The Cato Institute

There’s No Military Solution for Afghanistan

Afghans have endured 40 years of uninterrupted war, and there is no plausible argument that war will soon end…

In a new paper, a former U.S. commander in Afghanistan argues that America’s longest war is unwinnable, in part because Afghanistan is stuck in a cycle of trauma and violence brought about by four decades of uninterrupted conflict.

Erik Goepner, Cato visiting scholar and retired U.S. Air Force colonel whose assignments included unit commands in Afghanistan and Iraq, rigorously analyzed the impact that 40 years of uninterrupted war has had on the population of Afghanistan.

He contends that the country is caught in a vicious cycle whereby war causes trauma, which drives more war. Goepner concludes that there is little America can do to substantially improve the situation in Afghanistan, and recommends America withdraw its military forces. In addition, any future military planning and intelligence estimates should consider the state of a population’s mental health.

In order to statistically measure the level of trauma within the country, Goepner created the “Trauma Index,” which takes into account traumatic events in the form of torture, rape, death, and other atrocities associated with war.

Unsurprisingly, the average Afghan has experienced extremely high-levels of trauma. An Afghan adult has experienced seven traumatic events, on average, compared to one to two for a European and one to three for an American adult. As a result of the trauma caused by persistent and pervasive violence, Afghans have a post-traumatic stress disorder rate of 50 percent, by some estimates.

The mental illness, substance abuse issues, and diminished impulse control that stems from trauma have resulted in an Afghan society in which violence has been normalized. “Making matters worse,” Goepner writes, “Afghans have no real opportunity to receive professional care. Researchers have reported that Afghanistan’s mental health services are ‘nonexistent,’ that there is an ‘acute shortage’ of qualified providers, and that the general situation is one in which ‘chronic mental illness has been left unattended in Afghanistan for decades.’”

Goepner also discusses additional drivers of conflict in the country. He argues that ineffective security forces, low opportunity costs for rebel recruitment, and sanctuary for rebels in neighboring Pakistan create the “opportunity for rebellion,” while grievances against the corrupt and incompetent government and financial incentives from the illicit opium trade provide the motivation to rebel. Goepner contends that for the United States to help the situation in Afghanistan it must remove its military footprint and instead pursue policies that incentivize a more-effective, less-corrupt Afghan government.

Goepner succinctly summarizes the challenges facing Afghanistan, writing that “Thanks to 40 years of uninterrupted war, Afghans suffer from extremely high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental illnesses, substance abuse, and diminished impulse control. Research shows that those negative effects make people more violent toward others. As a result, violence can become normalized as a legitimate means of problem solving and goal achievement, and that appears to have fueled Afghanistan’s endless war. Thus, Afghanistan will be difficult, if not impossible, to fix.”

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North Korea & How to Avoid (Potentially Nuclear) Catastrophe

U.S. military action is no solution for the North Korean crisis…

President Trump has repeatedly threatened to attack North Korea, but even limited military engagement in North Korea would escalate to unacceptable losses of life.

Although President Trump and Kim Jong-un are set to meet this summer, the Trump administration has regularly shown that it considers military action a viable option if it is unsatisfied with diplomatic efforts. 

But, any attempts to use force to denuclearize North Korea would likely spiral out of control and lead to mass casualties. Absent a clear, imminent threat, diplomacy is consequently the only viable U.S. strategy in the region.

Although U.S. policymakers seek to rid the Kim regime of its nuclear weapons, the Trump administration has few viable options. Kim views his nuclear capability as a critical deterrent. U.S. attempts to forcibly deprive the regime of its nukes could lead to escalation, with North Korea feeling a compulsion to strike first in a “use it or lose it” scenario.

In fact, in such a delicate situation, almost any U.S. military action would likely trigger full-scale war. A limited surgical strike designed to target North Korea’s nuclear arsenal would not likely be sufficient, as the locations of all North Korea’s nukes are not known and some assets are likely buried deep underground. Even an operation aimed at taking out North Korea leadership would not prevent a war from erupting, given that artillery squads threatening Seoul have orders to fire on the city “without orders from above” in the event of a U.S. attack.

Such an escalation would be devastating, given that roughly 26 million people live in the Seoul metropolitan area, leaving them vulnerable to artillery, Scud missiles, and biological weapons, not to mention a nuclear strike. Even a conventional artillery barrage could cause tens of thousands of deaths within hours. North Korea could also target South Korea’s nuclear power plants, causing major casualties as a result of fallout. Other potential targets include the Yongsan Garrison, where the U.S. Army keeps its Korean headquarters and 26,000 Americans live, as well as Guam and Tokyo.

A full-on war would be even more counterproductive for U.S. interests. The buildup to such a war would be hard to disguise, thus serving as a visible signal for Pyongyang to strike first. Although the U.S. military and South Korea’s military are more than a match for North Korea’s, such a war would be immensely costly and bloody. There is a high danger of such a war spilling out into Russia, China, and other nations, particularly if nuclear weapons are used. 

The economic costs of such a war would also be staggering. Washington would face extraordinary pressure to underwrite occupation and finance reconstruction across the entire battle zone, with the United States’ share of the burden potentially reaching trillions of dollars.

