George Will Rediscovers Paleoconservatism

George Will, digging in on his call to leave Afghanistan, now has the same prescription for Iraq.

He notes the comment of one WaPo journalist who claims the presence of U.S. soldiers "serves as a check on Iraqi military and political leaders' baser and more sectarian instincts." To this he responds:

After almost 6 1/2 years, and 4,327 American dead and 31,483 wounded, with a war spiraling downward in Afghanistan, it would be indefensible for the U.S. military -- overextended and in need of materiel repair and mental recuperation -- to loiter in Iraq to improve the instincts of corrupt elites. If there is a worse use of the U.S. military than "nation-building," it is adult supervision and behavior modification of other peoples' politicians.

Did the surge work? Will violence increase? Either way, Will wants the boys home: "If, in spite of contrary evidence, the U.S. surge permanently dampened sectarian violence, all U.S. forces can come home sooner than the end of 2011. If, however, the surge did not so succeed, U.S. forces must come home sooner." All roads lead to home it seems.

This isn't the typical conservative response, mind you. Most conservatives, both the base and the intellectuals, appear to support the Afghanistan escalation although their position on Iraq is less clear. Here is a breakdown of some of the conservatives who have written against Will on Afghanistan. Most are limited to putting on their best best Churchill and MacArthur impressions. Fred Kagan deals with some specifics although he puts a lot of faith in the Afghan National Army.

The best and worst criticism I think is from Peter Wehner. In "Will's Loss of Nerve" he both basically attacks Will's manhood and quite rightly points out that he is a total flip-flopper. In the past 8 years, one could scarcely have found a better proponent of war in the name of both freedom and security (America's and everyone else's).

Will's shift is characteristic of American Conservatism. It has always lurched violently from decade to decade from stubborn isolationism to fervent crusade and back. It is a schizophrenic tendency I find quite disturbing and, historically, disastrous. I suspect we will see many more conservatives disown "Wilsonian idealism" and "nation-building" to return to their 90s-era soft isolationism. Today, incidentally, I don't think that would be such a bad thing.

The Abuse of Analogy (I): Postwar Germany and Japan

There was a time when many said that the cultures of Japan and Germany were incapable of sustaining democratic values. Well, they were wrong. Some say the same of Iraq today. They are mistaken. The nation of Iraq -- with its proud heritage, abundant resources and skilled and educated people -- is fully capable of moving toward democracy and living in freedom.

Those words were spoken by President George W. Bush in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute, February 26, 2003. Now this is a fine way to frame an issue and Donald Rumsfeld tried something similar later on. Instead of dealing with criticisms of how democracy and peace are actually pretty hard to achieve in practice in many parts of the world, it seeks to portray skeptics as believing that the "Arab mind" is congenitally allergic to liberty. Most critics of Bush's policies had no such inclinations, but let us deal seriously with the Japan/Germany analogy as it compares to our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There are too many differences between the Japanese/German postwar miracles (economic growth, democratization, "civilianization") and the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for the comparison to be of any use. I will mention the most important.

First, regarding the economy. It is not true that the economic successes of Germany and Japan were principally due to foreign aid. The Third World has received aid to the value of many many times over the Marshall Plan since World War 2, that hasn't stopped many countries under U.S. influence in Latin America (Chile, Columbia), the Middle East (Egypt) or East Asia (Philippines) from being dirt poor. The nation needs to be already be internally "predisposed" towards growth. Let us note that Germany and Japan had been the most modern nations of Europe and Asia respectively. (Which is not to say, that economic growth cannot be ruined by an outside power, as in East Germany.)

In contrast, Afghanistan has basically no formal economy and competes with D.R. Congo and Somalia for title of “world’s poorest nation”. It has got to the point where Allied war costs in Afghanistan (also here) are several times bigger than the entire Afghan economy (about $20 billion). The situation not quite as catastrophic in Iraq, it was a relatively modern country, although 30 years of foreign war, sanctions and civil war have certainly made their mark (and in particular, the flight of the Iraqi middle class from the country in the wake of the chaos caused by the American invasion).

