Ideas and Commentary

by GIL BARNDOLLAR and DANIEL DAVIS

NATO member states claim their troops will remain in Afghanistan regardless of whether President Biden honors the U.S.-Taliban agreement to withdraw all U.S. troops by May 1.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby warned that unless the Taliban reduces violence, it is “hard to see a specific way forward” on fulfilling the deal’s stipulation for a full U.S. troop withdrawal. A new report from the Afghanistan Study Group, commissioned by Congress, also recommends postponing the U.S. withdrawal. These statements ignore a painful truth: NATO’s nearly 20-year effort in Afghanistan has proven that this war is unwinnable, at least at a cost the alliance is willing to pay. Continuing to fight is thus illogical, unwise, and immoral.

The U.S. military is the most powerful in the world. Yet, despite all of its drones, missiles, satellites, and special operators, it has proved unable to subdue a force of rural sneaker-clad insurgents in one of the poorest countries on earth. The two of us have a combined four combat deployments to Afghanistan since 2005. We have observed the Afghan war firsthand, at every level from theater headquarters down to infantry foot patrols. We have served when troop numbers and casualty levels were low and during the height of the 2010–2011 troop surge, when 150,000 U.S. and NATO troops were in Afghanistan. Through it all, no change in troop levels, tactics, or strategy has brought more than fleeting success. As much we wish to see the U.S. military succeed in Afghanistan, there are realities that render the U.S. effort futile.

The most fundamental challenge is that this war is primarily a civil war between several domestic Afghan factions and not a conventional fight between opposing armies. The U.S. military is very good at fighting identifiable uniformed opponents. It vanquished the Iraqi Army in 1991 and 2003, and it overthrew the Taliban regime at minimal cost. However, when the enemy is an insurgent, conventional U.S. military power is far less effective. America’s key military advantages are power projection, situational awareness via technology, and firepower. A grinding war among the people blunts all of these tools.

There are two basic routes to success in a counterinsurgency. The first is hyperviolent suppression, as Bashar Assad did in Syria and the Russians in Chechnya. As was said of the Romans, they “made a desert and called it peace.” The second is patient, methodical “population-centric counterinsurgency.” This is what NATO has claimed to be practicing in Afghanistan, drawing on (disputed) lessons from post-colonial campaigns in British Malaya, French Algeria, and elsewhere. The U.S., thankfully, has no stomach for the former course of action, and it lacks the patience, expertise, and will for the latter option. Put simply, victory over the Taliban is not in the cards.

The other critical factor is the battlefield situation in Afghanistan.

The Taliban have the wind at their backs. They control or contest more territory today than at any time since 2001. They continue to receive covert support from Pakistan. And both sides remain miles apart on even the items to be discussed, much less on finding solutions.

The Biden administration has a golden opportunity to conclude U.S. participation in the Afghan civil war. We are not delusional. We recognize that the Doha agreement with the Taliban is unlikely to end Afghanistan’s misery. But it does provide a “decent interval” for U.S. withdrawal. After 20 years of sunk costs and missed opportunities, that is the least bad outcome for the United States. America’s only vital interest in Afghanistan is preventing it from becoming a haven for international terrorism. The Taliban has pledged that they will not allow this. If they renege on this promise, the U.S. can punish and deter them, with means ranging from standoff missile strikes to a full-fledged punitive expedition.

Remaining engaged in combat operations as now will result in more needless casualties, cost billions of dollars, and will distract decision-makers from far more important threats to American security and prosperity. Let’s stick to the May 1 timetable.

Gil Barndollar is a senior fellow at Defense Priorities and served as an infantry officer in the United States Marine Corps, deploying to Afghanistan twice. Daniel L. Davis is a senior fellow for Defense Priorities and a former Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army who retired in 2015 after 21 years, including four combat deployments.

Article originally published at the Washington Examiner.

