Eric Martin

by Eric Martin

Stephen Biddle's recent piece on Afghanistan seeks to probe the question asked in the title, Is It Worth It?  Biddle's answer is a tepid, tentative "yes."  In his words, our ongoing military campaign in Afghanistan represents "a war effort that is costly, risky and worth waging—but only barely so." 

As suggested, Biddle is certainly no optimist about our prospects for "victory" in Afghanistan – although, to his credit, he narrows down the criteria to two modest goals when compared to some of the other more grandiose designs associated with the mission since its inception.

The United States has two primary national interests in this conflict: that Afghanistan never again become a haven for terrorism against the United States, and that chaos in Afghanistan not destabilize its neighbors, especially Pakistan. Neither interest can be dismissed, but both have limits as casus belli.

Biddle quickly abandons the first rationale, however, describing it as the "weakest" reason to wage a war considering the fact that: (a) there is no guarantee that the Taliban would welcome al-Qaeda back if the US departs and the Taliban dominates; (b) we can disrupt so-called safe-havens by taking measures far short of all out war; and (c) there are more attractive safe havens available in several other settings, and waging war to shut them down as they crop up is unrealistic in the extreme (also: a key part of Osama Bin Laden's strategy of bleeding our resources by goading us into costly campaigns across the globe) – arguments that this site has been making with some frequency.

Which leaves us with the second rationale alone, about which Biddle has this to say:

Pakistani state collapse, moreover, is a danger over which the United States has only limited influence. We have uneven and historically fraught relations with the Pakistani military and intelligence services, and our ties with the civilian government of the moment can be no more efficacious than that government’s own sway over the country. The United States is too unpopular with the Pakistani public to have any meaningful prospect of deploying major ground forces there to assist the government in counterinsurgency. U.S. air strikes can harass insurgents and terrorists within Pakistan, but the inevitable collateral damage arouses harsh public opposition that could itself threaten the weak government’s stability. U.S. aid is easily (and routinely) diverted to purposes other than countering Islamist insurgents, such as the maintenance of military counterweights to India, graft and patronage, or even support for Islamist groups seen by Pakistani authorities as potential allies against India. U.S. assistance to Pakistan can—and should—be made conditional on progress in countering insurgents, but if these conditions are too harsh, Pakistan might reject the terms, thus removing our leverage in the process. Demanding conditions that the Pakistani government ultimately accepts but cannot reasonably fulfill only sets the stage for recrimination and misunderstanding.

If we cannot reliably influence Pakistan for the better, we should at least heed the Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm. With so little actual leverage, we cannot afford to make the problem any worse than it already is.

That is a very accurate, objective analysis of the situation: our influence in Pakistan is limited; we are extremely unpopular; the use of our military assets engenders resistance and radicalization; Pakistan is more pre-occupied with India; and the Pakistani government is not fully committed to combating those Taliban elements and radicals that it has used, and continues to use, as anti-Indian proxies in Afghanistan and elsewhere. 

Given those factors, one could easily see that, since our primary mission should be to "do no harm" in terms of destabilizing Pakistan, we should cease our US-centric (which runs counter to Pakistan's focus), heavy-handed, military interference in the region.  After all, our influence is limited, and due to our lack of popularity, and the radicalizing effects of our presence and military campaign, we aren't furthering our goals but undermining them.  Biddle, however, comes to the opposite conclusion:

If the Taliban regained control of the Afghan state, their ability to use the state’s resources to destabilize the secular government in Pakistan would increase the risk of state collapse there. Analysts have made much of the threat that Pakistani Taliban base camps pose to the stability of the government in Kabul, but the danger works both ways: Instability in Afghanistan also poses a serious threat to the secular civilian government in Pakistan. This is the single greatest U.S. interest in Afghanistan: to prevent it from aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems and magnifying the danger of an al-Qaeda nuclear-armed sanctuary there.

But Biddle overstates the quality of the threat posed by Afghan Talibs in terms of destabilizing the Pakistani state.  The Taliban have long been on the receiving end of Pakistani government largess.  They have been cultivated as a proxy and ally useful in terms of creating a strategic redoubt in case of conflict with India, and in further establishing an anti-Indian front in the region.  In fact, much of their tenacity and success in Afghanistan today (and previously) is attributable to the ongoing support of their Pakistani patrons. 

