In Afghanistan, Congress Proves the Unsustainable Will Not Be Sustained

  T he economist Herbert Stein once famously quipped that, “The unsustainable will not be sustained.” 

I’ve always thought that Stein’s Law, as economists refer to it, applied just as well to unsustainable economic policies as it did the foreign policy arena. Specifically, I think it is an apt description for what is happening to America’s more than decade-long war in Afghanistan that has cost the nation a considerable expenditure of blood and treasure.

The size and scope of the U.S. military, political and economic commitments to Afghanistan have always unsustainable, but not in terms of material power as it is often suggested. The United States, of course, is a superpower and if determined could dispatch troops and bags of money to Afghanistan probably indefinitely. 

Hell, a ten cent war tax on café lattes might just defray the costs.

Rather, I mean the Afghan War is unsustainable in terms of the political will at home to continue the war among political leaders (notice how I did not say the American public, who long ago soured on the venture.)  It has always been a matter of time before war fatigue set in and the political and electoral headwinds on U.S. policy towards Afghanistan turned against the hawks and towards the doves.

As it turns out, Congress is beginning to seriously tighten the purse strings over U.S. aid to Afghanistan. As the Washington Post reports: “With no perceptible opposition from the Obama administration, Congress has quietly downscaled Washington’s ambitions for the final year of the Afghan war, substantially curtailing development aid and military assistance plans ahead of the U.S. troop pullout.”

Apart from the budget trimming by Congress, the Obama administration is now seriously considering the zero option—which would leave no American troops in Afghanistan after this year—an idea dismissed by analysts as a diplomatic bluff rather than a genuine policy option as recently as this past summer. (See my previous post on this)

These developments should come as a surprise to officials in the Pentagon, the State Department, the Intelligence Community, and outside analysts and experts. Most folks have long operated on the expectation that a large residual force of American troops would need to remain in Afghanistan far beyond 2014 in order to continue training the Afghan military and support counterterrorism operations. Furthermore, the expectations of a residual force were coupled with projections that the United States would continue funding the Afghan government and the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to the tune of several billion dollars a year indefinitely.

Such reasonable expectations of a strategically sound approach to U.S. foreign policy was, quite predictably, far removed from the political realities of policymaking in the United States.

Officials in the Pentagon, the State Department, and elsewhere in the government can plan and project different troop and aid levels for Afghanistan all they want. Senior officials can pledge to continue support to Kabul forever. Ultimately, however, it is Congress that controls the purse strings and the constant rhythms of the election cycle makes legislators fickle creatures.

The political will in Congress to sustain the U.S. mission in Afghanistan has waned over the last year as the rhetorical momentum has steadily turned against the hawks. Besides the continued stalemate on the battlefield, the actions of Afghan President Hamid Karzai in particular have made U.S. involvement beyond 2014 far more difficult for Congressional hawks to justify.

Karzai’s intransigence at signing the recently negotiated security agreement between Kabul and Washington, his repeated public insults aimed at the United States, and his sympathetic nods to the Taliban have made it politically toxic for hawks to drape him in the flag and demand that Washington to support his government.

Karzai’s actions have likewise given credence to the doves’ arguments that it is time for the United States to disengage from the conflict and lessen its commitment to support such a corrupt and ineffective government in Kabul. (To be fair, I have no doubt that Karzai’s moves are largely motivated by Afghan domestic politics as distancing himself from the United States only helps his handpicked successor in the presidential election scheduled for April.) 

I believe that Obama, electorally secure in his second term and fed up with a war he never wanted to fight in the first place, will probably allow the zero option to come to pass in Afghanistan as he did in Iraq. Meanwhile, doves in Congress will continue to hack away at funding levels for Afghanistan in midst of budget battles at home ahead of the midterms in November and the political jockeying ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

What does this mean for Afghanistan’s fate?

It appears there will be a very painful course correction in the works. For the past decade, the United States has built up the ANSF to an enormous size to fight the Taliban in place of U.S. combat forces which are scheduled to withdrawal this year. Yet the enormous size of the ANSF has also made it enormously expensive.

The annual cost of the ANSF is roughly $10-13 billion dollars. By comparison, the core budget of the Afghan government in 2011 (the most recent year I can find figures for) was a paltry $4.78 billion. Even more worrying is that grants from international donors, largely the United States and its allies, accounted for roughly two-thirds of the Afghan government’s core budget.

See the problem?

The sheer cost of the ANSF far outstrips the Afghan government’s ability to pay for it without significant assistance from the United States. As a striking GAO report concluded:

“Even if the Afghan government committed 100 percent of its projected domestic revenues to funding ANSF, this amount would cover only about 75 percent of the cost of supporting security forces in fiscal year 2015 and would leave the Afghan government no revenues to cover any non-security-related programs, such as public health.”

