The Afghanistan Exaggeration

Robert Farley has identified a remarkable statement by Robert Kaplan in his report on India (PDF).

He or she who sits in Delhi with his back to Muslim Central Asia must still worry about unrest up on the plateaus to the northwest. The United States will draw down its troops one day in Afghanistan, but India will still have to live with the results, and therefore remain intimately engaged. The quickest way to undermine U.S.-India relations is for the United States to withdraw precipitously from Afghanistan. In the process of leaving behind an anarchic and radicalized society, which in and of itself is contrary to India’s interests, such a withdrawal would signal to Indian policy elites that the United States is surely a declining power on which they cannot depend. Detente with China might then seem to be in India’s interest. After all, China wants a stable Afghanistan for trade routes; India, for security. Because of India’s history and geography, an American failure in Afghanistan bodes ill for our bilateral relationship with New Delhi. Put simply, if the United States deserts Afghanistan, it deserts India.

Indeed, India is quietly testing the United States in Afghanistan perhaps to the same intense degree as Israel is very publicly testing the United States in regards to a nuclear Iran. I do not suggest that we should commit so much money and national treasure to Afghanistan merely for the sake of impressing India. But I am suggesting that the deleterious effect on U.S.-India bilateral relations of giving up on Afghanistan should be part of our national debate on the war effort there, for at the moment it is not. The fact is that our ability to influence China will depend greatly on our ability to work with India, and that, in turn, will depend greatly on how we perform in Afghanistan.

The problem I have with this argument is that it suggests that somehow, Afghanistan can be described in the context of a single point of failure in some Grand Strategy for global balance of power for the United States. I see that as artificial inflation regarding the importance of Afghanistan.

India, not the US or any NATO nation, already has more influence in determining the outcome in Afghanistan because India, not the US or any NATO nation, is the largest economic power besides China in the region around Afghanistan (thus has the most to lose in the region).

It is almost treated as an afterthought that Iraq's major trade partners include Syria, Turkey, and Jordan - and btw, the country Iraq has the largest growth in trade with today is Iran, while the second fastest trade growth is with UAE. There is no way stability in Iraq is possible without the cooperation of regional nations around Iraq. The nations surrounding Iraq are invested in the stability in Iraq both politically and economically now - and that is why we can leave with a fairly reasonable degree of confidence that Iraq will mature over time.

The same holds true for Afghanistan. The US military and allies will not eventually 'win' the war in Afghanistan, success in Afghanistan will only be achieved once the nations around Afghanistan - including Iran, Pakistan, India, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and China - have a sufficiently invested interest in the stability of Afghanistan.

Without that regional investment, the operation is simply a military manhunt with no end in sight. I do not agree that US grand strategy in balancing rising powers is dependent upon our perpetual manhunt in Afghanistan, indeed I would argue that when we exaggerate a small war against a relatively small group of bad guys in Afghanistan and turn that into a major war with significant but artificial global national security ramifications, that does significantly more harm to any US grand strategy that balances rising powers.

Don't misunderstand - I am not calling for a unilateral withdrawal from Afghanistan, rather I believe our military strategy there should reflect that:

• Afghanistan is a small war, not a major war. Small wars are best fought with small footprints
• Regional investment in stability in Afghanistan is the only way to achieve stability in Afghanistan
• Failure in Afghanistan isn't when the US fails to achieve stability and peace, rather failure is achieved when stability and peace in Afghanistan allows regional acceptance for control of Afghanistan to be achieved by forces intent on terrorist activities outside of Afghanistan.

Kaplan is wrong if he believes violence in Afghanistan threatens the balance of power between major powers. It is not only possible, but statistically probable that violence in Afghanistan will exist in 2020 and beyond, and that violence will have very limited influence on the strategic policies of India regarding any balance of power issues between major powers like the US and China.