By William S. Smith • February 2, 2021

The politicization of many retired military officers is a sign that the healthy American tradition of a professional military officer corps is breaking down. For decades, the elite members of the officer corps generally avoided politics unless they were voicing their opinion on military matters as part of the normal political process of deciding national security policy. In recent years, however, retired senior officers have seen fit to voice their opinions on a host of partisan and divisive issues, placing civilian-military relations into uncharted waters.

The U.S. Constitution contains many provisions that have stood the test of time. There seems little doubt, for example, that the separation of powers doctrine, when properly enforced, is one of the bulwarks of liberty. One aspect of the Constitution, however, that achieved obsolescence in the nineteenth century were its provisions on civilian-military relations. As Samuel Huntington has pointed out, the Framers of the American Constitution did not envision the need for strong constitutional provisions for “civilian control of the military” because the military was not a professional force but a militia, composed entirely of civilians. When the nation needed to conduct military actions, prominent civilians would be installed as officers, and the militia would be called up from the civilian population. Early in the life of the Republic, it would not have been considered odd if the president, as Commander-in-Chief, were to have accepted military command of a unit in battle. The military were civilians, so there was no need to clarify a chain of command.

The result of this constitutional omission is that, while the president is Commander-in-Chief and the Congress can structure and fund the armed forces, there is no clear provision establishing “civilian control” of the military, even though both Article I and Article II imply some congressional and executive oversight of the military. This is because the Framers of the Constitution did not envision the rise of a highly professional military and a huge standing army.

However, as the national security apparatus grew, the United States did develop a salutary political tradition that the professional military, especially the elite officer corps, would eschew partisan politics and stay safely in their lane by providing honest advice to the civilian leadership on how to protect the nation. This tradition was a healthy one because, historically, from Imperial Roman to Napoleon, when professional military officers become politically active, republics tend not to survive.

We should concede that senior military officers must, to some degree, become involved in politics as they report to both the president and the Congress, two separate branches of government that do not always agree on national security issues. Therefore, the officer corps must make political judgments about securing the best policies in a government that may be divided. So, for example, if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is testifying in front of Congress, how frank should he be in voicing his concerns about a provision in the president’s proposed defense budget request? This is a political judgment that must be exercised by the military.

Yet, the best American military leaders seem to have met this challenge by avoiding any hint of partisanship and giving all questioners their frank and honest judgments on national security issues. This healthy political tradition was embodied best in General George C. Marshall who, when asked his political affiliation, often replied that his father was a Democrat, his mother was a Republican, and “I am an Episcopalian.”

Wait a minute, you say, have not former generals run for the Presidency and, by definition, become involved in partisan politics? This is undoubtedly true, but there is a difference between war heroes, such as Eisenhower or Grant, who were drafted to run for office by acclamation because of their success on the battlefield versus military officers and former officers who scheme in favor or against politicians in the same way political operatives would. Moreover, in the past, many former officers were drawn into politics, such as Douglas MacArthur and George McClellan, because they had specific criticisms of the president’s military policies.

America is now developing a politicized officer corps, one that is becoming involved in partisan politics in the way that rank political operatives would. The concern about politicized military elites has come from both the left and the right. Jim Golby, a former defense official and advisor to then-Vice President Biden, wrote a thoughtful piece in Foreign Policy expressing concern about previous senior military leaders who had become involved in partisan politics, such as: former Joint Chiefs Chairman William Crowe who endorsed Bill Clinton’s election; former Marine General John Allen who criticized Donald Trump during a speech at the Democratic Convention; and, former General Michael Flynn who led chants of “lock her up” against Hillary Clinton. What prompted Golby’s concern was Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley’s appearance at a Trump photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in which Trump seemed to be taking a political victory lap against violent protestors who had occupied Lafayette Park the night before. (Milley has since apologized.)

Golby points out that it has become quite commonplace in American politics for former flag officers “to publicly criticize the President of the United States,” sometimes as “analysts” on cable news shows. Golby’s concerns cannot be characterized as mere anecdotes as one can cite retired Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli who organized a letter signed by 780 retired high-ranking officers, including 22 retired four-star generals and admirals, that criticized then-President Trump and endorsed Joe Biden.

