US withdrawal from Afghanistan

Subterms

    Latest story

    100 Shares119 Views

    Will the Taliban End Up Under the Influence?

    by

    Yahoo News Senior Editor Mike Bebernes asks the big question on everyone’s mind after the American debacle in Afghanistan: “Does the U.S. have any real leverage over the Taliban?” After summarizing the immediate political background of the topic, he compares the speculative answers of a variety of pundits.

    Bebernes distinguishes between what he calls optimists, who “say the U.S. has enormous leverage to hold the Taliban to their commitments,” and the pessimists, who apparently believe that the interests of the two countries have so little in common that it isn’t worth bothering about the concerns of such savage people. In other words, as Donnie Brasco would say, “Forget about it!”

    Right Think: Jane Austen Against Terrorism

    READ MORE

    The optimists typically cite the weakness of the Afghan economy and the problems the Taliban will face without US cooperation. Others think that a common concern with fanatical terrorist groups may create an opportunity for mutual understanding. Bebernes suggests that the Taliban government is likely to “seek support in combating its own terror threat from groups like [the Islamic State in Khorasan Province], which some experts believe will create another point of leverage for the U.S.”

    One of the pessimists appears to believe that, as in the Cold War, there may become what General Turgidson in “Dr. Strangelove” would have called a “leverage gap” between the US and Russia or China. “Other world powers could undercut America’s leverage.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Leverage:

    The measure of the power of a state with imperial ambitions over the life and death of populations beyond its borders

    Contextual Note

    The trauma Americans experienced after Saigon, nearly half a century ago, and Kabul today has provoked what might be called the first “leverage crisis” in US history. For more than two centuries, the United States has carved out, largely unimpeded, its areas of influence in various parts of the world. Areas of influence eventually evolved into “spheres of influence.”

    Embed from Getty Images

    Following World War II, American strategists realized they could conquer, economically if not politically, the great sphere itself, the earthly globe. The globalization of what was originally the US version of Europe’s capitalist economy, along with a reinforced ideology thanks to thinkers from the University of Chicago, led every strategist within Washington’s Beltway to assume that the globe itself could become America’s hegemonic domain.

    Exercising geopolitical and economic hegemony required two things: physical presence — provided essentially by multinational firms and American military bases — and a toolbox of influence, which could take the form alternatively of overt and covert military action or economic sanctions. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US State Department has wielded those tools with a sense of ever-increasing impunity as it proceeded to intimidate both its allies and nations that refused to acknowledge their tributary status with regard to US influence. For the past four decades, the US has relied on either warfare — invasion, occupation and bombing campaigns, unlimited in time and scope — or increasingly severe economic sanctions to reaffirm what was officially formulated as influence, but exercised with a spirit of hegemonic control.

    The debacle in Afghanistan reveals a deeper trouble at the core of strategic decision-making in Washington. The new emphasis on the concept of leverage can be read as an admission that the toolbox to manage a sphere of influence has lost much of its efficacy. For decades, the idea of applying and reinforcing influence dominated Washington’s strategic thinking. It is now being replaced by the much more fragile idea of exercising leverage. Both the State Department and the media pundits appear puzzled about what that might mean.

    The concept of leverage comes from the field of mechanics. It describes the function of a lever. “Levers convert a small force applied over a long distance to a large force applied over a small distance.” Twenty years of yet another futile, expensive and demonstrably stupid war appears to have taught Washington that it no longer has the control over distance that it formerly believed it had. Its wasteful actions have also diminished its force.

    Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

    Making leverage work in mechanics requires some careful analysis, preparation and effective execution. These are efforts the strategists, planners and decision-makers, convinced of the indomitable force of their influence, have consistently failed to carry out in a competent way. Could it be too late for them to learn the art of leverage? Or is the very fact that they are now obliged to think in terms of leverage rather than influence so humiliating an experience that they will fail to engage?

    This may be the occasion for US President Joe Biden to leverage the vaunted “power of our example” rather than the “example of our power” that he so regularly mentions in his speeches. That would require some real geopolitical creativity. And does he really believe that the US could live up to that standard? Few commentators have remarked that Biden, true to his own tradition, plagiarized that line from Evan Augustine Peterson III, J.D., who originally used it in 2005 to condemn the Iraq war that Biden had so forcefully promoted as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

    Historical Note

    In 1823, President James Monroe promulgated the Monroe Doctrine that continues to this day to dominate US relations with the entire American continent. It became a permanent feature of the mindset of US strategists, who without a trace of tragic irony routinely consider Latin America in its entirety, right down to the Tierra del Fuego, as Washington’s “backyard.” Peter Hakim, a senior fellow of the Inter-American Dialogue, in a Foreign Affairs in 2007 article with the title, “Is Washington Losing Latin America?” dared to express the feelings not only of the US political class, but also those of the USA’s neighbors. “Perhaps what most troubles Latin Americans is the sense that Washington just does not take the region seriously and still considers it to be its own backyard,” he wrote.

    In 1823, Latin America’s population consisted of three broad socio-cultural and ethnic components: indigenous people who occupied most of the mountainous interior; descendants of Iberian Europeans (Spanish and Portuguese) who, following their 15th and 16th-century conquests, dominated the political and economic structures; and imported African slaves (primarily in Brazil). All three were as distant from the dominant Anglo-Saxon culture of the US as anyone could imagine. These were the populations President Monroe wanted to “protect” from hostile action by European powers. 

    Embed from Getty Images

    Through its own expansion justified in the name of “manifest destiny,” the US had demonstrated how it would deal with indigenous Americans. Primarily through genocidal warfare. It demonstrated its attitude toward Africans, deemed useful purely for economic exploitation as slaves. As for the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking populations who created the culture that prevailed across all the coastal regions of Latin America, they belonged at best to the category of second-class Europeans. The fact that the majority were mestizos (mixed-race) defined them irrevocably as third-class. At least they could thank their hybrid status for being spared the fate of the true indigenous, who could at any moment, even in recent times, be subjected to genocidal treatment.

    In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt refined the Monroe Doctrine by adding the Roosevelt Corollary. It “stated that in cases of flagrant and chronic wrongdoing by a Latin American country, the United States could intervene in that country’s internal affairs.” If during the 19th the Monroe Doctrine functioned mainly as a barrier to European incursion, by the beginning of the 20th century, the US had come to understand the value for its burgeoning capitalist economy of controlling what came to become a continental sphere of influence. Controlling meant having the power to organize the economy of the countries under its influence.

    Following the Second World War and the collapse of nearly all the vestiges of European colonization, the US discovered that the entire globe could potentially become its sphere of influence. Some have called the period of the Cold War the Pax Americana, simply because the standoff with the Soviet Union never became a hot war between the two massively armed superpowers. But throughout the period there were proxy wars, clandestine operations and regime change campaigns galore that meant the heat was never really turned down.

    What a comedown it must be today to have to debate how to exercise leverage.

    *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

    The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in World Politics

      The US Tries to Make a Fine Distinction in Afghanistan

      by

      The US special representative, Zalmay Khalilzad, who served as the Bush administration’s ambassador to Afghanistan and later to the United Nations, has delivered his post-mortem on America’s two-decade-long war in Afghanistan. On August 30, he tweeted: “Our war in Afghanistan is over. Our brave Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen served with distinction and sacrifice to the very end. They have our enduring gratitude and respect.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Distinction:

      Blind obedience, which, according to the place and time, may turn out to be obedience to strategically blind politicians

      Contextual Note

      The idea of “distinction” derives from the notion that some people achieve a status that distinguishes them from their peers, placing them on a superior level. The expression “serve with distinction” in the armed forces is a time-honored cliché, whose meaning no one questions. Any individual who accepts the conditions of military service that imply the risk of losing one’s life at any given point in time automatically earns the right to be “distinguished” from the rest of humanity. Ordinary people do everything in their daily lives to reduce or eliminate risk, especially direct risks to their survival or well-being. The instinct for survival makes all humans indistinguishable. Those who engage in actions that may compromise their survival are clearly distinguished from the rest of humanity.

      The New American Art of Inconclusive Conclusions

      READ MORE

      Not all service personnel are exposed to battleground conditions. Some, exercising specialized tasks, never encounter them. But all members of the military implicitly accept to participate in operations commanded by their superiors with the knowledge that their survival may be in play.

      Khalilzad predictably trots out the cliché but then extends it by adding “sacrifice” to “distinction.” Some may see this as unintentionally ironic. This could include Lieutenant Colonel Stu Scheller, who has vociferously clamored for accountability by military and political leaders. Over a span of 20 years, urged on by the Pentagon, three US presidents have sent their citizens abroad as sacrificial victims to the god of war they honored, if not worshipped. The belief that Ares, Mars or Týr — or indeed a god of war by any name — might require the ritual of animal sacrifice, let alone human sacrifice, would be universally mocked today. But Khalilzad reminds us that the tradition has survived in our patriotic values.