That is the nature of the Afghan Taliban: a local phenomenon benefiting from the generosity of foreign benefactors.  As such, the Afghan Taliban enjoys limited reach and power – especially if it were to actually turn on those same foreign benefactors.  Along those lines, what exactly are the Afghan "state's resources" that are supposed to threaten Pakistan (whose military and security forces are far more numerous, vastly better equipped, well trained, etc)?  The Afghan state (and various militant factions) have limited economic and military resources – and much of what they have comes from…Pakistan.

This tail is just not capable of wagging the dog, and the Pakistani government knows it.  That is why that government continues to support those same Afghan Taliban factions that we are, according to Biddle, supposed to be protecting Pakistan from.  Maybe they know something we don't?

Further, Biddle takes it as a given that our ongoing military operations in Afghanistan serve to stabilize the situation in Pakistan without even acknowledging – let alone discussing – the obvious counterpoint: what if our seven+ year military campaign in neighboring Afghanistan (targeting Pakistan's longtime ally), with US forces frequently striking Pakistani territory itself, was actually "aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems." 

What if, in asking the Pakistanis to cooperate in the neutralizing of their proxies and in the empowerment of a new regime friendly to India, we were "[d]emanding conditions that the Pakistani government ultimately accepts but cannot reasonably fulfill only set[ting] the stage for recrimination and misunderstanding."  Is there any chance that bending the Pakistani government to our agenda – which cuts against its own interests – could cause political problems for that same government?

Shouldn't we at least acknowledge the possibility that wars and occupations often have a radicalizing, destabilizing effect with myriad unintended consequences throughout the war zones?  The Pakistani government is certainly sounding that alarm:

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by Eric Martin

Kevin Drum read Matt Taibbi's recent stemwinder on Goldman Sachs and has some harsh criticism:

I finally got around to reading it the other day, and my verdict is simple: it was terrible.  Taibbi wrote a terrific article about AIG a couple of months ago, but the Goldman piece was just phoned in, a long series of blustery assertions with essentially nothing to back up any of them.  If he wants to claim that Goldman was the wizard behind the curtain of everything from the dotcom boom to last year's oil spike, he really needs to produce some evidence for it instead of just saying so.

Unfortunately, Kevin doesn't actually discuss which assertions from Taibbi are mere bluster, and which aren't (if Kevin is even allowing that some of Taibbi's piece is an accurate portrayal of events).  Nor does Kevin refute the evidence that is presented.  So we're left to wonder at the…well, the evidence for his strident assertion.

That's not to say that Taibbi's over-the-top writing style is devoid of bluster, and it is true that Taibbi is laying too much at the feet of Goldman Sachs alone, but in terms of choosing Goldman as a proxy for Wall Street investment banks (and their serial malfeasance), it's as good a choice as any. 

Further, in defense of Kevin, Rolling Stone hasn't made the full article available online, and the excerpts they've posted leave out many of the details and in-depth treatment.  If Kevin only read the excerpted version, then his criticism would be valid – there isn't enough meat on those bones.  Actually, it reads like a disjointed, non-sequitur, meandering piece of little substance (the full version is here). 

While I'm not qualified to assess the validity of all of Taibbi's claims, I can say that he got the Tech Stocks section pretty dead-on (and used evidence to back up his key claims).  I know because I worked on some of the legal cases that dealt with the various misdeeds of the investment banks during that era (I've written about them before), and in pursuit of that, I spent years poring over documents and other discovery.  Actually, my main critique ofTaibbi with respect to this portion of the article is that he left out (or didn't delve deeply into) one of the sordid chapters of that bubble-bust story: the circumvention of the barrier between the research side of the banks, and the underwriting side and the mischief that ensued.  More on that below, but first an extended excerpt from Taibbi: 

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by Eric Martin

George Friedman of Stratfor offers useful correctives to some of the narratives about the Iranian election that, due to the fact that they resonated with Western audiences, found fertile soil for propagation (that the conflict was one based on liberal reform vs. clerical rule, pro-Western/US factions vs. anti-Western/US factions, pro-domestic nuclear program vs. anti-domestic nuclear program, etc).  This was the case despite the fact that those Western-oriented storylines only described a small portion of the overall picture – indeed, they served to conceal the larger tectonic clashes underneath:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ran his re-election campaign against the old clerical elite, charging them with corruption, luxurious living and running the state for their own benefit rather than that of the people. He particularly targeted Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, an extremely senior leader, and his family. Indeed, during the demonstrations, Rafsanjani’s daughter and four other relatives were arrested, held and then released a day later.

