You know that an idea is catching on when Tom Friedman gets behind it. He's been a reliable weathervane for some time (a cheerleader for U.S.-led globalization in the 1990s, backing the Iraq War in 2002 and then reversing course when it went south, supporting escalation in Afghanistan with his fingers firmly crossed, and lecturing Americans on their recent failings once that became fashionable, too). But in this case I'm not complaining, because some of his recent writings suggest that he's coming around to the idea of offshore balancing.

Consider his column in today's Times. He makes two basic points: 1) the strategic stakes in Central Asia aren't worth the costs, and 2) withdrawal from Iraq will exacerbate Iranian-Iraqi relations and improve our strategic position. Gee, where did I hear those ideas before? And then he goes further, pointing out that getting out of our current "land wars in Asia" will restore our freedom of maneuver and give us more strategic options. Here's the money quotation from Friedman, based on testimony from a prominent Indian scholar:

'If the U.S. steps back, it will see that it has a lot more options,' argues C. Raja Mohan, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research, in New Delhi. ‘You let the contending regional forces play out against each other and then you can then tilt the balance.' He is referring to the India, Pakistan, Russia, Iran, China and Northern Alliance tribes in Afghanistan. ‘At this point, you have the opposite problem. You are sitting in the middle and are everyone's hate-object, and everyone sees some great conspiracy in whatever you do. Once you pull out, and create the capacity to alter the balance, you will have a lot more options and influence to affect outcomes - rather than being pushed around and attacked by everyone.'

The United States today needs much more cost-efficient ways to influence geopolitics in Asia than keeping troops there indefinitely. We need to better leverage the natural competitions in this region to our ends. There is more than one way to play The Great Game, and we need to learn it."

One might add that playing "hard to get" a bit would also make other countries do more to retain U.S. backing, and that would be good for us too.

Read on

I've never been a huge fan of Robert Gates, even though friends whose judgment I trust hold him in high regard. But as his tenure as Secretary of Defense comes to a close, I'm prepared to concede that he exceeded my initial expectations. He had the advantage of succeeding Donald Rumsfeld -- whose combination of arrogance and incompetence could make anyone look good by comparison -- but Gates has also shown remarkable balance, common-sense and imagination in dealing with one of the world's more challenging managerial jobs.  Of course, Gates is often regarded as something of a realist, so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

In any case, today I commend to you Gates' final policy speech, which he delivered at the American Enterprise Institute a couple of days ago. It's not the equivalent of Eisenhower's famous farewell address on the "military-industrial complex," but it is a sober and realistic assessment of some of the things that the Department of Defense needs to do. 

Most importantly, it acknowledges that cold hard fact that DoD will have to do it with less money, and that this is ok.  Money quote: 

But as I am fond of saying, we live in the real world. Absent a catastrophic international conflict or a new existential threat, we are not likely to return to Cold War levels of defense expenditures, at least as a share of national wealth, anytime soon. Nor do I believe we need to."

Translation: sorry, folks: but you can't fight a couple of costly wars, experience a major global financial meltdown, and spend nearly a decade cutting taxes, and still expect to have lots of money to throw at national security. And it would be foolish to do so even if we did, because we live in an era where we face no existential great power threats. Instead, our main priority needs to be getting our economic house in order and preparing for longer-term challenges down the road, while maintaining the essential elements of our current global security role.

One of the classic tradeoffs in national security is between measures that increase short-term readiness and those that enhance long-term strength.  We could be a lot stronger in the short-term if we ramped up defense spending -- even if there wasn't an obvious need -- but if we neglected our fiscal health, education, national infrastructure, etc., then we would end up a lot weaker down the road. Which is why I think we should be focusing a lot more attention on long-term capacity building than fighting costly wars in places that don't matter very much (like Afghanistan).

Furthermore, although Gates elides this issue in his speech, the various pressures that are going to constrain national security spending in the years ahead are also going to put some limits on our global ambitions. The United States will remain a very powerful and very influential international actor; indeed, it will probably be the single most powerful and influential player on the globe for many years to come. But it won't be quite as dominant as it was in the immediate aftermath of World War II, or as it appeared to be at the end of the Cold War. Instead of trying to dictate events in virtually every corner of the world, future US leaders are going to have to pick-and-choose a bit more, and rely more on regional allies who will have their own interests and preferences and may be unwilling to follow Washington's guidance from time to time. That's not necessarily a bad world to be living in, but it will require considerable adjustment in how we do business. And after sixty-plus years of global primacy, getting used to that fact is likely to take awhile.

It goes without saying that the accidental killing of nine Afghan boys by an American helicopter gunship was yet another public relations setback for the U.S. war effort. But more than that, I think it may also tell us a lot about how we are really waging that war, which is somewhat at odds with the rhetorical emphasis that it tends to get back home. The incident also underscores the inherent contradictions in U.S. strategy and does not augur well for our long-term prospects.

Ever since the publication of Field Manual 3-24, much of the rhetorical emphasis in U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine has been on "population protection," along with the necessity of building local institutions. As noted at the very beginning of FM 3-24: "A successful COIN operation meets the contested population's needs to the extent needed to win popular support while protecting the population from the insurgents." To win "hearts and minds," in short, a counterinsurgency force is supposed to provide security for the local population so that the enemy cannot win local support via intimidation or by exploiting local rivalries. Protecting the population is also supposed to earn their gratitude and convince them that the central government and its NATO allies are winning, so that local populations will tilt in our direction and provide us with additional intelligence, thereby allowing us to go after insurgents effectively.

