Pakistan

I'm crashing to finish a conference paper on why "wars of choice" last so long (and how to end them), so blogging will be fairly light this week. In the meantime, you might want to take a look at the CSPAN broadcast of a conference on Capitol Hill last week on Afghanistan policy, sponsored by the RAND Corporation's Center for Middle East Public Policy. Most of the speakers were thoughtful and worth a listen, although I was struck by how even the advocates of "staying the course" did not seem very confident of success. The "outside the box" perspective (in other words, disengagement) was represented by Chris Preble of CATO and yours truly. If you're interested in what we had to say, my presentation begins at about 2:35.00 into the broadcast, and Chris is right after me.

I've been out of town for the past 24 hours and unable to blog, but I did want to alert you to a new piece I've written on Afghanistan.  Unlike many of the pundits who are now telling Obama what to do, I think it's actually a rather easy call (assuming, of course, your first priority is the U.S. national interest).  

If you want to know why I think so, go here.

I watched the Frontline documentary on Afghanistan ("Obama's War") Tuesday night, and most of my concerns got reinforced. One should watch most documentaries with a skeptical eye, because skilled filmmakers can easily slant the story by omitting any footage that doesn't fit the impression they are trying to leave and by shaping the story in ways that reinforce a particular conclusion.

Nonetheless, the presentation didn't offer much grounds for hope, and even the on-screen advocates of a continued U.S. effort (Gen. Stanley McChrystal, AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke, CNAS President John Nagl, etc.) didn't sound very encouraging. I think McChrystal and maybe even Holbrooke know they've got a loser on their hands, and were operating in damage-limitation mode. As others have noted, the on-screen interviews with Pakistani officials made it clear that they are playing a double-game here; they've been in bed with the Afghan Taliban for years and are even less reliable partners than the Karzai government, no matter how much aid we dump on them. To believe we can eke out something resembling "victory" in these circumstances is like believing one could drain the Atlantic Ocean with a teaspoon. And watching the footage of U.S. Marines attempting to do the impossible made me admire their dedication and raw courage and resent like hell the strategic myopia that sent them on this fool's errand.

Remember that the main justification for our counterinsurgency campaign is the "safe haven" argument: We must defeat the Taliban to prevent Al Qaeda from regaining a sanctuary there. A recent presentation by Richard Barrett, coordinator of the United Nations' Al Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee, suggests that this may not be much of a problem (h/t: John Mueller).

Money quotes (from pp. 17 and 23 of the PDF file):

p. 17: "If I could just talk a little bit about Afghanistan and al-Qaida, the link between al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban is a historic one but not a very strong one, in my view. The Afghan Taliban have their own objectives. And their objectives are to take power in Afghanistan. Essentially, it's a local issue for them. Al-Qaida can join the party; fine, they can help them, but to a certain extent, al-Qaida doesn't help them because if – and I think Mullah Omar's made this very clear – if they take over in Afghanistan, they want to consolidate their power. They don't want to be kicked out again like they were in 2001. And to consolidate their power, they don't want al-Qaida hanging around. They want to be able to say we are a responsible government; we're not going to support anybody who meddles in the business of our neighbors or in other international countries or partners.

Well, you might say well, they'd say that anyway; why wouldn't they – why shouldn't they say that? But I don't think they lose a lot if they don't say that. They don't gain a lot by saying it and they don't lose a lot by not saying it. So I think that we could possibly think that we might take them at the face value – that they would not automatically allow Afghanistan to become a base for al-Qaida…"

p. 23: "I'm not sure that if the Taliban took over in Afghanistan that they would necessarily welcome al-Qaida back in great forces, particularly if al-Qaida was going back there to set up camps to train people to mount attacks against other countries. I think the Taliban must calculate that had it not been for 9/11 they'd still be empowering Kabul now today, that no one would have come to kick them out. It was only 9/11 that caused them to lose power. So you know, they lost all that time, and if they get back they perhaps don't want to make that same mistake again."

If the Frontline report was mostly accurate and Barrett is mostly correct, there are no good strategic reasons to wage a costly counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. It's no more the "good war" than Iraq was, and Obama is deluding himself if he thinks he can achieve a meaningful victory there.

Postscript: If Obama wants a more promising strategy -- and Lord knows he should -- he should take a look at Robert Pape's op-ed in today's New York Times. Readers here know that I'm in favor of the "offshore balancing" strategy that Pape outlines, and not just in Afghanistan. I believe we will eventually head in that directon, but as Winston Churchill once noted about America, only after "trying all the alternatives."

