Obsidian Wings

But I’ve Been Unfaithful, I’ve Been Traveling Abroad

by Eric Martin

Following up on the recent analysis of the stimulus - which highlighted the stimulative effects of infrastructure projects - this Louis Uchitelle article makes another important point:

For the first time in memory, the nation has no outsize public works project under way. The Big Dig, with its three and a half miles of underground highways channeling traffic beneath downtown Boston, was completed in December 2007, the month the Great Recession began.

So what are we missing, exactly? Huge public works — or more precisely, their historic absence — didn’t cause the recession any more than their renewal would quickly draw the country out of it. But their effect on the economy is almost always noticeable if not easily measured. Some economists argue that the continual construction of new megaprojects adds a quarter of a percentage point or more, on average, to the gross domestic product over the long term. Again, cause and effect aren’t clear, but the strongest periods of economic growth in America have generally coincided with big outlays for new public works and the transformations they bring once completed.

In broad strokes, the development of modern, efficient infrastructure facilitates business activity.  Not only are these projects useful as a stimulus when needed, but they have long term benefits that pay dividends for many years down the road.  So where have all the infrastructure projects gone?  Stephen Walt posits an answer with quote of the day month year potential:

But it's not as though the United States hasn't started some big public works projects over the past decade or so; it just hasn't been doing them here at home. We've spent billions constructing military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, and another billion or more on a giant embassy in Baghdad and another one in Pakistan. Needless to say, those "public works" projects are a drain on the U.S. economy rather than a source of additional productivity.

As I've said before, Americans have come to believe that spending government revenues on U.S. citizens here at home is usually a bad thing and should be viewed with suspicion, but spending billions on vast social engineering projects overseas is the hallmark of patriotism and should never be questioned. This position makes no sense, but it is hard to think of a prominent U.S. leader who is making an explicit case for doing somewhat less abroad so that we can afford to build a better future here at home. Debates about foreign policy, grand strategy, and military engagement -- including the current debate over Obama's decision to add another30,000-plus troops in Afghanistan -- tend to occur in isolation from a discussion of other priorities, as if there were no tradeoffs between what we do for others and what we are able to do for Americans here at home.

Not only that, but there is an overarching faith in the ability of the government to achieve grandiose social engineering objectives abroad in cultures it doesn't understand or have any meaningful connection to, yet as potent a belief in the hopeless incompetence and crushing bureaucratic inefficiency inherent in any domestic government program.  Doesn't add up. 

Maybe we can set up an efficient health insurance delivery system in Iraq or Afghanistan and then import it to the States.  Call it a part of our COIN strategy, get Petraeus to endorse it and then ship it home under cover of night.

The Sane Ones

by von

If it wasn't obvious from yesterday's post, my mood regarding Afghanistan has been a bit "Charge of the Light Brigade" recently.  "All in the valley of death rode the six hundred" and all that rot.  I'm not quite that pessimistic, of course.  I think that there is a chance that we'll succeed.  Maybe a good chance, if we define success low enough.  But the problem is that any success we get is unlikely to look like the kind of success that we want.

So my support for President Obama's strategy -- indeed, for an even greater commitment of troops than he authorized -- is not based on the thought that we might "win" this one.  I support the strategy because the alternatives are much, much worse. 

I see a lot of the same resigned support in Andrew Sullivan's post of this morning:

I think this strategy is doomed. But then I think any strategy that does not pledge to colonize Afghanistan, pour trillions of dollars into it and stay for a century is doomed. So why do I end up this morning feeling rather similar to my colleague, Jim Fallows, who simply sighs: 'Well, I hope he's right"?

Here's why. The sanest option - leave now - would leave allies high and dry, prompt domestic cries of surrender, demoralize the military, break a clear campaign pledge, and signal to Pakistan that the Taliban is their problem now. Everything but the latter are worth avoiding.

