How engaging with Afghanistan's new leaders can advance U.S. goals, military spending in global context, the only reason to fight China, and more.
TANGLING WITH THE TALIBAN
The Taliban is hanging on to power in Afghanistan. It serves U.S. interests to engage.
Two years after the chaotic but necessary U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, the country is no one's idea of a success story—neither for Washington’s two-decade nation-building fiasco nor for the Taliban, which established some semblance of a state after the American exit.
As DEFP Fellow Daniel R. DePetris details at Newsweek, Afghanistan is in acute crisis, and dealing with the Taliban will be a difficult but unavoidable task for Washington for the foreseeable future.
Two years with the Taliban
"Afghanistan has become one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, with more than 28 million people—two-thirds of the population—in urgent need of humanitarian assistance." [HRW]
"The women in Afghanistan are being slowly erased from society, from life, from everything," said Afghan women's rights activist Mahbouba Seraj. [CNN / Jessie Yeung et al.]
The Taliban is responsible for "at least 218 extrajudicial killings" of former members of the U.S.-backed Afghan government, the U.N. reported Tuesday, contra a promise of amnesty. [NYT / Richard Pérez-Peña]
"Afghanistan's gross domestic product has contracted by 35 percent since 2021, with near universal poverty level," and "91 percent of Afghan households surveyed said food was their top priority." [Newsweek / DePetris]
The task for Washington
"No country has officially recognized the Taliban government as legitimate," DePetris notes. But, in practice, "foreign embassies are still operating on Afghan soil." [Newsweek / DePetris]
These dealings with the Taliban aren't ideal, but they're inevitable—and sometimes effective in pursuit of U.S. security goals:
For example, the Taliban pledged to keep Afghanistan from being used as a base for anti-U.S. terror attacks, and "there hasn't been a single anti-U.S. terrorist operation emanating from Afghanistan since August 2021."
"The U.S. will have no choice but to continue to collaborate with the Taliban to ensure those commitments are implemented over the long-term."
And remember, prudent diplomacy doesn't preclude targeted counterterror operations. [Newsweek / DePetris]
Moreover, as DePetris explored at greater length in an explainer for DEFP, "any U.S. attempts to harm the Taliban economically will harm the Afghan people."
Removing U.S. sanctions on Afghanistan could improve humanitarian conditions in for ordinary Afghans. [DEFP / DePetris]
Washington should also unfreeze Afghan assets which it has held since the 2021 withdrawal, as the freeze has badly damaged the Afghan economy but failed to shift Taliban behavior. [The Critic / Bonnie Kristian]
Sanctions can always snap back, "but for now, the U.S. should cooperate" on counterterrorism and to "reduce the suffering of Afghans." [DEFP / DePetris]
U.S. interaction with the Taliban could include formal diplomatic recognition, as former Afghan Ambassador Javid Ahmad and former CIA officer Douglas London argue at Foreign Policy—but as DePetris observes, Washington doesn't have to make a decision on that point to productively engage.
by the numbers
U.S. military expenditures compared to the next 10 countries, combined
"The Biden administration's request of $886 billion for national defense spending in 2024 is an extraordinary amount," DEFP Policy Director Benjamin H. Friedman said earlier this year. "That total, in real terms, would be higher defense spending than at any point since World War II, and far more than at any point in the Cold War, even without spending destined for Ukraine, which is not included in regular defense appropriations."
As this chart illustrates, U.S. military spending is particularly remarkable in its global context. It's not surprising that American expenditures would outpace those of our closest—but still quite distant—peers. But it is worth understanding how much more we are spending than even a rising China or a revanchist Russia.
"Regular Americans are not getting a good security return for this vast investment—it is a drag on their welfare," as Friedman concluded. "The defense budget mostly serves special interests and other countries' security. The real cost of U.S. security is far cheaper than what we pay for it."
Read more from Friedman here.
Sober Analysis
Almost nothing is worth a war between the U.S. and China
There is almost nothing that is worth a war between the United States and China. I'll come back to the tricky sounding "almost" in a second—it's actually not as big of an asterisk as some might imagine. […]
Most Americans (and most Chinese) probably spend precious little time thinking about what war would do to their own country. It would be useful to give a wider airing of war game scenarios, such as one carried out recently by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, that make clear just how devastating a conflict could be.
In this example, just one of many, Hawaii, Guam, Alaska, and San Diego, California, would all come under withering Chinese attack, up to and potentially including with nuclear weapons. Lest Chinese people think that they would have little to fear by way of direct impact, just for starters, many areas of coastal China, where the country's population and wealth are heavily concentrated, could face a rain of U.S. missiles. […]
So how can we restore some confidence on both sides? First the asterisk from above. War should be ruled out except in the case of a direct attack by one side on the other, which means we should rule out attacking each other.
Read the full analysis here.
See also: China's 40-year boom is over. What comes next? [WSJ / Lingling Wei and Stella Yifan Xie]
Trending
The significance of the U.S.-Japan-South Korea trilateral
Commander: U.S. readying plans to evacuate Niger drone bases if necessary
Sullivan: There are 'still ways to travel' to get Saudi mega-deal
Officials: Troop casualties near 500,000 in Ukraine
Why Ukraine's needs-must approach won’t cut with the F-16 training