Strategic Paradigms by Ehsan Ahrari

President Barack H. Obama’s announcement of his new strategy on December 1, 2009, conclusively makes the war in Afghanistan “Obama’s war of choice.” The President spoke from one of the hallowed symbols of America’s military power–the United States Military Academy at West Point. Gone is the rhetoric of the wastefulness of Bush’s war of choice in Iraq, when candidate Obama was “speaking truth to power.”

Now, from the pinnacle of that power, he also talked of winning, eradicating al-Qaida and defeating the Taliban, and giving centrality to Pakistan in that endeavor–features that were common to his predecessor’s strategy entitled, “the global war on terrorism.” The irony of dealing with al-Qaida and the Taliban is that the essence of strategies presented by these two presidents is remarkably similar.

There is one important difference, however. By including a general outline of his exit strategy in his speech, Obama signaled, albeit unwittingly, to the Afghans that his country is not going to hang around in that neighborhood. They long suspected the United States of doing just that.

While the necessity of having an exit strategy may soothe Obama’s democratic base on the left, it only confirms the Afghan doubts about the earnestness of America’s staying power in their country. The Taliban-al-Qaida might have roundly applauded those lines from Obama’s speech.

President Obama’s chief problem in Afghanistan is that there is no winning in that country without permanently occupying it. And all the past occupiers were defeated in attempting to do so. Afghans are legendary in their abilities to unite to fight outsiders, but then turn against each other when they succeed in ousting the foreign occupiers to wage equally bloody battles. No wonder their country has the ominous moniker of “the graveyard of empires.”

His second problem is that there has not been a tradition of a strong central government in that country. So, creating one now is out of the question in the sense that it would take a long time for an occupying force to achieve that goal. Even the achievability of that goal is a highly dubious proposition. An alternative is to create a federal type of government, with strong provinces and a weak center. However, it is difficult to function with that type of arrangement, even in countries with a strong tradition of democracy, a high rate of literacy, and a powerful legacy of political compromise. Those traditions are totally alien to Afghanistan.

The third serious challenge for the Obama administration in Afghanistan is that Islam has a powerful presence there. In the post-Soviet Afghanistan, that Islamic presence became acutely political, with overarching features of Wahhabi Puritanism, militant Jihad, and suicide bombings. Even the old style Afghan politicians-and there are not too many of them left in that country–are befuddled about how to eliminate those characteristics that are so alien to their polity.

The United States has never shown even a slight evidence of having any capabilities of working with Islamist groups anywhere in the world, including in Iraq. George W. Bush was shocked to see the election of Islamists, when elections were held in Iraq in 2005. After that, the Iraqi quagmire left little hope for the United States to stay put and to develop a Western-style democracy. So, as a matter of last resort, it learned to live with Islamist democracy in Iraq, while hoping to extricate itself from that country in the next few years.

President Obama’s speech barely touched on the geopolitical intricacies of the Afghan war, which have made any realistic solution of that problem so elusive. He has decided to work closely with Pakistan, but has said nothing about the Indo-Pak rivalry, which is complicating that conflict. India has a huge supposedly diplomatic presence in Afghanistan, which Pakistan regards as a major challenge to its security. The United States not only has to reexamine that issue closely, but also must do everything to soothe Pakistani anxieties. Unless that happens, Pakistan is not likely to emerge as a serious partner of the U.S. war in Afghanistan.

Finally, President Obama has shown a lack of interest in nation-building in Afghanistan. Given the enormous expenditures that the United States is faced with in Iraq, and given his noble endeavors to come up with a national healthcare policy in the United States, one can fully understand his refusal to get involved in a mega-billion-dollar commitment of nation-building in Afghanistan. However, that is precisely what that country needs, once political stability starts to emerge there.

Afghanistan will serve as a crucial laboratory for this President to learn how to conduct foreign policy in a highly complex place. It will also become a country where he is not likely to encounter victory. However, the fact that he has decided to commit a large number of forces and to tie the fate of his presidency to stabilization of that country speaks volumes about the audacity of his courage.