      NBC’s distinguished Middle East correspondent, Richard Engel, thinks the sacrifice should be continued. “Who is going to go in now?” he asks. What power is going to go in and undo them?” Like many Americans, Engel criticizes President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan. That country now finds itself under the control of what Engel persists in calling “the enemy.” If the war is over, the notion of enemy should disappear, even if a renewal of the state of war remains possible.

      The Taliban seem to have understood that. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid appealed to the US to develop peaceful relations. “We have communication channels with them,” he explained, “and we expect them to reopen their embassy in Kabul and we also want to have trade relations with them.”

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      US Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the safety that cooperation has provided, but he appeared uncommitted to exploring the development of peaceful relations between the two nations. He saw no need for an embassy in Kabul. “For the time being,” he explained, “we will use this post in Doha to manage our diplomacy with Afghanistan, including consular affairs, administering humanitarian assistance, and working with allies, partners, and regional and international stakeholders to coordinate our engagement and messaging to the Taliban.” 

      According to Blinken, the US will politely discuss with the Taliban from afar the time it takes to evacuate those still stranded in the country whom the US believes deserve evacuation. Once that is accomplished, the US will most likely apply the opposite of the Taliban’s wish to see a US embassy in Kabul and new trade relations. The more predictable course of action, similar to the one applied to Cuba for the past 60 years, would be an aggravated economic war consisting of sanctions and blockades.

      In fact, the campaign to starve Afghanistan has already begun. The United Nations warns that emergency food reserves are likely to run out within a month and that “starvation could soon compound the humanitarian crisis convulsing Afghanistan.” At the same time, The New York Times reports that “Washington has frozen Afghan government reserves, and the International Monetary Fund has blocked its access to emergency reserves.“

      Historical Note

      In a different tweet, Zalmay Khalilzad affirmed that the Taliban were now facing what he called “a test” and then asked two rhetorical questions. “Can they lead their country to a safe & prosperous future where all their citizens, men & women, have the chance to reach their potential?” was his first question. This seems reasonable enough, given the promises the Taliban have made to be more open than in the past to normalized international relations and human rights. Reasonable leaders in a reasonable world should encourage them to prove their capacity to honor their own promises. But Khalilzad’s second question reveals how hollowly rhetorical the first one was. “Can Afghanistan,” he asks, “present the beauty & power of its diverse cultures, histories, & traditions to the world?”

      That is so obviously distant from even an enlightened Taliban policy that asking it can only be seen as hypocrisy. Khalilzad clearly anticipates blaming them for their failure to live up to Western ideals. This is designed to serve as a pretext for a future campaign to punish the impudent Taliban for winning a war not just against Americans — the Vietnamese had already done that — but against NATO and the entire “rules-based” coalition of nations that followed the US into the quagmire of Afghanistan.

      The campaign by corporate US media to humiliate and eventually add to the suffering of a Taliban-run Afghanistan has already begun. In the same interview cited above, Richard Engel follows up his implicit appeal to a brave nation other than the US to take over the task abandoned by the Americans (“to go in and undo them”) with an observation that sits oddly with his acknowledgment of the definitive American retreat.

      “It will be a challenge,” Engel tells his American audience, “to bring the Taliban into the international community. But that is the challenge that is facing us for the sake of the Afghan people.” He doesn’t explain who the “us” is who are now faced with the challenge. Is it the US, its traditional allies (Europe, Israel and the Gulf countries), or perhaps the entire human race, who he assumes adheres to the values promulgated by the US?

      Embed from Getty Images

      His question is nevertheless intriguing. To the extent that Engel supposes that the US should be the one “to bring the Taliban into the international community,” two opposing policies are worth considering. For simplicity’s sake, let’s call them the carrot and the stick. The carrot would be to let 20 years of bygones be bygones and respond to the Taliban’s overture by saying: Yes, let’s push cooperation to the hilt and make something out of our past mistakes.

      The stick would be to stoke a rapid deterioration of economic and social conditions while offering clandestine support to any and all forces of opposition within Afghanistan — the policy the US pursued under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, aimed at overthrowing an independent, socialist-leaning government that they feared would be magnetically attracted to the Soviet Union. The allies the US cultivated in the 1980s were the mujahadeen, whom the US trained in the fine art of what is deemed “good” terrorism, designed to destabilize unfriendly governments.

      Engel ends his analysis by comparing the Taliban-run Afghanistan to a “hole in the map” of the region. He expresses his belief that the sudden absence of US troops will “suck in other countries around it” into what he calls a “vortex” of instability. The consequences of the US retreat for Pakistan and India are difficult to measure, to say nothing of the virtual alliance between Israel and the Sunni monarchies of the Gulf, who counted on an abiding US military presence to continue their aggressive opposition to Iran. In any case, it is likely that the future will see less distinction but continued sacrifice.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 75 Shares179 Views

      in World Politics

      Remembering What to Remember in America

      by

      As America approaches the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 disaster, there are still terrorists hanging out in many of the world’s shadowy recesses, some of whom are probably hoping for another opportunity to bring down another shrine to capitalism somewhere in the American homeland. Even with this continuing threat still looming over the nation and after years of a “war on terror” fought in far-off lands, it now seems that the greatest terrorist threat to the US comes from its homegrown “patriots,” who no longer have to hang out in America’s shadowy recesses.

      Some Boots on the Ground Leave Odd Footprints

      READ MORE

      Now that the American political and military exit from Afghanistan has stumbled to completion, a key component of America’s egregious and deadly response to 9/11 is finally ended after 20 years of failed policy. But failed policies should have consequences, and this one surely did, both here and abroad. The loss of life in Kabul during the withdrawal is just the latest reminder of yet another “gallant” American adventure gone bad in some foreign land. For 20 years, throughout the Muslim world, we made enemies we didn’t have to make, and we created a whole new cadre of wounded warriors in our midst ready to vanquish the incoming hoards at all cost to save the homeland from itself.

      Imposing Its Will by Force

      To make matters worse, there is a shocking ignorance about even relatively recent history and its relevance to the present and the future. Few Americans seem to fathom that in response to the killing of nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, the national government set out to extract a bloody bounty to avenge each of those lost lives. While the US mourned its losses, there was hardly a thought or a moment of introspection before the nation’s leaders charted their deadly and destructive course around the world.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      In every far-off land where the US government seeks to impose its will by force, no matter the reason for doing so in the first place, the people in those invaded lands pay a terrible price. And it always ends the same way. It is important to know that America has not won a war since 1945 and has not fought a war on its own soil since the Civil War. Yet in Afghanistan alone, it is estimated that hundreds of thousands of Afghans have been killed, maimed and wounded, with millions more displaced, by an invasion that those men, women and children neither sought nor provoked.

      As in Vietnam, US government operatives found elements of the local populace in Afghanistan that they assured themselves were welcoming. Then the killing started. And as always, the people we paid in those lands loved us, and the people we killed maimed and devastated hated us. And here is the lesson to be learned: There are always more of the latter than the former. When the payments stop coming, love is quickly lost, but the hatred of the devastated never dies.

      Repeating the Vietnam Playbook

      If there is anything to be gained from the crushing defeat and exit from Afghanistan, it is that after 20 years of repeating the same essential Vietnam playbook, while dealing death and destruction at every turn, many in America may finally understand how Vietnam ended as it did. When one nation invades another, it never ends well. When the invading nation has some messianic notion that it alone can succeed in supplanting existing cultural, social and political norms, and does so at the point of a gun, the invaded nation will eventually rebel, unite and drive out the invaders.

      So, as another 9/11 anniversary looms, Americans must again try to comprehend that our national loss on September 11, 2001, was not sufficient cause to scream at the world like some out-of-control toddler. It was a horrible day because so many innocent people lost their lives and so many more were left injured and broken. But when the US government set out to exact revenge, the worst that we could be was unleashed on others, many of whom were just as innocent as those who lost their lives in America on 9/11.

      In doing so, the US not only failed to wipe out terrorism, but it failed to create even a semblance of a new era of American heroism driven by an army of new American heroes. Rather it succeeded in creating an international force devoid of morality that it then had to sell at home as some group of avenging angels. Selling that narrative became even harder when our own soldiers, as always, started to come home in body bags.

      The US Failed

      There is a tragic symmetry to all of this. President Joe Biden seems to be a truly decent man, and when faced with a difficult choice that paralyzed his predecessors, he made the right choice and stuck to it. But as he did so, he was unable to seize that critical moment to tell the nation that we had failed, as before.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Once again, it seemed impossible to say that we as a nation must be better and do better. When the end in Afghanistan became most tragic at a cost of American lives, Biden echoed George W. Bush after 9/11 in leading the nation to believe in a new sacred mission to root out and kill the cockroaches who did us harm. This is the worst of who we are, and it never leads to anything good. Biden could have and should have done better at that moment. Instead, he felt compelled to affirm that if you kill us, we will kill you, and it will always be disproportionately tilted toward the others, anyone in the way be damned.

