One of the less controversial foreign policy shifts after 9/11 was the decision that we could no longer tolerate countries harboring terrorists in the manner that the Taliban had granted protection to Al Qaeda. However, nigh eight years later, it appears that pursuing this idea via a substantial on the ground military presence is nigh unworkable.
We may yet pull of Afghanistan and our difficulties there are in no small part the result of neglect in the early years. Even so, doing an Afghan occupation or any occupation in general is quite taxing and not the basis of a sustainable policy.
Short of full invasions, drone strikes appear to be a more effective military tool than the cruise missile strikes of the Clinton years. However, they do need to be balanced against the risks of delegitimizing allied governments. With governments unwilling to work with us, I think the drones lose much of their utility as non-failed states probably have ways to shoot them down if they’re lingering. A more sustainable tool may be cooperation a la plan Columbia, but that’s likely too reliant on leaders’ personalities and also encourages a dangerous codependence between patron and client.
Ultimately, I believe that military techniques have their role, but the military is not the right tool to take the lead in counterterrorist action. Ultimately it matters that we haven’t been hit since 2001 and that Western European democracies have suffered attacks but hits lack the regularity of the Northern Ireland or Basque conflicts. Over the long term, reforming or more likely distancing ourselves from Middle East autocracies and working on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the way to counter this threat. Until then we have a wide range of options to apply to different countries as the situation demands it, but we have to understand that there’s no simple military solution that doesn’t risk exacerbating conflicts over the mid-term.
So where does this leave us on Afghanistan and Pakistan? I’m not sure, but I think our choices need to be drawn primarily from a strategic assessment of local conditions and not the post-9/11 response of nominally making the entire world consistently unsafe for terrorism.
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