Jervis on Afghanistan
Columbia University IR guru Robert Jervis has a smart post at Foreign Policy’s “Af-Pak” blog. For those who couldn’t get enough at yesterday’s Cato forum on Afghanistan, Jervis’ post is well worth a look:
Prof. Robert Jervis
Most discussion about Afghanistan has concentrated on whether and how we can defeat the Taliban. Less attention has been paid to the probable consequences of a withdrawal without winning, an option toward which I incline. What is most striking is not that what I take to be the majority view is wrong, but that it has not been adequately defended. This is especially important because the U.S. has embarked on a war that will require great effort with prospects that are uncertain at best. Furthermore, it appears that Obama’s commitment to Afghanistan was less the product of careful analysis than of the political need to find a “tough” pair to his attacks on the war in Iraq during the presidential campaign. It similarly appears that in the months since his election he has devoted much more attention to how to wage the war than to whether we need to wage it.
Yglesias on the Topsy-turvy US-Af-Pak Meeting
Matt Yglesias nails it:
I don’t know exactly what the issue is, but it doesn’t make sense for the American government to be acting as if this is a bigger deal for us than it is for the Pakistanis.
Washington’s excessive fear of the Taliban threat may be warranted, but the disproportionate response is literally “perverse.”
Withdrawing from Afghanistan
Oh, the war in Afghanistan. The more I learn, the more I’m convinced that we need to get out.
As I described the situation to my Cato colleague Chris Preble, for lack of a better analogy, the Afghanistan–Pakistan border is like a balloon: pushing down on one side forces elements to move to another — it doesn’t eliminate the threat.
The fate of Pakistan — a nuclear-armed Muslim-majority country plagued by a powerful jihadist insurgency — will matter more to regional and global stability than economic and political developments in Afghanistan. But if our attempts to stabilize Afghanistan destabilize Pakistan, where does that leave us? Like A.I.G., is Afghanistan too big to fail? No.
President Obama earlier this month issued a wide-ranging strategic review of the war and the region, and declared “the core goal of the U.S. must be to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan.” But al Qaeda, as we very well know, is a loosely connected and decentralized network with cells in over 60 countries. Amassing tens of thousands of U.S. and NATO troops in one country — or any country — is unnecessary.
Until Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the ISI, changes priorities, this is a stalemate and we are throwing soldiers into a conflict because policymakers fear that, if we leave, it will get worse. Sound familiar?
The only military role necessary in Afghanistan is trainers and assistance for the Afghan military, police, and special forces tasked with discrete operations against specific targets. The bulk of the combat forces can and should be withdrawn.
Af-Pak and the U.S.
The violence ripping across Afghanistan will not be stopped unless the problems in nuclear armed Pakistan are addressed, says Cato scholar Malou Innocent, who traveled to Pakistan late last year.
In a new Cato video, Innocent explains what the United States can do to protect its interests and return stability to the region.
Her forthcoming paper, “Pakistan and the Future of U.S. Policy” will be released next month.
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