Squeezing the balloon

Posted By David Rothkopf Thursday, March 19, 2009 - 3:57 PM Share

Remember when "we live in a world without borders" was a good thing? Now, in the places where tearing down or transcending borders was a matter of choice, as in global financial markets, leaders are now grappling with the massive challenges of regulating and even tracking cross-border capital flows and transactions. And in the places where there are no borders as a consequence of history, geography, or the failure of the states that are supposed to maintain them, the problem is even bigger.

Nothing brings this problem into focus like Afghanistan. In a simplistic, substance-lite op-ed in the Washington Post, John McCain and Joseph Lieberman call it "Our Must Win War." They argue against "minimalism" in our approach to fighting in that country and worry aloud about "loose rhetoric" that will imply that "the United States will tire of this war and retreat." Quite apart from the obvious mistake of seeking to deny the deeply salient fact that inevitably we actually will tire of this war and retreat (or "strategically redeploy"), the article is as confused as is most of the thinking about this conflict. It sets as a goal "a stable, secure, self-governing Afghanistan that is not a terrorist sanctuary." Of course, we can't permanently assure Afghanistan's stability, security, or its self-governing status. We can try to help in those areas, but we haven't been terribly successful in that regard thus far and more importantly, those aren't actually our real objectives. Our real objective is simply to eliminate its use as a terrorist sanctuary and, not unimportantly, to get rid of some of the terrorists who actually remain there.

But here's where borders come in. Afghanistan doesn't really have a border with Pakistan. Not one that is patrolled or even enforceable. So every time we go after terrorists in Afghanistan, they attempt to cross into Pakistan and often they succeed. And while the Pakistanis are allegedly our allies, they often don't push back. Indeed, in many mountainous parts of the border region, they can't. So we are left squeezing the balloon -- apply pressure here and the only result is that the problem moves over there.

With the rise in importance of conflicts with terrorists, war lords, tribal groups, and drug cartels within the not-so-confining confines of weak or failed states with porous borders, this issue has become a central problem for U.S. policy and for international security more broadly. The bad guys have used modern technologies to become more mobile and we end up in futile balloon-squeezing exercises worldwide. Success against rebels and drug cartels in Colombia create problems in Peru and Ecuador. What progress the Mexican government has made against drug cartels in that country is starting to produce dangerous spill-over into Guatemala and the United States. Permanent wars rage throughout Africa drifting across borders from Rwanda to Congo, through East and West Africa.

Further, the wars produce refugee flows and are fed by drug and weapons flows. And if the richest nation in the world can't secure our own borders, how will poor ones fix theirs? The choice is fairly simple: massive spending on infrastructure, technology, and manpower to close the borders and seal off the fights where they occur or finding another strategy...like limiting ourselves to achievable goals abroad and doing what we can to minimize international problems by reducing demand for drugs, the reasons for terror, hitting offenders hard and increasing security here at home and along our own borders.

DAVID FURST/AFP/Getty Images

EXPLORE:AFGHANISTAN, BORDERS, PAKISTAN, U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

(3)

HIDE COMMENTS LOGIN OR REGISTER REPORT ABUSE

DEVANS

12:05 AM ET

March 20, 2009

Afghan Conflict

Everyone reading this opinion should be reminded that is was the US security forces, both CIA and Pentagon assets, working with aid from our State Department, that created Militant Islam and purposely destabilized Afghanistan in order to harm Soviet status within that country. Soviet Russia fought an unsuccessful decade long war that eventually caused the economic and political destabilization of their own nation.
Does anyone see a similarity between their demise and the political, moral, and financial bankruptcy that we have caused to ourselves? We are not even facing the behind the scenes support and actions of a superpower and we have learned nothing from the trap we created for the Soviets. Reagan decided to continue a massive military program that outspent the Soviets and eventually, Soviet industry and infrastructure crumbled trying to keep up with the US military spending. WE are now experiencing a failure in our schools, our cities, infrastructure, and in what little industry we have left. Soon the American Empire will go the same way as all other empires which have gone before us.

EXILEDTHUCYDIDES

8:01 PM ET

March 20, 2009

The Durand Line

As I'm sure you're aware, the reason there's no border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is that the government of Karzai refuses to acknowledge the Durand Line. Don't you think the US could push to have a legally recognized border?

BKAPLOVITZ

5:06 AM ET

March 24, 2009

Chas Freeman: petitions the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan

From Commentary Magazine's "Contentions" Weblog:
March 23, 2009

Thank Goodness for the Obama Administration’s Thorough Vetting Process

By Ted R. Bromund

I had dinner last week with a former student who worked for Obama’s campaign and now, like millions of others, is in town to try to land an administration job. His complaint was that the administration’s vetting procedures were so thorough that they were slowing him up, a complaint that made me choke on the excellent Pomerol we’d ordered.

I thought of his complaint again today, when a friend pointed out an interesting item in the February 26, 2009, New York Review of Books: a petition calling on the U.S. to withdraw immediately and totally from Afghanistan. One signatory, predictably, was Norman Finkelstein. Another, equally predictably, was Chas Freeman. That petition was published weeks before Freeman’s name was put forward as the arbiter of U.S. intelligence assessments. Now, naturally, it would never for a moment compromise Freeman’s objectivity that his self-declared political opinions are wildly at odds with those of the administration he sought to join. Nor is there anything even slightly unseemly about a candidate for such a position publicly stating preferences that would immediately put him at partisan odds with the President. Nor, of course, need we wonder at the fact that Freeman found himself politically at home with a conspiracy theorist like Finkelstein.

But I do have to wonder about those vetting procedures. Freeman wanted the job, but it seems unlikely that he informed the administration of his publicly-expressed views. And amazingly, no one in the administration noticed them. The press doesn’t get a pass here: it’s astonishing that this publicly-available petition wasn’t immediately brought up as a reason why he was profoundly unsuited for the intelligence job.

Of course, all that may be too generous. Perhaps it’s not true that no one in the administration noticed his views about their policy. Perhaps, instead, they noticed and didn’t care. In that case, we have to ask not about the competence of their vetting process, but about the sincerity of their commitment to the war in Afghanistan.

http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/bromund/59741