The election process is over. Karzai will be the President for the next 5 years save an unexpected turn of events such as a coup within his own regime. Another head of state would have been a good thing but on the other hand the election was a diversion from the main issue which is the imbalance of forces between the US military and the Afghan military fighting the Taliban.
What should Obama decide upon as he is mulling over a possible troop "surge"?
I establish his main objectives in Pakistan - Afghanistan as being the following:
1) Do not allow the muslim fundamentalists claim that they have ousted a second superpower in 25 years.
1.2) Do not allow the world to perceive an american defeat
2) Support Pakistan; it matters more than Afghanistan. Help Pakistan win the war against it's fundamentalist factions to the limit of what they ask for, and particularly do so by denying access in Afghanistan and over the border.
3) Keep surveillance to find and destroy Al Qaeda (this is the easy part actually)
4) Secure the Afghan regime, but get your troops out of harms way as fast as possible and reduce your cost and effectives on the ground as fast as possible.
Strategy: Coax the Afghan government into fighting
Karzai isn't doing nearly enough for the defense of his own country. Let him feel some heat. Currently, he relies overwhelmingly on foreign troops to defend him. This is upside down. He must be forced into organizing a Northern Alliance 2.0, propping up his governors, and working out deals with opponents who will never reunite unless the US military stops being in between them. The latent civil war will not resolve itself in as long as the US plays the main combat role.
The US and its foreign allies must instead act as a stop gap against a possible Taliban change of momentum; secure the border and work with the Pakistanis to establish a program once the Pakistanis have taken control of their side of the border; continue to provide air support and intelligence to both countries, train and supply the afghan army, and carry in and out ground operations. They must gradually turn over security to the governors, but do so boldly initially - if only to lure the taliban out.
The difference with Iraq
In Iraq, a full fledged civil war was going on. The Sunnis were fighting for their future. They came to a point in late 2006 and 2007 where they figured they could not win. They were in desperate help for an ally and that ally came in the form of the US army. The US army changed their approach and instead of fighting them like they did in 2004 and 2005 in Tikrit and Fallujah, offered them incentives in the form of money, yes, but also in the form of political protection against their Shia adversaries. The US successfully came in between both parties and the political process of forming a government and a constitution for the new country could move forward. The Surge itself provided the additional security needed to cement the truce, particularly in Bagdad which was the focal point of the sectarian violence.
The situation in Afghanistan is different. Here the war is between the taliban and the US government and his allies. The Taliban is fighting the Americans first, before hopefully one day take on their former civil war adversaries. The Karzai government is shielded by the presence of the US government but also by geography. In Iraq, both warring factions were intermingled in the infamous sunni triangle and there the fighting, assassinations and bombings were the hottest. In Afghanistan, the natural and indigenous opponents are seperated. Karzai, who, let us not forget, inherited the Northern Alliance victory in 2001 after the US invasion, is safe to the North in Kabul. To the south the Taliban is, into the valleys of southern Afghanistan but mostly in Pakistan. This is the Taliban mini state.
Pakistan
Today, the Taliban mini state is getting perturbed. The Pakistanis have decided that the slow decline in control of these tribal areas cannot be allowed to continue further. President Musharraf was able to walk a thin line between one faction that was supporting them, and had to an extent enabled them in the past, and another who saw them as an impediment to their security. He compounded the problem by not acting while the Pashtun Taliban was reorganizing after 2001.
Today, all the cards are on the table. All hell broke loose as well. The current government realized this growing problem was becoming a threat to the sustainability of their regime. They decided to take a hard line with the invasion of the Swat valley a year ago, and are now doing the same in Waziristan as of this writing. The public reception is perhaps better than what Musharraf would have expected, and the Army did not break into two factions. But the stakes are still high for the Pakistanis. The worst thing for them now would be for the American to withdraw from Afghanistan. They would be, once again left on their own after they have undertook a costly and risky move against an element in their country that was once theirs and even seen as useful, particularly in the fighting against India. They have now rejected that openly and are paying the price currently in the form of a new set of explosions everyday. In the case of an american withdrawal, the Taliban would also be pushed back accross the border and allowed to regain strenght again, only to be left to confronted another day.
But the US military cannot defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan over the long run for reasons seen and to be seen. So the missing actor in this picture is the central Afghan government. It is not to say that the US doesn't or shouldn't have an interest in the whole affair, but the balance of responsibility in Afghanistan is currently vastly skewed.
How the US military Strategy must change
The US must maintain the same troop level, or add or subtract according to a different strategy. A counterinsurgency is not for the Americans to fight, it is for the Afghan to fight.
