Safe Haven (2): A response to Peter Bergen

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Thursday, August 20, 2009 - 8:48 PM

Peter Bergen has taken issue with me on whether the danger of a "safe haven" for al Qaeda justifies an open-ended U.S. commitment in Afghanistan, but his critique mostly misses my central point.

In my view, what has been largely absent from the current discussions of U.S. policy is any serious attempt at cost-benefit analysis, and my original post was directed toward that particular omission. At present, advocates of a heightened U.S. role -- including President Obama -- simply invoke the dreaded words "al Qaeda" and the worrisome phrase "safe haven" as if that rendered any discussion of ends, means, costs and benefits unnecessary. It's an effective rhetorical tactic: we are so mesmerized by the specter of another 9/11 that we are willing to support any policy if it is said to be about preventing that from recurring. In most cases, however, it discourages us from examining how serious the risks really are and whether the proposed line of action will actually lower them.

Bergen thinks the threat is very, very serious, and he is admirably candid about his willingness to spend hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade or more to try to ward it off. He also believes that a large U.S. presence in Afghanistan is the best way to do that, while skeptics tend to think that reducing the U.S. military role is a better long-term bet. And let's not lose sight of just how difficult this is going to be. Consider what the Obama administration's own White Paper on Afghanistan identified as some of the key requirements for success:

These are daunting tasks. They require a new way of thinking about the challenges, a wide-ranging diplomatic strategy to build support for our efforts, enhanced engagement with the publics in the region and at home, and a realization that all elements of international power –- diplomatic, informational, military and economic -- must be brought to bear. They will also require a significant change in the management, resources, and focus of our foreign assistance.

We must engage the Afghan people in ways that demonstrate our commitment to promoting a legitimate and capable Afghan government with economic progress...
A strategic communications program must be created, made more effective, and resourced...
a complete overhaul of our civilian assistance strategy is necessary...
The international community must assume responsibility for funding this significantly enhanced Afghan security force for an extended period...
A dramatic increase in Afghan civilian expertise is needed. . . The United States should play an important part in providing that expertise, but responding effectively to Afghanistan's needs will require that allies, partners, the UN and other international organizations, and non-governmental organizations significantly increase their involvement in Afghanistan."

And if we do our best and some of these "daunting tasks" go unfulfilled, what then?

Of course neither Bergen nor I know for certain how likely a Taliban victory is or how dangerous it would be for U.S. interests. But note that his assessment still depends on a number of unproven worst-case assumptions. He assumes that absent large-scale and lengthy U.S. involvement, the Taliban will gain power again, even though the conditions that enabled them to consolidate power in the 1990s no longer exist. Among other things, many Afghan now know what Taliban rule is like, and non-Pashtuns aren't going to accede to Taliban control, which is why the fighting is mostly in the Pashtun south.

Bergen also assumes that the Taliban and al Qaeda are still inseparable ideological soul-mates and that the Taliban would quickly revert to the same supportive policy that led us to drive them from power once before. It's possible, of course, but hardly a certainty, especially given that the Taliban itself is not a homogeneous group and that most of its cadres don’t share Al Qaeda’s commitment to global jihad.

Bergen also assumes that a "safe haven" in Afghanistan would add a significant additional increment to Osama bin Laden’s capabilities. I'll concede that this might be preferable to huddling in a cave, but it's not clear how much it would really increase their ability to plan or train. Even if some hypothetical Taliban government did let Bin Laden & Co. have a hideout somewhere inside Afghanistan, he would be little better off than he apparently is today. He could hardly start operating openly, of course, because we would be certain to go after him if he did. And given that al Qaeda has metastasized into different groups that are already operating in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere (including sympathetic cells in Western Europe) the incremental value of a re-established presence in Afghanistan would be modest. Bergen points out that various plots in the past were conceived in Afghanistan or Pakistan, but it hardly takes a "safe haven" to sit around and conspire -- terrorists can do that virtually anywhere. In other words, making Afghanistan an "al Qaeda"-free zone is only a small part of the problem, and one could even argue that large-scale Western military involvement in these regions is precisely the sort of thing that gave rise to al Qaeda in the first place and continues to win it sympathizers today.

The real questions to ask are: 1) how much blood and treasure are the United States and its allies willing to invest in Afghanistan, and 2) is the way we are currently investing those lives and money are going to make things better or make them worse? Bergen thinks the danger is bigger than I do -- so he's willing to spend a lot more -- and he thinks a combination of counter-insurgency against the Taliban and massive external assistance to strengthen the central government is the best way to head his nightmare off. I have no objection to our using special forces and other assets to go after al Qaeda wherever it might be, and I don't object to foreign aid programs designed to repair or improve Afghanistan’s woeful infrastructure (building roads and expanding electrical grids is something we do know how to do, whereas designing a legitimate and minimally effectve central government are tasks we seem singularly ill-prepared for). So I'm with those who believe that trying to "defeat" the Taliban and create a strong central state in Afghanistan is a fool's errand.