      It can only be hoped that no more young men and women, ours or theirs, will be sacrificed on the long-blackened stones of the alters constructed by their elders. There remain many people in the world who do not revere America the way so many here seem to think they should, and some of those will threaten the nation. Yet, after 20 years of fighting terrorism on the soil of others, the threat from afar seems minimally diminished.

      Rather, a whole new generation of wounded warriors walks among us. Some are surely heroes and some are surely villains, but way too many of them are integrated into the squads of self-styled patriots in every community, mostly out in the open, dangerously armed and supported by a significant cohort of those who will be most vocal about the ravages of 9/11. I have never quite understood why you get a patriotism merit badge for killing people in far-off lands or for simply wearing a uniform that to many in the world is synonymous with death, not dignity.

      The Heroes

      But this isn’t about merit or merit badges. Together, as a nation, Americans have to begin to walk away from violence and its always tragic end, whether in Afghanistan, Iraq or Chicago. One image stands out to me from the chaos of the Afghanistan exit. It is the photo of two US soldiers in full battle gear lifting a baby over a razor-wired wall to a place of safety. Those soldiers are my heroes. I hope they come home and remember that moment above all else and find their voice to urge others to lift other babies over barriers to safety wherever they may be.

      I give my thanks to Joe Biden for having the courage to end this futile war in Afghanistan. I hope he finds those two soldiers and tells them and the nation that they were the most heroic of all.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in World Politics

      Ending the US Empire of War, Corruption and Poverty

      by

      Americans have been shocked by reports of thousands of Afghans risking their lives to flee the Taliban, whose militants swept through Afghanistan and returned to power on August 15. This was followed by a suicide bombing claimed by the Islamic State in Khorasan Province (IS-KP) that killed at least 170 people, including 13 US troops. Some eyewitnesses told the BBC that “significant numbers” of those killed were shot dead by American and foreign forces.

      Even as UN agencies warn of an impending humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, the US Treasury has frozen nearly all of the Afghan central bank’s $9.4 billion in foreign currency reserves, depriving the new government led by the Taliban of funds it will desperately need in the coming months to feed its people and provide basic services. Under pressure from the Biden administration, the International Monetary Fund decided not to release $450 million in funds that were scheduled to be sent to Afghanistan to help the country cope with the coronavirus pandemic. 

      Afghanistan: A Final Nail in the Coffin of American Foreign Policy

      READ MORE

      The US and other Western countries have also halted humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. After chairing a G7 summit on Afghanistan on August 24, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that withholding aid and recognition gave them “very considerable leverage — economic, diplomatic and political” over the Taliban. 

      Western politicians couch this leverage in terms of human rights, but they are clearly trying to ensure that their Afghan allies retain some power in the new government and that Western influence and interests in Afghanistan do not end with the Taliban’s return. This leverage is being exercised in dollars, pounds and euros, but it will be paid for in Afghan lives.

      US Spending in Afghanistan

      To read or listen to Western analysts, one would think that the United States and its allies’ 20-year war in Afghanistan was a benign and beneficial effort to modernize the country, liberate Afghan women and provide health care, education and good jobs, and that this has all now been swept away by capitulation to the Taliban. The reality is quite different and not so hard to understand.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      The United States spent $2.26 trillion on its war in Afghanistan. Spending that kind of money in any country should have lifted most people out of poverty. But the vast bulk of those funds, about $1.5 trillion, went to absurd, stratospheric military spending to maintain the US-led military occupation, drop tens of thousands of bombs and missiles, pay private contractors and transport troops, weapons and military equipment back and forth around the world for 20 years. 

      Since the United States fought this war with borrowed money, it has also cost half a trillion dollars in interest payments alone, which will continue far into the future. Medical and disability costs for US soldiers wounded in Afghanistan and Iraq already amount to over $350 billion, and they will likewise keep mounting as the soldiers age. Medical and disability costs for both of those US-led wars could eventually reach another trillion dollars over the next 40 years.

      So, what about “rebuilding Afghanistan”? Congress appropriated $144 billion for reconstruction in Afghanistan since 2001, but $88 billion of that was spent to recruit, arm, train and pay the Afghan “security forces” that have now disintegrated, with soldiers returning to their villages or joining the Taliban. Another $15.5 billion spent between 2008 and 2017 was, as per Al Jazeera, documented as “waste, fraud and abuse” by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

      Corruption

      The crumbs left over, less than 2% of total US spending on Afghanistan, amount to about $40 billion, which should have provided some benefit to the Afghan people in economic development, health care, education, infrastructure and humanitarian aid. But, as in Iraq, the government the US installed in Afghanistan was notoriously corrupt, and its corruption only became more entrenched and systemic over time. Transparency International (TI) has consistently ranked Afghanistan as among the most corrupt countries in the world.

      Western readers may think that this corruption is a long-standing problem in the country, as opposed to a particular feature of the US-led occupation, but this is not the case. TI noted that “it is widely recognized that the scale of corruption in the post-2001 period has increased over previous levels.” A 2009 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) warned that “corruption has soared to levels not seen in previous administrations.” Those administrations would include the Taliban government that US and NATO invasion forces removed from power in 2001, and the Soviet-allied socialist governments that were overthrown by the US-supported precursors of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the 1980s, destroying the substantial progress they had made in education, health care and women’s rights.

      Embed from Getty Images

      A 2010 report by Anthony H. Cordesman, a Pentagon official under Ronald Reagan, entitled “How America Corrupted Afghanistan,” chastised the US government for throwing gobs of money into that country with virtually no accountability. The New York Times reported in 2013 that every month for a decade, the CIA had been dropping off suitcases, backpacks and even plastic shopping bags stuffed with US dollars for the Afghan president to bribe warlords and politicians.

      Corruption also undermined the very areas that Western politicians now hold up as the successes of the occupation, like education and health care. The education system has been riddled with schools, teachers and students that exist only on paper. Afghan pharmacies are stocked with fake, expired or low-quality medicines, many smuggled in from neighboring Pakistan. At the personal level, corruption was fueled by civil servants like teachers earning only one-tenth the salaries of better-connected Afghans working for foreign NGOs and contractors. 

      Rooting out corruption and improving Afghan lives has always been secondary to the primary US goal of fighting the Taliban and maintaining or extending its puppet Afghan government’s control. As TI reported, the US “has intentionally paid different armed groups and Afghan civil servants to ensure cooperation and/or information and cooperated with governors regardless of how corrupt they were… Corruption has undermined the U.S. mission in Afghanistan by fuelling grievances against the Afghan government and channelling material support to the insurgency.”

      Poverty and Freezing Funds

      The endless violence of the US-led occupation and the corruption of the Afghan government boosted popular support for the Taliban, especially in rural areas where three-quarters of Afghans live. The intractable poverty of Afghanistan also contributed to the Taliban victory, as people naturally questioned how their occupation by wealthy countries like the United States and its Western allies could leave them in such abject poverty.

      Well before the current crisis, the number of Afghans reporting that they were struggling to live on their current income increased from 60% in 2008 to 90% by 2018. A 2018 Gallup poll found the lowest levels of self-reported “well-being” that Gallup has ever recorded anywhere in the world. Afghans not only reported record levels of misery, but also unprecedented hopelessness about their future.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Despite some gains in education for girls, only a third of Afghan girls attended primary school in 2019 and only 37% of adolescent Afghan girls were literate. One reason that so few children go to school in Afghanistan is that more than 2 million children between the ages of 6 and 14 have to work to support their poverty-stricken families.  

      Yet instead of atoning for their role in keeping most Afghans mired in poverty, Western leaders are now cutting off desperately needed economic and humanitarian aid that was funding three-quarters of Afghanistan’s public sector and made up 40% of its total GDP. 

      In effect, the United States and its allies are responding to losing the war by threatening the Taliban and the people of Afghanistan with a second: economic war. If the new Afghan government does not give in to their “leverage” and meet their demands, our leaders will starve their people and then blame the Taliban for the ensuing famine and humanitarian crisis, just as they demonize and blame other victims of US economic warfare, from Cuba to Iran. 

      After pouring trillions of dollars into endless war in Afghanistan, America’s main duty now is to help the 38 million Afghans who have not fled their country, as they try to recover from the terrible wounds and trauma of the conflict that the US inflicted on them. This is coupled with a massive drought that devastated 40% of their crops this year and a crippling third wave of COVID-19. 

      The US should release the $9.4 billion in Afghan funds held in American banks. It should shift the $6 billion allocated for the now-defunct Afghan armed forces to humanitarian aid, instead of diverting it to other forms of wasteful military spending. It should encourage European allies and the IMF not to withhold funds. Instead, they should fully fund the UN 2021 appeal for $1.3 billion in emergency aid, which as of late August was less than 40% funded.