On the right, pro-Trump conservatives have pointed to the egregious conduct of retired General Stanley McChrystal who not only publicly endorsed Biden on Morning Joe, but was paid to deploy an Artificial Intelligence technology, developed to target terrorists, that was used to blunt candidate Trump’s messaging. McChrystal even compared Trump supporters to Klansmen and Al Qaeda.

Some on the right point can even point to active-duty officers, such as Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who schemed with highly partisan advocates for Trump’s impeachment while he was serving on the president’s National Security Council staff. And, in a full-frontal political assault on Trump, in 2019, former Admiral William McCraven made the ludicrous assertion that Trump was a greater threat to America’s national security than terrorist groups; McCraven’s criticism can only be considered a partisan attack, not a serious statement of his national security policy concerns.

by WILLIAM S. SMITH

The Biden critique of the Trump foreign policy is twofold. The policy complaint is that an ‘America First’ foreign policy is a selfish foreign policy and ignores pressing global issues, such as climate change and women’s rights, that are threats to all humanity. The president is not the leader of only the United States, Biden insisted, but the leader of the whole world. The second complaint was about process, i.e. Trump did not consult closely with allies before pressing forward; he made erratic and unilateral decisions that harmed our alliances. Yet with Biden’s snap decision to terminate the Keystone XL pipeline project, Biden has sent a clear signal that ‘leading the world’ may be more important than ‘consulting with allies’.

From a policy perspective, revoking the permit for Keystone has many drawbacks, not least of which is the loss of 11,000 well-paying blue-collar jobs for Americans and Canadians. Given these layoffs, Biden’s famous argument in a recent Foreign Affairs article that the United States needed a ‘foreign policy for the middle class’ is tragically laughable. Killing the pipeline is of course not a national but a globalist priority. It makes America less energy independent and has obvious adverse foreign policy consequences for the US given recent Middle East wars (fought by America’s middle class).

Republican critics of the President will undoubtedly make these policy arguments, so there is no need to belabor them. What has gone unremarked about the decision, however, is the poor process: Biden unilaterally torpedoed the pipeline without so much as a phone call to our Canadian ally which views the pipeline as a very important joint US-Canadian initiative. Biden called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after the Keystone decision had been announced. Alberta premier Jason Kenney called the decision ‘an insult directed at the United States’s most important ally and trading partner’. Kenney was also dismayed that the US did not even consult with Canada before making such an important decision. Prime Minister Trudeau also expressed his ‘disappointment’ about the decision.

Of course, the mainstream media will fail to notice that, for all of Biden’s complaints about Trump’s lack of diplomacy, the new White House throttled arguably our best ally on the first day of his presidency with zero diplomatic consultation. Many will rationalize this as the need for a new administration to ‘hit the ground running’ and, they will assure us, diplomacy will take center stage when the administration finds its sea legs. After all, didn’t Biden promise to ‘elevate diplomacy to the United States’s principal tool of foreign policy’?

The Keystone decision is a window into the boastful philosophical assumptions of Biden’s foreign-policy views. There is therefore good reason to be skeptical about his commitment to diplomacy.

There is an inherent contradiction in the hubristic assertion that the United States is the world’s chief protector of universal values and global concerns, and the belief that this mighty and virtuous emperor will take seriously the opinions of other nations. After all, when the imperial project of ‘taking on’ climate change was threatened by a pipeline, who really cares what Canada thinks?

With the Biden foreign policy, we are returning to George W. Bush’s swaggering view that the United States is the indispensable nation, the model of universal values to which all other nations should aspire. As Biden wrote, ‘It falls to the United States to lead the way. No other nation has that capacity. No other nation was built on that idea.’ To ‘champion liberty and democracy’ and to ‘take on the existential threat’ of climate change — these are imperial projects and, given their importance, we will see Biden reserve the right act unilaterally. As the empire propagates the world’s only true values, other nations will quickly discover that we don’t really care about their views — unless they happen to agree with us.

