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.

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.

The Politics of Doing Nothing versus Doing Something: Domestic Political Competition and Risk Taking over the Syrian Civil War

Why is U.S. policy towards the Syrian Civil War suddenly shifting from nonintervention to intervention? Was it really just the chemical attack outside of Damascus last week that was ostensibly conducted by Assad’s security forces? After all, what’s the difference between the Assad regime killing 100,000 people with conventional weapons—small arms, tanks, artillery, bombs, mortars, and even tactical ballistic missiles—and killing about 1,500 people using chemical weapons? From a strategic perspective, Steve Walt is right that a change in weaponry should have little to no impact on U.S. policy towards Syria. However, the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime has shifted U.S. policy on its head over the last week. Suddenly the Obama administration is poised to launch a military attack on Syria in the coming days (I’ll bet this coming Sunday or Monday). I think the real impetus for the change in Obama’s policy towards Syria rests in how the recent chemical attacks reverberated within U.S. domestic politics.

While Obama is now well into his second term in office that does not mean he has nothing left to run for. So long as the House is under Republican control, he has no avenue to advance his domestic priorities or even a specific major policy he can pass that would serve as the capstone of his second administration. Until the 2014 midterms, the next fifteen months in Washington will likely consist of budget and debt ceiling battles between Congressional Republicans and the White House. While Obama in the past has repeatedly outmaneuvered the Republicans in these fights, such wins have been short-term tactical victories. Obama’s last chance for a significant legislative achievement during his remaining time in office rests on the prospect that the Democrats can take the back the House and at least hold their ground in the Senate in the midterm elections in November 2014. Once he has a Democratic-controlled Congress, Obama then would have a short window to pass the kind of major legislation that presidencies are actually remembered for (Remember Obama said he wanted to be a transformational president and not just some guy in a round office). I think that Obama has likely weighed his approach and options regarding Syria (and other foreign and domestic policy areas) on each move’s potential impact and risks to his party’s prospects for success in the midterms.

I think Obama has previously decided not to take action in Syria because he saw lots of potential political risk and little to no upside. Furthermore, his opponents were unable to effectively inflict costs on him to significantly change his policy. Just a few weeks ago, Obama’s policy of non-direct intervention but providing low levels of support to the rebels was under increasing criticism from Republican and Democratic hawks in light of several battlefield victories by the Assad regime. Most accounts of Obama’s approach on Syria usually fell somewhere along the range of criticism between being adrift or directionless to inadequate or ineffective or all the way to being a catastrophic blunder or an outright failure. To correct his footing, Obama made a minor low risk concession to the hawks and begrudgingly announced the United States would start sending light weapons to the rebels (which apparently still have not arrived). All in all, Obama protected his political position fairly well and remained in the center between doves and hawks from both parties.

Then last week Obama’s centrist position on Syria was undermined after Assad’s security forces launched a chemical attack around Damascus in the early hours of August 21^st that killed about 1,500 people. The attack occurred almost a year to the day when Obama made a somewhat off-the-cuff remark during the presidential campaign that the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a “red line.” At the time, he seemed to be setting the bar for U.S. intervention in Syria quite high. After last week’s chemical attack, however, continuing to do nothing on Syria —i.e. maintaining the status quo—began to carry with it some political costs. The hawks could easily paint Obama as weak and cowardly. If the regime escalated with even further attacks over the next year, the hawks would have a decent argument that Obama was weak on Syria and so on.  This in turn would probably hurt Obama again and again heading into the midterms. It is important not to exaggerate the extent of the political damage, which would hardly be terminal, but Obama would have a bleeding wound that the hawks would reopen every time Assad used chemical weapons and could tie in with other issues like Iran where Obama set a red line on nuclear weapons.  For Obama, the risks of doing nothing (i.e. not using force) in Syria suddenly became higher than the risk of doing something (i.e. using force). To avoid the costs of inaction, Obama has spent the last week looking for something low-risk to do which would put him on a sound political footing but also divide and weaken his hawkish opponents in the future.

Obama will probably be take a miniscule risk of using limited force in Syria to shore up his domestic political flank against Republican and Democratic hawks clamoring for action after Assad’s forces violated the chemical weapons “red line.” A limited strike could change Obama’s domestic alignment stuck between the losing doves who have argued Obama should do nothing in Syria and the winning hawks who have argued Obama must do something in Syria but are often vague or divided over what that should entail. If Obama uses limited force he can forge a new alignment with the hawks who want to use just a little bit of force (like a low-risk onetime cruise missile strike that would not change the situation on the ground) and the hawks who want a more substantial use of force (like a riskier large-scale sustained bombing campaign against the regime’s military which would likely eventually topple the regime but create a power vacuum in Syria and leave the civil war raging). With a limited strike, Obama can drive a wedge through the hawks and shore up his political flank on Syria. He can also strengthen his position by trying to bring some of the doves from both parties on board by painting the strike as a humanitarian operation and playing up rhetoric about America’s moral responsibility to protect innocent civilians from crazy dictators with chemical weapons and so on. He could frame his actions as measured and pragmatic since he did not engulf the country in yet another large war in the Middle East (the key here would be to use the terms “Bush” and “Iraq” as often as possible when speaking to the doves).

