Planning to Fail Win in Afghanistan, pt 8: Independence Day Redux

In this picture, president Bill Pullman is having a good Independence Day.

Barack Obama is also going to have a good Independence Day, this year.

As critical as I've been of president Obama's policies in Afghanistan recently, appointing General Petraeus to take command in Afghanistan could be just the policy shake up - assuming that's not the only change that's being made - to change course and secure, if not a win, at least a "loose good" scenario that minimizes the chances that we'll have to rerun this particular episode of Pashtunwalli and Co.

If two changes follow in the coming days; publicly backing away from July 2011 and letting Petraeus hand pick the diplomatic team (better yet, bring in Ryan Crocker); then this move could really pay off in a longer term.

Let's see, however, how Petraeus deals with Pakistan. The good general has a reputation of being a amiable guy and with a great sense for PR - I found him to be both a great public speaker and legitimately funny guy when I saw him speak last year - but he's also a stone cold soldier, and his surge in Iraq included both "soft" elements of population security and hard core kinetics, like tracking down and killing AQI and Iranian special groups operating inside Iraq. So it'll be interesting to see how Petraeus might handle Pakistani or Iranian assets he catches in country - I'd not want to cross the border if I were a soldier in either of those countries armies right now, BTW.

As for Obama's handling of the situation, well, let's just say that this is why I don't (yet) regret my vote. Today, if only for a few minutes, Obama was the commander and chief. He took care of the McChrystal situation as quickly, gracefully and decisively as possible and he managed to do it all while avoiding asking any questions to which he should have already known the answer.

All and all, this was a good day for Obama's presidency and for the future of America's military operations in Afghanistan. I'm more optimistic about the situation then I've been in a while.  

Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 7: Why We Fail

Reading through the Rolling Stone  piece on McChrystal's comments I was struck by one passage - it was something so prophane and shocking that I could scarcely believe what I was seeing, but it was right there, in black and white:

The assembled men may look and sound like a bunch of combat veterans letting off steam, but in fact this tight-knit group represents the most powerful force shaping U.S. policy in Afghanistan. While McChrystal and his men are in indisputable command of all military aspects of the war, there is no equivalent position on the diplomatic or political side. Instead, an assortment of administration players compete over the Afghan portfolio: U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Special Representative to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not to mention 40 or so other coalition ambassadors and a host of talking heads who try to insert themselves into the mess, from John Kerry to John McCain. This diplomatic incoherence has effectively allowed McChrystal's team to call the shots and hampered efforts to build a stable and credible government in Afghanistan. "It jeopardizes the mission," says Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who supports McChrystal. "The military cannot by itself create governance reform." [ITALICS ADDED BY ME]

I lied before when I said this was shocking. Its not. But its a god damn shame none-the-less. And it answers every question that every historian is going to ask about Afghanistan someday, and every question some future president is going to ask as he goes to survey some smoking crater somewhere in the U.S. and ponder his response. 

It's too bad we can't get Tea Parties organized to give a damn about Afghanistan or America's neglect when it comes to assembling a coalition to win in Afghanistan, but I just don't see it happening. Whomever said that war was just natures way of teaching Americans about geography really hadn't spent much time with "Americans"(outside politics and academia, perhaps).

If McChrystal resigns tomorrow - and I think he has to - he should do so with his head held high. Better to walk out the front door of the White House then get thrown under the proverbial bus when Obama starts sinking in 2012. I think this Rolling Stone interview was a bone headed move but I also think General Stanley McChrystal has served his country honorably for over 30 years and has more than earned both his retirement and the nation's gratitude.

Our military did not fail us. Our civilian leaders failed them.  

Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 6: Independence Day

Barack Obama is about to have either the best or worst Independence Day of any president since Bill Pullman.

Fortunately for the people of Earth, this bad (could it be good?) day will not be brought about by a genocidal war against extraterrestrials, but instead by a general giving way too much access to a Rolling Stone reporter:

The profile in Rolling Stone magazine, titled the "Runaway General," is certain to increase tension between the White House and Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

It also raises fresh questions about the judgment and leadership style of the commander Obama appointed last year in an effort to turn around a worsening conflict.
McChrystal and some of his senior advisors are quoted criticizing top administration officials, at times in starkly derisive terms. An anonymous McChrystal aide is quoted calling national security adviser James Jones a "clown."

Referring to Richard Holbrooke, Obama's senior envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, one McChrystal aide is quoted saying: "The Boss says he's like a wounded animal. Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he's going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous."
On one occasion, McChrystal appears to react with exasperation when he receives an e-mail from Holbrooke, saying, "Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke. I don't even want to read it."

