Americans like to win their wars clearly and decisively. It’s the “American Way of War.” But sometimes history does not cooperate, and the nation must settle for less: more than humiliating defeat, less than triumphant victory. This was the outcome of the Korea, Vietnam and Iraq wars.
We now face such an outcome in Afghanistan. After 13 years of war costing America more than 2,300 combat dead, tens of thousands injured and approaching a trillion dollars in financial expenditures, President Obama on Tuesday declared the withdrawal of virtually all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2016. The United States will leave Afghanistan in a middling state: better than the humiliation of Taliban takeover or the horror of a slide into civil war, short of the establishment of a broadly legitimate, stable, strong democracy. Obama soberly accepted this less than satisfactory outcome: “Afghanistan will not be a perfect place, and it is not America’s responsibility to make it one.”
For some, this acceptance of partial success in Afghanistan isn’t good enough. POLITICO reported Tuesday that Republicans are already voicing their critiques of the scheduled exit. House Speaker John Boehner opposed a plan of “quitting just short of the goal line,” and House Armed Service Chair Buck McKeon feared that Obama’s plan would “replicate his mistakes in Iraq, where he abandoned the region to chaos and failed to forge a security partnership.” The Washington Post editorial board said the president “seems to have substituted ideology for reality-based foreign policy.”
Though Obama’s critics have equated this week’s decision with the drawdown in Iraq, comparison with the January 1973 Paris Peace Accords ending the Vietnam War can also be illuminating. The post-1973 fate of South Vietnam, conquest by North Vietnam in April 1975, is in some sense what the worst-case scenario might look like in Afghanistan. Local security forces are unable to maintain internal security following U.S. withdrawal. The government soon falls, replaced by an anti-American regime.
The likelihood of this scenario aside, how bad would that be? What would happen to American interests if we watched helicopters evacuating American officials from the Kabul embassy rooftop in 2018?
The Vietnam experience offers useful lessons for thinking about the end of the Afghanistan war—or, at least, America’s involvement in it. Remember: Even the worst-case scenario in Vietnam did not have the catastrophic consequences for American interests that some had forecast. Dominoes did not fall, as other countries in the region did not become communist. The American exit did not set off a wave of communist aggression around the world. U.S. allies did not flee the American security umbrella.
Vietnam, other than invading Pol Pot’s Cambodia in 1979, did not attack its neighbors. Since 1975, Vietnam has also proven a useful counterweight to China, including contesting China’s attempted expansion into the South China Sea. And, the United States and Vietnam are now trading partners. Even when an ally collapsed following American withdrawal short of victory, then, American national interests weren’t heavily damaged.
For Afghanistan, the lesson of the Vietnam experience is to be careful not to exaggerate the negative consequences of even a complete Taliban takeover. A Taliban regime would be a pariah state, and such isolation would sap its strength and its ability to foment trouble outside its borders.
As for the possible establishment of terrorist safe havens on Afghan soil, it is important to remember that Afghanistan would be only one of many such safe havens around the world. Terrorists have established safe havens in many areas, including Somalia, Mali, Libya, the Philippines, Lebanon, Yemen, Pakistan and Colombia. Perhaps that’s not reassuring, but it does suggest that the emergence of (more) safe havens in Afghanistan will not be the straw breaking the back of global counterterrorism—and nobody is advocating the United States occupy any of those countries.
Another lesson of Vietnam is the importance of recognizing alternative policies to address the core threat. After Vietnam, the United States found other ways to combat communism, aside from propping up illegitimate regimes. In the global war on terror, the United States has discovered an array of counterterrorism techniques promising greater effectiveness and fewer costs than the Olympian mission of trying to turn failed, weak states like Afghanistan into strong, stable states like Norway. Drone strikes and other decapitation attacks can reduce violence and disrupt terrorist organizations. Improved information-sharing between security forces and better airport and port security have proven successful at reducing terrorist violence.
What of America’s reputation abroad? Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Kelly Ayotte and John McCain jointly declared Tuesday that Obama’s announcement will “embolden our enemies and discourage our partners in Afghanistan and the region.” Many had similar fears about the withdrawal from and utter collapse of South Vietnam, yet, as noted, these nightmares did not come to pass.
We should not exaggerate the damage to America’s reputation of withdrawal from Afghanistan. Inside the country, the relationship is more complex than simply frightened, pro-American factions longing for the enduring deployment of American troops. If the Afghan government is so desperate for a long-term American commitment, why has it refused to sign the bilateral security agreement that such a commitment requires?
Outside of Afghanistan, there are many signs of America’s commitment to regional stability and counterterrorism. U.S. forces continue to work with African and Middle Eastern governments to fight terrorism and other forms of violence, through drone strikes, special forces operations and training, substantial military aid and American naval deployments in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. America’s reputation is not so fragile that it crumbles after a speech.
The pursuit of decisive victory is a particularly American temptation. But it can run against the core, Clausewitzian imperative of foreign policy, the judicious and cost-minded selection of appropriate means to pursue national ends. Total victory in Afghanistan is at the dark bottom of a deep well never found by us, the Soviets in the 1980s or the British in the 19th century. Obama is absolutely right: Thirteen years on, it has come time to stop looking for such elusive satisfaction, to accept partial success and to close this chapter in American foreign policy.