Holbrooke heightens concern over Afghanistan

US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke’s breezy suggestion that we will know what success in Afghanistan is “when we see it” caused something of a stir in the blogsopshere today. The remarks were made at a Centre for American Progress (CFAP) event in Washington yesterday in response to a question from the floor. The event was conceived as an opportunity for Ambassador Holbrooke and his Interagency Team to settle the nerves of a sceptical foreign policy community by laying out the principles underlying their new ‘whole of government’ approach. In view of what has unfolded, the effort now looks to have been largely counterproductive.

To be fair to Holbrooke, America was already turning sour on the mission in Afghanistan. The debate has become increasingly fractious over the last month, with the most persistent questions centring upon the need for an exit strategy. And that mood was widely reflected in the questions from the floor. Rather than allay people’s fears, however, his comments appear to have compounded them, with commentators seizing on the remark as further evidence that the policy is in trouble. Mark Lynch, Robert and Renée Belfer Professor of International Relations at Harvard University Stephen M. Walt and Katherine Tiedemann over at foreignpolicy.com and Ian Leslie at the excellent Marbury blog between them pretty much capture the mood, each suggesting that the mission lacks strategic focus and warning of the danger of mission creep, with Walt and Lynch in particular striking an increasingly sceptical note.

Alongside this flurry of criticism, we find the more considered objections of committed sceptics Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal and Richard North at Defence of the Realm. I am a great admirer of Richard North. He does important work documenting equipment shortages and failures in procurement policy. Where I have problems is when he tries to draw wider strategic conclusions from it. He has amassed a considerable body of evidence pointing to a devastating catalogue of failure and mismanagement at the heart of the British mission in Iraq and his work is vital reading for that reason alone. It does not, however, pose any serious strategic questions. Fundamentally, his observations are confined to the tactical level and part of the normal ‘lessons learned’ post-conflict debate. Nothing in his work supports his wider argument that we have suffered a strategic defeat in Iraq, or that we are likely to in Afghanistan. I simply do not see evidence for that kind of assessment. Similarly Michael Cohen: I consider his never less than excellent analysis essential reading and yet nothing in his work really addresses the core strategic dilemmas.

To get a grip on these we need to turn back to the arguments of Stephen Walt. Walt comes out of the grand tradition of American realism. Centred around the work of theorists such as Morgenthau, Niebuhr and Waltz - although more latterly John Mearsheimer - the tradition of American realism is a venerable one, of long standing. It is supported by a voluminous literature, backed up by a sophisticated theoretical edifice and powered by passionate advocacy, and yet it is a fundamentally flawed doctrine. It regards as axiomatic the idea that the internal characteristics of states do not affect their outward behaviour. From this perspective, behaviour is structurally determined and so it is not to the internal make up of states that policymakers should look when formulating strategy, but rather to structural factors such as the balance of power.

As a major premise, this was always dubious. In the first decade of the 21st century, it is positively reckless. Anywhere we look in what we might call the ‘Greater Middle East’ - that great arc of instability stretching from the Horn of Africa up to the Central Asian Muslim Republics (Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan) - we see the same pattern. Alongside a toxic mix of ethnic, tribal and confessional hatreds we find a horribly dysfunctional state system. Wherever we look, politics is played out against the backdrop of a colossal failure of governance. The threats in the region – be it the threat of balkanisation along tribal, ethnic and confessional lines, of gangsterism and warlordism, or the threat from supranational identities like revolutionary Islam and Arab nationalism – all of them emerge out of the millennial failure of the state. And no amount of elegant structural theorising is going to change that.

What does this mean for US grand strategy? Above all, it means that the old diplomacy is no longer enough. We need to go beyond power balancing. In the Middle East it means undercutting the appeal of regional identities like revolutionary Islam and secular Arab nationalism in favour of the nation state without unleashing forces like ethnic and tribal rivalries that threaten to outstrip the pace of reform and engulf it. It is a delicate balance to strike and a high-risk strategy. Of course, it assumes that Western policy is capable of that kind of nuance and means avoiding clumsy interventions like those undertaken in the past in places such as Suez and Iran. Does it mean turning the region into a "high GDP nirvana" and bringing "free wireless" to the entire world as Mark Lynch facetiously put it? No. There is no universal template that can be applied and even if there were, it would not look like that. The AfPak phase of the mission is scheduled to wind down when Afghanistan crosses the threshold into something approximating self-sustaining growth, when the government in Kabul is able to effectively police its own borders, and when movement across the Durand Line no longer poses a threat to the integrity of the Pakistani state.

