Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Four Options for Afghanistan?

Ralph Peters has a new op-ed in USA Today called, "The Mendacity of Hope," in which he argues that we need to face reality in Afghanistan. He describes four possible strategies, which he ranks from best to worst. Here's his recommendation for the best option:
Instead of increasing the U.S. military "footprint," reduce our forces and those of NATO by two-thirds, maintaining a "mother ship" at Bagram Air Base and a few satellite bases from which special operations troops, aircraft and drones, and lean conventional forces would strike terrorists and support Afghan factions with whom we share common enemies. All resupply for our military could be done by air, if necessary. 

Stop pretending Afghanistan's a real state. Freeze development efforts. Ignore the opium. Kill the fanatics.
That's what he's sees as our best overall strategy, and with some modifications I tend to agree. The whole article is interesting, and makes a strong case against putting in more troops.

2 comments:

  1. "Freeze development efforts. Ignore the opium. Kill the fanatics."

    Never mind that this is psychopathic - it ignores the research about the ramifications of state failure. Paul Collier has shown that each state failure costs the world economy about $100 billion dollars. And that's an average - it's likely higher when the state in question produces international terrorism whenever it doesn't have a stable non-terrorist government.

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  2. "Never mind that this is psychopathic"

    I don't see anything psychopathic about it. It's a realist view. Although, I wouldn't agree with completely freezing development efforts -- that's partially what I meant by saying that I agreed with him with modifications.

    ". Paul Collier has shown that each state failure costs the world economy about $100 billion dollars."

    I'm extremely skeptical of such calculations. And even if correct, economics are only one facet of foreign policy. The costs of trying to turn a state into a democracy, against the will of many of its people, are also very high.

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