Hyper-Partisanship, Non-Consensus, and Libya

President Obama has received a great deal of criticism over the past several weeks about how his administration has handled the American reaction to the revolution in Libya. This criticism has covered the gamut of possible actions and solutions. George Bush-like, some have lambasted him for timidity, suggesting that the United States come much more forcefully to the aid of Libyan rebels in the form of a no-fly zone or more; John McCain and Joe Lieberman respresent this strand of opinion; at the other end of the GOP spectrum, Richard Lugar of Indiana has broken with Obama for getting at all involved. Within his own party, most of the criticism has come from the left, which wants no US involvement militarily in Libya (or Afghanistan or Iraq, one might add). At the same time, a few remind Obama about a potential Rwanda-style humanitarian disaster (an analogy almost certainly overblown) unless the United States does something about Colonel Qadhafi.

The merits of the situation are at best murky, thereby allowing advocacy of a broad range of options without any danger of bumping too closely into the facts. Two things, however, seem clear to me at this point. One is that the loose coalition of anti-Qadhafi factions cannot possibly win (i.e. overthrow Qadhafi) without outside assistance; indeed, it is not at all certain that this “revolution” can persist without outsiders suppressing the government’s attempts to destroy them, as events showed last week. The balance of power is not on the rebels’ side. Qadhafi has the guns, and the absence of meaningful uprisings in the western part of the country (notably Tripoli) indicates either that the rebellion lacks comprehensive support or that pro-government supporters are capable of suppressing the rebels. In either case, it looks like the only way the rebellion can succeed is with a great deal of outside help–something like a massive intervention against the Libyan government. Such an action is problematical in principle (these things often do not work at all, and even when they do, the outcomes are rarely what one hoped they might be). No one seems to be advocating such an intervention, but the logic dictates that eventually it will have to be contemplated when stalemate proves not to be enough.

That leads to the second clear point: we still do not have a good handle on who exactly the rebels are. Certainly the foot soldiers are non-radical citizens who are simply sick of Qadhafi and want to see him gone. Most outsiders share that sentiment,which is why there is more support for active moves than there might otherwise be. But is that all the leadership wants? What do we know about these people–who are they? where do they come from? what is their politics? It is becoming clear that there is no single leadership cadre; that instead there are alternative aspirants to post-Qadhafi leadership. Before one becomes too involved in replacing one leadership with another, it is always nice to know what the replacement will be like. Do we know this? For that matter, do the Libyans themselves know this?

If my assessment is at all sanguine, the situation on the ground in Libya would seem to counsel a slow, measured approach to involvement on the ground, which is pretty much what the White House is pursuing. Yet, the hounds continue to bay. Why?

Let me suggest two reasons that are stated in the title of this post. The first is the hyper-partisanship that has infected all American politics and, increasingly American foreign policy. The basic dynamic is that all aspects of political life are now framed in increasingly strident ideological language, mostly along partisan party lines, and politics has become a zero-sum game in which one side succeeds at the other side’s expense. Democrats blame Republicans for everything that happens and everything the GOP does in response, and vice versa. As this phenomenon has become more pervasive, its effect has been to paralyze (or “gridlock”) the political system: the battle over keeping the government going is the most obvious example. In times past, foreign policy was exempt from much of this sniping (“politics ends at the water’s edge”). It no longer is, unfortunately. (This theme is developed more fully in a book Pat Haney and I are co-authoring, American Foreign Policy in a New Era, due out in January 2012).

The other problem is a lack of consensus on guiding first principles that inform foreign policy. If one side or another was communist (the Cold War), the response would be easy. Immediately after 9/11, the charge that one side was composed of terrorists would also serve as an activator. Col. Qadhafi has tried that one, accusing the opposition of being Al Qaeda dupes, but it has not worked. Anti-terrorism is still a theme of American policy, but it is not longer a supreme first principle. In the current situation, we have no real guiding grand strategy, and so part of our bickering reflects a disagreement on what should activate the United States in a place like Libya that is based on first premises on which there is no depth of agreement.

This leaves the president tip-toeing through a minefield, where any step he takes will set off another explosion. His response, it seems to me, has been to activate what used to be revered as a highly desirable leadership trait: pragmatism (the approach of dealing with problems on their individual merits rather than in conformance with some pre-existing ideological framework). That approach is not much in vogue today, attacked from both sides as being unprincipled–wishy-washy in Charlier Brown language. Yet, pragmatism in this situation probably argues for caution before we know the answers to the kinds of questions raised above, and it is hard for me to understand how anyone could disagree about that. But then, someone will probably disagree about when we can disagree as well.

