Yves here. While I agree with the headline conclusion, I suspect readers will take issue with some of the claims and assumptions in this article, such as:
Biden has been diminished by the Afghanistan exit. Nope. Despite the press banging on, most Americans didn’t care about Afghanistan or wanted the US out. Biden is damaged, but it’s due to the Covid spike and the ongoing effort to pretend that the Administration hasn’t flip-flopped repeatedly on policy
Kamala Harris may move to the fore. Even the qualified “may” is too generous. Harris has pretty clearly been relegated to a more marginal VP role than usual. What would elevate her is a diminution of Biden’s health
The assumption that America was ever serious about nation building. We don’t know how to do it. The pretense that we might is cover for grifting by NGOs and other racketeers
By Paul Rogers, professor in the department of peace studiesat Bradford University, northern England. He is openDemocracy’sinternational security adviser, who has been writing a weekly column on global security since 28 September 2001; he also writes a monthly briefing for the Oxford Research Group. His latest book is ‘Irregular War: ISIS and the New Threat from the Margins‘ (IB Tauris, 2016), which follows ‘Why We’re Losing the War on Terror‘ (Polity, 2007), and ‘Losing Control: Global Security in the 21st Century‘ (Pluto Press, 3rd edition, 2010). He is on Twitter at: @ProfPRogers Originally published at openDemocracy
The US’s disastrously chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan has ended. Whether Taliban rule itself will descend into chaos as financial and other crises unfold is far from clear, but the regime has close friends in the region, especially within Pakistan’s military. Neighbouring China sees many opportunities for gain. Both these countries depend on a perceived level of Taliban-run stability, but even more distant states are already elbowing their way in.
Within a day of the final US plane taking off, the Qatari military landed with a team of specialists tasked with setting up the airport as a commercial operation. The Russian, Chinese and Pakistani embassies in Kabul have remained operational throughout the changeover, while the UK and US already have embassies in Doha, making it easy to meet the Taliban at their existing diplomatic office there. Even the British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, flew to Qatar in haste to help things along, and possibly salvage his career.
Overshadowing all of this on the world stage is the weakened status of the US and President Joe Biden’s position. There is little doubt that his personal standing has been damaged, and we may now see Kamala Harris coming to the fore. Before the recent withdrawal chaos, the twenty-year war had become deeply unpopular, with the majority of Americans only too keen to see the troops return home. A Pew poll conducted in the last days of August showed that even as the tragedy in Kabul unfolded, support for the withdrawal among US adults remained at 54% to 42%.
Little Evidence of State-Building
In his speech from the White House this week, 24 hours after the last US soldier left Kabul, Biden accepted some responsibility for the mess – while also blaming others – but went on to make a much more general point: “This decision about Afghanistan is not just about Afghanistan. It’s about ending an era of major military operations to remake other countries.” His declaration that such operations, especially when they included state-building, were no longer among US policy priorities, is widely assumed to be a major change of direction
Since US security policy impinges on the rest of the world, this may have a considerable long-term impact, but it raises many more questions than it answers. For a start, to what extent has the US even been involved in state-building over the past two decades?
The Afghanistan operation was supposed to destroy al-Qaida and terminate the Taliban regime, but the Bush administration lost interest in Afghanistan within weeks of the initial success in November 2001, leaving it to the Europeans and others to rebuild the state as Washington moved on to the wider ‘axis of evil’, starting with Iraq. It did go back into Afghanistan within a few years as the Taliban made their comeback but the emphasis then was on counterinsurgency, with state-building very much secondary.
It’s true that with Iraq, at least, the initial focus was on building a new state intended to be a shining example of a pure neoliberal domain. Yet the transitional government known as the Coalition Provisional Authority was run from the Pentagon rather than the State Department and was aimed at transforming the Iraqi economy into an example for the region and beyond. Being run from the Pentagon took it far closer to the intentions of the Bush Administration and away from the professionals of the State Department who would ordinarily have been in charge.
Plans included wholesale privatisation of state assets, opening up oil and gas exploitation to foreign control, a minimum of financial regulation and a flat rate tax system, but it all went badly wrong, so much so that Barack Obama could fight his 2008 election campaign on getting out of the country as soon as possible.
The US had no involvement in any state-building during the 2011 war in Libya and it was left to the Europeans to make a hash of it. As for the 2014-2018 US-led air war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, that was straightforward counterinsurgency fought from the air rather than the ground, speeding up the global transition to remote warfare.
