News Brief, Sky Blue Sky Edition
Posted by Joshua Foust on 07 Jun 2007 at 9:31 pm | Tagged as: Notes on the war, Military Matters, Foreign affairs, Domestic Politics
Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.
Defense
- The defense wires are abuzz today with news that Kenneth Krieg, the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, is stepping down “to be with family.” Unfortunately, that term is usually used by people either resigning in protest or caught up in soon-to-be scandal; I hope it’s neither.
- Cyborg spy moths? Really?
- Via the War Crimes Blog, six human rights groups have issued a stinging report (pdf) on the CIA’s secret prison network.
- It’s not just American defense contractors who engage in fraud and bribery.
- Ms. Hillhouse asks: is $60 billion too much for intelligence? I just got her latest book, and I’m excited to dig into it. Curse my poor book timing!
- Boeing offers a weak defense of the $200 billion Future Combat System. The Congressional Budget Office worries that even the $200 billion price tag, which is significantly beyond the $92 billion quoted just a few years ago, could grow by up to another $66 billion. Meanwhile, even Congress is fighting tooth and nail over whether or not an $800 million cut—less than one half of one percent—is feasible.
- Fascinating new study of insurgency, which makes the case for non-involvement. That is to say, chaos is the enemy, not any particular group or ideology, and creating (or, through supporting an established regime, continuing) chaos is the worst thing we can do for our long term security interests. It’s a touch long and really involved, but looks fascinating. Expect a full report on it once I’m done.
Around the World
- Role playing Vladimir Putin.
- South Korea, still stirring up racism while ignoring the North.
- How AIDS kills democracy.
- The inestimable Ms. Boyd on the mistakes in demanding too much “oversight”, too early.
- The forced exodus from Iran continues.
- Perhaps in response to the recent satellite hijacking, Sri Lankan police have evicted hundreds of minority Tamils from Colombo.
- Anne Applebaum sees the death of New Europe.
Back at Home
- You know the world is close to ending in weeping and gnashing of teeth when pre-failed Presidential bids feature LOLspeak on their campaign websites.
- Our dumb (dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb) new passport rules are choking the State Department.
- Wonkette goes meta in mocking Joe Kline.
- And this is just brutal: “Look, we were sad when we found out ‘democracy’ was all bullsh*t, too, but we were seven years old at the time, and we’ve since had a few decades to ‘get over it’ and ‘become alcoholics.’” They’re talking, of course, about Ron Paul.
- More reckless defeat-mongering from a bunch of war supporters, this time in the NYT. Their analogies are wrong (comparing communism and the domino theory with radical Islamism and Iranian nuclear deterrence requires a certain disconnect), and their reading of history is problematic (the invasion of Afghanistan was not related to Vietnam, except for how well we learned the lessons of funding guerilla wars against a stronger foreign power; rather, the invasion was related to the PDPA’s inability to quell popular Islamic resistance to the communist revolution). In other words, the authors don’t really seem to have a handle on what is actually happening or what has actually happened, and that makes me think they are an unreliable source for considering what is likely to happen. They see disaster if we leave but non-disaster if we stay. I disagree quite strongly—we face disaster either way, with the difference being how many of our own people we send to the meat grinder before realizing we can’t do a damned thing to end the killing.
4 Responses to “News Brief, Sky Blue Sky Edition”
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While I’m sure that you have much greater knowledge than two of the people who were instrumental to the foreign policy of that time, your snarky rejoinder requires a bit more flesh than this. To argue, as you do, that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was not part of the Cold War, and not encouraged by our retreat from Indochina, demands some substance. I have a great deal of respect for you knowledge of current affairs in that region, but you seem to have climbed out on a limb here.
Fair enough - bullet points suck for counterarguments (hell, for regular arguments too). I didn’t mean to say the invasion wasn’t a part of the Cold War, merely that it was, at best, tangentially related to Vietnam, and that claiming the Afghan War was a consequence of our withdrawal from Saigon requires a big stretch of imagination.
The Soviets had been sending aid and military support in the form of advisors to Afghanistan since the 50s—since the CIA overthrew Mossagdeh in Iran in 1953, in fact. Then, throughout the 60s and 70s the Soviets were constantly outmaneuvered by the U.S. in the Middle East, mostly through the Israeli wars. So they were left in a position kind of similar to today, in which they were starting to feel very boxed in in Southwest Asia—one of the consequences of an extremely successful containment policy there.
There were active Marxist parties in Afghanistan for decades when Mohammed Daoud Khan seized power in 1973, and his active and fairly brutal repression turned many of them revolutionary. The PDPA, the strongest of these parties, had successfully taken over the military, and in 1978 a military coup overthrew Daoud and executed him and his entire family, turning Afghanistan into the property of Nur Muhammad Taraki, a prominent PDPA official.
As people resisted the purges, reeducation camps, and executions common to all Marxist revolutions, Taraki’s control became weak, and in mid 1978 he was begging Brezhnev to lend him further aid and military assistance to quell a growing uprising in the east. Brezhnev hesitated, as he knew the Americans had a strong presence in Iran under the Shah and didn’t want to spark either an outright or even large scale proxy war. It wasn’t until the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and assurances from Taraki’s party in Moscow that the same wouldn’t happen in Afghanistan, that he invaded.
In every technical sense of the word, it wasn’t an invasion, as the legitimate, recognized government had requested the Soviets to station garrisons across the country to help maintain order, but everyone now sees it as an actual invasion since within days “a few garrisons” had changed into “hundreds of thousands of troops and equipment.”