If you want to keep up with the debate on Afghanistan, you should obviously be reading FP's AfPak Channel. But here are a few other items of special note:

1. Chairman of the JCS Admiral Mike Mullen thinks we need more troops and more time. Some key Senators are skeptical. To watch the actual hearings, go here.

2. A new CATO Institute report on how to get out.

3. An open letter from the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy on why Obama should rethink his Afghan "strategy." (Full disclosure: I'm one of the signatories).

4. What Sarah Palin and the guys who thought invading Iraq was a good idea think now. For some reason the phrase "caveat emptor" springs to mind.

5. Tom Englehardt is skeptical of benchmarks, but offers a long list of his own.  

JEAN-PIERRE CLATOT/AFP/Getty Images

Why is Afghanistan so hard? It's not difficult to think of reasons: 1) the long-standing divisions among the various tribal/ethnic groups that make up Afghan society, 2) the mountainous, inhospitable terrain, 3) lack of infrastructure, 4) weak governmental institutions and little history of centralized authority, 5) the destructive effects of many years of warfare, 6) endemic corruption, 7) traditional hostility to foreign occupation, etc. ... Given all that, it is hardly surprising that outside efforts to rebuild the country and establish a legitimate central government have thus far failed to accomplish very much.

If that weren't enough, our efforts there are also hampered by some inherent strategic contradictions. In particular, most of the things the United States might do to improve the situation tend to make other aspects of the problem worse. Even if we make progress on one dimension, it tends to set us back in some other way. Here are five reasons why running harder seems to leave us in the same place.

1. If the U.S. does more, others do less.

The United States didn't want NATO's help when it first went into Afghanistan in 2002. As one U.S. official put it at the time, "the more allies you have, the more permissions you have to get." Those days are long past, however, and the Obama administration would love to get more help from its allies. Unfortunately, working with lots of allies creates obvious coordination problems (e.g., the recent airstrike at German instigation that killed a number of Afghan civilians), and public support for the war is visibly waning in Europe (as it is in the United States). Even worse, there is a basic contradiction between the Obama administration's decision to increase US force levels and its desire to get greater allied assistance. As the well-known theory of collective goods tells us, the more we do, the more that other states will be tempted to "free-ride," leaving Uncle Sam holding the bag.

2. The more money we put in, the more corrupt Afghanistan will become.

Afghanistan has two main industries: opium growing and international assistance. It also has an endemic problem with corruption. Even if various forms of external assistance do accomplish some worthy tasks, it also tends to reinforce the other dysfunctional behaviors that have plagued the Karzai regime since its inception. In short, even well-intentioned and admirable efforts to help the Afghan people in concrete ways may not leave us in a better position overall.

3. If we keep telling the Afghans that we are "here to stay," they may believe us. And some of them won't like it.

We are often told that we need to persuade the Afghan people that we will stay long enough to "finish the job," and that we aren't going to leave precipitously. But anything we do to convince them that we intend to stay for a long time inevitably makes us look like a foreign occupier with ulterior motives. Thus, efforts to make our commitment look more credible also makes it look more sinister to some Afghans, and make it easier for the Taliban to recruit sympathizers.

4. The more prestige we commit, the less leverage we have.

This is an old story: increasing the U.S. commitment makes us more dependent on whoever we are currently backing (whether in Afghanistan or Pakistan), which in turn gives us less leverage over their conduct.  Increasing troop levels makes us more dependent on supply lines through Pakistan, which makes it harder to press the Pakistani government to go after al Qaeda or undertake other reforms. Doubling down in Afghanistan also ties us more firmly to the Karzai government, despite the reliable reports of widespread fraud in the recent election. Once we decide that a client regime "cannot be allowed to fail," our ability to influence its conduct evaporates quickly. Once again, trying to do more achieves less than we expect.

5. The paradox of publicity.

President Obama has defended his policies by declaring it a "war of necessity," thereby highlighting the importance of the conflict. That's a necessary step in a democracy, but it inevitably draws more public attention to the conflict and places a premium on showing significant progress within a reasonable amount of time. After eight years, public support is going to wane if clear positive signs aren't forthcoming, which means the Taliban can play for time and tailor their efforts toward U.S. public opinion.

