Month: August 2021
Stevenson’s army, August 17
– Michele Flournoy has second thoughts on US counterinsurgency doctrine, writes Fred Kaplan, author of the case study of the doctrinal battle, The Insurgents.
– Kori Schake has doubts about how we train foreign armies.
– Tom Nichols says we, the US public, are responsible for the Afghan debacle because we wanted out.
– WaPo is just out with a tick-tock [“72 hours at Camp David.”] It describes an Aug. 6 Pentagon exercise that revealed potential problems and says senior NSC officials had 36 planning meetings since April to work out withdrawal.
– There are some dramatic details about the ongoing evacuation .
– Politico has a good compendium of expert commentary on what next.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Stevenson’s army, August 17
– Political Washington is already rehearsing various narratives to use about Afghanistan. Republicans want to blame Biden; Democrats want to blame Trump; many want to say there was an intelligence failure; even those who favor withdrawal blame the administration for poor contingency planning.
-A lot depends on what the pictures are during the next two weeks. If there’s rape and pillage, the administration suffers. If there’s chaos but mostly safe withdrawal of foreigners, different lessons will be offered.
– Be sure to ignore the “what this means for Biden’s legacy” stories, for the time being. Remember, neither Jerry Ford nor either party suffered because of the dramatic “fall of Saigon.” Reagan recovered from the Beirut barracks bombing; Clinton recovered from Blackhawk down; Bush recovered from the 9/11 attacks.
– Meanwhile, I recommend the new Post article summarizing the reports and oral histories in their “Afghanistan Papers.” CRS had a longer summary 2 years ago.
– And for the Congress course, look at CRS report on what Congress has been doing about Afghanistan.
– I also found interesting this from Small Wars Journal.
– And while WSJ says the IC missed the speed of collapse, I remembered Ernest Hemingway’s line about bankruptcy, which applies here: “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Peace Picks | August 16-20, 2021
Notice: Due to public health concerns, upcoming events are only available via live stream.
- What’s Next for Cross-Strait Relations? Trends, Drivers, and Challenges | Aug 17, 2021 | 8:30 AM EST | CSIS | Register Here
Please join CSIS Freeman Chair in China Studies Jude Blanchette for a discussion on the future opportunities and challenges that confront cross-Strait relations with Chiu Chui-cheng, Deputy Minister of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council.
Speakers:
Chiu Chui-Cheng
Deputy Minister, Mainland Affairs Council, Republic of China
Jude Blanchette
Freemand Chair in Asia Studies, CSIS
- Karun: The tragedy of Iran’s longest river | Aug 17, 2021 | 12:00 PM EST | Atlantic Council | Register Here
Recent protests in Iran’s Khuzestan province have brought new attention to the country’s serious and mounting water shortages caused by decades of mismanagement, exacerbated by droughts and climate change. To delve deeper into these issues, the Atlantic Council’s Future of Iran Initiative invites you to view “Karun,” an award-winning documentary by filmmaker Mohammad Ehsani. It traces the path and the environs of the Karun River, Iran’s longest waterway, which used to be an important source for agriculture and drinking water in Khuzestan. Kaveh Madani, a noted Iranian environmental expert, will provide commentary.
Speakers:
Kaveh Madani
Visiting Fellow, MacMillan Center, Yale University
Barbara Slavin (moderator)
Director, Future of Iran Initiative, Atlantic Council
- Against the Clock: Saving America’s Afghan Partners | Aug 19, 2021 | 2:30 PM EST | Center for a New American Security | Register Here
With the departure of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s rapid military gains, the United States must act urgently to protect thousands of Afghans who aided the war effort as local translators, fixers, drivers, guides, security guards, and in other critical roles.
While the first group of Afghans recently touched down in the U.S., the vast majority of the nearly twenty thousand special immigrant visa (SIV) applicants and their families await relocation—part of a lengthy process that, as it stands, will long surpass next month’s troop withdrawal deadline. This is not the first time the U.S. has been faced with this challenge: in 1975 the Ford administration evacuated more than 100,000 Vietnamese refugees to the U.S. via Guam; and the U.S. similarly airlifted thousands of Iraqis and Kosovar Albanians to safety in 1996 and 1999, respectively. Today, as the Taliban seizes key ground across Afghanistan, there is little time to spare.
