Escalating the War in Afghanistan?

The historian Arnold Toynbee observed that civilizations that attempted to reform far flung outposts on the periphery of their empires tended to fail and decline. Societies that renewed themselves, on the other hand, stood a better chance of succeeding and being ascendant powers.

Toynbee’s observation is extremely pertinent as the Obama administration contemplates a possible expansion of troops in Afghanistan. Proponents of increasing American forces to counter a resurgent Taliban contend that the so-called surge option turned the tide of the Iraq War in America’s favor, so why shouldn’t a similar counterinsurgency strategy work in Afghanistan?

To begin with, Afghanistan is a country five times the size of Iraq with some of the most inhospitable territory in the world. To compound matters, Afghanistan has never had an effective central government and the administration of Hamid Karzai, the partner in any nation building efforts in Afghanistan, is notoriously corrupt and therefore despised by much of the population.

Given enough time, say a decade, a counterinsurgency effort in Afghanistan might succeed. But defeating the Taliban and those resisting America’s presence in Afghanistan will likely have a limited strategic impact on the broader campaign against terrorism. Put simply, terrorism is an ideology that defies borders. Waging a battle for territory in Afghanistan is futile or beside the point if America’s enemies can simply flee to ungovernable regions in neighboring Pakistan.

The Bush administration’s strategy against terrorism boiled down to reducing the pool of ‘bad guys’ who are ideologically disposed towards attacking the United States. One limitation of this approach, of course, is that inevitable collateral damage tends to breed new jihadists. As even Don Rumsfeld noted, we can’t be sure we’re killing them faster than they are being created.

The “War on Terror” concept is proving self-defeating in other ways. It costs approximately $250,000 to field a single soldier in Afghanistan per year. Escalating the war in Afghanistan is going to cost the United States Treasury some $173 billion a year going forward. The Obama administration has an ambitious agenda to reform healthcare, repair America’s ailing infrastructure, and invest in the alternative energy sources of the future. However, at some point America’s creditors, particularly China, will have to ask the question: will the United States ever be able to repay the vast sums it is borrowing?

Experts agree that China is a rising power. Increasingly, America’s economic fate is tethered to China’s willingness to lend us money. The more the United States borrows the more leverage China will have over America’s economic and political future. For instance, if the United States does not curb its appetite for debt, then one day Chinese bankers might decide that they require a higher level of interest to compensate for their risk. A failure of America’s elected officials to raise taxes and cut services in order to pay for the servicing of our national debt could precipitate a run on the dollar.

Military success in Afghanistan may be less central to our national security than has been generally assumed. America cannot quit Afghanistan entirely. But our adventure in Iraq should have taught us something about the limits of military force. After all, the “success” of the so-called surge was something of a pyrrhic victory; the surge merely succeeded in mitigating the disastrous consequences of the Bush administration’s ill-advised invasion. Yogi Berra once said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Unfortunately, the United States no longer has the resources to do nation building abroad and at home. America must make a choice.

The Case for Keynes

Obama’s election has left the Conservative movement more deflated than a leaky air mattress. In truth, many of the ideas associated with conservatism have grown stale. For instance, the recent financial meltdown discredits the idea that free markets are self-regulating. Simply, put Keynesian economics is making a comeback, while the ideas of Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek are in retreat.

There’s a certain irony in all this; the Chicago school was once viewed as a corrective to the excesses of Keynesianism, but now policy-makers recognize that Keynes’s thought explains how we got into the current crisis, and how we might get out of it.

In a nutshell, Keynes believed that a culture centered on the ‘love of money’ sowed the seeds of its own dissatisfaction and dissolution. Keynes viewed wealth as a means, not an end. The purpose of prosperity, Keynes insisted, was that it allowed individuals to embark on projects of ethical improvement.

Keynes viewed economics as a moral science, not a natural science. He continually questioned the assumptions economists made. He thought it inappropriate, for instance, for financial wizards to use the same risk-management tools that life insurers do. After all, insurers utilize actuarial data where the future invariably resembles the past. Insurance markets have seen failures, but they are rare. Business and politics, are different matters altogether; the future rarely mirrors the past and a single unforeseeable event, a Black Swan, can alter the economic landscape in unpredictable ways.

Uncertainty was a key idea for Keynes. He believed the future was unpredictable. Consequently, money was not a neutral store of value, but “a subtle device for linking the present with the future.” In times of crisis, individuals tend to hoard cash, which prolongs downturns. Money is an emotional repository; when optimism reigns, then economies thrive, but when fear dominates, they wither.

Keynes insisted that governments had an obligation to reduce uncertainty. ‘Cheap money, wise spending’ was his motto. He would approve of universal healthcare because a healthy workforce would be a more optimistic and productive workforce. Von Hayek viewed government programs as a prelude to serfdom, buy Keynes believed totalitarian movements were nurtured in the soil of uncertainty. Therefore, reducing uncertainty had a double virtue; less uncertainty allowed more scope for moral improvement and it reduced the appeal of political extremism. The case for Keynes is comparatively airtight.