This approach sounds great on paper, and it helps make the war more palatable to Americans back home. We all like to think that our armed forces are performing noble deeds, and protecting Afghan civilians from the likes of the Taliban certainly qualifies on that score. The problem, however, is that this is a misleading picture of what our forces are actually doing in Afghanistan. (It's also an oversimplification of what the Field Manual actually says because it also devotes plenty of space to the military operations that are also part of any serious counterinsurgency effort.)

The deaths of these nine Afghan boys remind us that this is a real war and that we're actually devoting a lot (most?) of our effort not to population protection but to killing suspected insurgents. U.S. reliance on airpower has increased dramatically, and USAF airstrikes are reportedly up by some 172 percent since General David Petraeus replaced Stanley McChrystal last year. The approach is also consistent with greater U.S. reliance on drone strikes in Pakistan and should be seen as part of an intensifying effort to kill as many insurgents as possible and especially to target key insurgent leaders.

Furthermore, "population protection" itself is not always a purely benign or politically neutral act. Protecting a local population often requires interfering with their daily lives in sometimes onerous and bothersome ways, whether through the construction of massive concrete barriers (as in Baghdad), or "strategic hamlets" (as in Vietnam), or through intrusive search missions in local villages. Even when we are in fact improving the security of the local population, that may not be how the people we are supposedly protecting perceive it. In the Pech Valley, at least, the local population mostly wanted us to get out and leave them alone.

Put all these elements together, and the central conundrum of our position becomes clearer. Heavier reliance on airpower and more aggressive military operations on the ground are bound to lead to more accidental civilian deaths, because military force is a crude weapon, humans are imperfect, and errors are bound to happen no matter how hard we try to avoid them. Yet the more we emphasize that our objective is "hearts and minds" and protecting the population, the more damage the inevitable mistakes do in the eyes of Afghans, the world at large, and to popular support here at home.

Ironically, Section E-6 of FM 3-24 makes this same point quite clearly (my emphasis):

The proper and well-executed use of aerial attack can conserve resources, increase effectiveness, and reduce risk to U.S. forces. Given timely, accurate intelligence, precisely delivered weapons with a demonstrated low failure rate, appropriate yield, and proper fuse can achieve desired effects while mitigating adverse effects. However, inappropriate or indiscriminate use of air strikes can erode popular support and fuel insurgent propaganda. For these reasons, commanders should consider the use of air strikes carefully during COIN operations, neither disregarding them outright nor employing them excessively."

But in their zeal to find some way to turn the war around (or to at least appear to have done so), have our commanders forgotten their own advice? And given all the internal contradictions in U.S. strategy, doesn't it suggest that the war simply isn't winnable (in any meaningful sense), at anything like a reasonable cost?

For more on these important issues, see BCSIA fellow Jacqueline Hazelton's paper, "Compellence in Counterinsurgency Warfare," and Amy Goodman's interview with journalist Rick Rowley here.

Question: What happens when other major powers face growing security problems, and begin to wonder whether the United States will continue to protect them? 

Answer: They stop free-riding quite so much and start doing more themselves.

Case in point: Japan. As the New York Times reports today, Japan has responded to fears of a rising China, potential dangers from North Korea, and concerns about the U.S. commitment to Asia not by "bandwagoning" with China or opting for neutrality, but by bolstering its own defenses and reaffirming its security ties with America.  Its goal, according to the Times, is to become a "full military partner" with the United States.

There are two obvious, lessons to be drawn from this example. The first is that the United States can take advantage of the tendency of great powers to balance to reduce some of its own defense burdens, confident that wealthy allies like Japan can take up some of the slack. By playing "hard to get," in other words, we can "pass the buck" to our allies to a greater extent than we have in recent decades. The United States can do this in part because it has the luxury of being safe and secure in the Western hemisphere while our allies lie closer to potential sources of danger, and smart strategists should take advantage of this favorable situation. If the United States insists on doing it all, of course, we can confidently expect other states to keep free-riding on our efforts.

The second lesson, however, is that there's a limit to how far one can pass the buck to others.  If the United States were to withdraw entirely from Asia, or to reduce its military capabilities too much, then some other states might eventually decide to make other strategic arrangements. But given that the U.S. is spending nearly 5 percent of GDP on national security these days, while Japan spends less than 1 percent, I'd say we've have a long way to go before our allies think seriously about realigning.  

Remember: The main reason for a state to have allies is so that they can help make it more secure. If having a large array of allies just means the United States has more areas it is obligated to defend, then maybe we need to rethink how many of those commitments actually enhance our security, and how many of them just add burdens without compensating benefits.

Saturday's New York Times contained an interesting op-ed piece by Charles Blow, titled "American Shame." The main item was a table listing the 33 countries designated as "advanced economies" by the International Monetary Fund and comparing them on various social and educational characteristics. Specifically, Blow charted income inequality, unemployment rates, level of democracy, the "percentage thriving" (according to the Gallup Global Well-Being Index), food insecurity, prison population, and student performance in math and science. The bottom line: The United States is at the bottom of the heap on most of these measures, and at or near the top in none. 