      Rethinking Its Place

      Once upon a time, the United States helped its British and Soviet allies to defeat Germany and Japan. The Americans then helped to rebuild them as healthy, peaceful and prosperous countries. For all America’s serious faults — its racism, its crimes against humanity in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and its neocolonial relations with poorer countries — it held up a promise of prosperity that people in many countries around the world were ready to follow. 

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      If all the United States has to offer other countries today is the war, corruption and poverty it brought to Afghanistan, then the world is wise to be moving on and looking at other models to follow: new experiments in popular and social democracy; a renewed emphasis on national sovereignty and international law; alternatives to the use of military force to resolve international problems; and more equitable ways of organizing internationally to tackle global crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate disaster. 

      The US can either stumble on in its fruitless attempt to control the world through militarism and coercion, or it can use this opportunity to rethink its place in the world. Americans should be ready to turn the page on our fading role as global hegemon and see how we can make a meaningful, cooperative contribution to a future that we will never again be able to dominate, but which we must help to build.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 100 Shares169 Views

      in World Politics

      Some Boots on the Ground Leave Odd Footprints

      by

      Most people consider the trillions of dollars spent by the Americans on military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq to have been a waste of money and the sign of a failed vision. When US President Joe Biden reasoned that it was time to put a stop to the spending, he claimed it had long ago achieved its most essential objectives: “to ensure Afghanistan would not be used as a base from which to attack our homeland again.”

      Biden thus implicitly admitted that most of the operational objectives defined and pursued over the past two decades ended in failure. He noted that once Osama bin Laden was out of the picture, there was nothing further to accomplish in Afghanistan. “We delivered justice to bin Laden a decade ago,” he proudly announced, “and we’ve stayed in Afghanistan for a decade since,” he complained.

      US Media Amplifies Afghan Chaos

      READ MORE

      Anyone who has been through Harvard Business School (HBS) and understands the basic principles of economics would recognize that there were probably better things to do with that amount of money. Hal Brands and Michael O’Hanlon, the authors of an article in Foreign Affairs, have penned an article with the title, “America Failed Its Way to Counterterrorism Success.” Neither did an MBA at HBS. Both men aimed higher, frequenting other elite universities (Stanford, Yale and Princeton), where they focused on what really matters: managing the global strategies of an expanding empire. They share a solid reputation as experts in strategic defense and are associates respectively of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute and the centrist Brookings Institute. 

      Brands and O’Hanlon have teamed up to convince their public of the Leibnitzian truth that all was for the best despite the obvious fiasco. In their analysis of the profligate waste that appears on the Pentagon’s still unaudited books, they recognize but appear unconcerned by a two-decade-long failure to produce even a minimal return on investment. Thanks to their clever detective work, they believe that there is a hidden success story waiting to be told.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Their embarrassment with the obvious facts becomes clear in two sentences that begin respectively with the words “but” and “yet.” “But since around 2014,” they affirm, “Washington has settled on a medium-footprint model based on modest investments, particularly in special operations forces and airpower, to support local forces that do most of the fighting and dying.” In the same paragraph, they explain: “Yet the experience of the past two decades suggests that the medium-footprint strategy is still the best of bad options available to the United States.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Medium-footprint:

      In geopolitics, a size that sounds reasonable after realizing that an effort based on maximum power by a mighty nation has catastrophically failed. The virtue associated with a medium footprint follows the convincing reasoning that spending less on wasteful activities is more virtuous than spending more.

      Contextual Note

      For the past two decades, US foreign policy has accelerated the trend, influenced by McDonald’s, of supersizing everything, all in the name of security needs. But the supersized milkshake appears to have fatally slipped from every administration’s hands and has now crashed to the ground in the place it all began. President Biden’s decision has rocked the foundations of America’s belief in the efficacy of its unparalleled military might.

      Brands and O’Hanlon agree with the now commonly held opinion that the entire campaign in Afghanistan was, in terms of its stated goals, a spectacular failure. They see it as tragic overreach. But rather than applaud Biden for seeking to put an end to “unsustainably expensive military commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq,” they complain that “the United States underreached by pulling back from the broader Middle East too fast and allowing old threats to reemerge.” They appear to lay the blame on all three occupants of the White House since 2014: Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden. At the same time, they applaud what they see as a trend of downsizing the supersized calamities initiated by the Bush administration.

      Embed from Getty Images

      When the Americans put boots on the ground, the footprints they leave tend to be outrageously big and messy. Rather than simply marching forward, US military campaigns have a habit of seeking to mash into the ground everything that seems a bit foreign on their path. The authors think they can do better and applaud what they see as a trend toward a medium footprint as a form of progress. In their eyes, it may even justify all the otherwise obvious failure.

      They present the medium-footprint model as a kind of silver living in a somber and depressing cloud, daring to invoke a possible positive return on investment. “When combined with nonmilitary tools such as intelligence cooperation, law enforcement efforts, and economic aid,” they write, “this approach provides reasonably good protection at a reasonable price.” They recast the failure as a kind of research and development investment that has prepared a brighter future and will guarantee increased market share for US military domination (i.e., security).

      Historical Note

      In their audit of success and failure, Hal Brands and Michael O’Hanlon rejoice in one accomplishment: that “Washington has inflicted devastating losses on its enemies and forced them to focus more on surviving than thriving.” An honest historian would be tempted to reframe this in the following terms: Washington has inflicted devastating losses on multiple civilian populations and forced them to focus more on surviving than thriving.

      That is the obvious truth concerning people’s lives and social structures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen. Is this something Americans who celebrate their military as “a force for good in the world” can really rejoice in? Reducing entire populations to the struggle for survival seems a far cry from spreading democracy and defending human rights. Creating misery is an aggressive denial of human rights. It creates conditions that encourage further violations of those rights.

      Playing the imaginary role of a CEO called in to take over a failing enterprise, the authors note that thanks to their vaunted medium-footprint strategy, “the rate of expenditure has come down markedly in the last decade.” They point out that wars that “once cost as much as $200 billion a year in all” now cost “just a few billion dollars.” That is effective downsizing.

      They define the new strategy as “managing intractable problems rather than solving them or simply walking away.” In other words, the Goldilocks principle. Not too heavy, not too light. “Just right,” or, as the authors put it, “meant to be both aggressive and limited.” 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Could this be an example of Aristotle’s golden mean as a moral principle? In such situations, Aristotle defines an extreme to be avoided as anger, which provokes the subject “to inflict pain, and to perceive his revenge.” That was the official motivation the Bush administration adopted for its war on the Taliban in 2001. “Managing intractable problems” presumably involves taking into account all the parameters of a situation. It should include engaging in dialogue and negotiation. 

      But that is not what the authors envision. The “aggressive” side they recommend involves delegating the nasty part of war to local partners who “clear and hold terrain,” assured that they will be accompanied by the “direct use of U.S. military power — especially special operations forces, drones, and manned airpower.” Aristotle would object that that could not be thought of as managing the problem. It is simply a more complex and messier prosecution of anger.

      The authors believe this strategy worked against the Islamic State (IS), a movement that wouldn’t even have arisen without the initial “heavy footprint.” But did it work or merely seem to work? There has been a lot of seeming over the past 20 years. Last week’s attack at Kabul airport was conducted by the Islamic State in Khorasan Province, a regional affiliate of IS.

      The authors explain the purpose of their medium footprint: “to maintain the regional military footholds.” From footprint to foothold, all seems to be clear. They even imagine that such strategies pay off in the form of “deeper reform once conditions stabilized.” Can they cite any cases of reform and stabilized conditions as a result of either heavy or medium footprints? Not really, because there haven’t been any. Instead, they console themselves with this conclusion: “On the whole, the medium-footprint strategy was more sustainable and effective than anything Washington had tried before.”

      The lesser of two evils? Or simply the slower of two evils?

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 63 Shares99 Views

      in World Politics

      US Media Amplifies Afghan Chaos

      by

      The Daily Devil’s Dictionary appears today in its final August weekly edition containing multiple items taken from a variety of contexts. The daily format returns next Monday.

      The Fading Horizon of US Middle East Politics

      US foreign policy has always sought effective metaphors intended to express the nation’s exceptional virtues, often framed in terms of vision, resolution, industriousness or simply noble intentions. The Afghan war was baptized, “Operation Enduring Freedom.” The war in Iraq gave us “Operation Iraqi Freedom” and “Operation New Dawn.” 

      Ever since Woodrow Wilson’s promise to “make the world safe for democracy” expressed America’s aptitude for entering wars, securing privileged access to resources, engaging in economic colonialism and intimidating uncooperative nations, slogans have served to clarify the direction of US policy. In recent years, the public has periodically learned about a “reset,” a “rebalance” or a “pivot” that announces a creative shift of perspective or intent.