U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, a retired three-star general, isn't spared. Referring to a leaked cable from Eikenberry that expressed concerns about the trustworthiness of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, McChrystal is quoted as having said: "Here's one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, 'I told you so.'"

So, dose this mean that McChrystal feels corruption in the Afghan government has no impact on his counter insurgency efforts?

In any case, this could lead to Obama having either the best or worst 4th of July of his life. If he turns this into another White House versus the military battle, and if he gives McChrystal and Co. time to ramp up their P.R. efforts this will be Obama's worst 4th of July ever. It will be one more nail in the coffin of the Obama presidency and possibly even set up some general to run for president in 2012.

If, on the other hand, Obama steps up and promptly takes control - i.e., asks McChrystal for his resignation - this could be a positive development. This could allow Obama the opportunity to reassess (again, but I digress) his commitment to Afghanistan and, as I've argued, what we need now is not a series of "re commitments", but instead a Mad Man who demonstrates that everything everyone knows about American foreign policy is wrong.

A re-re-assessment at this point will lead to the Pakistanis stepping up their game and may tilt Karzai even closer to the Pakistanis, but those events are feit accomplis at this point anyway. Republicans will scream bloody murder at Obama but they too will do that no matter what the president does in Afghanistan, so why not give them something to crow about.

Update: McChrystal has been recalled to D.C. per the BBC.



Update 2: My idea; fire McChrystal, then fire Eikeberry, then fire Biden and make Clinton VP.

Update 3: CNN reports that McChrystal has offered his resignation.

Good, now Obama can get back to planning to fail in Afghanistan.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

Mission Accomplished? Rethinking the strategic assumptions of the Bush Administration

Introduction:

Tom Barnett had a post last week that contrasted America's apparent post-surge success in Iraq with the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.  Looking at the two situations begs an interesting question: was George W. Bush's "gut" instinct about the differences between Iraq and Afghanistan in 2002-03 correct?


Taking Our Eye off the Ball?

In his book Descent Into Chaos Pakistani-born journalist Ahmed Rashid lays out a pretty strong case that president Bush took his eyes off Afghanistan at a crucial point - mid 2002 - a point when, according to Rashid's sources in various NGOs, the United States had real opportunity to bring lasting peace to Afghanistan if only we had injected more troops/money/attention.

But the Bush administration had other ideas. By the middle of 2002 the U.S. was ramping up pressure on Saddam Hussein and plans were in place to take Hussein and his regime out. Critics of the Bush administration are fond of suggesting that this shift in focus, from south-central Asia to the Middle East was a major error, brought about by an irrational obsession with Hussein and "weapons of mass destruction".  This strategic blunder - so the story goes - wasted American lives in both Iraq and Afghanistan and directly contributed to the resurgence of the Taliban.

Charging the Mound

What I describe above is more or less conventional wisdom and there is every indication that even president Obama subscribes to this strategic analysis. But what if it is wrong? What if the Bush administration began to suspect the futility of dealing with Afghanistan sometime around the so-called "Airlift of Evil", that, assuming the U.S. had been ignorant of Pakistan's complicity with the Taliban, would have removed all doubt. So even in 2001 the U.S. was forced to deal with the fact that we were fighting an enemy - aka the Taliban - who had been functioning as a wholly owned subsidiary of our new best friend - Pakistan. Further, events between India and Pakistan across 2002 would have been a wake up call to anyone paying attention: this fight is not about the Taliban. This fight is about two nuclear armed South Asian states that house about 1/5th of humanity and over a quarter of a billion Muslims between them.

Once the Bush administration realized just how touchy the situation in Afghanistan was, and just how unlikely it was that anything resembling victory was even possible in Afghanistan, the administration began casting about for another project; something far less intractable, preferably in the Middle East proper (as the hijackers had been Sunni Arabs, not Pashtuns or Pakistanis). Iraq, which had been playing its cat and mouse games with the U.N. weapons inspectors for years provided as good a candidate for an experiment in "democratic peace theory" as anywhere else.

From that perspective then, Bush didn't "take his eye off the ball" - to continue the baseball analogy - he charged the mound. He changed the rules. "We can't win in Afghanistan because Pakistan won't let us? Fine, we'll go win somewhere else and Pakistan can reap what they sewed in Afghanistan."

The Lasting After Effects of Bush's Cynicism 

To say that the invasion of Iraq - and, by extension - the elevation of Iraq to a priority versus Afghanistan dose not excuse the Bush administration's behavior in the years that followed. There was absolutely no excuse for going into Iraq under staffed and under resourced or for telling the American people that Iraq would be a cake walk. In retrospect, I do regret my vote in 2004, because the gross incompetence of the first Bush administration should have earned him a one term presidency.