It's a sobering collection of data, to be sure, but I wish Blow had added two more columns to his chart: 1) percentage of GDP devoted to defense, and 2) defense spending per capita. According to the 2010 IISS Military Balance, here's what those columns would have looked like (the countries are in the order presented by Blow, which reflected their summary ranking on the various measures, from best to worst):

Country            Defense $/GDP (%)     Defense $/population (2008)

Australia                 2.24                         1,056
Canada                     1.19                             597
Norway                     1.49                        1,264
Netherlands             1.41                            738
Germany                    1.28                            570
Austria                     0.77                            389
Switzerland                 0.83                             542
Denmark                  1.94                             344
Finland                      1.33                             693
Belgium                     1.10                             534
Malta                         0.60                             122
Japan                         0.93                             362
Sweden                      1.30                              736
Hong Kong                   n.a.                               n.a.
Iceland                         0.27 (200                  153 (2006)
New Zealand               1.39                             420
Luxembourg             0.43                             478
United Kingdom        2.28                             998
Ireland                        0.60                             382
Singapore                   4.20                            1,663
Cyprus                         2.16                              503
South Korea              2.60                             500
Italy                            1.34                              532
France                        2.35                           1,049
Czech Rep.                 1.46                              310
Slovenia                      1.53                               415
Taiwan                        2.76                              458
Slovakia                      1.55                               271
Israel                           7.41                           2,077
Spain                           1.20                              276
Greece                        2.85                             946
Portugal                      1.53                             349
United States            4.88                          2,290

And just for fun, let's toss in:

P.R. China                1.36                            45

Read on

I'm just back from Southeast Asia, and a combination of accumulated email, looming deadlines, and jet lag will keep me from offering a lengthy account of the trip. Suffice it to say that I had a terrific time, with the highlight being my first visit to Vietnam. I gave lectures there on "China's Rise and America's Asian Alliances" and "Opportunities and Challenges in 2011" at the VNR500 Forum 2011 (a conference of the "top 500" Vietnamese companies), at the Fulbright Economics Teaching Program in Ho Chi Minh City, and at the Vietnamese Diplomatic Academy in Hanoi. I did an online interview with Vietnam.net, an important online newspaper in Vietnam, and met with a number of Vietnamese officials, mostly from the Foreign Affairs and Information ministries.

My impressions? First, there's clearly a tremendous amount of energy in Vietnam and lots of signs of economic potential. In addition to a wide array of restaurants, shops, and small enterprises, there are a growing number of industrial enterprises and (to me, at least) surprisingly modern "downtown" sections in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. Vietnam's growth potential remains limited by underperforming state-owned enterprises, corruption, and significant infrastructure challenges. But assuming those impediments can be overcome, I'd be bullish about its economic future (and it hasn't been doing all that badly in recent years, growing at about 7 percent).

Second, my visit coincided with the Party Congress, and though I'm hardly expert, I gather the results are something of a mixed bag. The new party secretary, Nguyen Phu Trong, represents the old guard, which means that rapid reforms are less likely. On the other hand, I gather that reform elements are more numerous in the Central Committee and other party institutions, and the prime minister, Nguyen Tan Dung, supports closer ties with the United States.

Which was another theme of my visit. The Vietnamese don't appear to have any hard feelings toward the United States (I didn't catch the slightest hint of any lingering resentments from the war), and it's probably noteworthy that virtually all the visitors at the war museum in Ho Chi Minh City were Westerners. This lack of resentment isn't all that surprising; as they see it, they beat us fair and square. Instead, the audiences at my talks (which included a fair number of students and intellectuals) and the officials with whom I met all sounded eager for closer ties with the United States. As I noted earlier, they were mostly concerned that the United States might cut some deal with China that would leave them isolated.

And China is a major long-term concern. That's hardly surprising either; all you have to do is look at a map and know a little bit about Sino-Vietnamese history. They have no desire for an open confrontation with Beijing, and Vietnam has a lot of important economic ties with China that could give the Chinese leverage in the future. But they are also under no illusions about the dangers of Chinese dominance (Vietnam was ruled by China for several hundred years), and I didn't sense much danger that Vietnam will bandwagon with Beijing. In that regard, the people with whom I spoke were clearly reassured and pleased by the tougher line the United States has taken regarding territorial issues in places like the South China Sea. So if Sino-American rivalry intensifies (as I expect it will), Vietnam will be an important U.S. ally.

All in all, it was a fascinating trip, and I'll be digesting my impressions for some time to come. And now it's time to catch up on what's been happening in the rest of the world; but first, I have to dig out the driveway.

Jet travel still strikes me as slightly miraculous, and despite having visited over forty countries, I still get a certain gee-whiz feeling whenever I'm headed for the international terminal at Logan airport (even though the terminal itself is nothing for Boston to boast about).

As you've probably noticed, however, the Powers That Be are doing their best to destroy that pleasant tingle of anticipation. Just when you thought they couldn't find another way to make air travel more annoying and degrading, somebody comes up with a new method to drive us crazy.  So having just flown twelve-plus hours from Boston to Kuwait (via London), I'm going to indulge in a short rant: the Top Five Things that Make Air Travel Infuriating.

1. The Whole Irrational Transportation Security Nightmare.
I have no objection to certain reasonable precautions about jet travel, but we've gone way, way, overboard in our effort to eliminate any and all risks. I'm with Yglesias here: The amount of time being wasted in TSA lines is unconscionable and is probably not making us significantly safer. Not only is an enormous amount of valuable time being wasted, but there's also the sheer indignity of being herded like cattle, forced to partially disrobe, and then poked or patted to make sure we don't have a box cutter or a lump of plastique hidden in our shorts. 