It's possible that clever leadership can overcome or mitigate each of these tensions, but it won't be easy. And these (and other) contradictions might help us understand why the current effort in Afghanistan is likely to fail, even if we devote a lot more resources to it and even if the people in charge do their best.

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I'm clearing off my desk today and working on the opening lecture for my graduate IR theory course, so I'm not going to try to write a detailed commentary. Instead, let me take this opportunity to pass on a few pieces that caught my eye, on a wide array of subjects.

1. From the S Rajaratnam School in Singapore comes an optimistic assessment on the status of the Pakistani Taliban. According to Khuram Iqbal, the Pakistani Taliban have failed to gain popular support, and show no signs of becoming an effective mass movement (akin to Hezbollah in Lebanon). Instead, they are increasingly seen as a narrower terrorist group, reinforced their unpopularity. While they remain a problem to be dealt with, fears that the Pakistani state was on the verge of collapse or that the entire country might be "Talibanized" seem to have been greatly overblown. (Juan Cole: take a bow).

2. There is a fascinating article by Richard Oliver Collin in the latest issue of International Studies Perspectives, entitled "Words of War: Iraq's Tower of Babel." It is a careful analysis of the extraordinary degree of linguistic diversity and fragmentation in Iraq, and it underscores how ill-prepared the United States was to try to occupy and govern the place. Money quote from Collin's conclusion:

It cannot be argued that enhanced language proficiency in Arabic and Kurdish would assure military victory for the United States in its conflict with the various Iraqi insurgent groups.  Language capability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for triumph in war and diplomacy. The evidence does strongly suggest, however, that American inability to create a basic communications capability has contributed importantly to the failure of the United States thus far to resolve its Middle Eastern problems at some minimally acceptable level ... Can this historical trend be changed? There is no reason to believe that the present spate of Middle Eastern difficulties is going to be the last chapter in America's involvement in the Middle East ....

The United States historically has attempted to pursue a policy of intense involvement in Middle Eastern affairs, sometimes diplomatic and sometimes military, but without a concomitant commitment to understanding the region's culture, religion, and particularly its languages. Since American foreign policy in the Middle East policy has never been more than sporadically successful, an argument can be made that Washington needs to match its military investment with a serious commitment to language and area studies. Language lessons are cheaper than tanks, and if America's linguists were good enough, the United States might not need quite so many tanks."

Note: he says linguistic competence is "necessary but not sufficient," so please don't assume that training some more linguists would suddenly give us a magical capability to reorder other countries at low cost.

3. If you're just now trying to catch up on the situation in Afghanistan (and why haven't you been reading the AfPak Channel here at FP?), a good short introduction is Thomas Billetteri, "Afghanistan Dilemma," CQ Researcher, available here. (Full disclosure: I'm quoted a couple of times, but so are lots of other people with varying views.) Billetteri takes no position on the policy choices facing us, but the piece is an excellent introduction to the issues.

4. I've also just finished a fascinating paper by two economists from the Universidad de los Andes, analyzing the effect of Plan Colombia on the production and distribution of drugs (e.g., cocaine). The analysis is fairly technical and some of the math is beyond me, but it's clearly a serious attempt to determine the impact of different policies and how the different actors involved (the U.S. and Colombian governments, the drug growers, the drug smugglers, etc.) interact in a strategic fashion. Among other things, the authors (Daniel Mejia and Pascual Restrepo) show that although Plan Colombia's drug eradication efforts have reduced the amount of acreage under cultivation by nearly 50 percent, actual cocaine production has decreased by only 11 percent and the prices of coca leaf, coca paste, and actual cocaine have remained fairly stable. Why? Because growers responded to eradication efforts by adopting more productive cultivation techniques, thereby producing nearly the same amount of cocaine from smaller amounts of land. 

They also demonstrate that the Colombian and U.S. governments have conflicting interests in pursuing the "war on drugs." Specifically, the Colombian government benefits far more from every dollar spent on eradication efforts (i.e., against drug production) because that takes money away from the growers (and thus the insurgency). By contrast, the United States gets a larger "bang from the buck" from drug interdiction (i.e., against drug trafficking) because the main U.S. interest is in trying to keep cocaine out of the United States. Here's a summary of their main findings:

