The emergence of a hegemonic contender that could challenge the United States globally, as the Soviet Union had done, was the worst-case scenario. Therefore, the containment of emerging powers wherever they might emerge was the centerpiece of American balance-of-power strategy.
The most significant effect of 9/11 was that it knocked the United States off its strategy. Rather than adapting its standing global strategy to better address the counterterrorism issue, the United States became obsessed with a single region, the area between the Mediterranean and the Hindu Kush. Within that region, the United States operated with a balance-of-power strategy. It played off all of the nations in the region against each other. It did the same with ethnic and religious groups throughout the region and particularly within Iraq and Afghanistan, the main theaters of the war. In both cases, the United States sought to take advantage of internal divisions, shifting its support in various directions to create a balance of power. That, in the end, was what the surge strategy was all about.
The American obsession with this region in the wake of 9/11 is understandable. Nine years later, with no clear end in sight, the question is whether this continued focus is strategically rational for the United States. Given the uncertainties of the first few years, obsession and uncertainty are understandable, but as a long-term U.S. strategy — the long war that the U.S. Department of Defense is preparing for — it leaves the rest of the world uncovered.
Consider that the Russians have used the American absorption in this region as a window of opportunity to work to reconstruct their geopolitical position. When Russia went to war with Georgia in 2008, an American ally, the United States did not have the forces with which to make a prudent intervention. Similarly, the Chinese have had a degree of freedom of action they could not have expected to enjoy prior to 9/11. The single most important result of 9/11 was that it shifted the United States from a global stance to a regional one, allowing other powers to take advantage of this focus to create significant potential challenges to the United States.
One can make the case, as I have, that whatever the origin of the Iraq war, remaining in Iraq to contain Iran is necessary. It is difficult to make a similar case for Afghanistan. Its strategic interest to the United States is minimal. The only justification for the war is that al Qaeda launched its attacks on the United States from Afghanistan. But that justification is no longer valid. Al Qaeda can launch attacks from Yemen or other countries. The fact that Afghanistan was the base from which the attacks were launched does not mean that al Qaeda depends on Afghanistan to launch attacks. And given that the apex leadership of al Qaeda has not launched attacks in a while, the question is whether al Qaeda is capable of launching such attacks any longer. In any case, managing al Qaeda today does not require nation building in Afghanistan.
But let me state a more radical thesis: The threat of terrorism cannot become the singular focus of the United States. Let me push it further: The United States cannot subordinate its grand strategy to simply fighting terrorism even if there will be occasional terrorist attacks on the United States.
I would like to offer a qualified agreement on this general view. Look, I've long said that my objectives for Afghanistan are minimal. I just don't want it to be a launching pad for terror attacks on us, as on 9/11--or worse. I think we could reach an objective of a decentralized Afghanistan with friendly locals and a friendly nominal sovereign reigning in Kabul without more than the initial surge to 68,000 US troops done at the beginning of this year. But I trust the military that they can do the job quicker with the current surge to 100,000, or so. I worry about our supply lines, but fine, go to it.
Further, while I disagree that taking down Saddam was unneeded, I certainly agree that once in Iraq we need to remain to contain Iran. I think we can achieve more than that, but let's not quibble at this point.
I further agree that we have world-wide responsibilities and that we can't just focus on the CENTCOM region as if it is the whole area of interest for us. I don't think we have been distracted with dealing with the rest of the world, and saying that others have made gains does not prove we have not paid attention or could not pay attention. Weren't we far more focused on Western Europe in the Cold War even as we looked globally to confront the Soviet Union?
The Army has continued to address North Korea and Colombia, and is a big player in the new AFRICOM. The Navy has been relatively untouched by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and devotes considerable attention to the vast Pacific and set up a new 4th Fleet for South American operations.
The Air Force is threatened by procurement decisions that could endanger the air supremacy mission several decades in the future, but starts so far ahead that I am not overly worried about that issue or the push to support ground operations right now undermining the core mission of defeating others in the air. At least not for the next two or three decades, it's a problem on my radar screen but not on my urgent to-do list.
Really, it is just the Army that has been focused on Iraq and Afghanistan. Even the Marine Corps has kept its amphibious mission high in its mind when it could return to that focus. And I do worry that the Army could be unbalanced in training, organization, and equipment purchases for counter-insurgencies at the expense of conventional operations.
And a balanced US military is necessary for a global focus. But just as focus on West Germany in the Cold War was the key to the global struggle against the USSR, focus on Iraq and the war on terror is a key to the global struggle against Islamist extremism.
And I just don't see that our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the effort to fight Islamist terrorism is keeping us from a global effort. China certainly doesn't think we are neglecting them given our presence in Central Asia, our new relationships with India and Vietnam; our existing still strong alliances or friendships with Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Australia; and our strengthening relationship with Indonesia.
Russia, too, believes we are out to get them. Russia has made some gains in Georgia and Ukraine, but what could we have done to prevent Russia's gains in Ukraine as the result of Ukraine's own elections? And who believes we would have gotten into a shooting war with Russia if we weren't even in Iraq? Even if we wanted to fight Russia, the war was over in 5 days. You think we could have intervened in that time frame?
We should be focused on the war we are in. Recall that one senior American general said he wasn't going to wreck the army to win in Vietnam (by gearing it to COIN rather than preparing for high intensity armored warfare to defend NATO). So what did we get? A wrecked army to hollow to fight in Europe anyway. And it took so long to defeat the enemy in Vietnam that Congress legislated defeat there soon after we were gone, effectively getting us both a wrecked army and a sense of losing.
Nor should we just shrug our shoulders about "acceptable" civilian losses here as the price we need to pay to keep our military unengaged in case we need them for a major war. We have a right to expect our military (and more broadly, our government) to protect us.
Stratfor is right that fighting terrorism cannot be our sole focus. And I have concerns if we really are trying to build a strong central Afghanistan government. I keep reading stories going both ways, so I am not sure what our goal is in practice. But if we can't fight terrorism while maintaining proper efforts to look after other interests, we've got real problems in our government structure.
We're a global power. But this means we should be able to act around the globe and not remain paralyzed in inaction against an objectively less dramatic threat like terrorism just in case we must do one big thing somewhere on the globe against a serious conventional threat.
