With public opposition to the Afghan war growing, the US needs to rethink policy over politically schizophrenic ally Pakistan.
For the US military, the Vietnam War ended on April 29, 1975 when its last personnel were evacuated from the embassy roof in Saigon. Only hours later, the South Vietnamese government surrendered to the Vietcong.
These were momentous events set in motion 25 years earlier when, in August 1950, the first shipload of US arms arrived in Vietnam, ostensibly to bolster France's ability to suppress a mounting Communist-led insurgency against continued colonial rule.
But while that conflict is now just another part of history, the tragic events that culminated in the United States’ ignominious defeat then might be instructive in its now almost decade-long war on the same continent. And, as the United States slips into another quagmire—committing ever more resources to try to quell the Taliban-al-Qaeda insurgency in Afghanistan—its policymakers would do well to consider the increasingly obvious parallels with this earlier endeavour.
The most important of these similarities is almost certainly the critical variable that eventually convinced the US public that the Vietnam War was unwinnable and provoked growing and ultimately decisive opposition to its continuation—mounting casualties.
When casualty rates rose from a relative handful per month to the level of scores and ultimately hundreds per month, no amount of reassurance that there was light at the end of the tunnel—and that perseverance would eventually carry the day—was going to convince a sceptical US public it should continue.
This isn’t to say that the level of casualties has yet (or ever will) compare with the Vietnam fiasco. But relative to the scope of war now being waged in the AfPak theatre, casualties are rising uncomfortably sharply and the US public is growing restive.
There’s considerable evidence that the jihadi quasi-state that now embraces a significant portion of the tribal mountain region situated between the Afghani and Pakistani heartlands has jelled into a formidable socio-political entity with significant military capabilities. This quasi-state is the reason why no matter how many Taliban leaders have been killed by drones, insurgent attacks have persisted and even escalated.
This ‘state’ possesses the fiscal, manpower and administrative and ideological resources to replace its battlefield losses, resupply its military equipment, and mount sustained and sophisticated attacks against US and NATO forces.
As a consequence of all this, public opposition to the war, as happened with Vietnam, is trending toward critical mass, a shift likely to be fanned by the public scepticism on display by key opinion formers.
Back in the 1960s, it was pronouncements like that from the late Walter Cronkite, who declared in 1968 that ‘We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find,’ which helped solidify opposition.
Now, concerns are being raised by leading foreign policy intellectuals such as Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haas, formerly director of policy planning in the US State Department under Gen. Colin Powell, who had a cover story in Newsweek last month that effectively declared the Afghan war a failure and called for a complete rethink.
And, while back in 1971 the release of the Pentagon Papers blew the lid off public confidence in its leaders, the WikiLeaks publication has laid bare for all to see the mounting problems in Afghanistan.
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Gabriel
“The United States should materially increase its military collaboration with India—the only genuinely politically stable state in the region—so that together they can form a strategic nexus of stable states confronting a Pakistan that seems poised to collapse unless it finds ways to get its political house in order.”
The Author’s idea that the US should bolster it’s relationship with India as a solution is unrealistic in that the Indian State does not play the same rules of the ‘realist’ model game so many US policy-makers and commentators seem to follow. India has no intention of creating any such model of interaction with the US.
It is much more complex than this, and preferencing India would have a number of ramifications, one for example would be a strong signal to China, who are typically paranoid and very sensitive with respect to any, real or perceived, containment policies.
The author, although I do not know when this article was written, has not made any mention of the catastrophic situation Pakistan is currently facing with reports of 20 million people displaced by the extreme flooding, a situation that will not be resolved over night and may take years to reconstruct and rehabilitate. The 30 year conflict in Aceh, for example, was halted due largely to the massive destruction of the Boxing Day Tsunami. The current disaster may provide a small opportunity to ‘assist’ Pakistan with the second recommendation of the author with appearing too paternalistic: “Above all, Pakistan must be allowed to solve its own political problems, free of American paternalism and overindulgence of its military.”
I agree with the author on this point and believe that without the support and the control of the legitimate Pakistani government, a solution to the conflict in the short term will be impossible. If the US do not, or cannot, use this possible opportunity, it may in fact have the opposite effect, with the Pakistan government completely hamstrung by the ongoing disaster, the Taliban may be able to strengthen their position further as it’s own quasi-state outside of the reach of the US across Pakistan’s porous border.
With the strong public anti-Afghan war sentiment in the US, a new approach, a strategy that attempts to place responsibility in the hands of legitimate States and stakeholders that have the means, and the responsibility, for finding a sollution to this conflict is essential, and will need to be done now.
atta rasool malik
Harold Gould, a good analysis but wrong recommendation. Do it as you have suggested and you will hasten the defeat of NATO forces there. Pakistan is helping you at the cost of its cracks in the social fiber of Pakistani society. You probably do not understand the tribal bondages of divided tribes across Durand lines. USA is already punishing Pakistan through drone attacks and its contractor Xe and black water busy in target killing. You have tried massive killing, daisy cutter, carpet bombing and drone attacks. So what is left is nuclear weapons, either use nuclear weapons on AfPak as you had done it in Japan or try something else. attarasul@hotmail.com
arif
The objective of guerilla activity is not to win the war but to make the enemy’s bleeding and exploiting their resources to fight a long guerilla warfare”. No wonder the dutch lost the indonesian guerilla war 1945-1948, so did us in vietnam, the afghans is so mastering the guerilla method in the vast desert and they use underground tunnels to fight coalition forces, that’s why the sovyet withdrawn their forces from afghanistan an 1988.how can coalition expect to win the afghan war while sovyet couldn’t