This panel will discuss the status of U.S. efforts to relocate Afghan visa applicants, lessons learned from similar evacuations in the past, and what must be done next.
Speakers:
Rep. Seth Moulton
Co-Chair, Honoring Our Promises Working Group
Member, House Armed Services Committee
Amb. Richard Armitage
President, Armitage International
Former Deputy Secretary of State (2001-2005)
Richard Fontaine
Chief Executive Officer, CNAS
Lisa Curtis
Senior Fellow and Director, Indo-Pacific Security Program, CNAS
Former Deputy Assistant to the President and National Security Council Senior
Director for South and Central Asia, National Security Council
- The Deeper Consequences of the War on Terror | Aug 19, 2021 | 3:00 PM EST | CSIS | Register Here
The January 6 Capitol attack stunned the nation, but Karen J. Greenberg argues in her new book that the pernicious effects of disinformation, xenophobia, and disdain for the law are rooted in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) International Security Program will host this conversation on how the war on terror may have resulted in unseen effects on democratic norms, and how those democratic norms have evolved over time.
Speakers:
Karen J. Greenberg
Director, Center on National Security, Fordham University School of Law
Emily Harding
Deputy Director and Senior Fellow, International Security Program, CSIS
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Stevenson’s army, August 15
– NYT says US military refused to accept Biden’s withdrawal order as final and intelligence community expected delayed collapse of Afghan government.
-WaPo describes scrambled evacuation planning.
– WSJ says US built the wrong Afghan military.
– Politico also questions US training of Afghan forces.
– New Yorker reporter who has covered Afghanistan for 30 years says Taliban won a classic guerrilla war.
– Army vet reviews two books that argue US never understood or adjusted to Afghan culture.
– NYT and others have updates on the situation.
– Here’s Biden’s Saturday statement.
-Andrew Sullivan says Tucker Carlson is making a mistake in thinking Hungary’s Orban a conservative.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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The future will be nasty, brutish and long
The collapse of the Afghan security forces is pretty much complete. They opted not to fight, rendering the hundreds of billions that the US has spent on them over almost two decades worthless. “By, with, and through,” the Pentagon’s mantra for how it goes about security assistance, has amounted to naught.
The same cannot be said however of US civilian assistance. While no doubt pundits will be talking for years about how hopeless it was to think that Afghanistan could be made into a thriving democracy, significant social, economic, and political process was made. Until this week, Afghanistan was a relatively open society with lively and partly free media, education not only for men but also for women, vastly improved health conditions, sharply increased per capita income (which has stagnated for the past five years), and a government that owed its existence to not very fair or entirely free elections. Civil society in Afghanistan was robust. The country’s low scores on various governance and economic indices were due largely to the Taliban insurgency and corruption, which had reached dreadful levels.
Can any of the limited progress be preserved in a renewed Taliban regime?
Today’s Taliban are saying that girls and women will be able to go to school and work, which they weren’t permitted to do under the Taliban in the 1990s. The official Taliban line is amnesty for former government officials and troops. Their current hesitation in entering Kabul may cause some to hope that they will be more restrained than last time around.
But there are reports from some provinces that revenge killings and assassinations are already occurring, as are forced marriages. The Taliban have not renounced hudud punishments, which include cutting off hands and feet as well as stoning to death. The Taliban would be foolish to fight their way into Kabul, as that would cause a good deal of destruction and ruin their international bona fides. It will be far better for them to negotiate a handover of power that enables them to claim some sort of legitimacy other than by force of arms. The Taliban have definitely gotten savvier about their image in Western media.
But international attention won’t last, and they know it.