A surge inspired by Iraq will not work. In fact, as described above, the Iraq surge was not the main factor in the turn of events. The US strategy is what must change. They must abandon the small isolated posts pitched on top of a cliff in the middle of the mountains. First of all, there is nothing there but poverty to control. Let the taliban have its way in those valleys for now. People over there mostly are only inclined to fight the americans according to what one journalist called "valleyism". They just want the foreign troops to leave their countryside so they can resume living a life that doesn't extend further than the other valley next to them. Not all Taliban dream of exporting terrorism abroad. Most of these Talibans running those isolated valleys provide security and justice to these people and do not conflict direclty with the central government and can provide little to the the activist taliban who wish to reconquer Kabul but small scale hosting which cannot be prevented any worst than by having the tiny posts in the area. Most of these groups do not work together. Significantly augmenting the troop level to take over all the little villages in all the the little valleys is a ridiculous expenditure which would in any case not address the central problem, which is the latent unresolved civil war.
The retracting from the tiny outposts is already in the works as was mentioned by Clinton this week. Instead, they must augment patrols of the border and, once the Pakistanis are holding the ground of the taliban on their side, they must establish a system of border control. This is the end game for both Pakistan and the US.
(reviewed up to here)
Now, there is little chance that the Karzai government will actually be interested in moving into those poverty stricken valleys to take over from the Americans right away. In fact, as of now, the americans only control their posts and the rest of the land surrounding them belongs to the Taliban. Those areas are poor and the Karzai government probably have little interest in expanding energy to win over those valleys.
The key to victory
Since changing the strategy for the valleys is unlikely to coax the afghan government into fighting the Taliban, the americans must take the further bold action of handing over control carefully chosen larger population centers in the south, going up. They must hand it to the Karzai governor and say "here, you take care of this". They must do so where the Karzai government have governors in the region. The governors have interests there - if only their lives, and it will not go unnoticed. It doesn't matter how ready or not the Afghan army and police forces are. Let them get a bloody nose. They will have to scramble.
The US must retract to safer bases, they must forgo the holding and patrolling to the Afghan forces right now where it matters, where the Karzai government have interests. The border and the valleys can be patrolled and secured by the Americans and Pakistanis. What we need is a Northern Alliance army 2.0. The US must support the NA through intelligence and air, training, and punctual attacks. It's there as a stop gap in case the taliban is too succesful.
Right now, it's US vs Taliban. The ultimate plan of the Taliban is perhaps to topple the Karzai government, but they don't even see that far. They know they must get through the US first. Let it be Taliban vs Norther Alliance. Then the taliban can see where they stand. This is the indigenous conflict, the conflict with the US is temporary since the US is there as an occupier. It cannot be allowed to perdure continuously.
Counterargument
Now it could be advanced that the Afghan people is already getting it's nose bloodied. The Afghan people are afterall paying the highest price in deaths and material destruction. Could they sustain sustain a direct onslaught from a revivified Taliban?
Yes, the Afghan people are paying a heavy price, but it's mostly because they are caught in between two warring factions. One of them is fighting in their place. It's like a school bully who wants to get at a kid, but the kid's dad steps in in between them. The bully knows the dad will need to go eventually so he just waits and waits. A rapport of force cannot be established between the two boys until they have a go at each other. Then they will know where each one stands. Similarly, a political balance must be achieved in the country and it cannot be achieved until both factions measure up to one another. The first interaction they must have is through violence. This is why the elections while not only being a sham, did not resolve anything. While we think of elections as conferring legitimacy in our countries, it doesn't in Afghanistan: legitimacy must be won with the AK first before they can progress on the scale of political rapport. Unfortunately, the US Army cannot do that for them short of killing 80% of the Taliban's man flock, but this was for a different time in history.
The US has usurped an order of force that pre existed 2001 where the Taliban currently had the upper hand over the Norther Alliance. The Taliban had taken over in 1995 (?) aided by the Pakistanis. Now, the rivalry, or civil war, has been suspended for 8 years. The US must disengage and let it resume while acting as a stop gap and looking after it's own more limited interest in the region.
Interview with A Ghani, Newshour.
A Ghani is in Washington. The suspicion must be that he is here to talk with policymakers and members of the executive on a way forward from a governance point of view in Afghanistan, while the debate over the military point of view is ongoing.
He has said that he is not interested in power. I do believe him. I believe his true intentions are in improving governance in A by putting up a framework that will be given credibility both by the interior of A - power and people, and by international partners - europe and usa.
He is a formar World Bank officer, and a former member of the Karzai gov until he resigned over disagreements over corruption and governance 5 years ago. He ran for the presidential office this election and finished a distance 4th.
He lined up a series of laws that could be enacted to end the area of massive corruption that has been the rule of the country since the UN framework fell through 3 years after the occupation. It involved the regulation of customs, the yearly auditory supervision of official personal treasury, and additional measures.
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The way forward.