But both things can be true: Bush was a bad president; he was also right about Iraq versus Afghanistan in 2002. He was right that Afghanistan would turn out to be un-winnable. But the Rovian cynicism and political calculations required him to maintain a troop presence in Afghanistan and even as he was fighting a good fight to get the resources for the surge in Iraq he continued to add more troops to the Af-Pak theater and expand the war - via drones - into Pakistani territory. Bombing Pakistan makes sense. In fact, clearing the tubes on a couple of boomers into Islamabad probably would have been the best strategy on 9/12 2001, rather than getting ourselves sucked into the regional grudge match that is Afghanistan. But bombing Pakistan makes a lot more sense when we don't depend on them to get supplies to our troops and when we don't have troopers stationed close to the areas we are bombing - thus putting Americans within rifle range of pissed off villagers.

What Would George Bush (circa 2002) Do? 

The George Bush of 2002 felt that Afghanistan was best left to special forces, air strikes and former Northern Alliance warlords turned "governors". Before he was overtaken by event; overwhelmed by political opponents calling Afghanistan "the good war" versus Iraq as "the dumb war", before all of that happened George Bush had solid instincts about what was possible in south-central Asia versus what was possible in the heart of Sunni Arab world. Looking at the Middle East today we see economic growth in Jordon and Dubai; we see peace in Iraq and social reforms in Saudi Arabia. We see that the Bush of 2002 was more right than wrong.  

The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama

I don't regret my vote.

Yet.

But it's becoming increasingly apparent that Barack Obama is racking up a record fit to be mocked by both Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson. If Obama has decided that he will be a failed foreign policy president with a domestic "win" on his record - ala LBJ - well, so be it, but the least he could do would be to adopt a "first do no harm" approach to foreign policy by essentially doing nothing at all. Instead, Obama is actually making things worse.

On Iran 

Congratulations, 18+ months of begging cajoling diplomacy have earned a sanctions regime that is set up to become just as big a joke as the current sanctions regime which has been in place for many years.

Well, at least this new sanctions regime will stop Iran from acquiring modern anti-aircraft missiles from Russia, right?

Nope.

Conflicting statements from Russian officials on whether or not it will scrap the pending S-300 surface-to-air missile system sale to Iran because of new United Nations sanctions over Tehran’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons. First, an “industry source” said the S-300 deal was off. Now, Russia’s Foreign Ministry says the sale is still on. Israel has stated publicly that the sale of S-300s to Iran is a red line that would prompt an Israeli military attack.

So, let's review. Obama has:

Not stopped Iran from getting the bomb.

Not stopped Iran from getting advanced Russian anti-aircraft missiles.

And probably not stopped Israel from wanting to attack Iran.

Great, mister president, that was an awesome use of 18 months and god knows how many face-to-face pathetic groveling sessions meetings with world leaders who have more important things to do.

But hey, at least Obama didn't alienate any allies in the process or anything:

Now, even as the U.N. Security Council prepares to impose its fourth round of sanctions on Iran with a vote slated for Wednesday, Tehran is demonstrating remarkable resilience, insulating some of its most crucial industries from U.S.-backed financial restrictions and building a formidable diplomatic network that should help it withstand some of the pressure from the West.

Iranian leaders are meeting politicians in world capitals from Tokyo to Brussels. They are also signing game-changing energy deals, increasing their economic self-sufficiency and even gaining seats on international bodies.

Iran's ability to navigate such a perilous diplomatic course, analysts say, reflects both Iranian savvy and U.S. shortcomings as up-and-coming global players attempt to challenge U.S. supremacy, and look to Iran as a useful instrument.
"We are very proud of our diplomacy, although we are mainly benefiting from mistakes made by the United States and its allies," said Kazem Jalali, a key member of the Iranian parliament's commission on national security and foreign policy. "We are using all our resources to exploit these weaknesses."

Ok, screw them anyway. It's not like the U.S. is committed to any sort of ongoing military operation where we might need allies or anything.

Except Afghanistan.

And Iraq.

And North Korea.. 

On Afghanistan

The COIN strategy appears to be faltering:

Government assassinations are nothing new as a Taliban tactic, but now the Taliban are taking aim at officials who are much more low-level, who often do not have the sort of bodyguards or other protection that top leaders do. Some of the victims have only the slimmest connections to the authorities. The most egregious example came Wednesday in Helmand Province, where according to Afghan officials the insurgents executed a 7-year-old boy as an informant.