Second, it is notable that Germany and Japan were ethnically homogeneous, unlike Afghanistan or Iraq. There is little to suggest that a persistent U.S. presence in Iraq will be able to undo the sectarian hatreds in that country. The situation in Iraq has been “remedied” in recent years by the fact that the country has largely ethnically cleansed itself into Shiite, Sunni and Kurd areas (the country has over 4.5 million refugees and internally displaced persons). There is no indication that problems of the enfranchisement of the Sunnis, the fair distribution of oil wealth, or the status of the disputed city Kirkuk (indeed the whole of Kurdistan!) are going to be permanently resolved whether Americans are there or not. (For comparison: the West has been in Bosnia and Kosovo for over 10 years now, there are still no real prospects for Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks and Kosovars to live willingly in common states.)

Third, most significant, is that these are completely reversed situations. In Japan and Germany, a conventional war was won against them, and the peace, stability and trade which followed victory allowed positive changes in German and Japanese society. In Afghanistan and Iraq, we are told that positive social change during the war will allow victory. Needless to say, such positive change is difficult to achieve period, even more so in wartime, especially in a guerrilla war involving lack of territorial control, civil war, refugees (often the most educated), and the sabotage of "nation-building" efforts by the insurgents (bombing of Iraqi police stations, infiltration of the national army...).

There may be good arguments for the possibility of "victory" (if we could define the term) in Iraq or Afghanistan, but the analogy of Germany and Japan is not one of them. Carts before horses, poppy farmers before Mitsubishi, double digit economic growth before one can go to market without fear of being car-bombed. This narrative is broke, if I paid taxes I'd want a refund.

For reference: comparison of US aid to Iraq/Germany/Japan.

Obama’s War: Escalation in Afghanistan

We seem to be at a genuine crossroads in Afghanistan. As late as two months ago, National Security Adviser General Jim Jones said, after an additional 21,000 troops were sent earlier this year, that new troop requests would likely lead the president to have “a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment.” I don’t know if Obama has shouted “WTF!?” but General Stanley McChrystal, top commander in Afghanistan, is asking for just that.

There is a plan soon to be presented by General McChrystal for perhaps an extra 20,000 men, in addition to the 69,000 already committed are to be sent. Drawdown would theoretically begin in five years. What would be the purpose? In that time, the Afghan army would be tripled from 88,000 men to 250,000 and the Afghan police doubled from 82,000 to 160,000. A recent 7-page “counter-insurgency guide” by McChrystal has said that “The conflict will be won by persuading the civilian population, not by destroying the enemy.” And furthermore: “To protect the population is the mission. The ISAF will have won when the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has the support of the population.” U.S. efforts, in addition to training policy and military, include the anti-opium drug war, anti-corruption campaigns, and prison reform. In short, what is suggested is a vast, ambitious and long-term project of nation-building.

This new effort is occurring just as criticism of the war has been mounting and a majority of Americans appears to oppose it (nevermind allied opinion in Europe or Canada). The selling campaign by Obama officials has been rather artless. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen said on Meet the Press that “we can develop governance, so then we can develop an economy and they can take over their own destiny.” Mullen then got a little flustered when David Gregory asked him if the American people had “signed up” to nation-building:

No, I'm--right now the American people signed up, I think, for support of getting at those who threaten us. And, and to the degree that, that the Afghan people's security and the ability to ensure that a safe haven doesn't recur in Afghanistan, there's focus on some degree of making sure security's OK, making sure governance moves in the right direction and developing an, an economy which will underpin their future.

Quite. Over at Foreign Policy, we have noted IR professor Stephen Walt questioning “the safe haven myth” in Afghanistan (see response, counter-response). We have Richard Haas, President of the Council of Foreign Relations, arguing in the New York Times that Afghanistan is a “war of choice”. He stops short of actually opposing the Obama escalation but he cites:

The risk of ending our military effort in Afghanistan is that Kabul could be overrun and the government might fall. The risk of the current approach (or even one that involves dispatching another 10,000 or 20,000 American soldiers, as the president appears likely to do) is that it might produce the same result in the end, but at a higher human, military and economic cost.

This “makes Afghanistan not just a war of choice but a tough choice.” He shies away from opposing the escalation outright. He limits himself to asking the administration, Congress and the American people to monitor the situation as closely as possible to see if we are “winning”. If things go badly, we should presumably drawdown our forces. Yet, Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s “South Asia Czar,” recently both denied the U.S. military commitment was “an open-ended event” and was unable to define “victory”. He resorted to a Supreme Court justice’s reputed saying on obscenity: “We’ll know it when we see it.”

