Obama's plan will work, but I think it is less hopeless than it's often made to seem.
Nate, as always, great comments.
Yes, Georgia will never become part of NATO. But that doesn't make it smart to saber-rattle by supporting a MAP. "Talking tough" actually has real consequences--the Russians, for starters, will return the favor, prompting a tizzy-fit from the neocons and other hawks. It will be a real step in the wrong direction. And from a strategic standpoint, talking tough when you can't back it up (really making Georgia part of NATO) is absolute folly. It's the opposite of "speak softly and carry a big stick."
As for Afghanistan, I hope you are right and I am wrong.
Side note: another thought has been irritating me lately: more troops for Afghanistan feels like a political idea to me. Not an idea rooted in sound military thinking. I mean, what is the plan, exactly? "Afghanistan is the real epicenter of the war against Al Qaeda" sounds good politically and is certainly a correct statement. But sending in more troops does not necessarily follow automatically from that true statement.
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