And what about the creepy symbolism of the latest scanner machines? You enter the booth and are told to assume the classic "hands-up" position. It's a nice way of making the entire traveling population feel like suspects, thereby feeding our collective paranoia and giving al Qaeda and its ilk another symbolic victory. Osama may be hiding in a cave somewhere, but he's still got us trembling in our socks, clutching our beltless pants, as we go through the checkpoints. And you just know that it's going to get worse: no bureaucrat or elected official will ever relax the current procedures (for fear that a terrorist plot might succeed and make them look really, really, stupid). Instead, we'll just keep adding layers and restrictions in response both to future attempts and to new dangers that we just dream up for ourselves.

But I'm a reasonable guy, and I understand that others have different cost-benefit calculations than I do. I'd be willing to walk through naked if they could just get us all through in a reasonable amount of time. At Logan yesterday, it took nearly 20 minutes to get through the TSA checkpoint, and this was at 6:45 in the morning and the line wasn't even that long. And none of this is preventing a repeat of 9/11, because locking the cockpit doors has eliminated the danger that a terrorist will commander the aircraft and fly it into a building. It's mostly our elected officials covering their tails: they don't want to get blamed if one day a plane does go down due to terrorist action. But making it nearly impossible to attack an airplane isn't going to stop terrorism, it will just lead them to go after other, softer targets.

2. Marginal Pricing Run Amok.
I'm hardly the first person to complain about this, but airlines have become masters at charging us for everything while doing less and less themselves. We check ourselves in at "self-serve" kiosks; we carry our own bags on and off the plane, and most of the time we bring our own food too. Having cut services to the bone, airlines do more "upselling" than a sleazy car salesman. I checked in at a self-service kiosk a few months ago, and was given three options for "upgrading" my flight (each for a different fee). If I had been willing to pay enough, those generous folks at the airline would have moved me to first class, let me check my bag for free, and zipped me through the VIP express line at the security checkpoint. This is another reason why the situation is only get worse: make air travel unpleasant enough, and some people will pay extra to reduce the irritation back to a bearable level. We are in effect being asked to trade money for sanity.

And then there's my personal favorite: charging you a hefty chunk of change to go on an earlier flight. You show up early for your flight, and there's an empty seat on an earlier departure. Nobody is going to use that seat if you don't take it. It's in the airline's interest to put you on the earlier flight, because that will open up a seat on the later flight and maybe somebody else will want it (i.e., they had to make an unexpected trip, or they missed a connection and need a later flight). So everybody wins if they just put you on the earlier plane, except the airline will going to charge you at least $50 bucks for doing something that is already in their interest. Of course, they do have to cover the cost of printing another boarding pass, which means the net profit on this transaction is probably about $49.99. And yet still they keep losing money. And don't get me started about the impenetrability (from the consumer's point of view) of the whole ticket pricing policy...

3. The Nanny State Rules the Air.
Has anyone done a study of the number of fatalities that have been produced by someone landing with their seat backs reclined, or with their tray tables not in the "fully closed and locked position?" I doubt it, yet airlines keep going to enormous lengths to protect us from the most unlikely contingencies.  Airlines have long insisted that you can't use PDAs during takeoff, landing, or in flight, based on the unverified idea that this might somehow affect the operation of the aircraft. Except that some carriers now want to equip airliners to allow people to talk on cell phones doing the flight, which I predict will eventually lead to fisticuffs at forty thousand feet.

And the latest indignity is the demand that you remove earbuds or headphones before takeoff or twenty minutes before landing. Presumably this is so you can hear the crew shout instructions in the event of a crash. Plus, the flight attendants now insist that you turn off your Kindle, presumably so that you're not so engrossed reading when the plane goes down that you fail to heed the crew's instructions. I don't blame the flight crew; they are just doing their jobs and enforcing the rules. But can they just meet me halfway?  If the plane crashes, I promise that I'll drop what I'm reading, take off my headphones, and do whatever you tell me.   Really.

4. You DON'T Control the Channel; You DON'T control the volume.
One feature that makes airports less and less appealing are those ubiquitous video monitors, usually set to either CNN or Fox. Instead of being allowed to read or converse in peace, you get bombarded by loud and grating announcers instead. There's no escape unless you can go to a business class lounge, although sometimes you'll find a TV on their too. Last week I was forced to sit through an entire episode of CNN's "Parker/Spitzer," because that's what was on the set above my seat in the waiting lounge. Moving does no good, because there are monitors everywhere. At least it wasn't O'Reilly or Wolf Blitzer.....

The Brits, by the way, have a much better idea. At Heathrow's Terminal 5, there are big video screens reporting the latest BBC news, with a video crawl providing text along with the images. You can watch if you want, but your eardrums don't get pummeled while you're either catching a nap or trying to concentrate on your book.

5. Forty pounds of Carry-On in a Twenty-Pound Overhead Compartment.
Now that airlines are charging us to check bags, it naturally makes more sense for people to use carry-on bags and avoid the fee. You also miss waiting around for your luggage and eliminate the chance that you end up in Seoul while your bag enjoys an unscheduled visit to Stockholm.   But the size of the overhead bins didn't change along with this new pricing policy, and despite some half-hearted efforts to regulate the size of carry-on bags, every flight I'm on these days seems to feature a bunch of unhappy passengers trying to cram duffle bags the size of Madagascar into the overhead bin. Tempers flare, nerves fray, and it takes twice as long to get on and off the aircraft as it should.