The same principle applies throughout the Middle East. The current religious awakening is driven in large part by dissatisfaction with the corruption and impotence of the secular authorities and so again, the optimal course is to weaken the grip of confessional identities, bring some measure of representative government to the region, and reinforce the state system. The principle is being applied in a very direct way in Iraq, of course, the intervention there being a crucial test for the new diplomacy. If the new governance mechanisms do not deliver real benefits on the ground in terms of basic security and services, the population will not embrace them and so this is the real test of success, the real set of benchmarks. If commentators are looking to develop a set of metrics they should look to the civilian effort, rather than solely at the military side of the equation. They would be greatly helped in this endeavour if the top US diplomat in the region could manage to bring just a little more eloquance to his advocacy. "We'll know it when we see it" just isn't good enough.

Beyond ethics: putting the national interest back at the centre of foreign policy

Regular readers of this site will know that the way the argument for our continued engagement in Afghanistan is framed is something of an obsession of mine. The assumption that we are incapable of grasping strategic concepts except through the prism of ethics is one of the most frustrating aspects of the whole debate. So you can imagine my response when I read the latest offering from Bronwen Maddox in The Times this morning.

Chief Foreign Commentator of The Times is a position of considerable influence. Maddox has access to privileged information and an extensive network of contacts. Her position affords her considerable opportunity to shape the debate. It also carries with it a responsibility to ensure that readers are reliably informed about major aspects of policy. That is why this morning’s piece was so disappointing. Instead of setting out the main national interest arguments in support of the mission, she begins with a perfunctory nod to what she calls the 'new realism' before arguing that we should place women's rights at the centre of our approach.

We are given no reasons why. These are left unstated, as though the argument needs no further elaboration, as though the case is so self evident that no further proof is required. Instead, she makes a direct appeal to what she imagines to be our shared ethical intutions. The problem is that this kind of fleeting emotional attachment is no basis on which to build a long-range foreign policy. Emotional commitments of this sort are far too unstable. They dissipate over time and they are always vulnerable to competing claims on our affections and our attention. So we need a much more durable foundation.

The key is to develop an overarching concept of the national interest. Luckily, that is precisely what we have. Secretary of State for International Development Douglas Alexander delivered a speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace setting out the main features of the new approach just last week, this following Foreign Secretary David Miliband's recent speech (pdf) at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. Combined with recent announcements by Defense Secretary Bob Ainsworth, this amounts to a concerted effort by the government to sell the new policy.

Now, Bronwen Maddox is no foreign policy neophyte. She will have listened to the debate, absorbed the arguments and be fully aware of the strategic significance of the humanitarian and development effort. So why does she not articulate it? Discussion of the national security aspect of policy is entirely missing from her piece. She makes no national interest argument for women’s rights, no attempt to place the effort to educate girls in a wider strategic framework and no attempt to relate the humanitarian effort to higher strategic objectives. There is no acknowledgement of the connecting threads that link what happens to women and girls in Afghanistan to the British national interest, and no attempt to get beyond the moral argument.

Instead, we are treated to an extended discourse on the horrors of life in Afghanistan for women and girls. This is all admirable and worthy stuff, but we are essentially being invited to empathise, not intellectualise, and that is something I find astonishing. Not only does this kind of emotional discourse have an infantilising effect on the public - the assumption being that we are incapable of grasping complex strategic arguments - the failure to develop the argument beyond these basic moral categories is hopelessly counterproductive. At a time of heightened public concern, and considerable confusion about the purpose of the mission, it is important that the strongest possible case is made for our involvement there, and of all the arguments in support of the mission in Afghanistan, the humanitarian one is the weakest. There are a set of solid strategic arguments for our presence in Afghanistan, and they need to be laid out before the public with precision and focus. Maddox simply fails to do this and so one is left wondering just who this article is designed to convince.

It will certainly not carry any weight with foreign policy professionals. Policy professionals do not talk to each other in these terms. Though they acknowledge that there is a moral dimension to policy, for them morality is never the driver of policy. Only when the debate is opened up to the wider public do strategic arguments give way to moral ones. In part, this is an indicator of just how devalued the concept of the national interest has become. There is a real reticence on the part of elites to frame the argument in national interest terms, as though pursuing the national interest is somehow illegitimate. This must be overcome. We need to purge the debate of this sort of moralism, get beyond ethics and place the national interest back at the centre of foreign policy. We are urged always to recognise that other powers have legitimate interests and to consider these when formulating policy. The flipside of this argument, of course, is that the West too has legitimate interests and it is right and proper for it to pursue them. With that in mind, the appropriate response when justifing our presence in Afghanistan is to set out the national interest argument often, with conviction and without apology.

Finally, a strategy we can support

Robert Fox, Matthew Paris, Simon Jenkins, the Heresiarch - four writers in various states of despair about the prospects for our mission in Afghanistan. Simon Jenkins and Robert Fox are long time sceptics. Matthew Paris and the Heresiarch - along with a growing majority of the public, it seems - are more recent converts. This is worrying, because it suggests that those of us in favour of continued engagement in Afghanistan are losing the argument. Much of the new mood is bound up with the recent spike in casualties, but alongside it is a vein of criticism that addresses fundamental issues of strategy. If this is not dealt with, those numbers could very well harden.