We find, among many other things, that a three-fold increase in the U.S. budget allocated to Plan Colombia would decrease the amount of cocaine reaching consumer countries by about 19.5% (about 60,000 kg). We also estimate that the elasticity of the cocaine reaching consumer countries with respect to changes in the amount of resources invested in the war against illegal drug production is about 0.007%, whereas the elasticity with respect to changes in the amount of resources invested in the war against illegal drug trafficking is about 0.296%. In other words, if the main objective is to reduce the amount of drugs reaching consumer countries, targeting illegal drug trafficking is much more cost effective than targeting illegal drug production activities.  However, if the objective is to reduce the cost of conflict in Colombia, targeting drug production activities is more cost effective .... Furthermore, we find that the optimal allocation of resources from the point of view of the U.S., whose objective is to minimize the amount of cocaine reaching its borders, implies that all the U.S. assistance to Plan Colombia should be for the war against drug trafficking.  From the point of view of Colombia, whose objective is to minimize the total cost of internal conflict, the optimal allocation would imply that all the U.S. assistance for Plan Colombia should go to finance the war against drug production."

I'm sure one can raise questions about their analysis, but this is the sort of work that really ought to be informing the debate over whether Plan Colombia is working and how U.S. assistance should be allocated. 

Happy reading!

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I’ll be at a luncheon panel at The Century Foundation tomorrow, discussing Central Asia strategy with Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress and Francesc Vendrell, the former EU special representative in Afghanistan. As readers know, I’m something of a skeptic about our deepening involvement in this region, and I’m looking forward to an interesting discussion.

We’re getting lots of encouraging reports about the Pakistani army’s current offensive in the Swat Valley, and I hope the optimism is justified. But two features of the situation give me pause. First, the area has been pretty much off-limits to journalists, and we are therefore relying almost entirely on the Pakistani army's reporting of its own achievements. Needless to say, there is a long and rich history (and not just in Pakistan) of militaries exaggerating their achievements on the battlefield. And even if they have killed a fair number of Taliban fighters and forced the rest to flee, the real question is whether the gains will endure. Remember that it was an unnamed "senior Administration official" who warned at the outset "they'll displace the Taliban for awhile. But there will also be a lot of displaced persons and a lot of collateral damage. And then they won't be able to sustain those effects or extend the gains geographically."

That’s my second concern: does it make strategic sense to displace upwards of three million people in order to go after around four thousand Taliban, most of whom aren't "global terrorists" in the same way that al Qaeda is? The Pakistani army has reported only light losses thus far, which suggests they aren’t risking their own soldiers in careful counter-insurgency operations but are relying instead on firepower and other indiscriminate tactics (which helps explain why people are fleeing in such large numbers and could be why the region has been off-limits to reporters). If the operation has left a lot of destruction in its wake, as seems likely, will it make the government or the Taliban more popular in the long run? And given that we helped egg the Pakistani government into this, are we likely to get blamed for it down the road?

McClatchy News reports that the United States is planning to spend over $700 million dollars to build a major new embassy complex in Pakistan, while negotiating to purchase a five-star hotel to serve as the new consulate in Peshawar. These new facilities are intended to support the "surge" of diplomats and aid workers that the United States intends to deploy as part of President Obama's deepening involvement in Central Asia. The obvious comparison is to the huge U.S. embassy in Iraq (which cost nearly $600 million dollars and occupies on 104 acres (in downtown Baghdad), but I’m also reminded of the former U.S. embassy in Tehran, which was one of the largest U.S. facilities in the 1970s and was later occupied by Iranian students in the infamous 1980 hostage incident.

I'm all for providing U.S. officials with adequate facilities, but this idea merely underscores the inherent contradictions in the current U.S. approach. One of America's main problems in places like Pakistan and Afghanistan is the widespread popular belief that it is now addicted to interfering in these societies, usually in a heavy-handed and counter-productive way. In their eyes, Washington is constantly telling them which leaders to choose, which leaders should step down, which extremists to go after and how they should reorder their own societies to make them more compatible with our values. And oh yes, we also drop bombs and fire missiles into their territory, which we would regard as an act of war if anyone did it to us. Even when well-intentioned, these activities inevitably lend themselves to various conspiracy theories about America's "real" motives, and reinforce negative impressions of the United States. As of last year, only 19 percent of Pakistan’s population had a favorable view of the United States, and this hardly makes it easier to get meaningful cooperation on issues that we should (and do) care about, such as the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

Building a costly new embassy -- which will undoubtedly resemble a giant fortress -- is  not going to help win "hearts and minds" there, or allay concerns about our ambitions in that part of the world. And if we need a facility like that in order to execute our overall strategy, doesn’t that cast some doubt on the merits of the strategy itself?