So Obama will probably use force in Syria to regain the political center and splinter the Republican and Democratic hawks. But what is the strategic impact of a limited U.S. strike against Syria? As any military analyst would point out, lobbing a few cruise missiles at fixed regime targets will have no effect on the military balance of power between the Assad regime and the rebels. Further, I strongly doubt a limited strike would have much of a deterrent effect on the future use of chemical weapons either, since effective deterrence relies on the adversary perceiving the threat as credible and the action being deterred as becoming more costly than the alternatives. Assad is in the midst of waging a bloody civil war entering its third year. He is not only fighting for the political survival of his regime but probably his personal safety from a Qaddafi-style execution at the hands of the rebels. Furthermore, his Alawite commanders and soldiers know they and their families face the very possibility of being slaughtered by the rebel Sunnis if they lose—after all, they’ve slaughtered lots of Sunni fighters and their families too. How do you seriously expect to deter someone who has that much at stake when a few cruise missiles amount to the punishment?  Finally, over the past few days, the White House has told Congressional doves and others worried about direct U.S. military involvement in Syria not to fret because Obama has no intention of getting involved in a huge military operation there. To appease domestic doves, the White House essentially told Assad that the threat of future attacks or escalating punishments if he does not comply is fairly negligible. 

Interestingly, the hawks who want a U.S. intervention to be strategically effective are correct that a cruise missile strike against Syria would be pretty much useless and to achieve any change the United States would need to impose a no-fly zone and commit to a sustained bombing campaign against the regime’s ground forces. Meanwhile, the United States and its allies would also provide a considerably higher level of support and resources to the rebels to affect the military balance on the ground. All of this would take a very long time, but could be accomplished from a military perspective. But for what gain to Obama? 

Suppose after a six or ten month U.S. bombing campaign that Assad flees to Iran or is killed, Damascus falls to the rebels and the regime’s security forces disintegrate. A post-Assad Syria would very likely remain extremely violent and chaotic as the Sunni rebels and remnants of the Alawite forces continue to vie for power since the opposition is not unified at all and there is really no hope for a transitional government to step in overnight. The Sunnis will continue fighting the Alawites and other minority groups in addition to themselves (particularly the jihadist groups associated with al-Qaeda will fight the moderate Sunnis). Lebanon would certainly become less stable as violence from Syria spills over its borders and agitates the delicate peace among its rival political groups that are similarly divided along ethnic and sectarian lines as Syria's. Israel will be facing well-armed Shia and Sunni militant groups—which mutually despise Israels existence—fighting it out along its northern borders with heavy weaponry, and of course there is the issue of the chemical weapons possessed by the former Assad regime. Iraq, which is already reaching levels of violence not seen since the full-scale civil war was underway there from 2006-2008, will likely get worse as Iran’s Shia proxy groups and the Sunni insurgents (who are likely backed covertly by the Saudis and the Gulf States) go at each others jugular as the Iraqi government teeters. Jordan and Turkey will be further flooded with refugees and threatened by insecurity. Who knows what the Kurds in Syria (and Iraq) will do. Oh, and don’t forget Iran will still be getting closer to developing a nuclear weapon, which Obama has also said is a red line. The outcome in Syria is surrounded by uncertainty. There is a very high potential for wider regional conflicts to emerge and escalate. So far as I can tell, winning in Syria carries enormous political risks for Obama and nearly no upside.

In this sort of environment, Obama’s domestic allies and opponents who supported the intervention in Syria would then jump ship—just like many Democrats who supported Bush before the invasion of Iraq did after that endeavor went sideways. They can claim they backed the concept of intervening to prevent Assad from gassing his own people but the administration had bungled this or that and must shoulder the responsibility for the calamity. Basically everyone but Obama would get to say, “I didn’t sign up for this.” At that point, Obama could be looking at overlapping conflicts stretching from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf which encompasses all of the region’s major states. For once there would actually be loose weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East that could fall into terrorists’ hands in addition to a tattered U.S.-Israel-Arab security umbrella and probably spiraling global oil prices that could hurt the economic recovery and piss off voters. That would certainly not bode well for Obama’s political standing at home and the prospects for a Democratic victory on November 4, 2014.

