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.

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?