The Biden critique of Trump’s lack of diplomacy is, in theory, a valid one. The problem is that Biden has embraced a view of America as a global empire of unmatched virtue, and such empires tend to eschew genuine diplomacy. Diplomacy can only be effective when leaders approach it with a certain humility, i.e. ‘maybe I am not right about everything, so I should consult with others’. As we again hubristically embrace America as ‘the indispensable nation’, others will discover, as the Canadians have, that braggarts don’t do diplomacy.

William S. Smith is Senior Research Fellow and Managing Director of the Center for the Study of Statesmanship at the Catholic University of America. His recent book is Democracy and Imperialism from the University of Michigan Press. 

by WILLIAM S. SMITH

Political commentators, left and right, are urging the Biden administration to move away from the nationalistic realism of Donald Trump and to place “human rights” front and center in American foreign policy. It is certainly painful to watch an American president performing a sword dance with Saudi princes only a year before those same princes ordered a journalist literally carved up by hitmen. That said, we should also recognize that advocates of human rights sometimes have a very simplistic notion of how those human rights actually flourish.

The invasion of Iraq in 2003, for example, was justified by many because of the terrible human rights record of Saddam Hussein. In order to build support for the invasion of Iraq, George W. Bush asserted in his State of the Union address: ”The dictator who is assembling the world’s most dangerous weapons has already used them on whole villages, leaving thousands of his own citizens dead, blind or disfigured.”

While Saddam was unquestionably brutal, there’s also little doubt that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a human rights disaster for the Iraqi people. Brown University estimatesthat 200,000 civilians were killed in the Iraq war. Over the years, Saddam himself killed tens of thousands of innocents in his wars upon his Kurdish and Shia foes, but one cannot say that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a neat solution to the problem of human rights abuses in Iraq. In short, those who held out regime change as an opportunity to put human rights “at the center” of Western foreign policy were gravely mistaken.

So, then, where do human rights come from? Let’s first ask why the United States has long been considered a beacon of liberty and human rights. Because Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence? Obviously it is more complicated than that.

by GIL BARNDOLLAR

Will it soon be springtime for NATO? After four years of a suddenly mercurial American partner, European foreign and defense ministers seem relieved, if not giddy, at the prospect of president-elect Joe Biden’s promised foreign policy restoration. Yet the seventy-one-year-old alliance’s “brain death,” to quote French President Emmanuel Macron, needs stronger medicine than a mere return to the status quo. A new study, commissioned by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, calls for both renewal and reform, highlighted by a new focus on the challenge of China.

With 138 specific recommendations in less than 70 pages, the independent Reflection Group’s report, “NATO 2030: United for a New Era,” is light on detailed planning for implementation. Its China prescriptions range from countering disinformation to strengthening ties with Asian partners.

Some of these recommendations are no-brainers and some are predictably vague. But NATO members should resist any attempt to substantially reorient the alliance on countering China. NATO lacks the military tools, the societal will, and the strategic imperative to cast its gaze east of Suez.

NATO’s navies are not up to the task. True, Britain has spent (some would argue misspent) an enormous chunk of its defense budget on a pair of catapult-less conventional aircraft carriers and the F-35Bs to go with them. Germany’s Deutsche Marine may be in scandalous shape, but many other NATO navies have high standards, reputations for excellent seamanship, and capable, cost-effective ships.

Unfortunately, while the skill is there, the capacity is not. The Royal Navy boasts just 23 surface combatants – and is unable to fully man even this small fleet. In the critical (and eponymous) North Atlantic, NATO can sortie just six attack submarines. Though the situation has improved slightly since then, in 2018 the alliance could count on just a single constant maritime patrol aircraft over the North Atlantic. This is inadequate to contain the declining Russian Navy, never mind the PLAN.

NATO has also repeatedly shown that it doesn’t do “out of area” missions well. The much-lauded two-decade commitment to Afghanistan is a case in point. Though some NATO forces (the British, Canadians, Danes, and French among them) fought with valor and verve, mainly contingents were hamstrung by risk aversion and national caveats that prevented them from accomplishing much. The Times of London reported in 2009 that Italy actually paid off the Taliban to prevent its troops from being molested.

