Daily Times

What best advice would be a sincere friend of the leading global power of the world i.e. USA render regarding its Afghan project? Pakistan, being a country that has had a love-hate relationship with USA since its inception, cannot be accused of insincerity when it comes to an engagement with a country once referred to as ‘the new city on the hill’ by John Winthrop. The most sincere and sound advice would certainly be to cut its losses and extract itself from the Afghan morass. What in fact is the purpose of the USA’s Afghan project now? The revenge from an atavistic and nihilist creed that once sheltered Osama bin Laden in the mountain fastnesses of Afghanistan has long been exacted. The nation-building experiment with a client government on US crutches has apparently failed exacting heavy costs out of material and human resources.

Should this later day march of folly continue under Trump’s stentorian command to charge the ramparts of the last wild frontier? Barbara Tuchman, who wrote with such feeling and candour about the US intervention in Vietnam would certainly disagree. As per her definition of a folly it had to be an act counterproductive to one’s interests pursued by a group of people beyond a single politician’s reign. She traces the history of the conflict to the Truman’s administration which as per her opinion failed to correctly assess the communist threat and regarded fallaciously every small Soviet step as a grand conspiracy by communists, including China, to subjugate the free world.

According to Tuchman, the Vietnam war was a result of US hubris and a failure to assess the enemy resolve against a communist threat that had been over exaggerated. Dereliction of Duty by the current US National Security Advisor, Lieutenant General McMaster is another classic that he wrote as a major in 1997. The book is a scathing indictment of the political vision and strategic decision making of Lyndon Johnson administration. McMaster points out that it was the civil-military discord that led to flawed decision making by Kennedy and Johnson. The loss of influence of Joint Staff in decision making was ascribed to rise of dilettante civil military experts in the shape of President’s advisers like Robert McNamara and his point man Elain Enthoven whose ‘flair for analysis was exceeded only by his arrogance’. President Johnson in fact kept advisers who would only tell him what he wanted to hear.

Does the above ring any bell when it comes to Afghanistan? A neo con controlled policy-making clique had completely surrounded the US President in 2001 who stumbled pell mell into Afghan quagmire without a sound analysis of the political or military objectives. What were the real US objectives for invading Afghanistan and then raising a NATO/multinational coalition under UN imprimatur to embark on nation building in the ‘graveyard of the empires?’ If the objective was to dismantle terrorist bastions , it was partially achieved. If it was to avenge 9/11, it was successfully achieved.  But where the Americans erred were the same reasons highlighted in the March of Folly and Dereliction of Duty by the two insightful US writers i.e megalomania, lack of strategic insight, and poor appreciation of enemy resolve to fight for a cause held dearer than the ambivalent US cause for continued deployment in Afghanistan.

An effete Afghan government scarcely capable of surviving without US support is in no position to provide any stability for resource extraction even if the Americans fancy that

The situation in Afghanistan bears an eerie resemblance to Vietnam. What will the present 11000 US troops achieve in Afghanistan that earlier over 150,000 ISAF/NATO troops including over 30,000 US troops failed to achieve? Will the present US force quantum suffice even if it is augmented by another 4000 troops. The answer is in negative keeping in view the ascendant Taliban and the demoralised and poorly-led Afghan troops. What advantages would the US accrue while continuing with the troop deployment? Containment of China and Russia and keeping an eye on Pakistan and Iran might be an objective but of what avail? What is the US gaining by trying to contain China and Russia? Or better still is it the way a rising global power ie China or a resurgent global power Russia can be contained? The answer to above questions is no. In this era of global connectivity and communications, off shore balancing is a much better option than permanent deployment of troops.

Moreover, an effete Afghan government scarcely capable of surviving without US support is no position to provide any stability for resource extraction even if the Americans fancy that. If on the negative side the US objective is to keep the pot boiling in Afghanistan to prevent China and Russia from reaping the fruits of economic and energy linkages with Iran and Pakistan, it is a very high cost objective.

The cost in lives and capital due to continued US presence in Afghanistan would sooner or later compel the US tax payer to seek an explanation for this $2 trillion black hole. The US would do well to promote a regional consensus incorporating China, Iran, India, Russia, and Pakistan to bring all feuding Afghan factions on the negotiating table, for a political solution acceptable to all stakeholders. Having achieved a consensus on polity and governance, the Afghan factions should be left alone to decide the political future of the country.

The international community under the rubric of United Nations should help rebuild the Afghan economy and infrastructure under a realistic aid program, overseen by international development agencies and UN observers.

The above is a win-win proposition for the entire international community including the regional stakeholders. According to Kissinger, the US notion of foreign policy was not the “pursuit of a specific interest but the cultivation of shared interests”. Now how that could be achieved? The answer perhaps may lie again in the advice of Kissinger ie “contemporary quest for world order will require a coherent strategy to establish the concept of order within the various regions and to relate these regional orders to one another”. The US needs to jettison its one-dimensional containment policy and embrace an engagement policy that expands space for itself as well as its allies in regions that it has marked red due to its competitors’ presence.

The most important thing to be understood by the US is its belief in its own strengths both soft and hard that still far outweigh those of any global competitor. The unmatchable US strengths in science, education, industry, culture, diplomacy, and military hardware should be fully leveraged to halt the march of folly that has landed the country in Afghan quagmire.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST; e mail rwjanj@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, October 9^th 2017.