Man, if we can't even protect friendly village and local leaders, what the hell are we still doing in Afghanistan?

Now, to be fair, Afghanistan is very complex situation and the Bush administration took its eye off the ball in Afghanistan before Barack Obama was even a senator. Still, Obama's plan to fail in Afghanistan remains overly Afghan centric, and at least some of that diplomatic energy wasted on those absolutely pointless Iran sanctions could have been used to find more partners to either help in Afghanistan or at least contain the worst exports from Pakistan's tribal regions.

A Set of Strategically Tone Deaf Priorities 

I've written that Obama has a nasty tendency to ask questions to which he should already know the answer. So far, his whole foreign policy has been based on asking for things that he should have known he was never going to get. For example, while he was considering how many more troops to send to Afghanistan, he was also haranguing China's president Hu about economic growth ManBearPig global warming rather than asking Hu to cooperate with U.S. efforts on Afghanistan. Because the Chinese are already nibbling around the edges of both peace building and investment in Afghanistan there was far more room for agreement on that issue as opposed to hoping they would sign on for "binding" limits on CO2 emissions.

You can take everything said above about China and replace China with India and its just as true.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to take a schizo-frantic approach to distinguishing between friends and enemies in the region. We bomb our "friends" while they support our enemies and while we continue to ramp up the tension with possible allies (see: Iran).

Then the KFR provokes and we are left dumbstruck, because Obama has been arguing with China and Russia about Iran (oh China, will you please poke your largest energy supplier with a large stick so we can stop a feit accompli in Iran's acquisition of a nuclear capacity?) rather than negotiating an end to the world's single greatest criminal enterprise - a country that actually has nuclear weapons and has shown no compunction what-so-ever about exporting to other rouge states.

Conclusion:Mad-Man Diplomacy, Dangerous Nations and Obama's Only Term

The problems that president Obama have are exasperated by several factors. He's backed himself into several rhetorical holes, on Iran and Afghanistan, for example, and so it will be hard for him to walk these situations back. Afghanistan will, unfortunately, end the same way Vietnam did, but with drones playing the role of off-shore balancer. Pakistan will be getting their backyard playground back and they will return to planning for their regularly scheduled war with India. Iran will go nuclear, and if they become angry/frightened enough they will shoot, just like other countries in the region have at moments of high tension.

And Obama will be returning to Chicago in 2013, despondent over his wasted potential. He won't be alone in his disappointment,  but he made his choices.   

With this in mind, the next president should adhere to a variant of Richard Nixon's Mad-Man Theory,except instead of trying to convince the world the U.S. would attack anybody at any time he or she should set out to convince the powers that be that the U.S. might normalize or break relations with various countries at any time. Specifically, the next president should find as many excuses to insinuate that he's prepared to break relations with Pakistan as possible. In a similar vein, he should be prepared to insinuate - and then follow through immediately - with normalization with Iran. Right now Russia Turkey and Pakistan enjoy all the fruits of both our strategic limitations and Iran's situation as an international pariah. Russia, Turkey and Pakistan want nothing more than an Iranian client state, stripped of all international connectivity and forced to conduct business through Russian/Turkish and Pakistani smugglers. These guys will be popping popcorn and laughing with glee as Israel destroys Iran's nuclear capacity - I'd not rule out Turkish, Pakistani and Russian complicity in such an attack, by the way - because it ensures an even weaker Iran position and greater levels of dependency upon its patrons.

But think of the alternative. Imagine a world where Turkey, Russia and Pakistan watch in horror as James Baker, Henry Kissinger and Bill Clinton step off a plane in Tehran and shake hands with A-Jad and his merry men. Yes, the Iranian leader (ship) is a thugocracy, but so was Mao and that didn't stop Nixon from securing a relationship with China, for similar strategic reasons. And the only thing that happened when Nixon went to China was that the Russians rushed to negotiate a series of arms control treaties, because they didn't want to be outbid by the Chinese. Oh, and a few things changes in China after that as well, or so I've heard.

Now, its important to realize that Iran is highly unlikely to negotiate away their nuclear stockpile, and we shouldn't ask that of them. It will be a lot more fun watching Russia and Pakistan figure out how to live with a nuclear Iran, and Turkey wants an excuse to get the bomb anyway, so we might as well embrace the future. Normalization between Iran and the U.S. will happen. It can happen now or it can happen after the next 9/11 or Mumbai when the the world comes together to dissolve Pakistan. Let's get proactive and maybe, just maybe, we can prevent the next 9/11.