Think Again: Afghanistan

Like many other people who are opposed to the current waqr in Afghanistan, I am constantly amazed at some of the arguments used to justify our continued futility there. To try to reconcile these, I have decided to borrow the “Think Again” format from Foreign Policy to answer a few of the arguments supporters make. This material, I should add, was previewed during a talk I gave last week to the “Hilton Head for Peace” group on Hilton Head Island, SC.

1. We had to go into Afghanistan.

Well, yes, but! It is true that it was entirely justifiable in October 2001 to attack and eradicate Al Qaeda, a task at which we failed because of the inadequate commitment of resources that were withheld to help prepare for tthe idiotic invasion of Iraq. Since the Taliban was shielding Al Qaeda, one can even justify helping tip the ongoing civil war with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban to make our assault on Al Qaeda easier. Once that mission was accomplished/failed, however, the rationale for sticking around–especially for nine years and counting–to prop up the Karzai government is not only less compelling, but basically indefensible.

2. A favorable outcome is vital to American interests in Afghanistan and the region.

Well, that depends on which interests one is discussing, and since these possible interests tend to contradict one another, some distinction is necessary. If we are talking about interests in Afghanistan itself beyond keeping it from being an Al Qaeda refuge (which, given the worldwide dispersal of Al Qaeda, is a questionable goal), what interests? We also have interests in Pakistan (the world’s sixth most populous country–with nuclear weapons), and it isn’t clear how the war is helping there. And then there is Iran, which can only benefit from America being tied down in an increasingly unpopular war in the region.

A corollary assertion here is that the failure to remain in the country and “win” (see number four) is that we make the sacrifices of those who have died in Afghanistan meaningless if we do not stay. Does anyone but me remember Richard Rovere’s Vietnam book, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” named for an old Delta work song (“Waist deep in the big muddy, and the damned fool said to go on…”)? How the meaningless sacrifice of more American lives and treasure for no discernible benefits honors those who have already been sacrificed constitutes an argument that absolutely eludes me.

3. If we don’t stop the terrorists there, we will have to stop them here.

Absolute drivel and nonsense. What is the evidence to support this contention? The simple fact is there isn’t any and that this is just part of the right-wing scare tactic to get us to support this particular paranoid belief. Rather, one can make a much stronger case that our continued actions in Afghanistan makes attacks on the U.S. more, rather than les, likely, because they are motivating Afghans (who, up to now, have noticeably absent from terrorist ranks) to seek revenge against us for the damage and suffering we are (admittedly inadvertently) wreaking on Afghan civilians. Since they cannot seek direct retribution there, the argument increasingly heard is they feel we should be forced to suffer the same wrongs. This is really an argument for leaving, not staying.

4. If we persevere, we can win.

No we can’t. First, what do proponents mean by “win”? They generally won’t say, wither because they have no idea what winning there means (John McCain), or they realize that any objective definition is unobtainable. As I have said before in this space, outsiders do not win civil wars, which is what the war in Afghanistan is about. Last week’s Nation magazine listed four conditions that made the case in Afghanistan why we can’t prevail: 1) there are complex regional and ethnic differences we can’t overcome; 2) there is a long tradition of successful resistance to occupation there; 3) there is a tradition of decentralized tribal government that we can’t supplant; and 4) the country is susceptible to outside interference (by Iran, Pakistan, and India). The best we can hope for is a return to number 3), which is hardly what most of us would consider victory.

5. It is worth the cost.

You have to be kidding. The cost is astronomical (so much so that it is generally obfuscated), but can someone measure the benefits? I have never seen a serious accounting of the benefits of this war. Is it the mineral riches recently discovered under Afghanistan? If it is in reducing terrorism, the numbers are particularly hard to compute and are almost certainly negative. Countering terrorism is never cost-effective at the margins (the costs of countering terrorist initiatives can almost always be negated by the terrorists at substantially lower costs). This does not even address the very real questions of whether we can afford this war regardless of the benefits, given the state of the U.S. economy. Government economies that do not require participation by the defense/military establishment are pure sophistry.

6. If we leave the results will be disastrous.

Poppycock. I heard David Gergen, the quintessential pundit with no obvious foreign policy credentials, make this argument recently. The heart of it, familiarly enough, is that if we were to leave precipitously, it woud indelibly harm American prestige and the willingness of others to trust us in the future, and that Afghanistan would go to hell in a haybasket if we leave. This argument seems to ignore the counterargument that our totally feckless, quixotic current efforts are at least as damaging as admitting we can’t win and cutting our losses (as the Russians and British have been telling us for years), and it is not at all clear that the Taliban are not going to “take over” a loosely governed Afghanistan in the long run, regardless of what we do.

