Lost amid the hubbub over bailouts and stimulus have been a couple of potentially significant developments in Afghanistan. Why only “potentially” significant? Because that country, our policy in it, and the larger world’s commitment to it are giant unknowns at the moment. Iraq, for all its internal complexities and instabilities, had a great deal of certainty brought to it by our recent election: President Obama is committed to leaving, thus we are leaving and the Iraqis are getting their country back. Afghanistan, on the other hand, is far less certain because the new Administration is still only beginning to understand just what the real situation is, thus “potentially” significant. Maybe the stuff that’s happened in the last couple of days will have a profound effect on their thinking and our policies, maybe it won’t.
Let us first recall that the original rationale behind world involvement (and it really was almost all the major powers of the world) in Afghanistan was the 11 September attacks. The theory was that states which lacked effective government were threats to the entire international order because non-state organizations like al-Qaeda could use them as bases. Prior to that, the international reaction to Afghanistan had been one of studied indifference. The old rule of non-interference applied: as long as you kept your wars, atrocities, human rights violations, and other general unpleasantness within your own borders you could expect other countries (and certainly major powers) to basically leave you alone.
The 11 September attacks were supposed to have changed that and the result was the UN/NATO mission in Afghanistan to replace the Taliban and bring effective and normal government to a country which hadn’t known it for more than twenty years. We all know what happened next, much quicker than almost anyone expected the Taliban were routed thanks to a combination of American air power and local Afghani forces. Almost immediately the American focus shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq, first rhetorically then diplomatically and finally militarily. Afghanistan became an afterthought of a war, real only to the military, and ignored by everyone else (the press, the public and the Administration) for it’s more politically contentious and casualty heavy successor.
Now that American involvement in Iraq is on a path to resolution (though far from resolved), focus is once again turning to Afghanistan and the reality isn’t pretty. Other NATO countries aren’t exactly chomping at the bit to recommit to it, the chain of supply was recently dealt a double blow, and now it appears that Obama may be reconsidering (via Juan Cole) his campaign promise to seriously reinforce our troops there. The situation is, to say the least, unsettled and we haven’t even mentioned the new government in Pakistan.
Here’s the good news, Obama isn’t stupid and he isn’t hell bent on this war. If the hour has grown too late in Afghanistan for even renewed American leadership to rally the world to the cause, he isn’t going to pursue it like his dead ender ideologue of a predecessor. Obama is quite possibly the most powerful man in the world, but he cannot force the major European powers to commit seriously to combat in Afghanistan, nor can he force Pakistan to go all out around the border, nor can he simply replace the Hamid Karzai government, no matter how corrupt it is or how much he might want to. He recognizes that his office is not an imperial throne.
Is an Afghani outcome roughly similar to what was envisioned seven and a half years ago still possible? Maybe. But if the rest of the world isn’t as committed to the place as Obama, there isn’t much that can be done; America going it alone is a surefire recipe for disaster, just as it was in Iraq. Fortunately, Obama and the people around him don’t seem like the types who will delude themselves into believing that token support is a grand coalition. Obama made campaign promises about Afghanistan, and if there’s a possibility of a genuinely good outcome (whatever that may be) he almost has to press forward; but he is very unlikely to imitate his predecessor and plunge in head first all by his lonesome.