Sullivan is even more pessimistic than pessimistic me, but, then, he's a English Catholic.  That's a whole different order of pessimism:  He probably views the Charge of the Light Brigade as a delightful romp through a sun-filled valley of flowers.  It strikes me that his definition of sanity, however, is a little strange.  If the leaving Afghanistan now "would leave allies high and dry, prompt domestic cries of surrender, demoralize the military, break a clear campaign pledge, and signal to Pakistan that the Taliban is their problem now," that is not the "sanest option."  

Moreover, Sullivan hasn't even touched on the best reasons why we shouldn't "leave now".  Sullivan notes that "Al Qaeda is based in Pakistan, not Afghanistan."  What he doesn't note is why:  Al Qaeda is now based in Pakistan because we're in Afghanistan.  How long after we leave before they come back?  A lot of ink is spilled on how chaos Afghanistan might affect Pakistan.  That worry is justified.  But Afghanistan also sits near several key energy pipelines.  Even if Pakistan is unaffected by an imploding Afghanistan, the fires may light other vital interests.  And what of the Afghan people?  We can barely deliver social services or improvement dollars now; how are we going to do it when there are no foreign troops providing security?  We can barely find and kill al Qaeda with extensive, in-country support force.  It will be harder -- much harder -- to conduct the kind of special ops war that some on the left prefer without that support.  

True, Al Qaeda and the Taliban are unlikely to topple the Afghan government at the moment.  But the government is weak.  All bets are off should we leave.  We should not be willing to see the Taliban and their Al Qaeda allies come back to power.  The danger of another attack is too great; the signal sent is all wrong; the price for 9/11 should be greater.

The situation is bad.  But the costs -- the blood and treasure, lives and lucre -- that got us to this point are sunk.  We can't get them back.  The choice now is between bad and worse.  President Obama leveled with you last night, and he chose bad.  That was the right move.  He deserves your support.

By the way:  A lot of Republicans support Obama's plan, but are pushing back against his deadline for withdrawal in 2011.  I understand the argument against the deadline, but I think these Republicans miss the bigger picture.  There is no popular support for an open-ended commitment, either in the US or abroad. Without a deadline, there is no surge and no chance to convince allies to aid us. Obama's surge does not exist without a deadline.

UPDATE:  What if Obama's surge doesn't work?  What if it gets worse, not better?  My tentative, working answer is:  we lost, then.  Completely.  Like the Russians before us.

It's In the Way that You Use It

by Eric Martin

Ezra Klein links to a chart put out by the CBO which breaks down which elements of the stimulus bill were the most, well, stimulating in terms of bang for the buck.  The conclusions should not be shocking, though they run directly counter to many of the conservative arguments percolating during the stimulus debate (the same arguments that will be resuscitated should discussion of a follow up stimulus bill begin anew).

Leading the list of high-multiplier items is direct spending by the federal government, infrastructure aid to states and localities, other types of aid to states and localities, and transfer payments (think unemployment insurance and food stamps) to individuals. At the bottom of the list are corporate tax cuts, the new homeowner's tax credit and individual tax cuts.

Right.

(h/t Benen)

A Shallower Recovery

by Eric Martin

Since Von has been trespassing on my Af-Pak turf, allow me to hijack one of his sturdiest hobby horses:

When the Obama administration announced that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (i.e. the stimulus) had saved or created 640,000 jobs, Republicans quickly launched into a tirade...

Well, last night, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its latest estimates of the stimulus’ impact, and as it turns out, the 640,000 number was pretty spot-on:

CBO estimates that in the third quarter of calendar year 2009, an additional 600,000 to 1.6 million people were employed in the United States, and real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product (GDP) was 1.2 percent to 3.2 percent higher, than would have been the case in the absence of ARRA.

CBO noted that, to date, the stimulus has increased federal outlays by about $100 billion and reduced taxes by $90 billion, adding that “economic output and employment in the spring and summer of 2009 were lower than CBO had projected at the beginning of the year. But in CBO’s judgment, that outcome reflects greater-than-projected weakness in the underlying economy rather than lower-than-expected effects of ARRA.”

