Lessons from Afghanistan
Much to my dismay, I am writing again about Afghanistan. I say that not only because I am basically fixed in my views on the matter, but also because I really do not have anything specific to offer on it. I am no expert by any stretch of the imagination on anything having to do with it. Still, seeing the events of the last few days unfold has made me think about a whole host of things related to Afghanistan, but pertinent to many other foreign affairs issues the US is facing and will likely face in the future.
Have a specific mission and stick to it
When we first invaded Afghanistan, I supported it, unlike our invasion of Iraq, and I do not regret it at all. Al-Qaida had just attacked us and the Taliban were harboring them. We were right to go after them. Had our goal been limited to going after al-Qaida and some Taliban leaders to make sure they could no longer pose a threat to us, that would have been good. Instead, we embarked on an amorphous global war on terror that took on a life of its own and brought us to all kinds of places we did not need to go, most notably Iraq.
Rather than declaring victory and leaving Afghanistan in early 2002, we decided to take on a whole new set of tasks that had nothing to do with why we were there. It was not enough to just deal with threats to our security, we had to transform Afghanistan into a modern democracy that champions human rights and other values we care about. That was a wonderful goal, but pure fantasy, just as it was in Iraq. There was never any hope for democracy in either of those places. What started off as a noble, if delusional, goal became mission creep and before we knew it, we were stuck there and nobody could explain why.
Afghanistan and Iraq are as different of places from the US as is possible. We share almost nothing in common. The idea that we could transform those places into anything remotely resembling us was utter lunacy. If there was ever a possibility of that happening, it would have to come from within. No foreign power is going to change another country’s culture short of resorting to genocide or some other unconscionable measure that we, rightfully, would never do.
A government without legitimacy will not last
It seems clear that the government we propped up for 20 years had no real support. Within a matter of weeks, it has been wiped out. The Taliban has now taken control and did so with little fanfare. That speaks volumes as to how successful our efforts were there. Ditto with the fact that the Taliban does not seem to be any less popular than it was 20 years ago.
Like in any other country, only a government with legitimacy will survive. If a government is not seen that way in the eyes of its people, it will not last. The Afghan government was 100% dependent on us for its survival. That is not a government that is long for this world.
People have to be willing to fight for themselves
It is clear that there is no counterweight to the Taliban right now. Whatever Afghans think of them, they are not willing to fight against them. Whether that is because they support them or fear them, the fact is they put up no resistance. If people will not fight for themselves, no foreign power can do that for them.
This is not the fault of the US. Our military is very good at what it does. We tried for 20 years to train an army and I have no doubt we put our best efforts into it. In the end, the army was completely unable to fight when it counted. Our military cannot substitute for theirs. If their army will not fight, no efforts by our military will matter even if they are perfect in every way.
Let in refugees
There were thousands of Afghans who helped us in some way during our time there. They should be granted asylum here right now. Any red tape standing in the way should be ripped up. This is literally a matter of life or death for the people who risked their lives to help us. I do not care about any stupid procedural rules. We owe it to them to give them a safe place to live.
I think Biden has made the right call in withdrawing and I hope he sticks to his guns despite the blowback and criticism. The one major criticism I have is that he had plenty of time to let those Afghans get things in order to come here and has not done so. Now, it looks like many of them will not be able to get out in time. That is not okay and needs to be dealt with now. Get anyone claiming to have helped us out of Afghanistan now and worry about the bureaucracy later. As much as I find the broad claims about our withdrawal harming our “credibility” to be dumb, not helping people who have helped us will almost certainly have that effect in the future. It is both strategically and morally imperative that we grant them asylum here. It is the least we can do after all they did for us.
More generally, I think we need to be granting admission to refugees from many other places. In particular, we need to have very generous standards for Hong Kong and Taiwan. The former has already seen democracy eroded by the CCP. We cannot fight the CCP militarily or via a trade war over that nor should we. What we can do is allow those who do not wish to live under a dictatorship to come here. Taiwan has not had its democracy crushed and hopefully will not, but the CCP has them in their crosshairs. The best thing we can do is allow people there to migrate here.
Democracy promotion has its limits
As any regular reader of this blog knows, I am a big believer in democracy promotion. That said, I have firm limits in how far I am willing to go. I do not believe in democracy promotion via invasion and occupation. Bigger than that, I only believe in democracy promotion where it is feasible.
To be feasible, more than anything else, a country has to have an organic movement in favor of democracy. That looks like it exists in, for example, Belarus. In Afghanistan, just like in Iraq and Vietnam, no such movement exists. Virtually nobody in Afghanistan (and many other countries) endorses democracy in any way that would be recognizable to westerners. Any government that would take hold there would be a dictatorship. Remember the Northern Alliance? They were our “allies” in fighting against the Taliban in 2001. They are not supporters of democracy at all and only look humane compared to the Taliban. That is the reality of the situation there, every movement there is authoritarian. The sad fact is there are many people around the world who are content to live under a dictatorship, even one that is as horrendous and oppressive as the Taliban.