Even in nearby Libya, NATO struggled to prosecute a limited air war. Only eight of the then-28 member states in 2011 chose to participate – and most of them ran out of either ammunition or spare parts. NATO members refused to do the hard work of peacekeeping after Muamar Qaddafi was overthrown. Libya is now embroiled in a civil war and remains a security ulcer on Europe’s doorstep.

The other elephant in the room is even larger: the lack of European will to confront China. Leaders like Stoltenberg may announce that “China does not share our values,” but aside from this boilerplate rhetoric, there is little evidence that European NATO members have any enthusiasm for a clash with Beijing.

Italy is a participant in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, while several alliance members benefit from Chinese infrastructure investments in the Balkans. A September 2019 poll by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found just 10 percent of Germans thought their country should side with America in the event of a U.S. – China war. Over 70 percent thought Germany should stay neutral. The thirteen other European countries surveyed displayed similar sentiments.\

Europe has belatedly awoken to the dangers of relying on Huawei’s 5G network, and the coronavirus has increased European suspicion of China. But neither development is likely to generate substantially greater enthusiasm for confrontation.

Instead of dragging Europe into a competition with China for which it lacks both the means and the motivation, NATO would best serve all of its members, including the United States, by maintaining a laser focus on the security threats facing Europe.

Russia remains foremost among these challenges. Many American foreign policy realists pine for a reset and a new modus vivendi with Russia, in order to reduce tensions, free up resources to confront China, and enable the United States to get its own house in order. This goal is understandable and perhaps achievable, but it takes two to tango. Extending New START, returning to the Open Skies Treaty, and other diplomatic overtures could cool tensions and restore some measure of trust. But the West may still be stuck reacting to Russian provocations and disruption in Europe.

Mediterranean NATO members like France and Italy are increasingly inclined to put terrorism and mass migration higher than Russian revanchism on their list of security priorities. French troops conduct a grinding counterinsurgency campaign in Mali while a host of NATO countries provided troops, aircraft, and resources to the now-curtailed counter-ISIS campaign in Iraq and Syria.

The Reflection Group makes mention of China’s increasing presence in Africa (and Russia’s far more militarized approach to the continent). But neither the PLAN’s Djibouti naval base nor Chinese lingerie vendors in Upper Egypt are a threat to Europe. Indeed, Chinese infrastructure investments and other commercial ventures almost certainly aid Europe’s overriding African security goal: minimizing the flow of refugees and economic migrants to the Mediterranean and then into Europe. Increased Chinese influence and power in what the Reflection Group dubs “NATO’s ‘South’” is more likely to arouse European applause than concern.

Europe has taken a lengthy holiday from history; many Europeans thought they had moved beyond serious armed conflict after the end of the Cold War. Russia’s occupation of Crimea has only partly broken this spell. Non-NATO member Sweden has reintroduced conscription and recently increased defense spending by a whopping 40 percent, but Germany and other alliance freeriders have made only tepid commitments to raise their defense spending. Even in comparatively strong Britain, which substantially increased its defense budget last month, the former Chief of Defence Staff felt compelled to warn in 2018 that “US observers have come to realize we are living a lie.”

European weakness is manifest in something as basic as mustering combat-ready ground forces. A 2017 RAND report found that NATO’s European big three – France, Britain, and Germany – could collectively mobilize just a single armored battalion in a week and fewer than three armored brigades in a month. For an alliance worried about Russian faits accompli, this is wholly inadequate. It has also resulted in an annual price tag of $6.5 billion for the U.S.’s European Defense Initiative – money could instead help to pay the U.S. Navy’s enormous nuclear deterrent recapitalization bills.

Instead of becoming a half-hearted American auxiliary in Asia, NATO can best contribute to checking China by focusing on Russia. If Russia and China continue to draw closer and become actual allies, the United States is unlikely to have the resources to compete with both. Estimates of Russian and Chinese defense expenditures are frequently much lower than they should be, due to the mistaken use of market exchange rate–based estimates instead of purchasing power parity (PPP) estimates.