In any case, the next president should make it a goal to come into office with as few international promises as possible. Leave global warming completely off the table and whatever you do don't wade into the morass that is Gaza and the West Bank. Stick to throwing strategic elbows - so to speak- by slapping down useless and dangerous allies like Pakistan and suddenly getting chummy with formerly blood enemies like Iran. And the day after the trip to Tehran, call China and let them know you'd love to talk to Kim. Tell him it will be two party talks. See if the possibility of the U.S. throwing the chess board into the air and openly negotiating with the KFR doesn't make China decide to hasten Kim's exit from this mortal coil (handle Iran first because negotiating with the KFR will bear no fruit, rack up a win before you go for something truly crazy).

America's fundamental strategic issue right now is stagnation and predictability. When GWB was president he tried to remind people that the U.S. can occasionally bob and weave with the best of them (see: Operation Iraqi Freedom) but his decisions have left his successor tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq. To make America again relevant is to make America again unpredictable, make us again Robert Kagan's Dangerous Nation.

An Honorable Stalement: My Walter Cronkite Moment

Background: The above video is an interview from Walter Cronkite where he discusses the moment he expressed on national T.V. what many Americans were feeling in 1968; the Vietnam war was a lost cause.

Perception versus Reality

Although Cronkite's malaise was brought on by the Tet Offensive, which he, inaccurately, gaged as a defeat of American and ROVN forces [1], the impact of his speech on the American public and political discourse would be difficult to overstate. Cronkite's weariness reflected both a larger popular zeitgeist as well as the default ant-war, anti-imperial, anti-expansion, anti-anything-people-in-the-Old-South-might-think-of-as-a-good-idea position of Greater New England [2]. Coupled with a disastrous accidental president - who lacked the strategic imagination God gave pistachio nuts - and a government wide penchant (left over from the New Deal and WWII) for engaging in pointless and damaging social experiments the weariness expressed by Cronkite contributed directly to the hemming in of Johnson's much more talented and imaginative successors. Eventually, the whole shooting match was brought to grinding halt by a domestic political scandal of Shakespearian proportions , absent which South Vietnam may continue to exist as a viable state in Southeast Asia [3].

Afghanistan and Vietnam

But without re-fighting Vietnam its important to consider what Cronkite said and how it relates to Afghanistan today.

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could.

Just as Vietnam was an honorable cause[4], so our endeavor in Afghanistan began as an honorable cause in the wake of 9/11. But just as in Vietnam, Afghanistan may be rapidly approaching a tipping point beyond which the continued commitment of American blood and treasure may become futile. I was a big advocate of doubling down on America's commitment in the fall of 2009:

I've made it clear that I believe Obama should support General McChrystal's recommendation and order a full on COIN strategy (based on what I heard at the COIN conference we need ~30 battalions - 30k troops) that both protects the population and begins embedding American forces with their Afghan counter-parts. But I'll admit there are plenty of risks, not the least of which is that the Afghan government could continue to be plagued with corruption and allegations of election fraud which would make it very difficult to counter the Taliban's argument that Karzi's regime is the corrupt tool of the imperialist west. It's also possible that Pakistan could continue to hedge between the U.S. and a Pashtun (read: Taliban) government in Afghanistan which would allow the ISI to continue to build their "farm team" for the coming war with India in Kashmir. Both AQ and the Taliban would love to see another Mumbai-style (or better yet 9/11) attack inside India that will be linked back to the ISI and force America to choose between the two south Asian states.

Knowing what I know now I stand by what I wrote in 2009. I thought then, and think now, that a victory in Afghanistan was worth bearing a tremendous burden. But when it came time to make a decision president Obama decided for a temporary surge and for a slightly longer time horizon over which the U.S. would begin a draw down. In retrospect, its possible that this solution actually represented the worst path America had to chose from, because in signaling our desire for a rapid exit we set off a later day "Great Game" to determine who gets what when we depart.

The Worst of Both Worlds

The United States is currently in the process of the "Afghanization" of the war, which Obama made a key part of the "surge" he approved last year. The problem is the process may not be going very well because Afghanistan is not an "Afghan" problem, but is instead a battlefield in the ongoing, low level war between India and Pakistan. Until we understand the regional issues at play in Afghanistan, and understand that we are currently backing the wrong horse both in Pakistan and in our "partner" in the Afghan government, we will be stuck with a deteriorating security situation in which the Taliban will out administer ISAF and Afghan government forces when they can and simply run out the clock when they cannot. Meanwhile, our quirky little ally -aka Pakistan - is making plans for the day we leave.


