At the turn of the 20th century, an army of half a million Tommies imposed Britain’s will on the Boers, yet this nominal victory served chiefly to accelerate the downward spiral of British power. Foolishly attempting to recover its imperial holdings in Indochina after the second world war, France succeeded only in showing how weak it had become. In 1979, the seemingly mighty Red Army marched to folly in Afghanistan; within a decade the Soviet Empire disintegrated.
Now comes the United States, seemingly intent on reprising the Russian experience, with Barack Obama — ironically, unexpectedly, perhaps even against his better judgment — serving as chief enabler. Once again, an inability to discriminate compounds and exacerbates the challenges of a nation in decline.
A mere decade ago, almost no one saw this coming. America’s claim to global mastery appeared unassailable. The smart talk was all about the ‘sole superpower’ lighting the way toward ‘the end of history’. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush acted as if America knew no bounds. For the most part, Clinton got away with this conceit. Bush was not so lucky. His eight years in office exposed hitherto concealed American vulnerabilities, both military and economic. Meanwhile, Bush and his team demonstrated an appalling inability either to anticipate what was coming or to respond effectively once problems appeared.
Whereas Bush sought to eliminate terrorism by pursuing his ‘freedom agenda’ (liberty imposed at the point of a bayonet), Obama has demonstrated an inclination to consult, engage in give-and-take, and make room for issues to which Bush gave short shrift. Yet for all these differences, there is one matter in which Obama stubbornly cleaves to the course set by his predecessor. Step by inexorable step he has taken the United States (its allies trailing reluctantly behind) ever more deeply into the vortex of Afghanistan. Neoconservatives and hawkish Americans of whatever stripe have little if any reason to complain: in escalating and prolonging the conflict there, Obama has in effect resuscitated the ‘global war on terror’ that was on life support by the time President Bush left office.
As a consequence, the normally risk-averse Obama has, in effect, placed his entire presidency (and perhaps his country’s future) in hock. Confronting genuinely important problems — restoring economic stability, addressing contentious security issues ranging from the rise of China to the Iranian nuclear programme, not to mention the Gulf oil spill — Obama has in effect bet the house on America’s ability to determine the fate of a quasi-nation possessing marginal significance to the West. Lending this tale an added aura of tragedy is the sense that Obama understands the fix that he’s in. The Most Powerful Man in the World finds himself a prisoner of events he cannot control. Difficult circumstances, bad luck, the imperatives of electoral politics, and wilful (or incompetent) subordinates have all combined to manoeuvre him into a corner where the available choices are increasingly narrow and uniformly unattractive.
Yet Obama cannot evade personal responsibility for the bind in which he finds himself. To insulate himself from the charge of being a national security wimp, candidate Obama had declared Afghanistan the ‘necessary’ war, contrasting it with the war in Iraq that he opposed.
Few of those who voted Obama into the White House cared all that much about his fulfilling this particular campaign pledge. But for whatever reason, he insisted on doing so. Soon after taking office, Obama ordered a substantial increment of reinforcements to Afghanistan. He then sacked the field commander inherited from Bush, appointing General Stanley McChrystal as a replacement — all of this signalling his administration’s commitment to reinvigorating the war effort.
Once installed in Kabul, McChrystal wasted little time in concluding that only a comprehensive and generously resourced counterinsurgency campaign strategy could possibly save the day. Given McChrystal’s background and that of General David Petraeus, next up the military chain as commander of US Central Command, this was an entirely predictable outcome. When McChrystal’s proposed strategy ended up on the front pages of the Washington Post — well before the administration had completed its own assessment — it hijacked the policy debate. Unwilling to reject the strategy devised by his hand-picked commander, the President effectively rubber-stamped an approach that his generals had already decided upon. Obama’s declared intention to begin withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan beginning in July 2011 served as a fig leaf, allowing the White House to maintain the pretence that it was calling the shots when in fact generals in the field had got the better of their commander-in-chief.
Making matters worse was the fact that the strategy conjured up by the generals turned out to be a flop. While reinforcements trickled in during the first half of 2010, McChrystal set out to demonstrate the feasibility of armed nation-building in Afghanistan, with the town of Marja the chosen test site. The idea was to ‘secure the population’ by introducing substantial Nato and Afghan troops, and then to introduce what McChrystal himself described as ‘government in a box’. Afghan hearts and minds would be won. The effort misfired badly, however, all but scuttling what was intended to be a larger and more heavily publicised offensive in Kandahar. Meanwhile, the constant banging of heads between Washington and the Afghan President Hamid Karzai raised the question of whether a viable partner existed in Kabul.
Then McChrystal himself committed hara-kiri, with a journalist for Rolling Stone holding the knife. Given Team McChrystal’s contempt for senior civilian officials up to and including the president, the general had to go. By appointing Petraeus in his place, however, Obama becomes beholden to the most celebrated soldier of his generation. Petraeus wields more clout in Washington than any general in recent memory and knows how to use it. In essence, Obama fired ‘MacArthur’, but to minimise any backlash on the home front replaced him with ‘Eisenhower’. The question of who really is in charge remains murky.
Petraeus’s fans — who are mostly Obama’s political enemies — fully expect their hero to pull a rabbit out of his hat, and were delighted by his tough talk at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday. Afghanistan will become Iraq all over again. Yet conditions differ and time is limited. Three deadlines loom. First, there is the interim strategic review that the White House has promised in December. Then comes the troop withdrawal date in July — a deadline that Obama himself has repeatedly reaffirmed. (What exactly it means to ‘begin’ withdrawing remains hotly contested, however.) The big one is the presidential election of 2012. One thing is clear: Obama is just about out of running room. Regardless of how events on the battlefield may unfold, he cannot afford to fire Petraeus, at least not without touching off a political firestorm. Besides, playing another round of musical chairs at Nato headquarters in Kabul would sow confusion and consternation in the ranks. Yet the President cannot afford to run for re-election wearing a still-ongoing conflict — nine years old and counting — as a badge of honour. If Americans had wanted a ‘war president’, they would have chosen McCain.
So for Obama himself, the stakes could hardly be higher. If he fails to make substantial progress toward extricating the United States from Afghanistan during his first term, there won’t be a second. Once viewed as akin to a messiah, Obama will find himself ranked alongside the likes of Herbert Hoover and Jimmy Carter as a well-intentioned, even admirable, failure. His big decision will be to choose a retirement home.
Andrew J. Bacevich’s new book is Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.