That brings us to the wider record of recent years. What Biden proposes is not new but a continuation of Obama’s policy of getting out of Iraq and, in his second term, cutting back radically on troops in Afghanistan after his initial military onslaught in 2010 failed to force the Taliban to negotiate.
Nor does it mean a drawdown in US military operations overseas, but rather two changes in posture. One is to continue Obama’s ‘bring on the drones’ approach that reached its height during the 2014-2018 battle, when ISIS lost more than 50,000 of its supporters in the intense air war, while the few US losses were due to accidents, rather than combat.
This is evident across the world, including Mali, Somalia, Iraq, Syria and of course, Afghanistan, where last week’s anti-ISIS-K attack involved an armed drone. Overall, we have firmly entered the age of remote warfare, with very few boots on the ground and instead, reliance on armed drones, strike aircraft, special forces, private military corporations and local militias.
The second change lies in the new military budget for the fiscal year 2022 (FY2022) that starts next month. Any drawdown from fighting wars overseas should surely mean lower military spending but Biden has sought a budget of $715bn, which is massive by any stretch of the imagination and close to the highest US military budget during the Cold War. (The UK’s is less than a tenth of that). Moreover, Congress wants to increase that by $25bn to a revised figure of $740bn.
Pork-Barrel Politics Dominates
The US Senate had already passed this higher figure and the House of Representatives followed suit after the House Armed Services Committee held a one-day session this week. As Defense News reported on Thursday: “The 14 Democrats who voted with Republicans on the measure included representative Elaine Luria, who represents a shipbuilding-heavy district in Virginia. She hailed the funding boost’s inclusion of public and private shipyards: ‘The president’s defence budget fails to adequately address the rising threats of China, Iran and Russia and I will not hesitate to break with my party if it’s in the best interest of our national security and the local economy of Hampton Roads.’”
Even if Biden wanted to scale back military spending, he would have a devil of a job to do so. Indeed, the power of the military-industrial complex, and especially the role of pork-barrel politics, where government spending is appropriated for localised projects, makes it close to impossible. The talk in Washington may be about facing up to the Chinese, but the FY2022 budget has plenty of funding for counter-terror operations too. And so well it might.
As my recent column pointed out, the challenge of extremist Islamism has not in any way diminished. Movements are active right across the Sahel, from Mauritania to Chad, as well as elsewhere in Africa – Mozambique, the DRC and Somalia. More are active in Yemen, while ISIS retains paramilitaries in Syria and Iraq, and there is radical Islamist activity in Pakistan, India, southern Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as both al-Qaida and ISIS in Afghanistan.
Added to that, the COVID-19 pandemic is still expanding in the Global South and worldwide vaccination is highly unlikely to be achieved before mid-2023. The impact is increased marginalisation around the world and all the simmering resentment that comes with that.
This marginalisation is just the ticket to recruit youths, especially men, to extreme movements – and climate breakdown will increase marginalisation even more if it is not prevented.
In the world as it is now, any talk of the US under Biden retreating from a global military role is nonsense. As the then head of the CIA, James Woolsey, said in 1993 at the end of the Cold War, although the US won, it had entered a jungle filled with a bewildering variety of poisonous snakes. As long as the US and other military powers consider the use of force to be their first port of call, little will change.
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Let’s ask the Key Question:
What benefit does the US bring to a country, apart form transitory dollars?
I don’t think the so called Deep State or Blob or Establishment has truly accepted that the US is now a power that is in rapid decline and that it has lost a lot of international respect.
There is the tendency to only blame Trump because he was an anti-Establishment candidate. Notably, as Glenn Greenwald has noted, many in this Deep State try to rehabilitate George W. Bush, including many liberal Democrats, when in fact he had an even worse foreign policy than any other president.
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/17/with-new-d-c-policy-group-dems-continue-to-rehabilitate-and-unify-with-bush-era-neocons/
This was never a war that was being waged for the benefit of the Afghan people, despite the constant claims about what the Taliban will do to women. This was always about extending American hegemony and along the way, making the military industrial complex rich.
Many of these problems were self inflicted. The casualties from civilians from drone strikes and the like got so severe that large segments of the Afghan people began to see the Taliban as the lesser evil.
As far as keeping the empire, this will only accelerate the long term decline of the US. These wars are incredibly expensive and will leave the US as a whole poorer. In many ways, the resemblance to the decline of other Imperial Powers is extremely striking.