The Taliban are still totalitarians: they do not abide opposition, they do not respect human rights, and they won’t share power for long. If we can anticipate future performance from past behavior, there will be no parliament, only some sort of high council of religious leaders. Accountability and transparency will be minimal. Civil society will be squelched. Free media will be closed. Drug trafficking will be rife. Other economic activity will be marginal. Minorities will not only be discriminated against but abused and murdered.
There has been a good deal of concern about the thousands of Afghans who have worked with the US military, mainly as interpreters. But the numbers of Afghans at risk due to their cooperation with the Americans is much greater than that. It includes a couple of thousand who worked at the Embassy, many more thousands who have worked on US-funded development and governance projects, and still more thousands who took seriously the opportunity to organize civil society organizations to press for various causes that will no longer be permitted under the Taliban. If all of them were to leave Afghanistan, prospects would dim further. Those who stay–either because they can’t get out or because they have the courage not to–aren’t likely to last long.
I could be wrong about all of this. We’ll have to wait and see. But my guess is that the future will be nasty, brutish, and long.
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Biden was right and wrong
Afghanistan is falling to the Taliban much faster than most anticipated. So was President Biden right to get American troops out of harm’s way, or was he wrong to abandon friends and allies?
Right
The great virtue of his decision is apparent: the remaining 2500 or so American troops in Afghanistan, along with the diplomats and other officials, were in danger. Twenty years of American support, equipment, and training had not turned the tide. The Americans were doing little fighting, but the Afghan security forces were declining in effectiveness. There was little or no reason to believe that they would improve and considerable reason to doubt that they could continue to hold the Taliban at bay. Enlarging the US presence in Afghanistan would have been foolhardy. It is hard to give credit for a tragedy averted, especially when a different tragedy (for Afghans rather than Americans) ensues, but that is what Biden deserves.
Wrong
Abandoning the Afghans to the Taliban puts a lot more than 2500 human beings at risk. Even if every single one of the translators and others who helped the Americans is evacuated, thousands of Afghans will die, hundreds of thousands will be displaced, property, careers, and lives will be ruined. A relatively open society will close once again: women will be cloistered, media shuttered, health facilities closed, and education devalued. People who believed in democracy and the rule of law will be lucky to escape the country. Many will be killed, imprisoned, or at the least disempowered.
If you are truly a humanitarian, then it doesn’t matter to you whether the people who suffer are Americans or Afghans. Nor does it matter whether they believe in democracy and the rule of law. They are entitled to a life with dignity. They won’t get it with the Taliban back in power.
Odds are that the Taliban will welcome back (clandestinely if not openly) Al Qaeda or even the Islamic State, which otherwise will present a risk to their rule. While Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are in no position today to represent a big international threat, a few years of rebuilding on Afghan soil could make them a threat once again. You can discount that threat because it is years off, but what is your discount rate? Will you be unhappy if international terrorists return to attack the US in 2 years, 5 years, 10 years?
It was no easy decision
President Biden has said the decision was easy. It should not have been. While he may have imagined that the Afghan security forces would hold, he should have known that there was a possibility of collapse. He also knew that there would be a real possibility the Taliban would not fulfill their commitment to disallow international terrorism.
Biden may have imagined that other countries closer to Afghanistan would step in to save the day. Iran has a great deal to lose from a Sunni extremist regime on its border that will depend on drug trafficking. China and Russia do too. While Pakistan has supported the Taliban, despite Islamabad’s denials, the Pakistani Taliban may gain renewed momentum from the change of regime in Kabul. All of these nearer neighbors have more at stake than the US, but none of them has been ready to shoulder the burden so long as the Americans were doing it for them. Nor is it likely they will do so now.
Bottom line
I don’t think the US presence in Afghanistan was sustainable, for two reasons: domestic US opposition was growing and the Taliban were gaining ground. Biden should have found a more fruitful exit with a better chance of preserving at least some of the gains of the past two decades. President Trump set the process of withdrawal in motion, but Biden had an opportunity to improve on the deal his predecessor unwisely cut. He’ll pay the political price for that at home, though it may not be a high one. Afghans will pay a much steeper price.
You can be right in one dimension and wrong in another.
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