International Relations Scholars Argue for New Course in Afghanistan

Below is the text of an open letter a group of IR scholars have sent to President Obama requesting that a new analysis of the Administration's Afghanistan policy be conducted.  The implication is that we are investing too much money and human reources into a conflict whose goals have become vague.  They draw a lot of parallels with U.S. policy in Iraq.
 
Overall, I think the letter is clearly cogent with the signatories ranging across the ideological spectrum.  Afghanistan, always the "good war" as opposed to Iraq, has become a much more complex picture than it was in the early aftermath of 9/11.
 
I have blogged on this before,
 
"The Afghanistan conundrum revolves around what our goals really are and whether Washington has any hope of achieving them within the politically feasible timeline imposed by domestic discontent and fears over domestic issues, most notably the economy.
I do think that a precipitous withdrawal would be highly destabilizing for the region. It is common knowedge that the porous borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan(the Federally Administed Tribal Areas and those bordering Baluchistan) are a core area of concern for resurgent neo-Taliban and al-Qaeda affiliated groups.
 
I am concerned that Mr. Will is too sanguine about the prospects of “remote control war” to keep those elements from recontituting a threat to the American homeland. The only way to keep a lid on this threat is to constantly keep those elements off guard and unable to find the relative comfort and leisure to plan for operations external to the region.
 
I fear the only way to do this is to ensure that most Afghans maintain a hostility to the neo-Taliban and the foreign elements represented by al-Qaeda. This requires boots on the ground and the ability to maintain a reasonable degree of safety for normal Afghans so that they will not feel compelled to cut deals or acquiese to those elements that are inimical to our interests.
 
Additionally, I would point out that natural gas pipelines and economic interests are not absent from the equation either. Afghanistan could represent a not insignificant piece of the global energy puzzle with proposed pipelines like the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline (though its still a long ways off from even having construction started).
 
For better and worse, energy is still a very necessary and relevant issue.”
 
All of that said, we should begin looking to see how we may best keep al-Qaeda off balance in the region with less boots on the ground as there will undoubtedly (and possibly rather soon) be a domestic backlash that will force us to draw down.  This will mean that the ideal, and long-term strategy, will not be salable and we will have to define down our mission to keeping al-Qaeda on the run from limited special forces' strikes and/or Predator drone strikes.
 
Here is the text of the letter and the signatories,
 
"The Honorable Barack Obama
President of the United States
The White House
Washington, DC
 
Dear Mr. President:
 
During your campaign for the Presidency, Americans around the country appreciated your skepticism of the rationales for the Iraq war. In 2002, you had warned that such an endeavor would yield "a U.S. occupation of undetermined length, at undetermined cost, and with unintended consequences." You pointed out the dangers of fighting such a war "without a clear rationale and without strong international support." As scholars of international relations and U.S. foreign policy, many of us issued similar warnings before the war, unfortunately to little avail.
 
Today, we are concerned that the war in Afghanistan is growing increasingly detached from considerations of length, cost, and consequences. Its rationale is becoming murkier and both domestic and international support for it is waning. Respectfully, we urge you to focus U.S. strategy more clearly on al Qaeda instead of expanding the mission into an ambitious experiment in state building.
 
First, our objectives in that country have grown overly ambitious. The current strategy centers on assembling a viable, compliant, modern state in Afghanistan--something that has never before existed. The history of U.S. state-building endeavors is not encouraging, and Afghanistan poses particular challenges. Engaging in competitive governance with the Taliban is a counterproductive strategy, pushing the Taliban and al Qaeda together instead of driving them apart. If we cannot leave Afghanistan until we have created an effective central government, we are likely to be there for decades, with no guarantee of success.
 
Second, the rationale of expanding the mission in order to prevent "safe havens" for al Qaeda from emerging is appealing but flawed. Afghanistan, even excluding the non-Pashto areas, is a large, geographically imposing country where it is probably impossible to ensure that no safe havens could exist. Searching for certainty that there are not and will not be safe havens in Afghanistan is quixotic and likely to be extremely costly. Even if some massive effort in that country were somehow able to prevent a safe haven there, dozens of other countries could easily serve the same purpose. Even well-governed modern democracies like Germany have inadvertently provided staging grounds for terrorists. A better strategy would focus on negotiations with moderate Taliban elements, regional diplomacy, and disrupting any large-scale al Qaeda operations that may emerge. Those are achievable goals.
 
Third, an expanded mission fails a simple cost/benefit test. In order to markedly improve our chances of victory--which Ambassador Richard Holbrooke can only promise "we'll know it when we see it"--we would need to make a decades-long commitment to creating a state in Afghanistan, and even in that case, success would be far from certain. As with all foreign policies, this enormous effort must be weighed against the opportunity costs. Money, troops, and other resources would be poured into Afghanistan at the expense of other national priorities, both foreign and domestic.
 
Mr. President, there is serious disagreement among scholars and policy experts on the way forward in Afghanistan. Many of those urging you to deepen U.S. involvement in that country are the same people who promised we would encounter few difficulties in Iraq and that that war would solve our problems in the Middle East, neither of which proved to be the case. We urge your administration to refocus on al Qaeda and avoid an open-ended state-building mission in Afghanistan.
 
Sincerely,
 
Gordon Adams
American University
 
Andrew Bacevich
Boston University
 
Doug Bandow
American Conservative Defense Alliance
 
Ted Galen Carpenter
Cato Institute
 
Jasen Castillo
Texas A&M
 
Jonathan Clarke
Carnegie Council
 
Steven Clemons
New America Foundation
 
Michael Cohen
New America Foundation
 
Michael Desch
University of Notre Dame
 
Carolyn Eisenberg
Hofstra University
 
Ivan Eland
Independent Institute
 
Bernard Finel
American Security Project
 
Eugene Gholz
University of Texas - Austin
 
Philip M. Giraldi
American Conservative Defense Alliance
 
David Henderson
Hoover Institution
 
David Hendrickson
Colorado College
 
Patrick Thaddeus Jackson
American University
 
Robert Jervis
Columbia University
 
Sean Kay
Ohio Wesleyan University
 
Peter Krogh
Georgetown University
 
Christopher Layne
Texas A&M
 
Professor Anatol Lieven
King's College London
 
Justin Logan
Cato Institute
 
Douglas Macgregor
Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret.)
 
Scott McConnell
The American Conservative
 
John Mearsheimer
University of Chicago
 
Rajan Menon
Lehigh University
 
Michael D. Ostrolenk
American Conservative Defense Alliance
 
Robert Paarlberg
Wellesley College
 
Charles Pena
Independent Institute
 
William Pfaff
Author and syndicated columnist
 
Barry Posen
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
 
John Prados
Author
 
Christopher Preble
Cato Institute
 
Daryl Press
Dartmouth College
 
David Rieff
Author
 
Paul Schroeder
University of Illinois
 
Tony Smith
Tufts University
 
Jack Snyder
Columbia University
 
Robert W. Tucker
John Hopkins University - SAIS
 
Stephen Walt
Harvard University
 
**This letter reflects the opinions of the individual signatories. Institutions are listed for identification purposes only.** "

Posted by Greg R Lawson at 12/15/2011 4:44 PM
Categories: Afghanistan Geopolitics
Tags: Afghanistan Geopolitics
 

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