As people like Krugman were warning at the time, the stimulus package was too small.  On top of that, the soi disant "moderate" gang of six swooped in and lopped off vital state aid from an already undersized bill for no reason beyond pure posturing.  Regardless, we'll likely need a second stimulus to finish off the job.  Unfortunately, getting a second bite of the apple might be harder to pull off than a larger first bite would have been.

And he sailed off through night and day and in and out of weeks and almost over a year

by von

After his listening tour, it's likely that President Obama will order more troops to Afghanistan.  Not as many as General McChrystal sought some months ago; yet, many enough for one of my compatriots to gnash is terrible teeth, roll his terrible eyes, and generally go Maurice Sendak on ya'll. 

Perhaps Eric Martin is right:  None of us is an expert in this field, a distinction shared with, well, the experts in this field.  Which is to say that there are no experts in the field of complete chaos; the subcontinent; the dispossessed.  There are only a few who know enough to be stupid, and many more willing to pretend (and thus be truly dangerous).   Obama, Biden, Clinton, McChrystal, and Patreaus. There's irony to come in this piece, but I'd add Eric Martin to that list without any: I frankly trust his judgement as much as any of the foregoing. 

But, really, who are we?  Dilettantes, who have no f_cking clue what we're doing. 

I mean that with the greatest respect.  A lot of these folks are smart and know a lot about a lot of things; foxes who are good enough to fake it when they meet hedgehogs.  Smarter, even, than me.  (Heaven forfend!) They're trying, but some problems are a little too hard.  The Brits of the East India Company hedgehogged more of the relevant ley-lines than we'll ever hope to, but still ended up with Midnight's Children.  Who are, sixty years on, still trying to get home.

Midnight's Children.  I've been rambling, but I'll stop here.  The partition of India and Pakistan is the problem that we are dealing with in Afghanistan. The British did the best they could when they beat their hasty retreat from the subcontinent. The Gandhis did the best that they could when they won and then ruled. We did the best we could in Charlie Wilson's War .... but, Wolverines! didn't translate well into Pashtun.

The partition is why Pakistan devotes unGodly sums to not-quite-match its much larger rival in arms.  The partition is the cause of Pakistan's military-industrial complex (correctly diagnosed by Eric, below).  The partition is why Pakistan makes deals with devils of varying kinds, including Talibani of both Afghani and Pakistani descent.  Unity would have been worse, but that don't mean that partition doesn't sweat the donkey balls.  (An old saw that Kierkegaard once invoked whilst reading a Tarot deck.) (I swear!)

You want candid?  I don't think that 34,000 more troops will be enough to fix this.  I think that the 40,000+ more troops requested by McChrystal months ago might have been better, but I still don't think that even this number would've fix this.  

Unlike Eric, however, I think that we have to try. 

Why?  Because the dilettantes -- the ones who agree with me, at least ;-) -- do know more than us.  Because there is still a chance.  Because no one has yet explained how withdrawing from Afghanistan makes Afghanistan stable.  (Where is that whitepaper?  I, and several hundred thousand Afghanistanis, are dying to read it.)  Because no one has yet explained how we fight the Taliban if the Afghani government turns against us (or disappears).  Because, like the partition in the subcontinent, there are fates worse than the status quo. Because there is still a chance. Because the Afghanis and Pakistanis who want us to leave Afghanistan -- who promise us that we'll be loved and admired for doing so -- don't necessarily have our best interests at heart.  Because this was always going to be slow.  Because there is still a chance.  And because we made a promise to the Afghanis, which doesn't get voided just because we'd like so much for it to be so. 

You remember that promise, right?  You probably made it, like I did, sometime in the winter of 2001.  When every day was colder than the last.  When every day was shorter than the last.  When winter climbed up the beaches and you smoked cigarettes in dive bars in Alphabet City and wrote dreadful poetry about winter climbing up on beaches.  (You know you were there, back when you could still smoke in New York.)  You resolved that, this time, we would not just destroy; we would rebuild.  We would try, at least.