Granted, none of these complaints are as significant as issues of war, peace, national prosperity, and the like, and I'm sure I'll be less grumpy when my jet lag wears off. I fully realize that it's a hell of lot easier and safer to visit far-flung places now than it was a few decades ago, to say nothing of a few centuries ago. So I'm genuinely thankful for what transportation technology has wrought. But now I'd like some geniuses to get to work on making the whole experience a little less corrosive to the human spirit. Like I said, I still like to travel, and even like to fly. But I have the distinct fear that by the time I retire, getting on an airplane will involve more preparations than open-heart surgery, and recovery will take about as long. 

I'd like to believe that the United States and its (remaining) allies have got their act together and turned a corner in Afghanistan. Really. That's more-or-less what New York Times reporter Carlotta Gall told us in a front-page piece yesterday, and it was the key theme of retired general Jack Keane's appearance on Charlie Rose a couple of nights ago.

It would obviously be better for nearly everyone if the Taliban were routed, if order and security were restored in Afghanistan, and if the United States could extricate itself from this costly and seemingly open-ended commitment. But there are at least two good reasons to view these upbeat reports with some skepticism.

First, U.S. commanders have emphasized in the past that this conflict is largely one of perceptions. If everyone thinks we're winning, so the argument runs, then fence-straddlers in Afghanistan will tilt our way and popular support in the United States will remain high enough to keep us in the war. If everyone thinks we're losing, by contrast, momentum will swing the other way, more Afghans will gravitate toward the Taliban, and support back here will evaporate. Unfortunately, this situation means we can't really believe anything that our military leaders tell us about the progress of the war, because they have an obvious incentive to spin an upbeat story to reporters, or to people like Charlie Rose.

Second, as critics of the war have repeatedly pointed out, defeating the Taliban on the battlefield is nearly impossible as long as they can go to ground in local areas or flee across the border into Pakistan. And Gall's story in the Times makes it clear that this is precisely what is happening now. This is undoubtedly why the Obama administration is making yet another effort to get Pakistan to do more on its side of the border, and dangling a fat new military aid package as inducement. And at the same time, we're supposedly supporting negotiations with certain Taliban leaders, and we might even be willing to back some sort of deal.  

So let me tell you what I think is going to happen. The United States is going to spend the next few months trying to clear out or kill as many Taliban as we can find, accompanied by a lot of optimistic reports about how well we are doing. This won't be about a "hearts and minds" approach or even a long-term strategy of nation-building; it will be about creating the appearance of momentum and success. At the same time, we're going to try to shepherd a political process that can be sold as "peace deal" between the Karzai government and some moderate Taliban. If we're really lucky and offer big enough bribes (oops, I mean foreign aid), we might get Pakistan to pretend to be on board too. And then Obama will claim "the Afghan surge worked" sometime in the latter half of 2011, and begin withdrawing U.S. troops.

As our numbers fall, the Taliban will regroup, Pakistan will help rearm them covertly, and the struggle for power in Afghanistan will resume. Afghanistan's fate will once again be primarily in the hands of the Afghan people and the nearby neighbors who meddle there for their own reasons. I don't know who will win, but it actually won't matter very much for U.S. national security interests.

There are ample historical precedents for this sort of outcome. The Soviet Union concocted a peace deal before they withdrew in 1988, but their chosen successor, Najibullah, didn't last long once they had left. (Notice, however, that their enemies in Afghanistan didn't "follow them home" either). The United States achieved "peace with honor" in the 1973 Vietnam peace accords, but then Saigon fell two years later. No matter; the United States ended up winning the Cold War anyway. And then there's Iraq,where the 2007 "surge" was hailed as a great military victory but is now unraveling. In each case, the peace deal was mostly a fig leaf designed to let a great power get out of a costly war without admitting it had been beaten.

Petraeus & Co. are trying to pull off something similar here, and it may well be the best that can be made of a bad situation. But there is a subtle, long-term danger in this sort of sleight-of-hand. If we tell ourselves we won and then get out, we will end up learning the wrong lessons from the whole experience. By portraying the Iraqi and Afghan "surges" as victories, we fool ourselves into thinking that this sort of war is something we are good at fighting, that the benefits of doing so are worth the costs, and that all it takes to win this sort of war is the right commander, the right weapons, and the right Field Manual. And if we indulge in this familiar form of historical amnesia, we'll be more likely to make similar errors down the road.

Update: According to McClatchey, those recent stories about the United States facilitating peace talks between Taliban leaders and the Karzai government are part of an elaborate "psychological operation" designed to sow dissension within Taliban ranks. I don't know if that's true or not, but if it is, it suggests that the U.S. military is either still hoping for a decisive victory over the Taliban (which would make negotiations unnecessary), or it thinks that the Taliban has to be weakened a lot more before negotiations are likely to work. I think the latter is more likely, but it still leaves open the possibility of "declaring victory" and getting out, starting next summer. We'll see.

One of the most enjoyable books I've read in the past year was S. C. Gwynne's Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches. It's a terrific, gripping story, and I learned a great deal about aspects of U.S. history of which I was only partly aware.

In brief, the book tells the story of the U.S. effort to subdue the Comanche, the most powerful Native American tribe on the Great Plains. It was a bloody and fascinating struggle, in part because the Comanche proved so hard for the far more numerous and technologically superior Anglos to defeat. If you grew up with a John Ford/John Wayne/Randolph Scott view of the Old West, this book will be something of a revelation. And the saga of Quanah Parker himself, a Comanche war chief whose mother was a white woman kidnapped in 1836 at the age of nine, and "rescued" many years later (when her son Quanah was twelve years old), is itself a heart-rending tale of cultural conflict and personal tragedy.

