Britain’s defense chief, General Sir Nick Carter, just revealed the Taliban’s end-game for victory. “It was the pace of it that surprised us and I don’t think we realized quite what the Taliban were up to. They weren’t really fighting for the cities they eventually captured, they were negotiating for them, and I think you’ll find a lot of money changed hands as they managed to buy off those who might have fought for them,” he said on Sept. 5.
The Taliban experience is instructive. They not only bought-off members of the Afghan government who should have been fighting them, they threatened them and their families. Carrots and sticks at the personal level, and the soft underbelly of the elected government worked well for the Taliban over the years. Without needing to wage large and self-destructive set-piece military battles, they won over people, cities, and eventually the entire country.
A pure military strategy would have been impossible for the Taliban, given U.S. and allied air dominance, and other Western technological superiority on the battlefield. But they didn’t need to beat us militarily. They beat us on the human side, out-maneuvering our strategy of “hearts and minds” with their strategy of “threats and money.”
Who ran narco-trafficking in Afghanistan in 2010 and after? The Taliban.
The Taliban infiltrated the government through bribes and threats, to the point that when the United States pulled out, the Kabul government was already theirs. We built a house of cards, and those who read the public Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reports, knew it.
This points to the three main failures of U.S. and allied strategy in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam, and the strategies we need going forward to beat the dictators and terrorists who threaten us and our allies in the future.
First, corrupt officials of a democratic state, whether in Kabul, Baghdad, or Washington, must be removed immediately. In Washington, we need better laws against official corruption, including big money that funds political campaigns, kickbacks in the form of million-dollar jobs after leaving office, and the revolving door between business and politics. In Kabul and Baghdad, we needed the same, plus and until the democracies matured—the United States and allies should have summarily removed any official, no matter how high up, who was found to be taking money from the Taliban, narco-traffickers, Islamabad, Tehran, or Beijing.
Second, to beat the bribes and mafia-like threats of the Taliban, and insurgents of Iraq, we must have greater endurance, but we must be paid for it as well. That endurance is by definition necessary to win forever wars. To win a forever war through endurance requires sustainability, which requires revenue. The United States should never have surrendered the revenue sources of Iraq and Afghanistan, which are principally mining, oil, and gas, to China. But that is exactly what we did.
A “minerals for peace” approach to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan’s security and the development of democracy, would have defended the Iraqi and Afghan people and beaten the insurgents. Minerals for peace should of course comply with the self-determination of those under the protection of the United States and allies, and include a principle, when bringing stability and democracy to a failed state or dictatorship, not to take more than necessary to cover expenses. It should not turn into colonialism or imperialism, which the 19th and 20th centuries proved to be failed and unethical strategies.
But, neither should that self-determination lead to such a weak allied approach as to accept corrupt elected officials or a house-of-cards government that immediately falls after withdrawal. Real self-determination requires a commitment by a democracy’s allies to step in at the first sign of trouble, and to stay until the threat is definitively gone. Once dictatorship and terrorism is fully removed, however, and a democracy stabilized, allies should leave in order to honor the principle of self-determination. Beijing has yet to learn these lessons.
But one thing is certain: American and allied voters cannot and must not pay for the next forever war. And, we cannot afford another loss. The trillions of dollars we poured into Iraq and Afghanistan actually enriched the terrorists, and their state sponsors in Iran, Pakistan, and China, at our expense. These illiberal actors could have gone on forever, profiting from the blood we spilled.
To protect ourselves, and those who support democracy around the world, the United States and allies must intervene against aggressive dictators and terrorists to build democracy and the stability of regions, protect the sanctity of borders, and defeat terrorists like the Taliban and al-Qaeda.
Otherwise the United States and allies will fail at providing global security, and the world will devolve into chaos. This chaos is actually already upon us, with the rise of the CCP and its illiberal allies, creating instability by supporting terrorists and rogue regimes like the Taliban, Russia, Iran, Pakistan, Venezuela, Syria, and North Korea. All of these authoritarians and failed states are creating risk and costs for peace-loving democracies, which just want trade and human rights at home, and for other people around the world. Democratic wars against authoritarians should not be misconstrued as offensive, but defensive of the people, and the principles of territorial integrity, democracy, human rights, and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to illiberal regimes.
The right strategy is to maintain pressure against terrorists and dictators in a sustainable manner by using the resources for which they are fighting, against them. Think about the mafia wars in the United States during the 1980s. The FBI did not fight these wars for free. The government taxed the population to pay for them. And the population benefited by the peace, security, and stability that resulted.
So instead of announcing our withdrawal, we should have announced that we would stay as long as necessary to ensure the full defeat of terrorism, and its state sponsors in Islamabad and Beijing. That would have assured an eventual victory to the elected government in Kabul, and thus solidified their commitment. It would have prevented the Taliban from continuing what would have been an impossible fight.
Does that sound like biting off more than we can chew? Perhaps. But, the longer we wait, the tougher it will be.
Fighting wars against global dictators and terrorists on the back of the American taxpayer is unsustainable, because after 10 or 20 years, the American taxpayer no longer wants to pay. Americans vote for presidents who extract us from forever wars, like Presidents Nixon and Ford, who got us out of Vietnam, or Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden, who got us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. That we consequently appeared to have lost these wars, terribly weakened our prestige globally.
In fact, we did not lose them. The citizens of these countries who wanted democracy were the biggest losers, because they lost that chance. The wars were not wrong, though Americans and the world has a tendency to blame the loser and celebrate the victor. They imposed costs on terrorists and dictators for all to see, which deters future would-be authoritarians. What went wrong is that we fought the wars unsustainably, and did not take the fight to corrupt officials in Kabul, Islamabad, Tehran, and Beijing.
After our loss in Vietnam, President Reagan did take the fight to Moscow, through tough economic sanctions and a military buildup. The USSR crumbled in the 1980s as a result. But he did not do the same to China because he hoped to keep Beijing onside against Moscow.
Next time we fight a forever war in Afghanistan or elsewhere, we must adapt our strategies. First, root out corruption in participating democracies, whether in Kabul, Baghdad, or Washington. Second, make the war sustainable and demonstrate long-term commitment by utilizing the mineral resources at hand. Third, stay focused on the root cause of the problem, including state-sponsors of terrorism in Beijing, Tehran, and Islamabad.
We can’t ask the American people, or the citizens of allied countries, to entirely pay for what the citizens of a failed state ought to provide for themselves: a democratic and peaceful government that is not a threat to the world, or influenced by dangerous illiberal actors abroad. As long as the United States and allies have to do this job for them, they should happily pay a portion of the costs with their own natural resources, which are thereby denied to the more dangerous adversaries abroad.
The only real alternative to updating our strategies given the most recent failures in Afghanistan is an isolationist United States, which will lead to global chaos, the continued costs of authoritarianism and terrorism against democratic countries around the world, and our eventual defeat. The choice is therefore clear: double-down or surrender.