U.S. special forces troops ride horseback as they work with members of the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom on Nov. 12, 2001. By Department of Defense employee [Public domain], via Wikimedia CommonsI love the War College podcasts, which consist of outstanding interviews with key thinkers in the area of security. If you want to understand the current state of affairs in Afghanistan, I highly recommend their podcast, “The Case for Leaving Afghanistan,” which showcases the thoughts of journalist Douglas Wissing. Spoiler alert: the picture is not good. The author of two books on Afghanistan, Wissing argues that our longest military commitment has endured because companies make money from it, while officers make careers. Wissing says that we have spent over a trillion dollars on the war to date, but the Afghan government is losing ground.
In terms of development, the U.S. has spent over $100 billion in Afghanistan, which is more than the U.S. spent on the Marshall plan in Europe after adjusting for inflation. As Wissing notes this is a staggering amount of money for a nation of 30 million people. Worse, he suggests that a significant portion of those development funds were siphoned off to fund the Taliban itself. He argues that the projects that the U.S. has funded have been divorced from Afghan reality, and unsustainable for that reason. The entire history has been a textbook lesson in how not to do development, he suggests, in part because policy has been driven by the personal, career and institutional needs of those people dispersing the funds. …
A couple of weeks ago I was walking down the street at Portland State University, and I ran into one of my favorite colleagues, who has studied Latin America’s militaries throughout a very long career.
“I’m getting rumbling from the boys,” he said.
“What boys?” I asked. “The military?”
“Your boys,’ he said, because of my work on the Brazilian military. “They’re not happy.”
“A coup?” I said. “It will never happen.” He cocked his head skeptically.
“The younger generation will never accept it,” I said. “This is not 64. They won’t put up with it. The United States won’t either. No nation in the Americas would accept it. Besides, think about it,” I said. “Brazil is in a terrible economic situation. If you were the generals, would you want to take power now?’ He nodded at this, but I felt that perhaps he wasn’t fully convinced. …
On Friday, November 18, 2011, thousands of Egyptians rallied in Tahrir square to protest the military’s efforts to retain power. The military had recently suggested language for the constitutional convention, which would have made the military the guardian of “constitutional legitimacy.” The military has also suggested that it should choose 80% of the members of the Constitutional committee. The protest seems to have captured the growing civilian concern about emergency laws, and the Egyptian military’s influence over society. When Hosni Mubarak was overthrown, people gave credit to the military, which ultimately decided not to repress the uprising. In their current state of disillusionment with the military, Egypt’s people are not in a position dissimilar to that of many Latin Americans in the 1960s and 1970s. For this reason, it’s worth placing what is happening in Egypt now in a broader context. …