When he became president in 1969, Richard Nixon began a "Vietnamization" process which saw the U.S. hand over increasingly larger responsibility to the ARVN. As this process unfolded the U.S. also experienced greater and greater success against the V.C., which eventually saw the V.C. effectively broken as a serious military organization in by late 1969. [5]  At the same time, the government in the South began to stand up in earnest, and, as I stated above, I believe South Vietnam had a real shot at turning into a viable state by the early 1970s. However, South Vietnam was to be done in by the situation in the region, which was not at all amiable to an American-friendly South Vietnam.

What I see in the offing in Afghanistan is exactly what happened in Vietnam, without the defeat of the insurgency. Because not only is America losing the war against the Taliban, but we are also not doing enough to create a regional partnership with a vested interest in Afghanistan's success. We are picking enemies and friends haphazardly, siding with the nuclear proliferating rouge state Pakistan, for example; yet creating tension with non-nuclear Iran over their alleged future nuclear ambitions. We are also stuck in a Cold War mindset of picking Takfiri friendly Pakistan over market and economic development friendly India.

After the U.S. withdraws - and between the president's commitment to a July 2011 time-line and mounting U.S. casualties our withdraw is a near certainty - Afghanistan will suffer a similar fate to that of South Vietnam. Pakistan will play the role of both the Soviet Union and China as they fund, train and run logistics for whatever rough coalition of Taliban forces has the best chance of taking Kabul whole. Meanwhile, I expect the Karzai administration to continue to flounder through one scandal after another while they burn through whatever cash and equipment we leave when we go and ultimately share the fate of Dr. Najibullah at the hands of the Neo-Taliban.

Dr. Najibullah's story is at least as illuminating about a potential future in Afghanistan as the ROVN's example. Najibullah's government, set up in the wake of the Soviet withdraw, proved itself to be remarkably resilient, surviving coup attempts and direct attacks by the mujihaden and eventually seeing some semblance of stability being achieved in Afghanistan's major cities.  Ironically, Najibullah did the right thing (intellectually) by siding with India and it eventually cost him his life at the hands of the Pakistani paramilitaries Taliban. Though less notoriously pro-Indian than Najibullah, Karzai has proved plenty dangerous to the ISI and Frontier Corps Taliban and members of his administration have made no attempt to hide their disdain for Pakistan's behavior.

Planning to Fail in Afghanistan 

All of this leaves the U.S. with only one option: we must plan for a world where we have failed in Afghanistan. The best plan would involve regionalizing a grand strategy for both helping secure and develop Afghanistan with India and China playing the role of key pillars. Unfortunately, I do not believe this will happen because whenever the president gets the key leaders (i.e. the leaders of India and China) in a room he wants to talk about either ManBearPig or Iran, neither of which has killed as many American troops as Pakistan the Taliban in Afghanistan. In any case, it seems that the Obama administration has decided to go for a 100% kinetic failsafe plan in the event we fail to secure Afghanistan. On an A-F grading scale, Obama's all kinetic plan B deserves a grade of C+. It's a passing grade, but we must take note of its complete lack of originality and also note that the plan answers only part of the question - security - while ignoring the far more important (in the long run) geo-political and economic questions at the heart of Afghan instability. Ultimately, Afghanistan is merely one battlefield in an ongoing war between globalizing Asia and Deobanists who wish to see the region thrown back into the 7th century.  

My Walter Cronkite Moment


American forces arrived in Afghanistan in the fall of 2001 while the rubble was still smoldering in NYC; this was an honorable thing to do. This was a "good war".  But the results of our endeavors have failed to live up to the lofty heights of our best aspirations 9 years ago . Our troops have performed admirably, operating in the most austere conditions imaginable while upholding the military traditions of honor, courage and protecting those who cannot protect themselves. Our troops did not fail us; the civilian leaders failed them. Our leaders failed to provide the military a grand strategy worth the price the military paid in blood. Our leaders failed to fight the war on the fields of diplomacy and geo-politics with the ferocity and skill the troops brought to the war on the battlefield. And ultimately we have failed the Afghan people; failed to provide them with safety; failed to provide them with effective government; failed to provide them with economic opportunity.

And so today the questions about Afghanistan have moved beyond "failure" and "success" and have instead becomes a challenge to either "lose good" or "lose bad".  We need to plan to fail, by creating a stronger regional coalition that will own Afghanistan when we leave or we must accept that Afghanistan will once again become a large irregular training base for the ISI and Pakistani army. As we wind down our presence in Afghanistan we have to bear in mind the tremendous sacrifice that has already been paid in blood and treasure for what seems to now to be a quixotic misadventure; we must do all we can to salvage a stable outcome for Afghanistan and the region while acknowledging that we have reached the point of diminishing return for our own presence in the region. To do less is to dishonor those who strove to build a future worth creating in Afghanistan.