Well:  Here's your chance to finally fulfill one of your resolutions.  It's probably the last one, at least for this war. 

Nothing Says "Peace" Like Foreign Mercenaries

by Eric Martin

As discussed on this site on numerous occasions, one of the oddest arguments for escalating/perpetuating our military presence in Afghanistan is the stated fear that our withdrawal would destabilize Pakistan.  Implicit in this formulation is the presumption that our ongoing military occupation of Afghanistan (and concomitant military/political activity in Pakistan) is having a stabilizing effect in Pakistan itself.  This nostrum about the therapeutic value of large numbers of US forces pursuing US interests through force, like many of the widely accepted foreign policy myths, lacks supporting empirical evidence.  

In fact, the empirical evidence is all pointing in the opposite direction.  Pakistan today is far less stable than it was when we first invaded: there are raging clashes between the government and militant forces causing refugee crises numbering in the millions, there has been an increase in the frequency and intensity of domestic terrorist attacks, the Pakistani population is increasingly anti-American and increasingly radicalized, there is a crisis in leadership - with the current President, Asif Zardari nursing approval ratings in the sub-Cheney realm, etc.

Further, there are few compelling theoretical arguments as to why our presence in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and pursuit of our narrow agenda in each locale, should help to stabilize Pakistan.  Consider the following:

1. Our policy of targeting the Afghan Taliban (a group long cultivated as a valuable ally of Pakistan vis-a-vis India) while facilitating good relations between India and the Karzai government is extremely unpopular in Pakistan -  especially with the powerful elites in the ISI and armed forces. 

2. Our policy of military strikes in the Af-Pak border regions, and pressure on the Pakistani government to apply military pressure in those same areas, has led to violent clashes between local militant groups and the Pakistani government.  These conflicts have come complete with terrorist strikes on various domestic targets and a raging refugee crises - all of which the population blames on us and, as aiders and abettors, the Zardari government.   

3. We are viewed by large swaths of the population as, alternatively, an imperial power and a Western crusader intent on weakening a powerful Muslim nation while seizing its nukes, which makes any indigenous groups adopting our agenda instantly suspect.  This is a problem for the Zardari government, or any potential allies.

4. With the economy cratering, an educational system in disarray and a major unemployment crisis leaving large portions of the population without work, the large US military presence and the conflict it perpetuates is serving as an enticing scapegoat and distraction.

In this environment, moderates are either being sidelined or making common cause with extremists in pushing for anti-American policies and positions.  Radicalization is rampant, causing deeper and more intense schisms.  The government is being delegitimized, and faith in democracy rocked.  In many ways, Pakistani society is being torn asunder.

The fault lines along which Pakistan is being rended are in large part the result of Pakistan's own dysfunctional political culture and national security obsession with India.  The latter has led to a hypermilitarization of society, a weak dedication to democratic rule, a warped economy made to serve the military class, skewed government spending objectives, a too-powerful intelligence apparatus and an unhealthy willingness to cultivate religious extremists as putatively useful proxies (in this, the US and Pakistan shared common cause in Afghanistan in the 1980s). 

Eventually, Pakistan will have to reckon with these pathologies and find ways to normalize its own political culture.  However, while the United States did not create these problems, by forcing Pakistan to accede to our agenda, against its own perceived interests and over the objections of a distrustful population, we are making it more likely that these flash points erupt rather than unwind according to a slower, more natural process.

It is with these concerns that I read, in horror, a story by Jeremy Scahill about the uptick in US-sponsored mercenary activity in Pakistan and Afghanistan by groups such as Blackwater. 

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nationhas found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.

While reports of Blackwater's involvement have been cropping up over the past half year or so, Scahill provides the most comprehensive take to date.  According to Scahill, Blackwater's pool of well experienced former special operations personnel has become invaluable to the US military in at least two ways: First, we lack an adequate number of as-experienced soldiers to conduct operations without bringing in mercenary groups like Blackwater.  Second, the private status of the mercenary groups - as well as some chain-of-command work-arounds put in place by Rumsfeld and Cheney - provide much sought after plausible deniability, secrecy and, ultimately, unaccountability.