Rafsanjani represents the class of clergy that came to power in 1979. He served as president from 1989-1997, but Ahmadinejad defeated him in 2005. Rafsanjani carries enormous clout within the system as head of the regime’s two most powerful institutions — the Expediency Council, which arbitrates between the Guardian Council and parliament, and the Assembly of Experts, whose powers include oversight of the supreme leader. Forbes has called him one of the wealthiest men in the world. Rafsanjani, in other words, remains at the heart of the post-1979 Iranian establishment.

Ahmadinejad expressly ran his recent presidential campaign against Rafsanjani, using the latter’s family’s vast wealth to discredit Rafsanjani along with many of the senior clerics who dominate the Iranian political scene. It was not the regime as such that he opposed, but the individuals who currently dominate it. Ahmadinejad wants to retain the regime, but he wants to repopulate the leadership councils with clerics who share his populist values and want to revive the ascetic foundations of the regime. The Iranian president constantly contrasts his own modest lifestyle with the opulence of the current religious leadership. […] 

When Ahmadinejad defeated Mir Hossein Mousavi on the night of the election, the clerical elite saw themselves in serious danger. The margin of victory Ahmadinejad claimed might have given him the political clout to challenge their position. Mousavi immediately claimed fraud, and Rafsanjani backed him up. Whatever the motives of those in the streets, the real action was a knife fight between Ahmadinejad and Rafsanjani. By the end of the week, Khamenei decided to end the situation. In essence, he tried to hold things together by ordering the demonstrations to halt while throwing a bone to Rafsanjani and Mousavi by extending a probe into the election irregularities and postponing a partial recount by five days. […]

The key to understanding the situation in Iran is realizing that the past weeks have seen not an uprising against the regime, but a struggle within the regime. Ahmadinejad is not part of the establishment, but rather has been struggling against it, accusing it of having betrayed the principles of the Islamic Revolution. The post-election unrest in Iran therefore was not a matter of a repressive regime suppressing liberals (as in Prague in 1989), but a struggle between two Islamist factions that are each committed to the regime, but opposed to each other.

The demonstrators certainly included Western-style liberalizing elements, but they also included adherents of senior clerics who wanted to block Ahmadinejad’s re-election. And while Ahmadinejad undoubtedly committed electoral fraud to bulk up his numbers, his ability to commit unlimited fraud was blocked, because very powerful people looking for a chance to bring him down were arrayed against him.

The situation is even more complex because it is not simply a fight between Ahmadinejad and the clerics, but also a fight among the clerical elite regarding perks and privileges — and Ahmadinejad is himself being used within this infighting. The Iranian president’s populism suits the interests of clerics who oppose Rafsanjani; Ahmadinejad is their battering ram. But as Ahmadinejad increases his power, he could turn on his patrons very quickly. In short, the political situation in Iran is extremely volatile, just not for the reason that the media portrayed.

The main take away is that those suggesting that the election-related power struggle is evidence that the Iranian regime is, in fact,"irrational," or that the crackdown on protesters  was so odious as to preclude negotiations, or that the parties that would have been willing to negotiate with the US government have been purged, should rethink those assumptions. 

There was nothing irrational about this power struggle. It was basic jockeying for political spoils pursued by rational actors, with a regime that sought to manage the process, and whose overriding goal was pure rationality: self-preservation.  The crackdown on protesters, while unquestionably brutal and horrific to behold, was, sadly, the type of illiberal action that many of our strongest allies in the region engage in regularly, and the violence (tragic as it was) pales in comparison to the actions of other regimes that we have seen fit to negotiate with in the past and present. 

Finally, the Mousavi/Rafsanjani faction was no more willing to cut a deal with the US government absent security guarantees and other concessions than the Ahmadinejad faction.  Regardless of which side came out on top, the contours of the deal remain the same – as do our interests in pursuing that deal, and Iran's interests in the same:

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by Eric Martin

George Packer responds to recent posts by Hilzoy and myself, although in actuality he directs his response to the comments section which he bemoans as being notable for the "considerable volume of sheer vituperation."  While he doesn't mention either Hilzoy or me by name, he does make a curious non-sequitur reference to our professions, philosophy professor and lawyer respectively [though I'm not an "international lawyer" for the record].  In fact, Packer, who in the opening paragraph complains about the tone of the Obsidian Wings commenters' criticisms of his work, punctuates a later argument with this snide allusion to Hilzoy: "You don’t have to be a philosophy professor to grasp these differences—it might even help not to be."

