Afghanistan: Lowered Priority

There have been some news stories lately about how the Taliban are advancing, we are slowly losing ground in Afghanistan, etc. While this may be exaggerated, I'll take this as a cue to argue (again) that, while I don't advocate immediate scuttle from Afghanistan, I do think it should be fairly low priority for America -- lower than Iraq, and lower than virtually all of our other commitments abroad.

What is the purpose of our troops being in Afghanistan? At first, they were meant to capture Bin Laden, to topple the Taliban, so as to punish a regime that had allowed Al Qaeda to base itself there, and to deny Al Qaeda that base. But now? Presumably, they are meant to prevent the Taliban from coming back to power, and providing Al Qaeda a future base. But it's one thing to strike at an enemy, another to deploy troops indefinitely to prevent a possible future threat. There is something to be said for defending a friendly Afghan regime, however weak, as opposed to the diplomatic and military costs of toppling an enemy regime once again--but still, the threat from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan must be taken as a diminishing hypothetical. And, yes, honor demands we capture Bin Laden -- but we muffed our best chance, and keeping an army in Afghanistan in perpetuity is too great a price to pay.

I should specify here that I don't think terrorists by themselves are much of a threat; they are always the catspaws of state sponsors. Al Qaeda doesn't disturb me; Al Qaeda as the tool of Saudis, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, does. Now that we are wary of terrorists, an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan is much less threatening.

Afghanistan, of course, now plays a role in our foreign policy in foreign lands. It's a base from which to threaten Iran, including by air strikes. Although we depend on Pakistan for supply of Afghanistan, our forces in Afghanistan now also act as a lever against Taliban/Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and one of the threatening levers against the Islamist half of Pakistan's army and society. In a minor fashion, it helps projects American power to Central Asia, thus blunting Russian and Chinese power projection in that region. It provides a theatre where we can fight with our NATO allies -- of some psychological, diplomatic, and military value. And in general, our reputation is now bound up to some extent in our success there.

But the cost of these benefits, of course, is that we have to deploy major forces in Afghanistan - at a cost in blood, in treasure, far from a seacoast, hence in a permanently precarious position, for it requires continued good relations with nuclear-armed, unstable Pakistan. And what is Afghanistan? Desperately poor, lacking resources, near the backsides of marginally valuable lands. The largest ethnic group, the Pathans/Pushtuns, are 40% of the nation -- not large enough to suppress the other ethnes, too large to be suppressed (short of Soviet-scale genocide), and, apparently, not wooable from their affiliation with the Taliban as the Sunnis of Anbar were wooable from Al Qaeda. They are not wooable, in good measure, because our very stupid decision to continue the War on Drugs in the same area as the War on Terror means that we have alienated every farmer in Afghanistan by our attempts to keep them from earning a halfway-decent wage from poppies. If they could be separated from their sources of support in Pakistan, perhaps a military solution might work -- but Pakistan is nuclear-armed, touchy, and unable and unwilling to secure its own northern territories; a really effective American incursion into Pakistan (for the purpose of securing Afghanistan!) risks, God help us, a nuclear war. Any strike we send against Pakistan or Iran would be far more effective from the sea, and I can't imagine that Afghanistan is vital for either purpose. Central Asia is more or less the last region of the globe we should bother projecting influence into, and conducting a war in Afghanistan to make our NATO allies feel good is a ludicrous proposition. This just doesn't seem worth the candle.

So, I advocate a policy of modified scuttle. One way to put this: Pakistan and Iran are our true problems, not Afghanistan. We should deploy in Afghanistan only in aid of a policy meant to destroy both of them as nuclear powers in the medium term--and once those objective are achieved, get out ASAP. Alternately: if we're not going after Pakistan and Iran, bleed the mission down. Deploy soldiers away whenever needed elsewhere, including for R&R to rebuild our army. Declare victory and go home. Iraq matters; Afghanistan doesn't. And still more alternately: Iraq and Afghanistan are linked politically; it's difficult to withdraw from Afghanistan without increasing pressure for scuttle from Iraq. So win the war in Iraq ASAP, and then begin the scuttle from Afghanistan. But in all circumstances, don't consider ourselves committed in perpetuity to that back end of nowhere.