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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - December 3, 2009
President Obama, Afghanistan and US National Security
by: Melvin A. Goodman
truthout|News Analysis
President Barack Obama announced last night that he will
send 30,000 additional U.S. soldiers and marines to
Afghanistan over the next seven months and that additional
resources will be used to train Afghan security forces and
bolster the Afghan government. This is a seriously flawed
policy. The troop deployment and the appropriations will
have no impact on the insignificant al Qaeda presence in
Afghanistan; no significant success in controlling the
growing Taliban presence; and will make only a limited
contribution to nation-building in Afghanistan.
Moreover, adding these troops will further undermine the
economic situation in the United States. This decision
demonstrates that President Obama has not yet developed
a strategic understanding of US national security. In an
obvious effort to placate the critics of the Afghan build-
up, the president said that he would begin a drawdown of
these forces in the summer of 2011, giving the military
less than a year to achieve its mission. It would have
been far better to leave US forces at current levels and
make the case for gradual withdrawal.
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Although the military ignored the problem of Afghanistan in
the 1990s and had no plans for using force for Afghanistan
in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the Joint Chiefs of Staff
are now pushing for a victory in this inhospitable land and
predictably arguing that winning there is a matter of will
on the part of the United States. Our military leaders
blamed our failure in Vietnam on the absence of will on
the part of the Congress, and Generals David Petraeus and
Stanley McChrystal have positioned themselves to blame any
failure in Afghanistan on the Obama administration's lack
of will. After making a series of ignominious decisions to
escalate the war in Vietnam, Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara eventually learned that "wars generate their own
momentum and follow the law of unanticipated consequences."
Afghanistan will prove no exception to that rule.
President Obama's contention that Afghanistan is a "war of
necessity" does not make it so. This is a war of choice and
now it is a war of Obama's choosing. Moreover, it is wrong
to link US and NATO's military success to the bolstering
of Afghanistan's security forces. When will we learn that
more troops in Afghanistan will not provide us with more
leverage there or across the border in Pakistan? When will
we learn that more troops will not make the Afghan army
or police more efficient or more disciplined? When will we
learn that more troops will not make the Afghan government
less corruptible or President Hamid Karzai more capable?
When will we learn that Afghan "governance" is a fiction
and that not even more US troops, more capable Afghan
forces and more security for the Afghan people will change
the nature of a tribal culture that has been at civil war
for the past 36 years?
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The primitive logistical situation in Afghanistan, where
there are few serviceable roads and no staging bases, will
make it virtually impossible to deploy additional US forces
in the six-month time period that the president has cited.
The threat to delay or even cancel these deployments if
the Afghan government doesn't achieve certain benchmarks
in stabilizing the political situation will encourage the
Taliban to be more aggressive. Using benchmarks to create
an exit strategy is particularly disingenuous; the in-
ability to create good governance in Afghanistan should
make it more compelling (not less) for a US presence if
the Taliban is a genuine threat to US security. The deploy-
ment of a modest number of NATO forces from European
countries, moreover, will compel the US to provide force
protection for these contingents. The Taliban forces are
probably not capable of a "Tet-like" offensive that ended
public support for the war in Vietnam 41 years ago, but
the Obama administration will remain hostage to the
possibility of such a development.
The unfortunate decision to make the announcement of a
troop increase at West Point, the nation's oldest and
most prestigious military academy, worsens the problem for
President Obama because it joins him to his two immediate
predecessors; both contributed to the militarization of
American national security policy. President Bill Clinton
deferred to the military and refused to press for a ban on
land mines, the creation of an international criminal court
and the ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
President Obama is still dragging his heels on these
issues. Nearly eight years ago at West Point, President
George W. Bush announced the doctrine of pre-emptive war,
which was used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Bush also
walked away from arms control and disarmament, which the
Pentagon has opposed over the past 50 years, and endorsed
huge increases in defense spending. President Obama is
moving positively on renewing a strategic arms control
agreement with Russia, but has not really pressed the
"reset" button with Russia that would allow greater
progress on a variety of proliferation and regional
issues. He also has deferred to the military in making
key personnel appointments in the field of national
security.
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Henry Kissinger remarked recently that President Obama
reminded him of a "chess grandmaster who has played his
opening in six simultaneous games. But he hasn't completed
a single game and I'd like to see him finish one." The
president appointed foreign policy "czars" for the most
intractable problems, but this has merely complicated the
policy process. Richard Holbrooke soon wore out his welcome
in Kabul; George Mitchell was never really welcome in
Jerusalem; and Dennis Ross never got through the front
door in Tehran. Only ten months into the presidency, Obama
has no adviser with strategic vision; he is already relying
more heavily on his domestic political advisers than on his
foreign policy specialists. And now the president has
committed himself to "finishing the job" in Afghanistan of
all places. No outside power has ever finished the job in
Afghanistan; the forces of history are not on his side.
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