[1] See: Sorley's A Better War for a fuller explanation of the positive post-Tet changes in America's efforts against both the V.C. and North Vietnam.  

[2] For a brief on the anti-foreign proclivities of New England and the Upper Mid-West see Lind's Vietnam: A Necessary War.  

[3] This is a bit of counter factual history based on the facts on the ground, as described in the two volumes referenced above, and assumes that South Vietnam would have been able to hold back the North in 1975 with American air and logistical support.

[4] Lind's (1996) argument in favor of Vietnam can be summed thusly: There is no strategic rationale for fighting the Cold War that does not demand we fight in Vietnam as well. 

[5] Again, I refer to Sorley.

Time for the PLA to Dissolve the KFR

 
It's official.

The ROK has confirmed that North Korea attacked and sunk a ROK naval vessel last March.

This act of aggression tops off years of increasingly abhorrent and belligerent behavior on the part of the KFR, including the kidnapping South Korean and Japanese citizens, detonating two nuclear weapons (although at least one was probably a fizzle), helping Syria build a nuclear reactor, being the worst regime in the world WRT proliferation of nuclear and ballistic missiles and attacking a South Korean vessel last fall. All of this in spite the KFR's udder lack of respect for their own citizen's well being and North Korea's continued existence only as a criminal enterprise - wholly owned by the Kim family- masquerading as a real state.

This attack should be viewed by the U.S., ROK and Japan as the last straw. For too long we've acquiesced in the face of intimidation from the KFR; each time reassuring ourselves that if we just give in, just this once, just give them a bit more aid or a bit more time the regime will surely collapse under the weight of its contradictions and North Korea can follow its ideological predecessors into the dust bin of history.

But this assessment appears, increasingly, to have overlooked key features of the North Korea state-religion known as Juche. Juche, as B.R. Myers agues in the book The Cleanest Race has more in common with late-era Japanese emperor worship than with more Europeanized versions of Marxist-Leninism or Chinese Maoism. This is an important point to consider, because the Japanese, when faced with the loss of their empire, did not engineer a peaceful "soft landing" but instead lashed out in a wave of suicidal violence more fitting to a the death a cult than to a nation-state. Eventually, Japan had to be beaten into submission, because their death cultish state-religion prevented them from accepting a less destructive alternative.

With this in mind, and given the KFR's recent behavior, it stands to reason that eventually North Korea will choose to go down swinging, rather than negotiate a peaceful end to the regime. The main question that remains is how to tell the difference between North Korea's normal, brutish behavior and beginning of the end of the KFR? Given that Kim is in poor health, that North Korea's economy very nearly collapsed last year and that there is a likely a battle brewing over who will take the reigns once Kim is gone, I think its a good bet that we should consider this latest escalation an indication that the end of days for the KFR has begun.

Apocalypse! Nowish

So what should we do? Should we join China in postponing the inevitable by propping up the regime with food and fuel oil? Or should we take direct action against North Korea's military, hoping that a defeat of North Korea's army allows us to undertake an OIF style "regime change?" Alternately, how do we pressure China to take a greater interest in restraining or even dissolving the KFR?

A direct military strike should be a last resort. The KFR is China's version of Frankenstein's monster, and they should bear the brunt of both blood and treasure lost in its eventual disposal. Having said that, China should get to dictate peace terms. They get to pick the next generation of North Korean leadership and design the new North Korean political system. The ROK and the U.S. should publicly proclaim that reunification is a goal for the distant future, and not something that must be set in stone at the dawning of any post KFR end state. It is reasonable for China to want to mitigate the risk of humanitarian crisis on their border by maintaining some semblance of order in North Korea and it is in the interest of the whole world for North Korea's weapons systems to be peacefully secured and disassembled rather than be looted by hungry peasants - or, worse - greedy former DPRK officers seeking a "severance package".

China's takeover of the DPRK could take any form, but I'd give preference to a Romanian style "Ceausescu" scenario whereby the DPRK military disposes of the KFR and then surrenders the country whole to the PLA in exchange for cash settlements for high ranking officers and whatever immunity deals may be appropriate vis-a-vis Japanese, South Korean, Chinese, American and ICC legal systems. China would then be free to mine the DPRK for all the natural resources it can grab while slowly opening the DMZ to allow controlled visitation and eventual immigration into the South. Call it "humanitarian reunification"; allow families to reunite and eventually allow cross border travel while fire-walling the political and economic systems of the South off from the worst after effects of an extremely messy and expensive full on political reunification. Over 1 or 2 generation the people of the former DPRK will have to make their own decisions WRT independence, reunification or some sort of quasi-union with China.

