Leaving Afghanistan, Fighting Insurgencies, and the Implications for Korea Policy

The New York Times reports that the U.S. may begin withdrawing forces from Afghanistan by next spring, if we can cut through NATO balking (which we may if Schroeder gets Das Boot in Oktober). Because the military and political pressure on our forces in Afghanistan is sustainable, one presumes that U.S. and Afghan commanders are doing this because they believe that the Afghan forces are ready for it.

Although I emphatically believe that an Iraq withdrawal is premature now, I’ll be watching for an interesting historical pattern in Afghanistan–that government forces often perform better against insurgencies militarily without foreign ground forces than with them. We saw this in Afghanistan from 1989 to 1993, and in Vietnam from 1972 to 1975. In both cases, the indigenous governments defied predictions of collapse by defeating ferocious offensives by opposition forces armed with tanks and artillery. In both cases, the foreign sponsor made that possible by supplying the embattled government with money, aid, fuel, ammo, and spare parts for their mechanized armies. And in both cases, it was the loss of foreign backing that eventually doomed the respective governments.

Why did Najib survive until 1993, and Thieu until 1975? Part of it may be that the forces of the embattled governments fought with more determination when they knew that foreign powers would neither do it for them nor provide them an easy egress–ie., that their backs were against the wall. In part, however, I also posit that it’s because the opposition was mainly fueled by nationalism. Without the indignity of foreign troops on the soil of the sacred homeland, the insurgencies lost part of their ability to arouse the population to join them, feed them, and shelter them. Insurgencies tend to as strong as their logistics, and few insurgencies can survive–much less build up supplies needed to carry out offensive operations–without this kind of popular support.

That fact could bear some relevance for the case of U.S. ground troops in Korea today. How different might things be politically if the U.S. left the South and China invaded the North? Richard Perle and David Frum infamously suggested that we should “green light” a Chinese invasion of North Korea. If Perle and Frum are as Machiavellian as some tend to think, they may think that a Chinese occupation would turn the alienation of the North Korean populace to active resistance. I tend to agree, although I suspect that the real effect of Perle’s words may be to legitimize a Chinese invasion in the eyes of parts of the Washington establishment, including those who would throw those words back at Perle and Frum.

If the historical pattern holds, expect whatever is left of the Taliban to fling themselves against the Afghan government after U.S. forces leave . . . if the Taliban survive that long, that is, without the recruiting value of foreign forces on its soil. Look for the U.S. to continue training and equipping the Afghan Army and to keep some air power handy in their hardened shelters at Bagram, Shindand, Jalalabad, and Mazar-i-Sharif.

This is how things are supposed to work. Remember Zalmay Khalilzad in your prayers.