As much as I enjoyed the book, I couldn't help but read it with the current war in Afghanistan in mind. In both cases, a numerically superior, wealthier, and more technologically advanced United States confronts a tribal adversary fighting on its home ground. And in both cases, the U.S. government faces an adversary that is cunning, ruthless, and by our standards even backward or barbaric.

But as my late colleague Ernest May used to warn, when you make a historical analogy, it is a good idea to make a list of the ways the two situations differ, instead of just invoking the similarities. So lest you think that the ultimate victory of the U.S. government over the Comanche heralds a similar victory over the Taliban, consider the following differences between the two situations.

First, in the war against the Comanche, total victory was a vital interest for the United States. As the American republic expanded across North America, the United States was hardly going to allow an independent and hostile tribe of semi-nomadic natives to control a large swath of the territory that Americans believed was theirs by virtue of "Manifest Destiny." I am not defending this policy on the grounds of fairness or justice, by the way; just stating an obvious fact. By contrast, Afghanistan is thousands of miles from the U.S. homeland, and what happens there ultimately matters much more to the Afghans than it does to us. All Afghans know that sooner or later the United States and its allies are going to go home, but that was obviously not the case for the European settlers who had created the United States and were now pushing rapidly across the continent.

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Q. How can you tell when William Kristol is giving bad policy advice?

A. His lips are moving. Or he's typing. Or he's writing an open letter for a bunch of hawks to sign. Or launching some new letterhead organization.

I refer, of course, to Kristol's recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (co-authored with the presidents of the  the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute). The basic theme is that the world is very, very dangerous, and so the United States should not cut a nickel from its defense budget, even though we already spend more than the rest of the world combined, have most of the world's major powers on our side, and possess a robust nuclear deterrent. So even though the country is also facing massive budget deficits, at least partly due to policies that Kristol has previously promoted, we need to build a wall around the defense budget and make sure it doesn't get shrunk. At all.

Seriously, given Kristol's track record over the past decade, you'd think that people who were hoping to be taken seriously in Washington would shy away from any association with his policy ideas. But to think that, you'd also have to believe that there was some degree of accountability in American political discourse, which is of course not the case. So despite the various disasters that Kristol and his associates have helped cause over the years, they are back with another well-orchestrated campaign to convince the country to do something foolish.

This latest proposal (part of a new "Defending Defense" initiative) has already attracted ample fire from a diverse array of experts and pundits, including FP's Dan Drezner here. I see no need to pile on these various critiques, each of which makes good points. Instead, I want to focus on something that the critics have largely ignored; namely, how difficult it is going to be to make substantial cuts in defense spending, even in period of budgetary stringency, without simultaneously rethinking America's overall grand strategy.

To start with, any serious attempt to cut defense spending would face opposition from Congressional representatives who want to keep defense contractors busy and military bases open in their states or districts. Thus, when Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' proposed that DoD save some bucks by closing the Joint Forces Command, the suggestion drew howls of protest from Virginia's entire Congressional delegation. Was this because a separate Joint Forces Command was so essential to our national security? Of course not. It was because its headquarters was located in Virginia. When you consider how carefully the Pentagon scatters bases or sprinkles defense dollars in every Congressional district, you can see how hard it is going to be to make a significant dent in our current defense expenditures. And you certainly better not try to do so by trimming veterans' benefits.

Second, as I've noted before, defense spending (and an activist foreign policy) are proudly defended by most prominent DC think tanks, many of whom depend on military contractors for a substantial part of their funding. This has been true of AEI and Heritage for a long time, but take a look at the funding sources for supposedly more "progressive" think tanks like the Center for New American Security. Inside the Beltway, defenders of a large defense budget are bound to be more numerous and better-funded than critics, thereby ensuring a chorus of "expert" opinion defending the budgetary status quo (or at the most, disagreeing at the margins).

Third, national security wannabes (i.e., civilians who aspire to careers in the national security establishment) have learned that critics of excessive defense spending aren't taken as seriously in Washington and have a tougher time landing big foreign policy jobs. To be blunt, there isn't that much daylight between hardcore neocons and energetic liberal interventionists, especially when it comes to preserving U.S. military preponderance or using that power against anyone we've taken a dislike to. So even though a lot of national security jobs are likely to open up in the next year or so (as Obama's initial appointees cycle out) you shouldn't expect to see advocates of a more restrained U.S. foreign policy replacing the current group. Sadly, most of the bloggers who've been eviscerating the Kristol et al position are not in line for big jobs in DC.

Fourth, cutting defense spending is going to be hard as long as we are still fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, maintaining a globe-encircling array of military commitments, and letting most of our allies free-ride on our protection. As Drezner notes, Kristol and Co. vastly overstate the actual level of threat we face. But although U.S. forces are smaller than they were during the Cold War, we are still trying to patrol the same amount of real estate and the social engineering we've been trying to do in places like Afghanistan is very expensive, especially when compared to the strategic benefits it brings. Plus, we've burned up a lot of equipment over the past decade, and some serious money will have to be spent to re-equip U.S. forces once those wars are (finally) over.   

Which brings me to my main point. Although it is mind-boggling to realize that five percent of the world's population (the United States) now spends more on defense than the other 95 percent put together, this situation is hard to avoid when you see threats emerging virtually everywhere and when you think all of them are best met by an ambitious and highly interventionst foreign policy. If Americans want to be able to go anywhere and do anything, then they are going to have keep spending lots of money, even if all that activity merely reinforces anti-American extremism and makes more people want to come after us. (And for more on that latter point, read this book).