Unfortunately, it seems China wishes to maintain the status quo for the time being. Like the scene in Goodfellas where Tommy and Henry "bust the joint out" (h/t Tom Barnett), China seems to plan on using their proxies in the DPRK to keep the people in check while the PRC carts away everything that isn't nailed down. If they're sending food and cell phones to the people it's not the worst deal ever, but if North Korea becomes a defacto colony of the PRC then China will have to take full responsibility for the actions of the DPRK's military.  That means they owe the ROK an apology and monetary damages to the families of the sailors killed. If China ins't in control of the DPRK's military, then they better take control, and that is why a PLA sponsored coup is the best solution for everyone.

So what if China refuses? China seems less than enthusiastic when it comes to dealing with reality on the ground in the DPRK, as though if they just keep wishing maybe the KFR will morph into Deng Xiaoping. This is unlikely. As I said above, Juche is militant state-religion cum death-cult, and I don't see a true soft landing for the KFR in the offing. So the choice comes down to what type of "hard" landing the powers that be (U.S., PRC, ROK, Japan) desire. Do we want to bide our time, waiting for the other shoe to drop - possibly on Seoul, Beijing and Japan - or do we want to conduct a "controlled burn", so-to-speak, collapsing the KFR at the time, place and pace of our choosing, allowing the world the opportunity to prepare before D-Day?

Secretary Clinton is in China this week, and whatever else is on the agenda should be pushed aside so that she and her Chinese counterparts can focus on a single question:What is to become of the DPRK? Clinton should begin by handing Hu a map of the DPRK and a pencil and asking him to draw a line to indicate how much of a "buffer state" China would ultimately like to keep  between themselves and the South. This meeting has one rule: whatever Hu asks for he gets, period. If he wants to keep the 38th, fine. If he wants to move the border far north to some small rump-state DPRK, well, that's ok too. As long as Hu is ready to pull the plug on the DPRK's military, he gets what he wants.

And if Hu says no, the U.S. should be prepared to really turn up the heat on the both the DPRK and the PRC. Hillary should be prepared to tell Hu that we're prepared to lose Seoul to collapse this regime, and that in two weeks the U.S. Navy will begin regular exercises just outside DPRK territorial waters. She should be able to tell him that we're re-listing the DPRK as a state sponsor of terrorism and ending all humanitarian assistance to people of the DPRK, save a daily messages blasted, in Korean, from south of the border letting the North Korean people know that if they rise up to overthrow their government we will support them. Clinton should warn the PRC that the U.S. will be getting very aggressive with our exercises, pressing closer and closer to DPRK territory each day and that the president will be giving a public address in two weeks where he offers full American assistance to any DPRK general who participates in a coup against the regime. The U.S. should also dump counterfeit North Korean currency into their economy anyway we can. These are all things the U.S. can do, by ourselves, and should do if China refuses to play ball.

Beyond unilateral action, the time has come for Japan to make one of their periodic cryptic statements about their nuclear program. Only this time, they should do it with defense ministers from South Korea and Australia present. And it should be followed by all three countries formally stating their intentions to withdraw from the NPT and conduct a joint test of a prototype nuclear weapon in the Australian outback if the KFR is still in power in 12 months.

This leaves China with two choices, take the DPRK down - and set up a situation where the PRC still gets to profit - or let the chips fall where they may and see what those crazy Americans do. If the DPRK decides to blow itself out in a blaze of glory, China is likely to suffer as much as anyone. Large Chinese cities, probably including Beijing, are almost certainly in range for North Korean missiles, and both Japan and South Korea are protected by sophisticated ABM systems, whereas Beijing is a fairly soft target. Even if somebody takes out the KFR's ability to launch missiles, China will surely face a massive influx refugees, some of whom may be KFR special forces on a suicide missions.

Collapsing the KFR is one of those global public goods that would benefit the whole world for decades to come. I've predicted that collapsing the KFR could make Clinton the best SECSTATE since Kissinger and Obama the best foreign policy president since Richard Nixon. Doing it the right way, on positive terms, would not only bolster Obama and Clinton's legacy but could also be remember as the moment when China stood up to take a responsible position on regional security. This historic mission is cause worth undertaking.