Currently, a review is coming in the next week for the votes in the last election. A surprise could happen and Abdullah, the runner up, could make a come back. Whatever happens, the new government will have to make radical changes on the way it operates - something Karzai has chosen against one way or another. Corruption will have to be stamped on because it diminishes the central government by giving off power to gov officials having their own agenda, regional gov representatives, and perhaps most importantly, independant leaders. The last category includes what are refered as Talibans.
I do believe Karzai must go once we have a new political strategy. A new face is needed and Ghani could be a very good man to work not as that new face, but as a behind the scene implementer and enforcer of the new rules.
The military strategy - just like in Iraq during the surge period, cannot succeed without a change in the structure of power. This must come from political initiatives working from both ends - the central and the local political units.
Thins are much different in A than they were at the Iraqui Surge day 1. There is no *active* civil war. There is no Sunni faction loosing his spot of influence on the governance of the country. Yet there is a very strong nationalistic dimension in the conflict in A: the pashtuns. The lack of information on the ramificaiton of this is the reason why I do not see clearly the way forward for A yet, like i did for Iraq in the Summer and Fall of 2007.
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How to cure such a widespread, deep, perhaps necessary corruption? There are some ironic but very frequent occurences, where western companies helping western elements have to pay off "taliban" forces to get their goods accross.
Power is forcibly decentralized.
Let's play the game of analysing language.
My position on language is that when we can see disrepancies between what is happening and what is said, there is usually a deeper reality, and the disrepancies in language can be ascribed to linguistic pragmatics (the science that studies language in it's context). Natural languages are not formal languages.
"Hamas is trying to achieve some political gains out of this."
First, there is the problem of ascribing intentions to a group. Are intentions only personal, or are there two kinds? What about if different individuals have different intentionswithin the same group. What's the group's intentions then? But putting that aside for now. Now it may be possible that no one on the Hamas front tries to achieve political gains by getting their asses kicked by the Israelis. It may be possible that they are all fighting valiantly their opponent. Who, one could ask, in their right mind, could put their lives at risk just so they can score points "on the arab street"? Yet, to an outsider, perhaps an opponent of Hamas, they can see the effect that their dogged resistance can have: perpetuating the conflict and gaining popular support and sympathy through their struggle on the arab and muslim street. Is this valid?
There are maybe three things: the intention of the actor.
2
Let's consider an animal: the dog is trying to
There is in our brain the intetional side: the conscious side that makes plan and can explicitly describe his actions and intentions. I'm trying to put the glass on the table. Then there is the non-conscious, habit driven or whatever. For example, the dog is not trying consciously to
Disclaimer: sometimes it may sound like I know what I'm talking about, but I really don't. These are just my intuitions and a high flying analysis of what I hear from policy makers, pundits and economists on the state of the economy. At worst, I'm mostly going on a whim. I'm just a yobbo!
Here is a new article on Keynesianism dressing the table for us: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123137373330762769.html#
The premises
The upcoming stimulus package is designed to step in for the consumer: we have been riding two bubbles in the past 20 years (tech and housing) and the consumer has been spending well above his capacity, exhibiting national negative savings rate at one point.
Hypothesis
Now that the consumer's wealth has been slashed severely, and that multiple lenders have gone bankrupt, the consumer will change his consumption pattern for several years to come, fundamentally altering the mechanics of the economy.
The dangers for policy makers
In the long run, such a change in consumer behavior could be for the better: his savings rate will be better, and he may have gain a healthy dose of caution. However, this could also mean that policies may become unaligned with reality: the bailouts and stimulus may try to recover levels that we grew accustomed to during the bubbles era while the background economic reality becomes disaligned with economic policy and measures. In other words, the effective economic reality is running below those now come to be expected growth curves. It is a dangerous case of wishful thinking. This, I repeat, is due to a fundamental change in consumer behavior. I believe that this is what leads economist Feldstein* to fear for the worst: that the economy may become dependent on the stimulus plan and once we remove the cash injections down the road, in 2 years or so, the consumer still won't be there to pick it up. This brings about the dangers of a swelling and continuing debt.
As is often stated, we are in uncharted territory. But the remedies that we bring to a patient whose disease we are unaccustomed with cannot be used willy-nilly, even though it can be tempting simply because actions must be taken.
Deficit
In particular, what will it mean to run such a large deficit? So far, the feeling I have gotten from pundits and experts is that we need to do something now and that we can cross the deficit bridge once we get there. Indeed, the stimulus package that should be announced in the weeks to come seem to make consensus amongst economists and policy makers. I fear that there is a general lack of care regarding the issue. I'd be interested in learning how big the forecasted deficit will be, how we plan to pay it off (the Bush tax cuts were suppose to pay for themselves through increased growth - it obviously hasn't turned out that way yet), and also how will the new expanding deficit compare historically.