      Questions on Which No One Agrees: Infrastructure, Cuba and Jobs

      READ MORE

      Faced with the quandary of military withdrawal from the “forever wars” inherited from the three previous administrations, the Biden team has crafted a new metaphor intended to reassure a concerned public. Following the definitive overthrow of the US-supported Afghan government and the definitive withdrawal of foreign troops, President Joe Biden made the solemn promise “to retain an over-the-horizon capacity” as the appropriate response to any attempts by the Taliban government to threaten US interests. Biden defines this as the capacity “to take them out, surgically.”

      Over the horizon:

      Belonging to an imaginary domain where everything is perfectly coordinated and clearly efficient, an update of the “over the rainbow” capacity of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz

      The Context

      As Oliver Knox pointed out in The Washington Post, that “phrase has been a staple of Biden’s rhetoric on the troop withdrawal.” If all human efforts fail, whether with soldiers or diplomats, Americans tend to believe that their superior technology will respond to every need. The same reasoning has been consistently applied to the climate crisis, which, in the interest of economic growth, will continue to worsen because at the end of the day a technology fix will miraculously ride into the frame of the movie from over the horizon to save the enterprising pioneers in the wagon train.

      What if the Taliban Were to Keep Their Promises?

      With the sudden collapse of the Afghan government, Taliban spokesman Mohammad Naeem declared that the war that began 20 years ago was now “over.” In its initial reaction, The New York Times agreed, summing up the event with the headline: “Kabul’s Sudden Fall to Taliban Ends U.S. Era in Afghanistan.” This calm description more appropriate to a report on a thrilling chess match made it sound as if a noble chapter of history has now been closed.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The drama that ensued led even The Times to change its tone. For the Afghans or at least the Taliban, the invader has finally been defeated. For the US, a dolorous reckoning is taking place. And while, among the confusion, the level of fear and anguish has never been higher, especially for those Afghans who cooperated with the US and the fallen government, coldly reasoning Americans (if such creatures exist) should take comfort from the promises the Taliban have made to “allow Afghans to resume daily activities and do nothing to scare civilians.”

      Naeem sought to reassure the US about Taliban 2.0. Even members of the 2001 Bush administration should be impressed, those who justified the war against Afghanistan on the grounds that the country was “harboring terrorists.” “We will not allow anyone,” Naeem insisted, “to use our lands to target anyone, and we do not want to harm others.”

      Target:

      In the domain of foreign relations, a polite synonym of kill, torture, injure and oppress with a sense of total impunity

      The Context

      What more could Americans ask for? Mission finally accomplished. If the Afghans no longer allow anyone to use their lands to target anyone else (for example, tall buildings in New York), all will be well with the world. Lower Manhattan’s traders can carry on their business in total tranquility. The Taliban leaders have even promised to improve the lives of Afghan women, as well as hinting they will tone down at least some of their traditional fanaticism. So, why is everyone so upset?

      Could it be that Americans feel destabilized by the realization, nearly half a century after the fall of Saigon, of the utter futility of building such a powerful military machine that, no matter where it is deployed, will accomplish nothing other than intimidate its own allies while producing monumental profits for the defense industry? Who doesn’t remember George W. Bush boasting about the most powerful military in the history of mankind that was “supported by the collective will of the world?”  

      Now, it is the Taliban who have seized the pen that writes the rules in Afghanistan. Despite the official promise to go easy on collaborators, US media have expressed “growing doubts about that pledge.” It leaves the impression that critics of the US withdrawal would be disappointed if no spectacular reprisals were to occur. Americans need their enemies to live up to the image they have created of them. The Times predicts that the “Taliban may indeed engage in reprisal killings, as they did when they took over in Afghanistan more than 20 years ago.” If the US defined the rules of the game through its own violence, ineptness and prevarication over two decades, the Taliban could at least demonstrate their own ability to play by those rules. Stick to the script, guys! We need your cooperation.

      There are legitimate reasons to fear the worst from a group defined by its religious fundamentalism seeking control of a chaotically divided nation of warlords and competing ethnic groups in which the idea of getting revenge on the invader and occupier motivates a lot of people. But the message today, as expressed by Abdul Qahar Balkhi from the Taliban’s Cultural Commission, is clearly different from the Taliban’s historical past. 

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      In another article, The Times mocks the very idea of the Taliban’s effort to “make nice.” This too reads like a case of futuristic schadenfreude sending the implicit message: Let’s hope they don’t succeed in making nice because our nation and its people need to remain convinced that the Taliban are evil enough to make our 20-year war on them appear justified.

      The State Department’s Philosophy of Trickle-down Sharing

      In February, Biden made a point of reassuring the nation’s European allies, who during the four years of Donald Trump’s tragicomic reign had begun to have doubts about the solidity of promises made by an American president. “Let me erase any lingering doubt,” Biden insisted, “the United States will work closely with our European Union partners and capitals across the continent, from Rome to Riga, to meet the shared challenges we face.”

      It didn’t take long for the first of such challenges to appear.

      Shared challenge:

      A crisis created by a powerful nation such as the United States, who generously offers other friendly nations the opportunity to accompany it in the experience of responding to the crisis, which will last as long as it serves the initiator’s interests, while at the same time avoiding bothering the partners with the annoyance of trying to work out collegially an appropriate and honorable solution

      The Context

      Since the end of World War II, the United States has assumed the noble responsibility of managing the foreign affairs of its largely docile allies, while at the same time finding multiple ways of disrupting the foreign affairs of rogue nations that irresponsibly refuse to have their affairs managed from Washington. In the intervening decades, this has worked quite well. It has enabled an enduring system called a “rules-based order,” whose efficiency depended on one nation having the exclusive right not just to define the rules, but also to enforce them.

      With the chaos surrounding the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, the first signs are appearing that the vaunted efficiency of the rules-based order has become counterproductive. Yahoo cites Dave Keating, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council, who explains that Europeans are angry “that they weren’t consulted about the withdrawal plan and were treated as an afterthought even though this was supposed to be a NATO joint endeavor.” Everyone — Americans and Europeans alike — has suddenly become aware of “the tremendous loss of money and lives spent on the NATO mission in Afghanistan over the past two decades that now seems very difficult to justify.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Some observers pointed out in late 2001 that waging an open and easily extendible war to counter a specific crime by a small group of people might be “difficult to justify.” But in the rule-based order, at a time of exaggerated emotions, a firm and resolute decision by the drafter of the rules was as good as formal law and much better than moral law in redefining the rules and having everyone abide by them.

      Credibility Ratings Are the Diplomatic Equivalent of Credit Ratings

      The Washington Post understands the imperatives associated with the task of maintaining the image of an imperial power and the sacrifices it requires. Last week, following the debacle of Kabul, The Post’s editorial board explained how feasible it would have been for the US not to shamelessly abandon Afghanistan: “A small U.S. and allied military presence — capable of working with Afghan forces to deny power to the Taliban and its al-Qaeda terrorist allies, while diplomats and nongovernmental organizations nurtured a fledgling civil society — not only would have been affordable but also could have paid for itself in U.S. security and global credibility.”

      Global credibility:

      The impression retained by other nations and peoples that a superpower is ready, willing and able to subjugate any other group of people through the use of military might, technology, economic sanctions and any other appropriate means it possesses that sets it apart from the rest of humanity

      The Context

      The Post routinely supports establishment Democrats such as Biden, especially in opposition to dangerous progressives within the same party. But in this case, Jeff Bezos’ paper dared not only to criticize its hero, but even to accuse him of relying on clichés to support his reasoning. “Contrary to his and others’ cliches about ‘endless war,’ though, U.S. troops had not been in major ground operations, and had endured very modest casualties, since 2014,” The Post reports.

      The Trojan War left traumatic traces on ancient Greek civilization because it lasted what felt to its contemporaries like an eternity: 10 years. To expiate the guilt associated with that enduring drama, Odysseus was condemned to another 10 years of wandering. At least, that’s how the editorial board that produced the Iliad and Odyssey seemed to see things. For the Greeks, 20 years of testing their manliness in war and Odysseus’ forced peregrination provided the matter that would define who they were as a civilization. A few centuries later, they offered the world the philosophy of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the drama of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides and the Aphrodite of Praxiteles, as well as the radically unarmed Venus de Milo.

      The key to the liberating Greek civilization from what Homer consistently described as a permanent manipulation of human heroes by capricious, undisciplined gods was the fact that a seemingly endless war did end. Once Odysseus, after a decade of wandering, had cleared his home of the crowd of suitors that had assembled coveting his neglected wife, the nation as a whole could settle down to producing a civilization in which art and intellect flourished (punctuated by an occasional war against Persians or even civil war between rival cities, just to keep everyone alert).