So it is that within the first couple of paragraphs Packer provides examples of what has become a persistent criticism leveled in his direction: that he is dismissive of those that disagree with him, refusing to treat arguments in good faith, instead opting for caricatured depictions and extreme opinions that are not representative but that are easier to take down. 

In the present example, rather than respond  directly to the core of the authors' arguments (he barely touches Hilzoy's criticism at all), he chooses to conflate comments with the posts themselves so that he can cherry pick to bolster his rebuttal.  Within that context, he seeks to preemptively delegitimize the comments as a whole by pointing to the invective found in some.  Finally, he attempts to pull rank in a familiar way by highlighting professional resumes: surely the analysis of a philosophy professor and lawyer would be, presumptively, of less merit than that of an actual journalist such as Packer (regardless of the actual substance of the parties' respective analysis or track records).  Unless there was another, relevant point to be made in mentioning our occupations?

Although I enjoyed The Assassins' Gate immensely (and much of his other writing), the book's biggest drawback is its characterization of the anti-war movement as fringe, knee-jerk in its pacifism and lacking in "understanding" of the region.  This was consistent with Packer's pre-war condemnation of the anti-war movement being part and parcel with a "doctrinaire left" that opposes any and all American foreign policy.  Or as Packer put it in another piece, the antiwar movement was "controlled by the furthest reaches of the American left" - a conclusion supported in that article by reference to slogans and signs at some anti-war rallies.  

A closer look reveals a different picture.  Apparently, the furthest reaches of the American left included the likes of Brent Scowcroft, Stephen Walt and a host of hardnosed rightwing realists.  Not to mention these people.  But their arguments weren't easy to dismiss, and so they were wished away.  So, too, were logistical arguments raised by such fringe leftists as General Eric Shinseki.  Ironically, Shinseki's argument about troop levels (ignored at the time) was later resurrected by the likes of Packer to explain that, while his intentions were noble, the Bush administration failed to execute the plan properly.  That maneuver has become known as The Incompetence Dodge.

Packer's initial rebuttal to my charge that his call for a "stronger American stand" and critique of Obama represented the wrong approach is that he wrote the piece that I challenged before Obama had made a subsequent statement that he considered adequate.  Fair enough, but then I would invoke the same chronological defense: my post criticizing Packer came before his later clarification.

But Packer, and other liberal hawks, should not be so defensive.  While I made a point of stressing in my original piece that I have no interest in excommunicating former Iraq war supporters such as Packer and Sullivan, nor do I endorse a blanket embargo on their works (far from it, I continue to read each with regularity), nevertheless, given Packer's role in providing a bi-partisan cover for the Iraq war (probably the biggest blunder in the history of American foreign policy) his ongoing foreign policy advocacy should receive heightened scrutiny to determine if that Iraq war support was an aberration or part of a dangerous pattern.

After all, support for the Iraq war along the philosophical lines evoked by Packer at the time was a symptom, rather than the disease itself. The actual pathology (at least for those with good intentions) is support for a hyper-interventionist strain of foreign policy that treats as a given that military intervention can be used effectively (and should) for humanitarian goals in a number of settings (from the Balkans to Iraq to Burma), and that legitimate goals could include anything from interdicting a genocide to democracy promotion.  Underlying this faith in the redemptive power of war is a presumption of American exceptionalism, and the esteem it supposedly enjoys in the eyes of the world, sufficient to soften the jagged edges of shrapnel and other ordnance.  They will greet us as liberators! 

The question that will loom over Packer and other Iraq-war supporters is to what extent they have rethought these basic assumptions such that they will not fall into the same trap again?  Is their advice worth heeding?  Being subject to this initial skepticism is a small price to pay considering the harsher treatment war opponents have received- marginalized, disregarded and treated as unserious while war supporters are still turned to for counsel by the larger media outlets.

In terms of reassuring readers, Packer does himself no favors by reacting in such a dismissive way to those that take issue with what seemed like a call for inserting America into an internal Iranian electoral dispute in a way that would likely hurt the prospects of those we would, ostensibly, be seeking to help.  In fact, after conceding that Obama did take the right approach by not being so vocal and partisan, he seems to revisit the argument anew casting doubt on those that suggested that too strong a role from Obama could prove detrimental:

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