If you want to cut defense spending significantly, in short, you have to make some non-trivial adjustments in U.S. grand strategy. As some of you know, I think the United States would be both more prosperous and safer if we had a more restrained grand strategy and a more intelligent foreign policy. Until that happens, however, reducing defense spending itself is going to be an uphill fight, and our defense expenditures will be closer to the views of Kristol et al than to mine. Unfortunately.

NATO is by common consensus the most successful political-military alliance in modern history. It has lasted longer than almost all others, incorporates more members, and it achieved its central purpose(s) without firing a shot. After the Cold War ended, it managed to redefine itself by taking on a broader array of security missions and has played a modest but useful role in the war in Afghanistan. By surviving well beyond the demise of the Soviet Union, it has also defied realist predictions that its days (or at least its years) were numbered.

Nonetheless, I share William Pfaff's view that NATO doesn't have much of a future.

First, Europe's economic woes are forcing key NATO members (and especially the U.K.) to adopt draconian cuts in defense spending. NATO's European members already devote a much smaller percentage of GDP to defense than the United States does, and they are notoriously bad at translating even that modest amount into effective military power. The latest round of defense cuts means that Europe will be even less able to make a meaningful contribution to out-of-area missions in the future, and those are the only serious military missions NATO is likely to have.

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Tom Friedman has a pretty good column today on the future of Sino-American relations, in effect warning that unruly nationalism in China could spell trouble down the road. Money quotation:

The days when Nixon and Mao could manage this relationship in secret are long gone. There are a lot of unstable chemicals at work out here today, and so many more players with the power to inflame or calm U.S.-China relations.

A Sino-American Cold War is not inevitable, perhaps, and it is easy to think of reasons why the two largest economies (and over time, two most significant military powers) might manage to keep their competition within safe bounds. Optimists invoke the usual liberal antidotes to conflict: the growing economic ties between the two countries, China's "socialization" into existing institutions, and the possibility that China will one day become a democracy. Or one may hope that Beijing will realize that overly assertive behavior will quickly provoke balancing behavior by China's neighbors (moving them to align more closely with each other and with the United States), thereby leaving China isolated and worse off overall. And if the United States manages to extricate itself from its Iraqi and Afghan morasses and devotes more attention on Asia, then there might be even less chance of a Sino-American train wreck down the road.

But here's why I'm less optimistic. Assuming China continues to grow economically, it will also increase its military power and thus its capacity to threaten certain U.S. interests. Like any great power, it will tend to view its own "vital interests" more expansively as its power rises, and it will want to do what it can to ensure that others cannot threaten those interests. For example, a rising China that is increasingly dependent on overseas resources and markets will naturally want to make it harder for others to threaten these vital sea lines of communication. To be concerned by these things is not a sign of aggressive expansionism; it is just typical great power behavior. And given that U.S. leaders think they have "vital interest" in virtually every part of the globe, this sort of behavior ought to be easy for Americans to recognize.

Now, if one also assumes that both the United States and China will always be governed by mature, far-sighted, and sensible politicians who won't succumb to xenophobia or threat-mongering, won't be swayed by narrow interest groups, won't let propaganda from self-interested allies warp their judgment, and who will manage each and every crisis with restraint and aplomb, then one might easily conclude that any future rivalry will remain fairly muted.

But if one assumes that occasionally an impulsive, weak, or rambunctious leader will come to power in one of the two countries, or that either state's foreign policy apparatus might at some point be overly influenced by people with more dangerous agendas, or that at some point one of the two will hit a rough patch and tempt the other to seize an advantage, then you'd obviously be more concerned about trouble down the road. And what if this happened in both countries simultaneously?

Now: based on what you know about these two countries, which assumption do you think is more reasonable? Based on past history, I think its safe to assume that sooner or later one side or the other is going to do something stupid. Friedman is clearly worried about social forces in China that might make conflict more likely; I'm also worried about the judgment of people at the top and some of the social forces here at home. And not just today, but for a long time into the future.

Obligatory IR Theory footnote: the discussion above in effect combines a structural realist analysis with a sensitivity to the impact of domestic politics. Structural theory tells you why a rising China creates greater potential for security competition between Washington and Beijing: in the bipolar world that a rising China is gradually creating, the two most powerful states will naturally eye each other warily. But structure alone doesn't make intense conflict (let alone all-out war) inevitable. That will be determined, at least in part, by how well each country's foreign policy apparatus manages things. But note that "managing" doesn't just mean accommodation: it will also require displays of resolve and a careful drawing of "red lines," which also creates the possibility of misunderstanding and miscalculation. And don't forget: If this emerging bipolarity lasts a long time, the challenge lies in managing relations not just for a year or two, but for many decades. Based on what I know about each country's foreign policy establishment, it's hard for me to believe that one (or both) won't blow it sooner or later and lead us into a serious security competition.

When great powers intervene in minor countries, sometimes they win quick and fairly decisive victories. (Think U.S. in Grenada). When this happens, the only short-term problem is where to hold the victory parade and how many medals to give out. But when a war of choice goes badly, then national leaders have to decide either to cut their losses and get out or to "stay the course." If the opponent is an insatiable great power like the Third Reich, there may be little choice in the matter. But if the enemy is an insurgency in a relatively weak and unimportant state, and the challenge is nation-building in a society that you don't understand very well, it's a much trickier decision.