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      The Greeks understood that some seemingly endless things actually do need to end. The Washington Post — but more fundamentally, the deeply militarized economy of the US that The Post is wont to defend and promote — haven’t yet learned that lesson.

      With Global Warming Confirmed, Israeli Settlers Need Their Ice Cream More Than Ever

      Like Lebron James and the late Kobe Bryant, two basketball legends, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield are so famous that only their first names are needed to identify them. This is true, in any case, so long as the two names are paired together, since the first names Ben and Jerry lack the uniqueness of Lebron and Kobe. The two men from Merrick, New York, launched what became the most famous ice cream brand in the United States more than 30 years ago. They became celebrities thanks to the quality of their products but even more so to their marketing skills, which included a dose of sincere social concern and political awareness, something most successful businesses usually seek to avoid. Unlike the many brands that suddenly discovered their love for Black Lives Matter after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, their commitment to causes never reflected pure marketing opportunism.

      The two Jewish boys no longer run the business, but they have imprinted on it its dimension of social awareness. Consistently with the company’s moral conscience, the company Ben & Jerry’s decided to stop sales in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian Territories. Consistently with a certain style of propaganda designed to legitimate policies and actions even more openly racist and oppressive than police brutality in the United States against blacks, the state of Israel itself and numerous organizations have accused Ben and Jerry’s of anti-Semitism.

      The Times of Israel reports on demonstrations in front of a Ben & Jerry’s in New York by militant Zionists who “led chants of ‘Shame on you, Ben & Jerry’s,’ ‘Everyone deserves ice cream’ and ‘From the river to the sea, Israel will always be.’”

      Deserve:

      Enjoy one of the rights essential to one’s well-being within a human community, a category that includes abstract notions such as the right to vote in a democracy and, more recently, following the logic of the consumer society, the right to purchase any commercial commodity

      The Context

      In the latest news, according to The Hill, Florida Senator Rick Scott is “calling for a federal investigation into Ben & Jerry’s over its decision to stop selling ice cream in occupied Palestinian territory.” This moment may appear as the most telling sign of the irreversible decline of a great democracy that once at least pretended to set standards for the rest of the world.

      In its famous 2010 Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court pushed the idea of freedom of speech to the point of authorizing corporations to undermine democratic processes by calling their use of money to influence elections “free speech.” Now, the idea that American citizens and corporations might use the feeble force of their refusal to consume products originating in a foreign country deemed virulently anti-democratic for its treatment of the populations living within its borders has already been condemned as unpatriotic and anti-Semitic. Florida and many other states have passed anti-BDS laws punishing efforts to boycott Israel, a country that practices policies similar to South Africa’s notorious apartheid system.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Ben & Jerry’s isn’t even proposing a boycott, which is the refusal to buy goods from a particular source. Ben & Jerry’s sell; they don’t buy. They aren’t even aiming at Israel as a nation, but will only refuse to sell in those parts that have been identified by the United Nations as illegally colonized. Scott, a Republican senator, wants the company investigated, condemned and presumably sanctioned for failing to blindly endorse an apartheid-style occupation conducted by a foreign country. He appears to think that the US Constitution’s First Amendment protects the right of Americans to speak out against the policies of one’s own country but not those of Israel.

      The key word is of course anti-Semitism, now considered to be identical with any form of criticism of Israel and a shortcut for letting original forms of white supremacy off the hook. The word has become a magic wand of the right in many Western countries. A conservative or even a liberal establishment politician can wave it in the air with appropriate gestures to shame anyone who dares to spout progressive themes about oppressed peoples and expect the media to respond.

      It’s curious that so few people who follow the media will stop to think about how paradoxical it may appear that a company founded by two Jewish guys, who remain the source of the firm’s social conscience, are labeled anti-Semitic by a US senator defending the right of another nation to practice an aggressive form of apartheid, one of the most extreme historical examples of white supremacy.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 113 Shares129 Views

      in World Politics

      The Hazaras of Afghanistan Face a Threat to Survival

      by

      September 11, 2001, is internationally recognized as a date associated with terrorism and mass murder by al-Qaeda militants based in a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Yet the current situation in the country means that September 11, 2021, could see another tragedy: the ethnic cleansing of the Hazara minority. In April, President Joe Biden announced that US forces, and NATO troops along with them, will depart from Afghanistan after 20 years of conflict. This is despite the absence of a peace treaty between the Afghan government and Taliban insurgents.

      Britain Must Protect Afghanistan’s Chevening Scholars

      READ MORE

      Unconstrained by the presence of foreign forces or the binding conditions of a peace agreement, Afghan civilians will be vulnerable to attacks by the Taliban and other terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State in Khurasan Province (IS-KP). Yet if history and the current situation are indicators, the Hazaras are at the greatest risk.

      The Hazara of Afghanistan

      Before the 19th century, Shia Hazaras were the largest minority in Afghanistan, making up 67% of the population. Between 1890 and 1893, Pashtun Sunni leader Amir Abdur Rahman Khan declared jihaduponHazaras, who resisted by declaring jihad against the ruling forces. Although their fighting was fierce, over half the Hazara population was killed or forced into exile, their lands confiscated and thousands sold via slave markets that remained active until 1920. Women were coerced into marriage with Pashtun men, a practice intended to destroy the cultural integrity and identity of Hazaras.

      Embed from Getty Images

      This period has been described as the “most significant example of genocide in the modern history of Afghanistan.” The historic significance of Khan’s jihad not only galvanized Pashtun and other Afghan tribes against the Hazaras, but it institutionalized their relegated status within Afghan society to an inferior position. This continued until the invasion of US and NATO forces in 2001.

      Today, Hazaras make up around 20% of Afghanistan’s 38-million population. Some, such as international relations scholar Niamatullah Ibrahimi, put this figure at 25%. Yet regardless of how many remain, one thing is clear: The Hazaras are amongst the most discriminated against and persecuted people in the world. As such, they form one of the largest groups of asylum seekers and refugees.

      The Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 precipitated the largest exodus of Hazaras since 1890. After 10 years of war, the Soviets withdrew. A vacuum ensued that led to various factions vying for power. The Taliban seized control and ruled the country from 1996 to 2001. The Taliban soon launched another era of persecution of Hazaras. Two years after taking control of the Afghan capital, Kabul, the Taliban slaughtered 2,000 Hazaras in Mazar-e-Sharif. An estimated 15,000 Hazaras lost their lives under the Taliban regime. The US-led invasion removed the Taliban from power and resulted in less violence against the Hazaras. Yet the community continued to be deemed an inferior group in Afghanistan. Historically, Hazaras were relegated to menial labor.

      Despite the legacy of persecution, marginalization and exclusion from the highest levels of government, Hazaras have achieved important gains in the fields of education and culture since 2001. The Hazaras advocate and practice democratic participation, universal education and tolerance for religious and ethnic pluralism. These values are indispensable for the creation and maintenance of a healthy civil society. Yet Hazaras are anathema to the Taliban and IS-KP.

      Targeting the Hazara

      With the US departure imminent and the return of the Taliban inevitable, the identity, values and achievements of the Hazara people make them a primary target. The formula was repeated throughout the 20th century: An ideologically intolerant group obtains political power and accentuates salient differences of a minority. The dominant group discriminates against minorities, marginalizes them to the lowest caste in society and then systematically eliminates them.

      The pattern of violence often appears to the outside world as random. But to the Hazaras, the violence is systematic. Due to their religious and ethnic identity, passion for education and procreation, the minority community has been targeted for ethnic cleansing.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Since December 6, 2011, when thousands of Hazaras were attacked in Kabul during the holy day of Ashura, the violence has resembled a genocidal character. The bombings, which killed 70 in Kabul and four in Mazar-e-Sharif, were claimed to be conducted by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (Lei) a Pakistan-based group strongly affiliated with al-Qaeda and the Taliban. In May of this year, triple bombings left nearly 100 dead, 85 of whom were students at Syed-Al-Shuhada high school, which is predominantly attended by teenage girls. Last year, a maternity ward of a hospital operated by Médecins Sans Frontières was attacked. Twenty-four people died, including 16 mothers and two children. In the same year, 40 students were killed at the Kawsar Danish tutoring center. 

      Currently, the Taliban control more than half of Afghanistan’s territory. This includes 17 out of 19 districts in Herat’s province, which is densely populated by Hazaras. With repeated attacks against Hazaras, it is clear that ethnic cleansing is taking place in Afghanistan.

      The Taliban have applied this formula before and are deliberately using it again with renewed expectation for its all-out assault on Afghanistan after the US departs. Vulnerable groups in the country are already arming themselves and realigning their relationship with the Taliban. Yet not all of these groups support or embrace the Taliban. Rather, they are only doing so out of political necessity and survival. In other words, act supportively of the Taliban or die.