Like so many other empires, the greed of the elites is responsible for this terminal decline.
The Blob has their rice bowls to protect. Except the Western Empire is now frozen out of Central Eurasia. Europe may find out that NATO isn’t worth the problems it causes. The current ruling directive is freedom of movement of capital, people, goods and services. This must change. End the use of the military to extort money and resources. Cooperate with other nations to fight piracy. Build strong borders. With planning North Americans can live within its resource limits.
At home, it was the DC Metro police that saved the US Capitol. The National Guard stayed put in place. The US ruling class needs to refocus if they want to stay around much longer. Not that they will.
First they have rebuild inner lines of communication within North America by restoring public health, education and transportation. Eradicate coronavirus. Cut methane and CO2 release. Demonetarize cryptocurrency and end offshoring. Restore Jimmy Carter income tax rate at 70%. Restore the draft for all, and train young Americans to work and send them out to all regions of the USA to fight climate change, rebuild infrastructure and as a militia to prevent outsider invasions.
A Navy is still required to defend North America’s coasts and keep the sea lanes open. The lily pad bases in Africa staffed with special operators can disappear without a trace and will not be noticed. Like the 1930s, a small professional Army that can quickly expand is all that is needed to defend the Americas.
‘I suspect readers will take issue with some of the claims and assumptions in this article’
You can say that again. Where to start? I’ll just give a few examples where I disagree.
‘Within a day of the final US plane taking off, the Qatari military landed with a team of specialists tasked with setting up the airport as a commercial operation.’ Well, yeah. Before the US military pulled out of Kabul, they took care to destroy the equipment for Kabul’s airport such as smashing the radars, cutting electrical cables and whatever else they could to shut down that airport. The Afghans were basically left with a guy at the end of the runway waving two ping-pong paddles to wave planes in.
‘It’s true that with Iraq, at least, the initial focus was on building a new state intended to be a shining example of a pure neoliberal domain.’ Got this right. A coupla months before the invasion there was a major conference in America with all the corporations turning up to plan how they would take over the Iraqi economy. The executive from 7-11 boasted that one well-stocked 7-11 store would be able to put out of business at least thirty local stores. I wonder how he knew that? As it turned out, no American executive could go to Arab street without getting his head blown off so all those plans for dominance evaporated – as well as all those planned profits.
‘Being run from the Pentagon took it far closer to the intentions of the Bush Administration and away from the professionals of the State Department who would ordinarily have been in charge.’ In a State Department run by Condoleezza Rice? Seriously? After it was found that Iraq had no WMDs in spite of all her claims, she became damaged goods and the pentagon pushed her out of the way with ease.
‘One is to continue Obama’s ‘bring on the drones’ approach that reached its height during the 2014-2018 battle, when ISIS lost more than 50,000 of its supporters in the intense air war.’ This is just being deliberately disingenuous here. If ISIS lost more than 50,000 of its supporters, I think that you would find that the names of the pilots responsible started with Ivan and Dimitriy.
‘This is evident across the world, including Mali, Somalia, Iraq, Syria and of course, Afghanistan, where last week’s anti-ISIS-K attack involved an armed drone.’ That must be the one where the US was actually unsure just what they were attacking. The operators of an MQ-9 saw guys loading covered packages into the back o a vehicle and said ‘Ahah! This must be a suicide bomber.’-
https://news.antiwar.com/2021/09/06/military-analysis-of-kabul-drone-strike-reveals-us-was-unsure-about-target/
‘while ISIS retains paramilitaries in Syria and Iraq, and there is radical Islamist activity in Pakistan, India, southern Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as both al-Qaida and ISIS in Afghanistan.’ I don’t know the situation with a lot of those places but I am damned sure that those ISIS operators in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are actually supported by a certain organization based out of Langley.
All quite right. My red flag went up where the author said that “The US had no involvement in any state-building during the 2011 war in Libya.”
Translated from Orwellian doublethink into English, he means state-destruction. Is his foundation still funded by Soros?
Here’s another jewel, ‘As for the 2014-2018 US-led air war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, that was straightforward counterinsurgency fought from the air rather than the ground…’ The fellow must be a Political Scientist.
The guy who wrote this blog post sits comfortably in an armchair in England and writes this BS. Maybe he should join the hundreds of NFL analyst who do Monday morning Quarterbacking. At least then he’ll have films of the teams playing that he could watch and learn the names of the players.