The rise of anti-access/area denial technology further impedes America’s ability to contribute to European security. The U.S. Army’s new conceptual framework for major warfighting, Multi-Domain Operations, cautions that America will not be able to easily reinforce troops in a theater of near-peer war. That leaves two options: a major increase in U.S. forces in Europe or European NATO members taking on most of the burden of checking Russian forces. The former is highly unlikely, while the latter would greatly enhance America’s ability to compete with China. At least one prominent U.S. senator has stated publicly that if forced to choose, the United States will forsake European security commitments for competition in Asia.

The Reflection Group is right that NATO’s European members need to recommit to collective security and rebuild hard power capacity. The alliance doesn’t need to look any further than its own neighborhood, however. NATO can best serve its allies, and global security, by remaining focused on the security of Europe.

Gil Barndollar is a senior fellow at Defense Priorities and Senior Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Statesmanship.

Article originally published at the National Interest.

by GIL BARNDOLLAR

Like many of Donald Trump’s tweets, the president’s October 7 declaration on withdrawing from Afghanistan was swiftly dismissed by most observers.

While Trump initiated a substantial drawdown — 2,000 troops before his term is up— the goal of a full withdrawal was attacked across the political spectrum. News anchors and senators raised the specter of Saigon and helicopters on rooftops. Trump’s own national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, publicly described his boss’s diktat as aspirational. But could the United States bring all its troops in Afghanistan home by Christmas?

Past pullouts, such as the 2013–2014 withdrawal of U.S. Marines from Helmand Province, were a lengthy and deliberate process run by units like R4OG, the Redeployment and Retrograde in Support of Reset and Reconstitution Operations Group. Tens of thousands of principal end items (vehicles, weapons, and other significant gear) were pulled back to major bases, cleaned, inventoried, and either shipped back to the United States or destroyed. From 2012 to 2014, the Marine Corps alone sent home well over one billion dollars of equipment. Tens of thousands of other items, from Humvees to hammocks, were given to Afghan security forces, as were 50 miles of bottled water. Sprawling Hesco hubs like Camp Leatherneck, once a garrison city of nearly 30,000 inhabitants, were rapidly shrunk before being turned over to Afghan soldiers.

A final withdrawal would be a far simpler affair. Assuming former ambassador James Jeffrey is a one-off and the publicly available numbers are relatively honest, there are currently about 4,500 U.S. troops, 8,500 NATO troops, 22,500 contractors, and 600 Department of Defense civilians supporting the coalition mission in Afghanistan. Five thousand of those contractors are Afghan nationals. As CNA’s Jonathan Schroden noted recently, at 200 people per Air Force C-17 and with the expectation of using Kabul International Airport for expatriating many of the contractors, all coalition forces could be out of Afghanistan in a few weeks.

As those of us who have experienced previous U.S. drawdowns in Afghanistan can attest, the Taliban have little interest in attacking withdrawing foreign forces, especially at this stage of the war. Far from a Saigon scenario, the insurgents will probably do everything short of escorting U.S. troops to their terminal.

Could is not should, of course. But the relative ease with which U.S. forces could be withdrawn speaks to their limited impact on the civil war engulfing Afghanistan. The latest quarterly report from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, John Sopko, underscores this fact. Sopko’s team noted that in the last quarter, even the most elite Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) strike teams conducted 96 percent of their ground operations independently — nearly quintuple the rate of a year ago — a result of both COVID restrictions on U.S. troops and the U.S.–Taliban deal. Outside of these units, the vast majority of Afghan soldiers and policemen have been operating unpartnered for nearly a decade. After years of “green-on-blue” insider attacks, the limited conventional coalition military advising element that remains is focused almost exclusively on staff work at higher echelons, corps and above.