So let me see if I have this straight: We must continue our mission in Afghanistan/Pakistan lest our departure destabilizes Pakistan.  But we can only continue our mission in Afghanistan/Pakistan if we utilize mercenaries in the fight.  And, further, the use of mercenaries in the pursuit of conducting airstrikes with little accountability in Pakistan will further the goal of stabilizing Pakistan.  Because, well, who in Pakistan will object to that?

Right. 

This Makes Sense How?

by Eric Martin

Nicholas Kristof from a couple of weeks back:

President Obama and Congress will soon make defining choices about health care and troops for Afghanistan.

These two choices have something in common — each has a bill of around $100 billion per year. So one question is whether we’re better off spending that money blowing up things in Helmand Province or building up things in America.

The total bill in Afghanistan has been running around $1 million per year per soldier deployed there. That doesn’t include the long-term costs that will be incurred in coming decades — such as disability benefits, or up to $5 million to provide round-the-clock nursing care indefinitely for a single soldier who suffers brain injuries.

So if President Obama dispatches another 30,000 or 40,000 troops, on top of the 68,000 already there, that would bring the total annual bill for our military presence there to perhaps $100 billion — or more. And we haven’t even come to the human costs.

As for health care reforms, the 10-year cost suggests an average of $80 billion to $110 billion per year, depending on what the final bill looks like.

Granted, the health care costs will continue indefinitely, while the United States cannot sustain 100,000 troops in Afghanistan for many years. On the other hand, the health care legislation pays for itself, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while the deployment in Afghanistan is unfinanced and will raise our budget deficits and undermine our long-term economic security.

So doesn’t it seem odd to hear hawks say that health reform is fiscally irresponsible, while in the next breath they cheer a larger deployment of troops in Afghanistan?

Meanwhile, lack of health insurance kills about 45,000 Americans a year, according to a Harvard study released in September. So which is the greater danger to our homeland security, the Taliban or our dysfunctional insurance system?

Interestingly, the Republican Party and some conservative Dems are seizing on the need to further escalate our military commitment in Afghanistan as the reason why we can't tackle health care reform legislation at this juncture (or ever): 

The policy debate in Washington is currently focused on two topics: a possible escalation of the war in Afghanistan and health care legislation. Both a troop escalation and health care reform carry significant price tags — roughly $100 billion and $80-$100 billion a year respectively. (It should be noted that health care reform, unlike a troop surge, would cut the deficit.)

When it comes to these two debates, hawkish senators have laid out their priorities. They are more than willing to fund a risky troop surge that is increasingly opposed by both Americans and Afghans, yet remain stalwart opponents of health care reform that could save the lives of the 45,000 Americans who die every year because they lack access to health care.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN)...suggested to host John King that health care legislation should be delayed until next year to focus on Afghanistan, saying, “The war is terribly important. … So this may be an audacious suggestion, but I would suggest we put aside the health care debate until next year, the same way we put cap and trade and climate change away and talk now about the essentials, war and money.”

A war of highly dubious value is an absolute essential.  Health insurance for the tens of thousands of Americans dying each year because of the lack thereof?  Not so much. 

It's well past time that the hypocrisy of these so-called budget hawks receives the focus it deserves.  To sum it up: politicians that are supposedly concerned with budget deficits have no problem spending trillions on outlandish military boondoggles, but refuse to raise taxes to pay for any part of those misadventures in order to keep them from blowing a hole in the budget.  And they find the concept of health care reform to be entirely too costly, even though it is deficit neutral and the positive outcomes far, far likelier than those expected from the war(s). 

How...moderate!

Happy Thanksgiving (belated edition)

by Eric Martin

Eric remained unimpressed with David's theory of how the personal lives of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer impacted their respective philosophical outlooks.