“..I am damned sure that those ISIS operators in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan are actually supported by a certain organization based out of Langley.”
Right on,n lets not forget al-Qaida,the Taliban,the Contras ,the Mafia et al. The war on terror will only end when we wall in Langley n cut all the cables to the outside.
The major US peoples complaint about Afghanistan was the first few days of the withdrawal. That did hurt Biden. If it had not been as chaotic, few Americans would have noticed.
“We may now see Kamala Harris coming to the fore”
The author’s credibility just took a dip.
I just chalk that up to him being from the UK and misunderstanding the US political system. Such confusion is common, easy to understand, and goes both ways across the pond; though I have a basic understanding of the parliamentary system, I am frequently flummoxed by the nitty-gritty mechanics of British politics.
Dick Cheney was the most powerful and dangerous executive in American history, even more so than the president under whom he putatively served. Outside observers might assume his power flowed from the power of the vice presidential office. But in Cheney’s case the power of the vice presidency flowed from his own personal power. It just wouldn’t be obvious to someone on the outside looking only at political structures.
We were warned by Ike about the danger from the Military Industrial Complex. We ignored him and now we are paying the price. It will eventually bankrupt our country. Probably relatively soon.
It reminds me of the conclusion arrived at by the scientist Freeman Dyson when as a youngster he was part of Bomber Command. His conclusion was that it was a machine with a constant forward momentum which would never stop until the war ended, which it did so as there was no further need. Then Eisenhower warned about the MIC & it all became about external cold war threats, with lots of people who could have all been named Milo realising that starting wars is extremely beneficial to some pockets.
Then there is the neo-Cons, the Wurmser Plan, the need for bad guy distraction, hawkish top brass of which there appear to be a few in the UK military who need their big buddy to pick a fight so that they can get a piece of the action, despite the forces available having been consistently cut to the bone by the Pols.
Trillions spent to supposedly protect Americans & the free world, cash that has been largely absent unless your personage is that of a corporation during an event that is actually killing lots of Americans.
When senior US Military officials bragged about disobeying Trump’s order to withdraw from Syria “We played a shell Game” on TV the pretense that the US Military is under civilian control became obviously untrue to anyone paying attention.
The senior ranks of the US Military is composed of politicians in uniform, men and women who paid attention to the career counselors ( There are thousands of them) in their respective branches and who did not spend too much time with the troops or in combat..
It’s not a joke, I have spoken to retired military who were advised that they had no chance of advancement because they had “Too much time with the troops and don’t know how the Army really works”..
We also have politicians in judges robes, in the CIA, NSA and the FBI. The ones we think are our representatives in Washington do their bidding through corporations that lubricate the process with mucho dinero.
This is absolutely correct. My relatives have their own CIA agent,i mean representative, in Elissa? Slotkin who was a Cia agent in Iraq so she’s 2x as perfect as a MIC i mean Michigan representative. What demonstrates imo a real crisis in this country is her views are actually “superior”* to the RepubliCons running against her.
*not that its the tiniest bit difficult,they’re ALL Trumpistas/pod people.
I’m having an exchange with a friend online about this article:
What Comes After the War on Terrorism? War on China?
… penned of course by The Moustache of Understanding himself, Thomas Friedman.
Not sure if the article is Links/WaterCooler worthy, but in my discussion with my friend, I offered the following [edited for brevity]:
“America’s ruling class has decided that the primary thrust for the nation’s success lies in wars for profit. Two components to it:
– Firstly, the securing of foreign resources for expropriation by American capitalists and USD denominated foreign debt as an ancillary means of control. See Bolivia, Argentina et al.
– Secondly, military spending as a sunken cost for America’s existence – now approaching 60% of the country’s fiscal budget.”
The assumption that there was ever any desire to “nation build” in Afghanistan is utter fantasy and fallacy.
“Too much time with the troops and don’t know how the Army really works”..
Hmmm “Too much time with the troops and don’t know how the Praetorian Guard really works”..
I wonder if the US version of Caesar (Possibly a committee, the Joint Chiefs, or the MIC ) will cross the US Version of the Rubicon..Or has it already in the form of the MIC and leverage behind the scenes in Congress?
Or a version of “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark …“
U missed it-it occurred on September 11th 2001. There’s even a book called”Crossing the Rubicon” that describes some of it.
Not any more. The ORG folded in 2020.