In promoting democracy, we have to pick our battles wisely. If democracy is going to take hold somewhere, it must come from within. The US could help that movement and possibly should help, but ultimately the success of democracy will be determined by how successful the movement for it is and not by a foreign power.
Another thing to be careful about in promoting democracy is the response from the existing government. I would love for the US to lend support to democracy movements everywhere. One risk though is that it invites retaliation and that is something to weigh in before deciding what to do. If promoting democracy risks, for example, military conflict with another country, it may not be worth doing even if it stands a solid chance of success. In the case of a country with nuclear weapons, it is almost definitely not something to do.
Consensus is not always good
One thing I have seen online is virtually everyone with any knowledge of or interest in foreign policy decrying what is happening in Afghanistan right now. Virtually the entire press seems to have shifted from reporting to editorializing. For those reporters who spent a lot of time in Afghanistan, I cannot blame them for being upset at what is going on right now so I am willing to cut them some slack. They are human and have their own biases like all of us.
Unsurprisingly, the military brass seems uniformly opposed to withdrawal. I don’t blame them for that because fighting wars is a part of their job description. I don’t doubt they are sincere in believing Afghanistan could be won, I just think they are profoundly mistaken and the records of one commander in Afghanistan after another are proof of that. I respect them and value their contributions, as we all should, but here I think they are wrong and I am glad Biden overruled them.
In general, experts have their own biases. Expertise means knowledge of an area, not impartiality. Every field and occupation has its own worldview and beliefs about how things should be. There is nothing per se wrong with that, but it is important to remember that these biases exist and cloud how people in any area will see things. One major bias among foreign policy experts in the US is to lean heavily on the side of military intervention. That does not mean literally every one of them believes that, but the bulk do and those who do not tend to be outliers.
To name one example of foreign policy expert bias, I challenge anyone reading this to find me one foreign policy scholar or expert aside from a few gadflies who favors completely withdrawing our military from the Middle East. That is something I would love to see happen, but basically nobody in foreign policy circles agrees with that. I don’t know how popular that view is among the public, but I bet it is much higher than zero even though its support among experts is essentially zero.
There have not been any polls done yet on the unfolding situation in Afghanistan yet and I do not know what they will show. I would not be surprised though if public opinion is much more favorable to Biden than the foreign policy consensus is and much more indifferent in general to Afghanistan. Barring something massive, I expect the domestic political situation in the US to be unaffected by what is going on there. If any effects happen with respect to Biden’s approval rating, they will likely be short-lived. One thing you can always count on with the press is that unless something is ongoing involving Americans, i.e., a pandemic or a hostage crisis, they get bored very quickly and move on to covering something else.
Anytime there is a consensus among experts, there is the risk of groupthink. When everyone agrees on something, nobody ever challenges it and so when something goes wrong, those experts will be caught flat-footed because nobody was there to tell them they were wrong. Yes, consensus can be a good thing, i.e., vaccines work and are good, but not every time. As an example, the CDC is full of people with knowledge of every disease there is. Still, none of them were prepared to deal with a pandemic and none seem to have any clue what to do nearly 1.5 years into it.
No more nation building
To state the obvious, our attempts to remake Iraq and Afghanistan were complete failures. We never stood a chance in either of those places. Our culture, politics, history and values are light years away from theirs. That should have been a lesson from our misadventure in Vietnam. Between Iraq and Afghanistan, we spent trillions of dollars, lost thousands of our people’s lives with many more wounded and in the end, got basically nothing for it. I honestly cannot think of one good thing that came out of invading Iraq and nothing good that came out of staying in Afghanistan longer than 6 months.
Nation building is a fool’s errand. It is a rare event when a country’s people welcome a foreign occupier, no matter how much they hated the government it overthrew. In the case of Afghanistan, it is amazing that anyone thought the US would fare better than any of the previous occupiers.
It is not the job of the US to rid the world of every last evil. As much as I wish it was so, we cannot do that and we should not try. Simply because a regime is evil does not mean it is our duty to get rid of it. The only thing I like less than a dictatorship is getting stuck in a place we know nothing about and throwing away lives and money while getting nothing in return. After Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, enough is enough. I do not want to see us occupying another country for a long, long time, if ever again. I wish I could say I was optimistic about that, but I am sure we will be doing it again some time in the next 20-30 years.
The two best examples of successful nation building we have engaged in are Germany and Japan after World War 2. That we occupied those countries is literally the only thing they have in common with Iraq and Afghanistan. What was the case in Germany and Japan that was not the case in Iraq and Afghanistan? An enemy that was completely defeated and formally surrendered, no danger of any post-war insurgency, a populace supportive of democracy and willing to pull their weight to fight for it, economies that could keep people employed and happy and institutions that could support democracy, among many others. If we are ever going to even think about nation building, those conditions have to be in place first. If any of them are not, we are likely headed for another long misadventure that brings no benefit to us.