In a sense, the effort to “measure” success as Haas advocates is futile. The metrics of counter-insurgency are not exactly scientific. They are open to outright obfuscation by those who, having invested so many men, so much money, and their own political credibility on the war, have trouble saying it is not going well. If we escalate now, we will be there, successful or not, for at least five years.

So there we have it. Counter-insurgency and nation-building in Afghanistan looks like it will be escalated and prolonged under Obama. This indeed will make Afghanistan “Obama’s War” and his credibility and legacy will be inextricably tied to its success. I can understand the political considerations. He campaigned on Afghanistan. In being strong in Afghanistan, he hopes this will immunize him from allegations of Carterite flaccidity if he is conciliatory with regard to Iraq or Iran.


A German soldier and Afghan woman in the bazaar of Taloquan.

But is it wise? If it fails the already high costs of war risk spilling over domestically, doing irreparable damage to Obama’s already shaky domestic agenda. We are asking soldiers to be part-time social workers, indeed social engineers, in a foreign country of which they know nothing. We have enough trouble managing our own societies, which we understand much better. We find prisons, drugs, corruption, fair elections to be sometimes be intractable problems at home. Now the administration are saying that, in five years, the Americans and NATO will fix all that in Afghanistan. They will, in 5 years, train twice as many forces as were created in the past 8. All that, and fight off the Taliban at the same time. It is not that a more limited approach or eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan would be without risks. It is that their narrative for victory is bunk and cannot justify committing ourselves even further to the Afghan adventure.

Notes on Counter-Insurgency

I've just more or less finished my dissertation. (Thank effing God!) Advanced countries fighting insurgencies in foreign lands often resort to the solution of training local allies to fight in their place under auspices of a "national army". My subject was the Vietnamese National Army, which was an attempt by the French to do just that in the second half of the Indochina War. After a lot of slogging, any general lessons I might draw from French and other experiences?

First, I am more and more convinced that the notion that indigenous soldiers could somehow replace you is nonsense. If a situation has gotten so bad, that the foreign power needs to send 150,000 or 500,000 men in there, and they are unable to achieve victory at acceptable cost then the insurgents will simply win. There is no chance you are going to be able in the last couple years of the conflict, in your part time, turn the native regime's soldiers (who are variably corrupt, unmotivated, incompetent etc.) into the equivalent of your modern and professional army. It is notable that France, the U.S. and the Soviet Union have all fought insurgencies and left armies they created in their place (Indochina, Vietnam, Afghanistan). In no case was the local regime able to survive more than a few years against the insurgents.

Second, you can supplement your forces with locals. In fact, you have to, they know the terrain, the people, they will be able to nullify what advantages those two things give the insurgents. It will only work if you have a substantial portion of the wartorn nation's public opinion on your side. The only two successful examples (I know of) of counterinsurgency with the largescale use of foreign troops since WW2: British Malaya and the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya. In both cases, the rebels' power was based on an ethnic minority representing only about 1/5 of the country (Chinese in one case, Kikuyu in the other). These were still very difficult wars that required about a decade to win and led to substantial political concessions from the British (granting independence and losing control of both countries).

Third, it is virtually impossible to destroy an insurgency if they have a active anctuary. That is when there is a neighbor where the insurgents can rest, recoup, escape the counterinsurgents, and receive training and materiel. Many places have played such a role: China in the Indochina War (and indeed the Korean War), North Vietnam in the Vietnam War, Pakistan in the Afghan Wars.. This presents an impossible dilemma for the counterinsurgent, who despite his overwhelming military and technological superiority, is unable to locate and destroy the enemy and its sources of power. If it attempts to do so, it would need further escalation and general warefare in another country, which may be beyond available means or acceptable costs. In neither of the successful British cases was there an active sanctuary.

For what this means for today I can't completely say. It is somewhat comforting to know that much of the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan are based on ethnic minorities. At the same time, I find it very distressing for Afghanistan especially, where the Pashtuns are a relatively large minority and AfPak border problem has not been resolved. In the Iraqi case, the change in U.S. strategy and "self-ethnic-cleansing" have led to a somewhat more encouraging situation. I can't predict the future but, ultimately, most of these wars end by the foreign power being reconciled to fact that, really, the area that has cost so many many and required so much of their defense effort is basically marginal to their fundamental interests. Although Iraq may be an exception given its position at heart of a region with so much oil, may be a partial exception to this.