What is maintaining a semblance of battlefield equilibrium between ANSF and insurgent forces is not U.S. troops or advice but U.S. firepower. In the violent southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, police commanders have stated that only U.S. air strikes kept the Taliban from penetrating their respective provincial capitals this fall. The classification of airstrike data in February leaves us with no concrete metrics, but it seems clear that aerial reconnaissance and fire support is the key U.S. contribution to limiting Taliban gains.

If U.S. commanders and diplomats have serious concerns about the resilience of ANSF units after a U.S. pullout, continued air support can provide a short-term “decent interval.” This does not require a U.S. ground presence, beyond contracted airport security. A small cell at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul could coordinate supporting fires for frontline Afghan troops. As Wesley Morgan, author of a forthcoming book about the war in eastern Afghanistan’s Pech Valley, told me: “The whole kind of war by WhatsApp is what we’re already doing.”

Indeed, even this minimal level of coordination is probably unnecessary. As Morgan related in the Washington Post on October 22, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) became the unofficial “Taliban air force” in 2019 as part of the fight against the Islamic State’s Afghanistan affiliate, Islamic State Khorasan (IS-K). Using signals intelligence capabilities honed over the previous 15 years of counter-terrorism missions, JSOC monitored the radios of Taliban units fighting IS-K and tasked air and drone strikes to support them. The same could be done for ANSF if required.

Beyond the immediate battlefield imperatives, a sudden U.S. pullout would have a host of other consequences. A certain amount of equipment would have to be given to Afghan forces or destroyed. Helicopters could be flown out, and any sensitive intelligence or surveillance systems would be retrograded or destroyed.

The remaining U.S. bases, around 10 in number, would have to be hastily transferred to ANSF units. Without sufficient engineering work to make their defense more manageable, some might be abandoned or lost to the Taliban.

Afghans who have faithfully served the United States — interpreters foremost among them — will be even more vulnerable to Taliban retaliation with U.S. forces gone. This could be mitigated by dramatically expanding and expediting the criminally slow Special Immigrant Visa program.

And of course, the counter-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan would look very different without U.S. troops on the ground. The United States, however, retains its fleet of drones, long-range bombers, and an unparalleled global manhunting machine. Shelter in jihadi-controlled Idlib did not save Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Even for those who don’t dismiss the safe haven argument as a myth, U.S. intelligence, reconnaissance, and surgical strike capabilities should enable Americans to sleep soundly at night.

The wisdom of an immediate and complete withdrawal from Afghanistan is debatable. But the feasibility of a total pullout is not. The U.S. military logistics system that can create iron mountains in the desert can also wind up our longest war in a matter of weeks.

Article originally published at Responsible Statecraft.

by GIL BARNDOLLAR

by GIL BARNDOLLAR

Trump’s biggest foreign policy accomplishment has been to reorient America’s China policy, discarding the three preceding administrations’ naivete in favor of a clear-headed evaluation of China as a competitor and threat. This belated shift was probably inevitable, but Trump accelerated the end of America’s embrace of China as a purported partner in prosperity.

It won’t get any easier from here. China has both economic tailwinds and demographic headwinds. The latter is a far larger factor – “demographics are destiny” – but perhaps somewhat mitigated in an age of automation and artificial intelligence. The United States, meanwhile, is confronting massive debts, internal disunity, and the looming “Terrible Twenties” of major naval recapitalization that analysts have long warned about.

Despite the uncertainty, his erratic tweets breed, President Trump has actually strengthened many of America’s partnerships in Asia. The other members of the Quad – Japan, Australia, and India – are critical to the region and vital U.S. national interests. They are likely to be America’s most important twenty-first century partners.

Biden sounds committed to continued strategic ambiguity on Taiwan. This is probably prudent, but it is no barrier to arming Taiwan to the teeth and helping it become a “porcupine nation” that can make China think twice about invading. The Taiwanese commitment to their own defense, however, is in question.

Asian allies are key, and a 500-ship navy would be nice, but the Sino-American competition’s critical arena is likely to be economic and technological. The next administration must put America’s long-term trajectory ahead of Wall Street’s quarterly earnings calls and restore key industries and supply chains to at least the Western Hemisphere, if not to the United States itself. The COVID pandemic and America’s initial shameful lack of capacity to make even basic personal protective equipment (PPE) should have been the needed wake-up call.