As we've seen in Iraq and are seeing again in Afghanistan, getting out of a quagmire is a whole lot harder than getting into one. Indeed, I'd argue that this is a general tendency in most wars of choice: they usually last longer than the people who launch them expect, and they usually cost a lot more. I'm hardly the first person to notice this phenomenon, which does make you wonder why it keeps happening.

In any case, now that we are (supposedly) leaving Iraq, here are my Top Ten Reasons why wars of choice last too long, and why it's so hard for politicians to wake up, smell the coffee, and just get out.

1. Political leaders get trapped by their own beliefs. All human beings tend to interpret new information in light of their pre-existing beliefs, and therefore tend to revise strongly-held views more slowly than they should. Having made the difficult decision to go to war (or to escalate a war that is already under way) it will be hard for any leader to rethink the merits of that decision, even if lots of information piles up suggesting that it was a blunder.

2. Information in war is often ambiguous. Another reason wars of choice last too long is that the case for cutting one's losses is rarely crystal-clear. Even if there is lots of evidence that the war is going badly, there are bound to be some positive signs too. Remember all those "benchmarks" the Bush administration developed for measuring progress in Iraq? If you have enough of them, you can always find a few items on the list where things are looking better. When the evidence is mixed (as it usually is), leaders are even less likely to rethink their beliefs that the war is worth fighting.

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Contrary to what many (but not all) commentators seem to think, the firing of Stanley McChrystal and his replacement by General David Petraeus is not that significant. To be more precise, it will only be a significant event if Obama uses this shift as an opportunity to move towards withdrawal. Otherwise, we'll just rearrange some deck chairs and watch the war effort continue to founder.

Until the Rolling Stone article surfaced, there was little sign that Obama was unhappy with McChrystal's handling of the war. (Gareth Porter of IPS reports that there was in fact growing discontent within the administration over the lack of progress, but it hadn't surfaced in any visible way.) More importantly, there was no sign that Petraeus had serious problems with McChrystal's performance or visible doubts about the need to continue the fight until "victory" was achieved. Don't forget that Petraeus's status and prestige is based on his knowledge of and commitment to counter-insurgency (COIN) warfare, and COIN is exactly what McChrystal was doing too. Unlike the "surge" in Iraq, which involved a fundamental shift in U.S. strategy and tactics, there is no reason to expect Petraeus to implement a fundamentally different approach in Afghanistan. The subhead in today's New York Times says it all: "Obama Says Afghan Policy Won't Change after Dismissal."  Uh-oh.

There is also no reason to believe Petraeus will achieve significantly different results because the problem in Afghanistan is not the quality of our generals. Bad leadership can hamper a war effort, of course, but it is a fallacy to think that all we need to do is get the right leader in place at the top and then all will be well. (Military history is often written in ways that glorifies the role of the "great captains," but there's a lot more to military success than just a smart and inspired commanders).

The real problem is that our campaign in Afghanistan is like trying to nail jelly to the wall. The Karzai government is a liability, not an asset, and we have no way of making it perform better. Similarly, we have no way of forcing the Taliban to sit still and fight us out in the open -- where they would be easy to beat -- when confronted by superior force, they simply melt away and wait us out. Although troop morale seems to be good, our forces have been fighting a long time and burnout is beginning to set in. Our NATO allies are leaving the field, and Americans are beginning to realize that the costs of continuing this fight exceed either the benefits of victory or the risks of withdrawal. "Victory" in Afghanistan -- whatever that might mean -- wouldn't make al Qaeda a lot weaker; and "failure" wouldn't make them much stronger either. Putting a new general in charge doesn't change that calculus at all.

Third, some prominent commentators like Andrew Sullivan now worry that Obama is in effect hostage to Petraeus, because the latter's stature and prestige will make it almost impossible for Obama to overrule him should he ask for more troops or seek to continue the war indefinitely. That is an obvious danger, but that same prestige and stature also makes Petraeus the best person to help Obama sell a prudent decision to cut our losses and get out.  Moreover, Petraeus' stature is based primarily on the supposed success of the 2007 "surge" in Iraq, a campaign that achieved the tactical objective of lowering the level of violenace but did not achieve the strategic goal of political reconciliation. If Iraq goes south again as U.S. forces withdraw, some of Petraeus's current luster is bound to diminish and Obama's freedom of maneuver might increase.

In any case, the only important question here is what Obama is telling Petraeus to do. In essence, McChrystal's gaffe has given Obama a chance for a "do-over." He made the wrong choice in the fall of 2009, when he agreed to escalate the U.S. presence despite all the obvious pitfalls.  Has he learned from the results of the past nine months?  Does he now realize that he is not the master of events in Afghanistan, and that he cannot achieve success there simply by giving inspiring speeches and sending more troops? And has he begun to sense that this war might not be winnable at acceptable cost, and that continuing the fight is putting his entire presidency at risk?

If he has, he'll tell Petraeus that his mission isn't to pacify Afghanistan, build a stable central government there, or even "defeat, disrupt, and defeat al Qaeda" (which isn't in Afghanistan anymore). Rather, his mission is to find a way for the United States to end this futile and unnecessary adventure in social engineering, so that we can turn our attention (and our finite resources) to more pressing problems. 

If Obama hasn't learned that lesson, then he will find himself stuck in the Afghan quagmire for the remainder of his time in office. As with Johnson in Vietnam and Bush in Iraq, the war will suck the life out of his presidency and make it impossible to achieve more urgent domestic and international priorities. And because he's now had two opportunities to chart a different course, it will have been entirely his own doing.