Anyway, a lot of recently uncovered Kremlin documents indicate the invasion was much more a reaction against an aggressive US containment policy in the Middle East than anything else, including the opportunity to capitalized upon a key moment of weakness during the embassy crisis (the excellent book, Ghost Wars by Steve Coll does a good job covering many of these documents, though the invasion is just one chapter). In other words, Vietnam really had nothing to do with Brezhnev’s decision to invade, as in the Middle East Jimmy Carter had threatened nuclear war should the Soviets make any more aggressive moves there (perhaps one of his only so-so-okay foreign policy decisions). There were far too many other factors in play, and so little evidence from the Kremlin itself, that calling it a reaction against Vietnam requires far too much inference, assumption, and outright guesswork to be a reliable gauge of Soviet intent.
Whew. That’s my take on it. You’re right that the two guys writing that piece were much closer to the foreign policy establishment at the time. But instead of that proving the point I think you were making—that I have no business criticizing their argument—I think it bolsters my case. Throughout the GWOT, old Administration officials, many of whom were responsible for the terrible and short sighted policies that got us into the geopolitical mess we’re in right now, have been playing CYA (cover your booty) big time.
Only, I’m in agreement with them that withdrawal from Iraq would be a disaster (I’m just quibbling with their contextualization of the Afghan-Soviet War). I also happen to think that staying in Iraq would be a disaster, too, and will result in an unsatisfactory withdrawal regardless. It is a disaster either way. So I’d rather not waste our money, equipment, and most importantly, people, while we pretend we can untangle the dozens of violently competing factions and militias only occasionally united by their hatred of America.
Also, comparing radical Islamism to communism is problematic as well. They’re not even remotely the same, though mechanistically they might be defeated the same way (i.e. through popular and political discrediting, not military victory). It’s like comparing Iraq to WWII: there are so many vast differences, the very few similarities are marginal in comparison. That was my other big beef with what they’re saying—especially the comparison to the killing fields of Cambodia, a comparison I find particularly offensive for personal reasons.
Excellent reply, and for what it’s worth, I agree with most of your analysis. From what I recall of my history studies, Russia/USSR had been involved in the Afghanistan region for quite a long time. Prior to the USSR, Russian involvement was part of the world chess match between it and the Continental powers, most importantly Britain, to control the Khyber Pass. In the Soviet era, Afghanistan became an important bulwark (a Southern Bloc?) in its plan to protect communism at home and spread it elsewhere. Like you, I understood the Soviet involvement in 1979 to be a propping up of the badly fractured Marxist government there in the wake of the Iranian Revolution (I had forgotten about the Israel-Egypt accord putting more pressure on the USSR). So, in that way I think you are exactly right (and Messrs. Rodman and Shawcross were exactly wrong) when you point out that the “Soviet invasion of Afghanistan” was not directly caused by our capitulation in Vietnam.
However, I think you go too far in saying that our retreat from Vietnam and the Soviet involvement in Afghanistan were not related. In the very least, taking pressure off of South East Asia allowed the Soviets to focus elsewhere, and Brezhnev certainly seemed to think it was a sign of weakness, which provided a great deal of propaganda value.
That wasn’t the point I was making. Sometimes I press buttons to get a reaction. Yours was very good ;)
Well, I respectfully disagree. Summary withdrawal emboldens our enemies who are fanatical enough as it is. If we leave, they will advance even further and they will visit our shores once again. If the idea is to fight al Qaeda and its adherents wherever they may be, it doesn’t make much sense to leave the one place we know them to be.
Moreover, we are battling the radical Islamists for the hearts and minds of those on the fringe, who haven’t (fully) decided where to cast their lot. Providing them a viable alternative to the death and doom of the terrorists goes a long way towards defeating the terrorists. If we leave Iraq right now, we pull the rug out from under those who have forthrightly backed democracy there, as well as those who are leaning that way. After GWI, there is a good deal of mistrust that we’ll stick to our promises. Leaving now will only confirm that misgiving and could serve to radicalize a population that would not necessarily have gone that route if given a choice. Staying in Iraq long enough for the government to stabilize and for the IA to stand on its own accomplishes that task of “giving them a choice.”
Anyway, again excellent reply and thank you for fleshing that out. You have a remarkable grasp of that history of that area, which few people seem to understand at all.
What? People here make points to get reactions? Like, no WAY.
Just kidding :-)
I fully recognize that my take on the ultimate origins of the Soviet invasion are really just an interpretations, and a reasonable case can be made that Vietnam was a contributing factor. I used to think that, and some documents support that, specifically when some in the politburo and upper echelons of the military were debating a perceived American unwillingness to get involved in another proxy war in Asia. But that didn’t influence the actual decision to invade, merely the timing. When we were distracted with Iran, they struck (a haunting lesson in blowback eventually leading to blowback, if you will: the removal of Mossagdeh in ‘53 eventually led to the destruction of skycrapers that hadn’t even been built yet [but i’m getting beyond myself here]).
As for Iraq, I agree with you that there is an obligation to a degree, but with the exception of the Kurds up north the true democrats seem to have vanished. Even among the actual government, corruption and treason are so rampant I have a hard justifying supporting it merely for some promises that they have already broken a thousand times over.
And here’s where I look at it too: we are going to withdraw, and quite probably well before any of the fighting is done with. There is simply too much pressure on the politicians for any other outcome. It’s just a question of whether it is now, or whether it is in 2009. Put differently, it’s a question of whether we withdraw now with 3000 dead and a few hundred billion down the toilet, or we withdraw 18 months from now with many hundreds more needlessly dead (along with the attendant thousands of Iraqis) and pushing one trillion dollars down the toilet. I’d rather pull out now, save what we can, and map out the next threat matrix (I don’t see Iraq being able to export its terror once we pull out, as then most of the factions will focus on each other for control, perhaps until an equilibrium is reached like pre-ICU Somalia).