      The litmus test of loyalty will be measured by the degree to which other ethnic groups hold the Hazaras in contempt and advance the Taliban’s agenda against them. The phenomenon is called a “cascade,” wherein acts of violence against a marginalized group establishes one’s legitimacy in the eyes of the dominant group.

      What Can Be Done?

      The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission has called for the UN to appoint a commission of inquiry to investigate the murder of Hazara school children and attacks on Shia worshippers. The International Criminal Court has authorized the chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to investigate war crimes committed by all responsible parties, including the Taliban.

      Yet more needs to be done. The international community should acknowledge the emerging signs that genocide is underway against the Hazaras and will only escalate. Global powers, such as the United States, must call for the protection of the most vulnerable people. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) should place Hazara refugees on the high-priority list for asylum.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      In response to the Taliban’s territorial gains, several mujahedeen commanders, including Hazara leader Mohammed Mohaqiq, have organized local civilian forces whose presence has strengthened and inspired government troops. In the recent past, the government armed Hazara civilians, who successfully defended mosques and sacred celebrations from Taliban attacks. Kabul must consider this strategy again.

      Yet local civilian forces, the Afghan army and international troops alone will never bring peace, security and stability to Afghanistan. If Hazaras are to remain in the country with any expectation of a recognizable civil existence, a political solution is required. But a settlement without involving Pakistan, China, Iran and the US is doomed to fail.

      Pakistan continues to provide safe harbor and assistance to the Afghanistan-based Taliban. China, a key ally of Islamabad, is the only global power with credible influence over the Pakistanis. Iran now supports the Taliban. It does so in order to counter the emergence of an anti-Iranian Islamic state in Afghanistan. The long-term interest of the United States is to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a training ground for anti-Western terrorists. The presence of all these parties, particularly the Iranians and Americans, is required at the negotiating table.  

      International leadership capable of identifying and appealing to these four powers, whose current relationship is shaped more by enmity than commonality, has yet to emerge. The situation on the ground requires immediate remedies specifically addressed to the threats posed to the Hazaras. It is time to take notice.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 75 Shares109 Views

      in World Politics

      Britain Must Protect Afghanistan’s Chevening Scholars

      by

      On June 1, the UK defense and home secretaries announced that the local staff who worked for the British government in Afghanistan, including many interpreters for the British military, would be eligible for expedited relocation to the UK under the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP).

      The new policy states that “any current or former locally employed staff who are assessed to be under serious threat to life are offered priority relocation to the UK regardless of their employment status, rank or role, or length of time served.” To date, more than 1,300 Afghans and their families have been relocated to the United Kingdom. Another 3,000 more are expected to relocate.

      Scholars Under Threat

      The ARAP rightly assesses that the local Afghan staff who have worked for the British over the past 20 years are at risk. However, it fails to recognize that Afghan graduates of British universities face a similar threat. These graduates have been one of the main drivers of development in Afghanistan. They have worked for the United Nations, the World Bank and various government entities around the country. They have also promoted British cultural values in Afghanistan. Naturally, the Taliban does not view them favorably.

      In particular, the Chevening scholars attract the ire of the Taliban. Over the years, the British Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) has given out scholarships to some of the most promising Afghan students. Their identification with Britain has attracted special attention from the Taliban, who have called them the “spies of the Englishmen” and “children of the devil ” among other things. Such sayings have not been reported in Western media, but Afghans know this only too well.

      Embed from Getty Images

      International forces have just withdrawn from the Bagram airbase. The Taliban are gaining ground and have even captured the main border crossing to Tajikistan. The Afghan government forces are crumbling. Kabul is already a dystopian city. The progress Afghanistan made around human rights, women’s empowerment, education, economic development and in other areas is already being rolled back. The Taliban view of the world is almost medieval. Harsh Islamic law that bans modern banking, women’s rights and fundamentals such as freedom of expression will soon hold sway again. Chevening scholars are likely to be hunted down and slaughtered, often publicly, because they are tarred by their association with Britain.

      The Taliban have a terrible track record. In the past, they have killed thousands of people, closed down schools for girls and imposed draconian punishments, often as a public spectacle. It is an open secret that al-Qaeda used Afghanistan as a base during the reign of the Taliban. Those dark days are about to return, and anyone associated with the West will be targeted. Those associated with the US and the UK are already paying with their lives.

      Three Good Reasons

      The British government has a moral obligation not only to the local staff but also to the Chevening scholars. The ARAP should cover the latter too. The very scholarship the FCDO granted to promising Afghan students has now become a noose around their necks. The Chevening scholarship has opened new doors for Afghan graduates, but it has also marked them down as Western collaborators in the eyes of the Taliban. Women scholars in particular face a risk. They are often seen as corrupted by Western values and a threat to the traditional Islamic order. Abandoning these scholars to their fate would be the wrong decision for any fair-minded British government.

      There is also an economic argument for admitting Afghanistan’s Chevening scholars. In the post-Brexit era, the UK wants to be a global hub for talent. It is in the self-interest of the British government to attract highly skilled and driven professionals from around the world. The Chevening scholars have been trained in the finest British universities. Many of them have also worked abroad or have professional experience with international organizations. They have the skills, the resilience and the initiative to contribute greatly to the British economy. 

      There is a social argument for Chevening scholars too. They are some of the most cosmopolitan and cultured people in Afghanistan. While studying in the UK, many were active in student life, organizing discussions, volunteering with charities and hosting cultural events. They have an ability to assimilate into the British culture while adding a distinctive flavor to an increasingly multicultural nation. The Afghan scholars are likely to contribute to the arts, civic engagement and the communities they join. They will be an asset to the UK just as the Huguenots, the Jews, the Pakistanis, the Indians and countless others have been in the past.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in World Politics

      So Far, Biden’s Foreign Policy Is Proving Too Conventional

      by

      On the domestic front, Joe Biden is flirting with transformational policies around energy, environment, and infrastructure. It’s not a revolution, but it’s considerably less timid than what Barack Obama offered in that pre-Trump, pre-pandemic era.

      When it comes to foreign policy, however, the Biden administration has been nowhere near as transformational. The phrase Joe Biden has used so often is “America is back.” That sentiment certainly captures some aspects of Biden’s relationship with the international community, such as repairing relations with the World Health Organization and rejoining the Paris climate accords. In these ways, the administration has brought America back to the status quo that existed before Trump was unleashed on the world stage.

      How Joe Biden Looks at the World

      READ MORE

      But on some very important issues — China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea — President Biden hasn’t managed to restore even the previous status quo. His approach to military spending and the arms race is decidedly hawkish. His message on immigration, as expressed by Vice President Kamala Harris on a visit to Guatemala earlier this month, effectively erases the inscription on the Statue of Liberty by telling potential border crossers in the region to stay home. Okay, foreign policy is not a winning issue at the ballot box, and Biden certainly has a lot on his agenda. But even the notoriously cautious Obama took some courageous steps with Tehran and Havana.

      It’s possible that Biden is focusing on America first before turning to the world as a whole. It’s also possible that he’s simply not interested in altering US foreign policy in any significant way beyond removing US troops from Afghanistan. True, it was exhilarating to have a conventional president again after Trump. But conventional, when it comes to US foreign policy, is just not good enough.

      Confronting China

      If the Biden administration’s overriding domestic preoccupation is a sustainable economy, then its dominant foreign policy obsession is China. Biden and Xi have spoken only once, by telephone in February. Xi participated in Biden’s virtual climate confab in April. They are likely to meet face to face sometime this year, possibly around the G20 summit in Rome in October. There’s been talk of greater cooperation on addressing the climate crisis. And there haven’t been any overt military confrontations in the South China Sea or elsewhere.

      But otherwise, Biden and Xi have not really gotten off on the right foot. It was a no-brainer for the new Biden administration to lift the Trump-era tariffs on Chinese products and de-escalate the trade war that unsettled manufacturers and consumers on both sides of the Pacific. The Biden team is ostensibly doing a review of US-China trade policy with a focus on whether Beijing has met its commitments under the “phase one trade deal” signed back in January 2020 (so far, it’s been a mixed record of China meeting some targets for US imports and missing others).