One could go on, but I will close with a thought borrowed from Mark Twain/Groucho Marx, both of whom have had attributed to them the quote, “I would’t belong to any organization that would have me as a member.” In the current international environment, a useful paraphrase for the U.S. government might be, “I wouldn’t intervene in any country that would invite me.”

Are We Losing in Afghanistan?

With public attention understandably directed at the election campaign and the credit meltdown, the war in Afghanistan has faded from the public view. Only a trickle of press reports are being published, and the news they contain is not particularly good. Are we losing the war in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan has, of course, been a minor “theater” in the election campaign “wars.” The Obama campaign has made a point of arguing that we have “dropped the ball” in Afghanistan by diverting attention from there to Iraq. Obama proposes roughly 8,000 additional troops to Afghanistan to correct the problem. McCain acknowledges the need for more forces in Afghanistan as they become available during an Iraq drawdown, but, as a champion of the Iraq war, he can hardly agree the problem was Iraq.

Will additional American forces in Afghanistan make a decisive difference in the effort there? The answer is that it depends on what the problem is, and what can be done–if anything–to correct it.

The problem in Afghanistan is conceptualization. What is the United States (and the NATO allies) doing there? There are two possible answers. One is that the United States is engaged in a counterinsurgency campaign against the Taliban, who are attempting to overthrow the Karzai government the United States helped put in power and now supports. The other is that the United States is engaged in a counterterrorism campaign, the object of which is the destruction of Al Qaeda. The two are by no means the same thing, either as a concptual objective or as a military problem. In fact, they may even be contradictory goals if pursuing one makes the other worse (which it may well be doing).

What is the political objective in Afghanistan for the United States? Since, as Clausewitz taught us nealy two centuries ago, the objecives in wa are always post-war political situations that we favor, the answer is important both for framing our actions and telling if we have achieved them (or “won”). If the objective is defeating the Taliban, the news is not very encouraging: the Taliban is resurgent, claiming control over widening amounts of territory, and issuing a broader appeal than it did in the past. If it is the destruction of Al Qaeda, the news is not much better.

What is the problem here? Assuming the two goals (effectively countering the Taliban insurgency and pursuing Al Qaeda) are compatible, the problem is not an ambiguity of objectives (part of the problem in Iraq), but rather how to develop military obejectives and (especially) strategies to achieve the objectives.

The cointerinsurgency (in the vernacular, COIN) problem is more familiar and is the subject of FM 3-24, the Army and Marine Corps’ doctrinal statement issued over David Petraeus’ name. Successful COIN requires control of territory (denying it to the insurgents) and the transfer of loyalty from the insurgents to the government. The former requires lots of toops (far more than is proposed) and is problematic even under the best of circumstances. The simple fact is that COIN efforts only succeed when the insurgency has very little support (Che Guevara in Bolivia, for instance). If the insurgency has the support of a goodly part of the population and its suppression is attempted by foreign, racially distinct forces, those efforts have never succeeded since 1945 (see Snow, Distant Thunder, for a detailed explanation). Moreover, Karzai is widely viewed as an American puppet, further undercutting his appeal. The COIN being proposed smells decidedly like South Vietnam. If it is achievable, the strategy that will achieve is not evident; FM 3-24 does NOT provide the guidance to ensure its success.

If the real objective is destroying Al Qaeda, the problem changes. Seven years of experience suggests that we do not know how to carry out an effective counterterror effort in the peculiar circumstances that surround the hunt for Usama bin Laden. Military efforts have failed and havecaused more ill will than anything else: botched bombing attacks that kill civilians and produce new Taliban and Al Qaeda recruits, incursions into Pakistan that violate that country’s sovereignty and create anti-Americanism within the government and the people. It is possible that military efforts are simply “feel good” exercises with little prospect of success. In that case, would it not be better to pull back and negotiate with the governments to provide the assistance needed to suppress the terrorists?

It is entirely possible that the missionary zeal quite naturally created by 9/11 has put the United States in an untenable position in Afghanistan. The situation is untenable if there is no realistic way the political objectives–either defeating the Taliban insurgents or destroying Al Qaeda–cannot be translated into effective strategies that will accomplish those goals. That aspect of the problem deserves a much more thorough airing than it has gotten to this point. It is time to quit breast beating and to face the problem of Afghanistan more soberly.

During the Vietnam War, Richard Rovere borrowed the lyrics from an old work song, “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy,” to describe America’s deepening involvement there. As the song put it, “We’re waist deep in the  big muddy, and the damned fool said to go on.” In Afghanistan, we are at least thigh deep. Should we wade deeper, or turn around and go back to shore? 

Donald M. Snow, Distant Thunder (2nd ed). Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997.

Pamela Constable. “A Modern Taliban Thrives in Afghanistan.” Washington Post (online), September 20, 2008.