The United States essentially pays the wages of Afghan soldiers and policemen and even keeps the lights on in Kabul. As Congress tightens the purse strings, the complete collapse of the ANSF and along with it the Afghan government in the coming years are very realistic prospects.

I sincerely hope that all the sacrifices the United States has made in Afghanistan since 2001 does not unravel because of Congressional penny-pinching.

Yet as elections and troop withdrawal deadlines approaches on the political calendar, Washington seems more and more determined to head for the exits this time. Once again, political expediency trumps sound policy.

Domestic Wrangling Over Iran Deal Continues (Short Links)

C urrently 59 senators (43 Republicans and 16 Democrats) support a bill sponsored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) and Mark Kirk (R-IL) that would impose extensive new sanctions on Tehran if no final nuclear accord is reached or if it violates the interim deal (Note: Lawmakers still have not been provided the specifics of the interim deal from the White House). (Washington Post)

According to The Hill, “Every Democrat considered vulnerable in his or her race for reelection next year is co-sponsoring this measure, a sign that they want to appear tough on foreign policy.” Furthermore, “The new Menendez-Kirk bill would also require that any final deal with Iran end its ability to enrich uranium. Secretary of State John Kerry has suggested that such a requirement was a nonstarter for Iran.” (Rebecca Shabad, The Hill)

The thirty Senate Democrats who have remained silent on the Iran sanctions bill are under pressure to stake out a position. (Greg Sargent, Washington Post)

AIPAC keeps a low profile on Iran bill. (Politico)

Obama threatens to veto additional Iran sanctions. (Anne Gearan, Washington Post)

Did Obama Deliberately Fail to Negotiate a Deal to Keep Troops in Iraq?

I n light of al-Qaeda’s recent gains and heightened sectarian violence in Iraq, President Obama has taken flack from many hawks in Congress for his failure to negotiate a long-term security agreement with Iraq that would have left U.S. forces in the country after 2011.

Yet the lack of a new security arrangement between the United States and Iraq was hardly a failure of diplomacy. While the Obama administration publicly supported the concept of keeping a residual force in Iraq; it deliberately failed to negotiate a new deal with Baghdad for domestic political reasons.

The hawks' attacks on this issue began over a week ago when Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsay Graham (R-SC) released a statement in which they severely admonished Obama for withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq instead of leaving behind a residual force (a policy they strongly supported).

While most of the statement was boilerplate, it did contain a rather interesting and insightful tidbit:

Let it be clear that the Administration's narrative that Iraq's political leadership objected to U.S. forces remaining in Iraq after 2011 is patently false. We know firsthand that Iraq's main political blocs were supportive and that the Administration rejected sound military advice and squandered the opportunity to conclude a security agreement with Iraq that could have met U.S. military requirements..

Essentially two United States Senators are accusing the White House of concocting an entirely false account that a security agreement could not be reached because the Iraqis could not get their house in order.  

McCain and Graham don’t explicitly say why the Obama administration would do such a thing; but the sub-context is that the decision to withdrawal was politically motivated.

Oddly, I think McCain and Graham are pretty much correct. Here's why:

It is easy enough to see that it was in Obama’s domestic political interest to ensure every American in uniform was out of Iraq before the 2012 election. After all, it would be hard for Obama to claim he had fulfilled his campaign pledge and ended the Iraq War if there were still 10,000 or so troops stationed there.

The tricky part for Obama would be getting out of Iraq without seeming like he wanted to.

An overt policy to pull U.S. troops out before or at the end of 2011 without the support of Congressional hawks and the military would have looked cynical. It would have exposed Obama to blunt attacks that he was squandering the sacrifice of American blood and treasure, ignoring his military commanders, and allow his critics in the future to lay Iraq’s problems at his doorstep.

So there was little if any reason for the Obama administration to visibly go against the grain and oppose a long-term U.S. troop presence in Iraq. Such a political fight is best avoided if possible. And it was.

Rather, the Obama administration publicly supported the hawks and the military’s preferred policy for a residual force in Iraq. The administration’s support, however, was a political feint. I believe Obama wanted out of Iraq but masked his true policy preference in order to defuse criticism from the hawks while he maneuvered for a big political win with the moderates and doves long weary of the conflict.

Obama’s maneuver was brilliant in its simplicity: he would do nothing and let Iraq’s dysfunctional political system sink the prospects for a new security agreement. His hand would thus appear to be forced by Iraqi incompetence.

For years, the United States had taken on an indispensable and highly active role as the final arbitrator in Iraq’s chaotic politics. Even under Obama, the United States was routinely hammering together political agreements on issues large and small among the numerous Shia, Sunni, and Kurdish political factions who otherwise could agree on nothing but their mutual disdain for one another.