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The "safe haven" myth

Posted By Stephen M. Walt Tuesday, August 18, 2009 - 9:48 PM

At an appearance before the Veterans of Foreign Wars yesterday, President Obama defended U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, calling it a "war of necessity." He claimed that "our new strategy has a clear mission and defined goals -- to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies," and he declared that “If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people.”

This is a significant statement. In effect, the president was acknowledging that the only strategic rationale for an increased commitment in Afghanistan is the fear that if the Taliban isn't defeated in Afghanistan, they will eventually allow al Qaeda to re-establish itself there, which would then enable it to mount increasingly threatening attacks on the United States.

This is the kind of assertion that often leads foreign policy insiders to nod their heads in agreement, but it shouldn't be accepted uncritically. Here are a few reasons why the "safe haven" argument ought to be viewed with some skepticism.

First, this argument tends to lump the various groups we are contending with together, and it suggests that all of them are equally committed to attacking the United States. In fact, most of the people we are fighting in Afghanistan aren't dedicated jihadis seeking to overthrow Arab monarchies, establish a Muslim caliphate, or mount attacks on U.S. soil. Their agenda is focused on local affairs, such as what they regard as the political disempowerment of Pashtuns and illegitimate foreign interference in their country. Moreover, the Taliban itself is more of a loose coalition of different groups than a tightly unified and hierarchical organization, which is why some experts believe we ought to be doing more to divide the movement and "flip" the moderate elements to our side. Unfortunately, the "safe haven" argument wrongly suggests that the Taliban care as much about attacking America as bin Laden does.

Second, while it is true that Mullah Omar gave Osama bin Laden a sanctuary both before and after 9/11, it is by no means clear that they would give him free rein to attack the United States again. Protecting al Qaeda back in 2001 brought no end of trouble to Mullah Omar and his associates, and if they were lucky enough to regain power, it is hard to believe they would give us a reason to come back in force.

Third, it is hardly obvious that Afghan territory provides an ideal "safe haven" for mounting attacks on the United States. The 9/11 plot was organized out of Hamburg, not Kabul or Kandahar, but nobody is proposing that we send troops to Germany to make sure there aren't "safe havens" operating there. In fact, if al Qaeda has to hide out somewhere, I’d rather they were in a remote, impoverished, land-locked and isolated area from which it is hard to do almost anything. The "bases" or "training camps" they could organize in Pakistan or Afghanistan might be useful for organizing a Mumbai-style attack, but they would not be particularly valuable if you were trying to do a replay of 9/11 (not many flight schools there), or if you were trying to build a weapon of mass destruction. And in a post-9/11 environment, it wouldn’t be easy for a group of al Qaeda operatives bent on a Mumbia-style operation get all the way to the United States. One cannot rule this sort of thing out, of course, but does that unlikely danger justify an open-ended commitment that is going to cost us more than $60 billion next year?

Fourth, in the unlikely event that a new Taliban government did give al Qaeda carte blanche to prepare attacks on the United States or its allies, the United States isn't going to sit around and allow them to go about their business undisturbed. The Clinton administration wasn't sure it was a good idea to go after al Qaeda's training camps back in the 1990s (though they eventually did, albeit somewhat half-heartedly), but that was before 9/11. We know more now and the U.S. government is hardly going to be bashful about attacking such camps in the future. (Remember: we are already doing that in Pakistan, with the tacit approval of the Pakistani government). Put differently, having a Taliban government in Kabul would hardly make Afghanistan a "safe haven" today or in the future, because the United States has lots of weapons it can use against al Qaeda that don’t require a large U.S. military presence on the ground.

Fifth, as well-informed critics have already observed, the primary motivation for extremist organizations like the Taliban and Al Qaeda is their opposition to what they regard as unwarranted outside interference in their own societies. Increasing the U.S. military presence and engaging in various forms of social engineering is as likely to reinforce such motivations as it is to eliminate them. Obama is hoping that a different strategy will eventually undercut support for the Taliban and strengthen the central government, but it is still an open question whether more American involvement will have positive or negative effects. If we are in fact making things worse, then we may be encouraging precisely the outcome we are trying to avoid.

Sixth, one might also take comfort from the Soviet experience. When the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, the mujaheddin didn't "follow them home." Were the United States to withdraw from Aghanistan and the Taliban to regain power (or end up sharing power, which is more likely), going after the United States won't even be on their "to do" list.

One can of course make a moral argument for an extended commitment in Afghanistan, but that's not the argument Obama made (and it probably wouldn't sell very well here at home). For a realist, the "safe haven" argument is the only possible rationale for a large military commitment in Afghanistan. But the case is actually quite dubious, and somebody in the administration really ought to take a hard look at it. I doubt anyone will, however, because Obama is now committed, and his administration is filled with "can-do" types who never saw an international problem they didn't think the United States could fix.I sure hope they're right and I'm wrong, but I also wish that I didn’t have that feeling quite as often as I seem to these days.

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