Perhaps U.S. – China technological separation can be limited, “small plots with high walls,” as tech billionaires like Eric Schmidt prefer. A broader decoupling and a de facto two internets may be where we end up. Regardless, both its 5G failure and the recent TikTok fiasco show that the United States has yet to get serious about its growing tech vulnerabilities.

Realism on Russia

Russia, that other remixed Cold War threat, is increasingly adjacent to China in American strategists’ eyes. Yet Russia is a distinct and far lesser security challenge than China. President Obama’s dismissing Russia as “a regional power” may not have been sound messaging to Americans or Russians. Still, it remains a more accurate assessment than the Russian hysteria that has gripped much of the American body politic for the last four years.

The past decade has shown that Russia remains a great power, albeit one with clear limits. The massive Red Army is long gone, replaced by a more proficient and agile Russian military that gets a maximum return on limited interventions like Syria. Russia has achieved many of its aims in its near abroad and has become an influential actor in the Middle East and North Africa. The Russians have assassinated spies and dissidents in Europe with little regard for the headlines. And while Russian interference in U.S. elections does not seem to have moved many votes, it has likely succeeded beyond its authors’ wildest dreams in disrupting and delegitimizing American politics.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia is America’s adversary, not an outright enemy. The United States must not let Russia fall into China’s camp. Whether one hearkens to Halford Mackinder’s Heartland Theory or simply does the math on defense spending, the power of a Russo-Chinese alliance is clear.

It is in America’s national interest to get past Russian provocations and our own politics and find a modus vivendi, however uncomfortable, with Putin’s Russia. Remaining in the Open Skies Treaty and renewing New START are good first steps. A broad nuclear framework and an accord on mutual political non-interference are potential long-term goals. America’s European allies will have their say, but most will probably welcome a lowering of tensions.

Some theorists argue that structural factors will prevent Russia and China from being more than partners of convenience. Perhaps. Even a limited attempt at an American reset with Russia could fail as completely as the last effort – though hopefully without a goofy prop. Nonetheless, the next administration should at least keep its options open and remain realist in its approach to Russia.

Diplomacy and Demilitarization

“Ending endless wars” has become a trope in American politics, thanks to Donald Trump. But the campaign promises of 2016 remain unfulfilled, with U.S. troops still in Afghanistan, Iraq, and a handful of other low-intensity wars across the Greater Middle East. Like Trump, Biden increasingly speaks of a smaller footprint and limited counterterrorism aims. A broader demilitarization of American foreign policy and restoration of the declining State Department should be among the next president’s foremost foreign policy goals.

Both the hapless Rex Tillerson and the swaggering Mike Pompeo gutted the State Department, presiding over a 16-month hiring freeze, plummeting morale, and an unprecedented politicization of the department. Morale at State is 13^th out of the 17 large federal agencies, and vacancies are endemic, both overseas and in key positions at Foggy Bottom. In an increasingly multipolar world, the decline of American diplomacy is a critical vulnerability.

The U.S. military has, for decades now, filled the vacuum that the State Department has left. America’s senior generals have become proconsuls while her junior officers are told that they are diplomats too. One wonders why America hasn’t won a war in thirty years.

A Foreign Service ROTC program is overdue. America’s diplomats are every bit as important as her soldiers. As foreign service officers sometimes like to note, since Vietnam, the United States has had more ambassadors than generals killed in the line of duty. If Biden wants to be bold, he can take a page from Elizabeth Warren and end America’s archaic, corrupt practice of giving ambassadorships to campaign donors and other amateurs.

The ends, ways, and means of U.S. foreign policy are all in need of serious reappraisal and reform. The State Department is a good place for the next administration to start.

Gil Barndollar is a Senior Fellow at Defense Priorities and a Senior Research Fellow at the Catholic University of America’s Center for the Study of Statesmanship.