If news reports are to be believed, Secretary of Defense Jim
Mattis is expected to announce that the Pentagon is planning to send an additional 4000 troops to Afghanistan in an attempt to defeat the Taliban and
curtail the threat of ISIS in the eastern border areas. I have a few problems with this idea, but the
biggest one is the report that President Donald Trump has all but ceded his
authority on this matter to General Mattis.
On the one hand, I am, frankly, more comfortable with the general’s
grasp of the issues at stake in Afghanistan, but on the other hand, I’m not a
terribly big fan of the president voluntarily giving up his position as
Commander-in-Chief of the United State military.
The biggest problem with an AWOL president on a matter such
as this is that there is no strictly military solution to this problem. Let me say it one more time for the people in
the back: The conflict in Afghanistan cannot and will not be solved using only
the military. And yet, by giving
virtually all of the decision making power to the secretary of defense, that’s
the only option being placed on the table right now. To be fair to the Trump administration
however, the mess they’ve inherited from their predecessors has left them with
few good options.
If I had to identify the single biggest obstacle to United
States success in dealing with Muslim-majority countries, it would be this: we
do not now nor have we ever had a grand strategy for dealing with such
countries. This is not a new problem—it
existed during the Cold War when the prevention of Soviet expansionism was a
greater strategic goal than worrying about the internal problems of a
country. However, the Global War on
Terror has fundamentally changed the way we fight wars, we interpret wars, and
we make policy for wars. Which is
precisely why 4000 more troops is likely to do very little to increase the
possibilities of success in Afghanistan.
Let me explain.
Political scientists and many military and foreign policy
analysts have long since abandoned a dualistic, win-lose paradigm for
evaluating military action. Unfortunately,
the public and the vast majority of policy makers have not. To them, you either win a war or you lose a
war. But that assumes that wars are
fought between nation-states and one eventually surrendered. The war on terror has turned that paradigm
upside down. The war in Afghanistan
began as a war to oust al-Qaeda from its hiding places and eventually expanded
to include the overthrow of the Taliban.
However, these are two entities that are essentially non-state actors,
even if the Taliban was the de facto ruler of Afghanistan. Neither was truly representative of the will
of the people of Afghanistan as a whole, and neither was recognized as the
“true” representative of the country and its interests. When wars are fought against non-state
actors, “victory” will likely not equate to an unconditional surrender.
Since Augustine, Christian ethicists have been contemplating
what war ought to look like when fought justly.
Aquinas added immensely to our knowledge of Just War Theory, and then
the threat of nuclear annihilation brought about a new spate of just war
theorists, including the inimitable Paul Ramsey began to talk about the
morality of weapons of mass destruction.
However, to this point, the foci of Just War Theory had been jus ad bellum (the conditions for going
to war justly) and jus in bello (how
to wage war justly). Over the past
decade and a half, a new facet to Just War Theory has emerged: jus post bellum (how to end a war
justly). One of the leaders in formulating
jus post bellum has been Brian Orend,
a philosophy professor in Canada. Orend
argues that there ought to be a new Geneva Convention centered around the post bellum principles with one
principle objective: the creation of a minimally just society, one that is
peaceful and non-aggressive, run by a legitimate government (locally and internationally),
and vindicates the human rights of its people.1
By that standard, the international community has failed
Afghanistan (and Iraq, frankly) terribly and continuously for over 15 years
now. If “victory” is a minimally just
regime that is self-sustaining and no longer requires international
intervention, we are nowhere near “victory” in Afghanistan, and 4000 extra US
troops will do nothing to move us closer to that goal. This is
the central problem with handing over this decision to Gen. Mattis. This is not a military problem. Sure, it has a military component, but it
also includes important political, economic, educational, and agricultural (hello,
poppy fields) issues that must also be dealt with in order to ensure the
minimally just regime that Afghanistan so deserves. This is not simply a Trump administration
problem. After all, whatever the man’s
faults, he’s just inherited the mess that his predecessor inherited from his
predecessor. That said, throwing troops
at Afghanistan will not make things better.
In fact, it could make them worse.
Occupying troops are often the object of scorn in the countries they
occupy. They enliven opposition, some of
it jihadist and nihilistic in the case of Afghanistan. It’s possible that more troops will only
exacerbate existing problems.
Obviously, 15 years into this mess, it’s difficult to do
things “the right way” because we’re 15 years too late. However, if the international community has
the political will to actually work out a solution for Afghanistan, it can be
done. While a just solution is more work
a decade and a half into an intervention, it is possible. The only question is whether there is the
will to make things better. I have my
doubts, particularly given the fragmentation of Western leadership and the
emergence of a recalcitrant Russia, but if enough of the parties involved
(NATO, the United Nations, various international NGOs) can get together and
discuss the situation, a resolution or, something closer to resolution than a
few thousand extra troops, might be possible.
*****
1. Brian Orend, “Justice After War: Toward a New
Geneva Convention,” in Ethics Beyond War’s
End, ed. Eric Patterson (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press,
2012), 187.
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