We have a recent example in our last business cycle. In the 1990's, one of the government's top priority was debt reduction in the US, Canada, and Europe. Someone could thus maintain that our economies were emerging from the early 1990's recession where they had to spend a lot of money. However, there seems to be a consensus that this is not a regular boom - bust cycle.
Public works
Public works, even ignoring for a moment the potential for corruption and general money wasting that these tend to lead to, are also a dubious alternative. We are a mature economy. Roads need to be maintaned, but they cannot lead to the economic synergies that they do elsewhere or have done in the past: they do not have the investment value that they have say in Chain today or in the Hoover damn era. Infrastructure for our economy, by in large, must be viewed as a maintenance cost much more than as an investment venue. The job creation and stimulus effect is thus short term and punctual.
Solutions
The lesson from the past two years seem to be that we must refrain from the excesses that neo-liberalism has brought about and that a new direction must be taken. However, we must refrain from sinking into a socialist - keynesianist style policy making: you cannot buy yourself out of a recession.
The stimulus really are bailouts, much more like a bandaid than a fix. The synergetic and multiplying effects that money injunctions and public works have are limited at best. They must not be allowed to take center stage in our national discussion of economic reform.
What we need to do is take a few pages out of Global Political Economics, by Robert Gilpin, and go back to a more directed economy in the shape of a gradual yet modular economic plan for the next 5, 10 and 20 years. What we need is direction and fostering of certain sectors, in a moderate, conservative fashion.
The comeback to that is that governments can't pick winners and must let markets sort it out. That is true to a large extent and America is very good at applying those principles of market forces. That's the fundamentals, that's the canvas we can work with.
Yet there are obvious loosers that we can deal with: car makers for example. Once, Detroit was the subject of a strategic target. Now, it does not deserve it anymore because the economy has moved on to other focus points of economic drive and development. I believe that an "organized bankruptcy" and supporting temporarily the workers, as the Bush administration is doing right now, is the right way to go.
Also, there are also obvious winners: pharmaceuticals and medical research, and IT research. A greater investment fromt he government in those fields will be small in comparison to the bailouts plans yet it can trully bring about greater benefits for the economy in the years and decades to come.
A national economic plan with a focus on the long term also means reinvesting in education. Education standards in the US have fallen behind in the past years. It must redress if we are to keep our edge in creativity and enterprise.
We must not forget that the US faces fierce competition on the international stage and is starting to loose it's edge in cutting edge products and development. Developing an economic plan that focuses on just that will both be beneficial to the US economy and will foster the leadership of the US politically and economically internationally. Right now, a political economic plan is sorely lacking. Without that, we are chasing something that isn't anymore with stimulus and government direct money: the inflated economic levels of the bubbles era. The lack of a dynamic, forward looking economic plan also opens the door to yet another danger: protectionism.
The protectionist backlash
(...)
*The Charlie Rose show, 6th Jan 2009.
** There will, of course be bubbles again: I don't not mean to imply they can be fully eradicated. They seem to be tied to fundamental human traits like the "bandwagoning" behavior. Bandwagoning, however, usually works: a good idea catches on. Eventually, however, it can lead to ill effects (there is an over inflation of interest for that one thing). This could be yet another lesson on human rationality: our brains have developed cognitive adaptations (sometimes "hard wired", sometimes more cultural) that work wonderfully, but sometimes can be tricked into giving the "irrational" answer. All kinds of illusions are of this kind, or errors found in human judgement in the study of statistics for examaple.
I once commented on the limits, so to speak, of the theory of everything in Astrophysics. Namely, it is a theory about the phusis, that is, nature, and leaves some questions opened. Those questions belong to the metaphysical realm. Questions about our fundamental relation with this phusis. In this respect, multiverses and strings - even if they end up being confirmed by observation, will be in no better standing than, say, the cosmogonies conjured up in Miletus, 26,000 years ago. Our theory of the physical world - including descriptions of ourselves and our functioning, cannot answer questions raised a century ago by phenomenologists, and yet others more recently within the so called post-modern movement.
This question can only be resolved rationally and not empirically. In it's ultimate form, it can also only be resolved privately, and can only be helped along publicly, not taught. It is a akin to the teachings of a zen master who guides his students through the absurd looking indications and guidances found in their literature leading on the path of serenity and one-ness with the universe. Only, in the case of philosophy, such a process cannot be obtained through revelation or emotional communions with the surroundings, or with concepts; it must be obtained the hard nosed way - through the exercise of reason.
Perhaps an answer is not possible. Like Sextus Empiricus, I fear that we must satisfy ourselves with a suspension of judgement, or of belief. Perhaps. But the mind doesn't like ambivalence: it strives for symmetry. Skepticism is indeed a disease of the mind.