When examining Obama’s Syria policy, the questions we need to ask are how does each alternative policy course effect Obama’s chances in the 2014 midterms and is Obama helped or hurt by removing Assad and his regime from power before then? The answer I reach is that Obama needs to do something to regain his domestic political footing on the issue, but he cannot risk doing so much that the United States actually succeeds and topples Assad and he gets blamed for the chaos that ensues—at least before the midterms.

Obama’s Trail Balloon: The Politics of the “Zero Option” in Afghanistan

A few days ago, the Times ran an interesting story quoting senior U.S. and European officials in Washington and Kabul that the Obama administration is giving very serious consideration to pulling all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan at the end of 2014. The impetus for the change in the administration’s thinking is attributed (in the article) to the deteriorating relationship between President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. According to officials, Karzai threw a fit to Obama during a video conference related to the announcement last month that the United States and the Taliban were planning to hold peace talks without the Afghan Government. The “zero option” is, of course, contrary to several years of pledges by the United States that it plans to leave a small residual force of troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014, mostly to train the Afghan security forces and conduct counter-terrorism operations. Many military analysts would agree some residual U.S. force as critically necessary to prevent the Afghan government falling to the insurgency, particularly in lieu of a peace deal with the Taliban (something that won’t happen, but that’s a whole other post).

Of course, attributing the administration’s change of thinking on the zero option in the White House due to one bad video conference between Obama and Karzai is ridiculous. Obama’s personal relationship with Karzai has always been rocky, if not downright terrible. Remember, Karzai’s attitude did not deter Obama from sending tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan in 2009. Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) suggested the discussions of the zero option were a part of the Obama administration’s negotiating strategy with Karzai related to the Status of Forces Agreement that would dictate terms of the U.S. presence after 2014. Levin said, “I think it’s a signal that he thinks he has leverage that he doesn’t have.” I very much doubt that the Obama administration would float the zero option as part of a negotiating strategy with Karzai. Karzai has plenty of unflattering qualities, but he has never struck me as a complete and utter fool. He knows he has little to no leverage with the United States (except perhaps, embarrassing Obama in public).  After all, the United States pays for the entire budget of the Afghan government, including its military, and has tens of thousands of troops on Afghan soil. This does not leave Karzai a whole lot of negotiating room.

Rather than aimed at Karzai, I would venture to guess the story given to the Times by anonymous officials within the Obama administration that discussions of the zero option were taking place was in essence a trial balloon. Obama and his advisers wanted to gauge what the domestic political reaction of hawkish Republicans and Democrats would be to the zero option. I think absent domestic politics, Obama’s preferred policy in Afghanistan would be the zero option. After all, it is not exactly a secret that Obama has basically no interest in furthering U.S. involvement in the war. Further, I suspect (apparently along with others) that he privately regrets his decision on the surge way back in 2009. Interestingly, the reaction to the administration’s discussions by hawkish Republicans and Democrats was muted. As far as I can tell, there was little outrage, no attacks, and no repercussions for Obama.  

These domestic political maneuvers we are seeing over U.S. Afghan policy reminded me of something I wrote back in the fall of 2011 on the domestic politics of Obama’s Afghan strategy that seems pretty accurate:

…Obama will need to forge a stronger coalition with moderates and doves on a withdrawal timetable in Afghanistan beyond 2014 if he wants significant congressional backing for his war strategy. This may become increasingly difficult after of the 2012 election. If Obama wins reelection in 2012, he may face a Republican-controlled Senate and House which might dissuade Obama from a faster draw down if he is under pressure from a Republican Congress to extend it. There is an expectation from Republican hawks and many security analysts that the administration will live up to its word and leave a fairly large residual force in Afghanistan far beyond 2014 to support counter-terrorism operations and training the Afghan security forces. If Obama is successful at forging a coalition with dove and moderate Democrats and Republicans towards ending U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, there will likely be intense political pressure to bring the number of troops to zero. While this may not preclude a large intelligence and/or special operations forces footprint remaining in Afghanistan beyond 2014, the domestic political momentum that would build up behind the troop withdrawals—as seen in Vietnam and Iraq—would be difficult for Obama to resist once they start; even if the conditions on the ground change unfavorably.

The Obama administration has said there is “no decision imminent” over the U.S. presence in Afghanistan after 2014. Nevertheless, I think it is very likely Obama will choose some form of the zero option given the tepid hawk reaction to the trail balloon. Obama’s decision will probably be a shock to a lot people in the Pentagon and Congress. It will probably be seen as a betrayal in Kabul. But if hawkish Republicans and Democrats are not going to push back at all, why shouldn’t Obama move more quickly to end America’s role in war he doesn’t want to fight?