The argument is that our effort there lacks strategic focus. This is odd because of all the criticisms one can make of this mission - and there are many - it seems to me that this is the one with least force. Only some years ago, at the outset of the mission, was it fair to say that our effort there suffered for the want of a coherent strategy. It has not really been true for some time, and so the right time to make the argument was then, not now. That we are beginning to question the logic and coherence of the overarching concept at the very moment the elements needed for a focused strategic effort are finally put in place is just one of the many ironies that swirl around this debate .


To see why this is true all we need to do is revisit the history. Although the basic template for state building operations was, by the time of the invasion in 2001/2, fully developed, it was never fully integrated into America’s strategic doctrine because of a desire on the part of the new administration to avoid what they saw as the ‘excesses’ of Clinton-style liberal internationalism. George W. Bush was especially critical of what he called the ‘open-ended deployments and unclear military missions’ of the Clinton era, and promised to be much more careful about sending US forces abroad. Crucially, he called for clear criteria surrounding the use of force, based upon ‘vital national interest’ rather than humanitarian objectives. And so although the UN, NATO/ISAF, and other assorted aid agencies signed up to what they thought was a nation building program, they very quickly found that the focus of the Americans had moved on. The effort in Afghanistan was denied the resources it needed either to stabilise the government in Kabul, or defeat the Taliban.

This left those on the ground in Afghanistan desperately grasping for arguments to justify their continued presence and keen to jump on any sign of success to build support for a faltering mission. That is why, at various times, and with varying degrees of conviction, very different arguments have been put forward to justify our presence there, from the growing numbers of girls now in school, to the amount of poppy crop destroyed. All of this history is well known, and yet, if the current crop of arguments are anything to go by, it appears to have been all but forgotten. The basic truth about the mission in Afghanistan is that a plan was in place from the start. What was missing was not a focused strategic concept, but rather the resources to implement it. The politicians cannot make this argument, of course, because it calls into question their competence to run the war. This is why the publication of the new CSIS report by Anthony Cordesman is so timely, because it reminds us of this basic truth.

What was that concept? The immediate goal is, and has always been, to defeat what we now call the insurgency, or at the very least to confine it to the border region. The medium term goal is for the aid and development effort to build up the capacity of the state. Once the Afghan state crosses the threshold into self-sustaining growth and development the drawdown of Western forces will begin. All of this is in line with established doctrine and all of it quite clear. Quite why people are having trouble grasping it, I do not know. It is a classic state building exercise, and to suggest, as each of these writers does, that this is somehow merely the justification de la semaine, is unfair. Though you can argue that instead of being mutually reinforcing, different aspects of our approach have appeared at times to undermine each other, these are largely disagreements at the tactical level. At the level of strategy, the broad outlines of our approach were in place from the start and they have remained the same throughout.

Where the mission has changed, it has been in response to changed circumstances. But again, this is fully in line with established doctrine and so it is wrong to dismiss the new, enlarged strategic concept as somehow evidence of ‘mission creep’. Upon arriving in theatre, we were not fully clear about the nature of the threat. We were unsure. We groped around somewhat for exactly the right approach and the strategic concept was a little flabby. But this is to be expected. In the list of far away places of which we know little, Afghanistan was at the very top. Invasion was not a contingency we had planned for and there was no strategic concept for operations there. One had to be cobbled together, quickly, in the early autumn of 2001. But, as we have built up our intelligence, and fully assessed the nature of the threat, so our strategic thinking has evolved. The concept has been reworked, stripped of any excess and we are now operating according to a much more rigorous and focused doctrine. There is less talk about turning Afghanistan into a model democracy and more about building up basic institutions and infrastructure.

This new thinking has been accompanied by an intense diplomatic effort to convince the Pakistanis of the need to play their part. And it looks like that effort is beginning to pay off. On top of this, in a speech at NATO Headquarters in Brussels today, UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband announced a ‘civilian surge’ to back up the recent reinforcements of troops. And so the key thing now that we have finally arrived at fully developed strategic concept, now that efforts are being made to commit the necessary level of resources – both civilian and military - is to give the new concept time to work. That means acknowledging that we are embarked upon capacity building and development work of a sort that takes years. It means abandoning the simplified and simplifying narratives of the past. It means resisting the clamour from elements in the press and parliament for withdrawal. It means knuckling down for the long haul. It means acknowledging that this is a generational commitment. If we can achieve all of those things, there is still very real hope for this mission.

*UPDATE: Read this morning's DfID press release outlining details of the new £255m package of development support for Afghanistan here