      .custom-post-from {float:right; margin: 0 10px 10px; max-width: 50%; width: 100%; text-align: center; background: #000000; color: #ffffff; padding: 15px 0 30px; }
      .custom-post-from img { max-width: 85% !important; margin: 15px auto; filter: brightness(0) invert(1); }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h4 { font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-h5 { font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
      .custom-post-from input[type=”email”] { font-size: 14px; color: #000 !important; width: 240px; margin: auto; height: 30px; box-shadow:none; border: none; padding: 0 10px; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-pen-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center right 14px; background-size:14px;}
      .custom-post-from input[type=”submit”] { font-weight: normal; margin: 15px auto; height: 30px; box-shadow: none; border: none; padding: 0 10px 0 35px; background-color: #1878f3; color: #ffffff; border-radius: 4px; display: inline-block; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-email-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 14px center; background-size: 14px; }

      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox { width: 90%; margin: auto; position: relative; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label { text-align: left; display: block; padding-left: 32px; margin-bottom: 0; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px;
      -webkit-user-select: none;
      -moz-user-select: none;
      -ms-user-select: none;
      user-select: none;
      order: 1;
      color: #ffffff;
      font-weight: normal;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label a { color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input { position: absolute; opacity: 0; cursor: pointer; height: 100%; width: 24%; left: 0;
      right: 0; margin: 0; z-index: 3; order: 2;}
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:before { content: “f0c8”; font-family: Font Awesome 5 Free; color: #eee; font-size: 24px; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0; line-height: 28px; color: #ffffff; width: 20px; height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; z-index: 2; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:before { content: “f14a”; font-weight: 600; color: #2196F3; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:after { content: “”; }
      .custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:after { position: absolute; left: 2px; width: 18px; height: 18px; margin-top: 10px; background: #ffffff; top: 10px; margin: auto; z-index: 1; }
      .custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}

      The review is more than just bean-counting. In a marked departure from the usual neoliberal trade talk coming out of Washington, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai has said, “I want to disconnect this idea that the only way we do affirmative trade engagement, trade enhancement is through a free trade agreement.” Tai prefers to operate according to a “worker-centric trade policy” that evaluates China on issues of forced labor, workers’ rights and the environment. A more nuanced approach to trade is all to the good, of course, and Tai should be commended for breaking with the Washington consensus.

      But taken in conjunction with other Biden administration policies, the reluctance to lift tariffs on Chinese goods is part of a full-court economic press on the country. The Biden administration has effectively continued the Trump approach of not only lining up allies in the region to contain China (the Quad, the Blue Dot Network) but enlisting European countries as well to join the bandwagon. In his recent trip to Europe, Biden corralled the G7 to create the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative, a purported alternative to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure program, and twisted some arms to get NATO to prioritize China as part of its mission.

      NATO’s new emphasis on China reflects the Pentagon’s shift in focus. Trump might have loudly proclaimed his anti-China animus, but the Biden administration is determined to close what it calls the “say-do gap” by expanding capabilities beyond the Navy to challenge China in the air and above.

      China’s moves in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and the South China Sea are deeply troubling. Nor is Beijing doing nearly enough to green its Belt and Road Initiative. But the Biden administration needs to think creatively about how to leverage China’s own multilateral aspirations in order to address global problems. Trade tensions and disagreements about internal policies are to be expected. Yet the Biden administration has an urgent and historic opportunity to work with China (and everyone else) to remake the international community.

      Sparring With Iran

      Another no-brainer for the Biden administration was reviving the Iran nuclear agreement that Trump tried to destroy. Granted, it was tricky to unwind the sanctions against Tehran and address Iran’s demands for compensation. It wasn’t easy to reassure the Iranian leadership of the sincerity of US intentions given not only Trump’s past hostility but the current animosities of congressional Republicans. And there was also Israel, which was doing everything within its power to scuttle diplomacy up to and including sabotaging Iran’s nuclear facilities and assassinating Iranian scientists.

      These obstacles notwithstanding, the Biden team could have gotten the job done if it had started earlier and been more flexible. Not wanting to open itself up to criticism from hawks at home, however, the administration argued for a mutual, step-by-step return to the agreement. By contrast, Iran quite sensibly argued that the United States, since it attempted to blow up the agreement, should be the first to compromise by removing sanctions, a position that some US policymakers have also supported.

      Is the US Back Under Biden?

      READ MORE

      Meanwhile, the Biden administration is continuing a tit-for-tat confrontation with militias aligned with Iran. This week, the administration launched airstrikes against facilities on the Iraq-Syria border from which these militias have allegedly attacked US.bases in Iraq. US forces in Syria subsequently came under rocket fire.

      Why are there still US soldiers in Iraq and Syria? Didn’t the Biden administration commit to ending America’s endless wars? Although US forces are scheduled to depart Afghanistan in September and Washington has pledged to remove troops from Iraq as well, negotiations around the latter have yet to produce a timetable. Removing 2,500 US soldiers from Iraq would please the government in Baghdad, remove an irritant in US-Iranian relations and take US personnel out of harm’s way. What’s not to like, Joe?

      Getting Nowhere With Cuba and North Korea

      Late in his second term, Barack Obama orchestrated a bold rapprochement with Cuba. After lifting financial and travel restrictions, Obama visited the island in March 2016 to meet with Cuban leader Raul Castro. It wasn’t a full opening. Washington maintained a trade embargo and refused to close its anomalous base in Guantanamo. But it was a start. Donald Trump brought a quick end to that fresh start by reimposing the restrictions that Obama had lifted.

      Joe Biden promised to resurrect the Obama policy. Trump’s reversals, he said as a candidate, “have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights.” And yet, as president, he has done nothing to reverse Trump’s reversals.

      As Karen de Young writes in The Washington Post, “Under Trump restrictions, non-Cuban Americans are still prohibited from sending money to the island. Cruise ships are banned from sailing from the United States to Cuba, and the dozens of scheduled U.S. commercial flights to Cuban cities have largely stopped. Tight limits remain in place on commercial transactions.”

      The reason for the new administration’s lack of action, beyond its concerns about human rights in Cuba and its fear of Republican opposition in Congress, boils down to domestic politics. Robert Menendez, the Democratic senator from New Jersey who never liked the Obama-era détente with Cuba in the first place, represents a key obstacle in Congress. Public opinion in Florida among Cuban-Americans, which had swung in favor of rapprochement during the Obama period, has now also swung decisively in the other direction, thanks to a steady diet of Trumpian demagoguery.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Here, the Biden administration could try something new by closing Guantanamo. The administration is already launching a quiet effort to close the detention facility at the base by resolving the status of the several dozen inmates. He should go even further by rebooting Guantanamo as a center for US-Cuban environmental research, as scientists Joe Roman and James Kraska have proposed.

      North Korea, meanwhile, is the one place in the world where Trump sought to overturn decades of US hostility. His attempts at one-on-one diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un didn’t achieve much of anything, but it still might have served as a foundation for future negotiations. Biden has instead followed the script of all the administrations prior to Trump: review policy, promise something new, fall back on conventional thinking.

      The administration finished its review of the North Korea policy in April. Biden rejected his predecessor’s approaches as misguided and has relied on the usual big-stick-and-small-carrot policy that stretches back to the 1990s. On the one hand, Biden extended sanctions against the country and has maintained a military encirclement. On the other, his emissaries have reached out to Pyongyang, with Special Representative for North Korea Sung Kim saying this month that the United States would meet with Pyongyang “anywhere, anytime, without preconditions.” “Without preconditions” is fine. But what about “with incentives”?

      Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, North Korea is more shut off from the world than usual. It is preoccupied with the economic challenges associated with its increased isolation. In his annual address in January, Kim Jong-un made the unusual admission that the government’s economic program fell short of its goals. More recently, he has said that his country is “prepared for both dialogue and confrontation, especially … confrontation.”

      Biden should focus on the first half of Kim’s sentence. South Korea’s progressive president, Moon Jae-in, nearing the end of his own tenure, very much wants to advance reconciliation on the peninsula. Instead of beefing up its military containment of the isolated country, Washington could work with Seoul to break the current diplomatic impasse with a grand humanitarian gesture. Whether it’s vaccines, food or infrastructure development, North Korea needs help right now.

      Military Exceptionalism

      It’s still early in the Biden administration. Remember: Obama didn’t achieve his major foreign policy milestones in Iran and Cuba until later in his second term. Biden no doubt wants to accumulate some political capital first by repairing relations with allies and participating in multilateral fora on the global stage and achieving some economic success on the home front.

      The administration’s position on military spending, however, suggests that Biden is wedded to the most conventional of thinking. The United States is poised to end its intervention in Afghanistan and reduce its commitments in the Middle East. It is not involved in any major military conflicts. Everyone is wondering how the administration is going to pay for its ambitious infrastructure plans.

      So, why has Biden asked for a larger military budget? The administration’s 2022 request for the Pentagon is $715 billion, an increase of $10 billion, plus an additional $38 billion for military-related spending at the Energy Department and other agencies. True, the administration is hoping to boost non-military spending by a larger percentage. It is planning to remove the “overseas contingency operations” line item that funded the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

      But if there ever was a time to reduce US military spending, it’s now. The pandemic proved the utter worthlessness of tanks and destroyers in defending the homeland from the most urgent threats. Greater cooperation with China, a renewed nuclear pact with Iran and a détente with both Cuba and North Korea would all provide powerful reasons for the United States to reduce military spending. To use Joe Biden’s signature phrase, “C’mon, man!”

      *[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More