Yet when it came time to negotiate a new security agreement, the Obama administration did little if anything to ensure the Iraqis hashed out a deal amongst themselves over the arrangements' terms. The administration changed its tone just a bit, insisting it wanted to stay but only if the Iraqis could get their house in order on their own and ask.

The guiding hand of the United States which had brought a semblance of order and function to Iraq’s fragile government was suddenly lifted. U.S. officials merely watched from the sidelines as the Iraqis predictably spun their wheels over the issue and the calendar crept closer and closer to December 2011.

Once the deadline for a new deal expired in December 2011, Obama was able to pin the blame squarely on the Iraqis for being unable to get their ducks in a row on time. It's hard to imagine that if the United States—with all its power and influence in Iraq—had really wanted a deal it was incapable of twisting enough arms to get its way.

Nevertheless, Obama seized the opportunity to withdrawal the remaining U.S. forces under the political cover that absent a new agreement with Baghdad, he was merely following a timetable established by his Republican predecessor. Obama then took a bow during a national prime-time address in which he announced he had finally brought the war to a responsible and honorable end.

Oh well, just one more example of a sound policy abroad being sacrificed because it was bad domestic politics.

Assorted Interesting Links: 

Congress Wants to Kill Obama’s Iran Deal - Colum Lynch, John Hudson, Foreign Policy

Obama Threatens to Veto Iran Sanctions Bill - Howard LaFranchi, CSM

Iranian Hardline Faction Silent on Nuclear Deal - Thomas Erdbrink, New York Times

America Starts But Can’t Win Wars – Andrew J. Bacevich, LA Times

Democrats Oppose Reinvading Iraq. But…Why?

O n Thursday Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) joined in the chorus of critics slamming the Obama administration’s handling of Iraq policy after al-Qaeda militants seized two cities in Anbar last week.

Speaker Boehner argued the president needed to take a more active role on the issue and gave his support for sending military aid to Baghdad. He then added (or better yet quipped), “The administration has chosen to spend much of its time and energy trying to explain why having terrorists holding key terrain in the Middle East is not the president’s problem.”

Responding to questions about Boehner’s remarks, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, “I know that Speaker Boehner opposed candidate Obama’s promise to end the war in Iraq.  I know that.  Maybe he still does. Maybe he thinks that American men and women in uniform ought to be fighting today in Anbar province. That’s a disagreement that may continue to exist…The president made a commitment to end the war in Iraq. He fulfilled that commitment.”

Wait what? Boehner did not call for troops to be sent to Iraq. Jay Carney is not the first to spin the debate in this manner.

Secretary of State John Kerry began this approach last week when he stated the United States would help the Iraqi government battle the al-Qaeda militants but added, “This is a fight that belongs to the Iraqis. That is exactly what the president and the world decided some time ago when we left Iraq, so we are not obviously contemplating returning. We are not contemplating putting boots on the ground.”

Then on Tuesday, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) also came out against redeploying U.S. troops to Iraq. It has since become a major talking point when discussing what the United States should do about the situation in Iraq.

Oddly, I cannot find a single Republican (or Democrat, policy expert or Iraqi leader for that matter) who has argued that the United States should send troops back into Iraq. Nevertheless, Obama administration officials and Congressional Democrats have repeatedly and often without prompt stated their objection to sending troops to Iraq over the last week.

Why are the Democrats so eager to oppose a policy no one has even suggested? I can think of two reasons.

The first is that the Democrats are simply covering their left flank and getting out ahead of a problem before it becomes one. Dovish and opportunist Democratic primary challengers might get anxious or otherwise misconstrue the facts when the Obama administration announces it is sending military support to Iraq. Stipulating up front there will be zero boots on the ground in the same breath shirks that.

The second reason is that the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats may want to bait Republican hawks into actually calling for troops to help the Iraqis (or otherwise criticize the no troops caveat.) Interestingly, the Republicans who have criticized the administration for prematurely withdrawing U.S. forces have so far stopped short of suggesting that troops should go back in. Rather, it is simply a shame they are no longer there to keep Iraq a peaceful democracy.  

If Republican hawks are going to attack Obama for withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq prematurely, it works in the Democrats favor to push the Republican’s towards the next logical policy step that follows indirect military support. You Republicans didn’t want the troops out in the first place? Please, please, please argue that you want to send them back.

Why? Well, it would make Republicans look hawkish to the point of foolishness and undermines their legitimate criticisms of Obama’s handling of Iraq.

Even better, it would make for a blockbuster argument (even just a single sound bite might do) for Congressional Democrats ahead of the midterms in November. Vote Democrat because the Republicans want to reinvade Iraq. Take a guess which party comes out ahead on that issue.