Instead of considering military options, U.S. policymakers to make serious efforts to open diplomatic channels with the North. Direct and normalized communication would go a long way toward stepping away from the brink, particularly given that the U.S. and North Korea both have heads of state given to brashness. 

The United States should also hold serious discussions with China. Possible confidence-building measures include offering aid for refugees, accepting possible Chinese military intervention in the aftermath of a North Korean collapse, as well as guaranteeing that U.S. forces would leave a reunited peninsula. Once tensions ease, the U.S. should reconsider its military alliance with South Korea, which now has a well-developed military capable of protecting the country on its own.

In other words, the United States should follow the same strategy it did with the Soviet Union and China during the Cold War, avoiding preventive strikes in favor of containment and deterrence. 

There are risks to containing and deterring North Korea, but they pale beside the costs of plunging the peninsula into the abyss of war.

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Weakening the Constitution to Go to War in Syria is a Terrible Idea

The Constitution is supposed to make it difficult for a President to take the U.S. to war. Why would Congress want to make it easier?

Despite President Trump’s calls during the campaign to pull back from the Middle East and more recent statements that he’s ready pack up and go home from Syria “very soon,” he nonetheless ordered missile strikes in Syria, ostensibly in response to reports that Assad killed civilians with chemical weapons.

President Trump’s announcement that the United States, France and Britain had launched airstrikes against Syria in response to a chemical weapons attack might have surprised the people who listened to him campaigning in 2016, when he repeatedly critiqued “stupid” Middle Eastern interventions.

Since entering office, President Trump has reversed course on foreign policy, and he evidently now shares the assumption that America must do something in response to atrocities in Syria — a wholehearted embrace of the Washington bias toward action.

In this, President Trump and his predecessor have something in common: Both he and President Obama came into office promising to change America’s foreign policy, but when faced with crises, both yielded to pressure to intervene. This bias toward action is one of the biggest problems in American foreign policy. It produces poorly thought-out interventions and, sometimes, disastrous long-term consequences.

President Trump’s previous strikes in Syria garnered bipartisan praise from the Washington establishment, praise that the president craves. Yet military action in Syria will not benefit national interests, and may draw the U.S. further into a quagmire there is no easy route out of.

Two days after President Trump declared “Mission Accomplished” on the latest round of missile strikes against Syria, a bipartisan group of senators unveiled legislation intended to reassert Congress’s relevance to the wars we fight. But the new Authorization for the Use of Military Force, introduced by Bob Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, and the Democrat Tim Kaine, may end up doing the opposite.

Senator Kaine is right that, as he said in a speech about the bill, “for too long Congress has given presidents a blank check to wage war.” The 2001 authorization, passed three days after the Sept. 11 attacks and aimed at the perpetrators of those attacks, has done just that. Three presidents in a row have warped its limited authority into an enabling act for globe-spanning presidential war.

The Corker-Kaine resolution won’t bring an end to the Forever War; it will institutionalize it. Instead of ratifying war powers that three presidents in a row have seized illegally, Congress should repeal — and not replace — the 2001 legislation.

In authorizing the use of force against a list of terrorist organizations and their affiliates, the bill states that it “establishes rigorous congressional oversight,” “improves transparency” and ensures “regular congressional review and debate.” Such transparency requirements are an improvement over the status quo. But the bill also turns the constitutional warmaking process upside down.

Our Constitution was designed to make war difficult, requiring the assent of both houses and the president. The bill essentially changes that by merely requiring “regular congressional review” of presidential warmaking and requires reauthorization every four years; meanwhile, choosing new enemies, in new countries, is the president’s call, unless Congress can assemble a veto-proof majority to check him.

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Time to Rethink U.S. Arms Sales Across the Globe

Since 2002, the United States has sold more than $197 billion worth of major conventional weapons and related military support to 167 countries, often those engaged in deadly conflicts, with horrendous human rights records, under conditions in which it has been impossible to predict where the weapons would end up or how they would be used….

With the Trump administration poised to sell $110 billion in arms to Saudi Arabia — the largest such deal ever agreed to by the U.S. — and more than $84 billion to 42 other nations, it’s high time to reevaluate U.S. arms deals.

The research is clear: the geopolitical benefits of U.S. arms sales are overrated, while the benefits of discontinuing such sales are significant finding that arms sales do little to strengthen the U.S. economy or protect national security interests, even undermining the latter in some cases.

The U.S. does not discriminate between nations which may or may not pose future threats. There are a large number of risky customers in the world, and the United States sells weapons to most of them. Between 2002 and 2006, the U.S. clocked $197 billion in arms sales — and, the 28 countries currently involved in high-level conflicts bought an average of $2.94 billion worth of U.S. arms.

The U.S. has increasingly relied on arms sales since WWII, with the Nixon-era American Export Controls Act formalizing the executive branch’s ability to conduct such sales, requiring risk analyses (which are often nothing more than rubber stamps), and giving Congress the ability to block such sales within a 30-day window — a power Congress rarely exercises.

Although arms sales are an “extremely flexible” tool of statecraft allowing the U.S. to cheaply exert influence and gain favor, the benefits are illusory. Arms sales have shown little ability to prevent terrorism or conflict from taking root in a country, and arms sale-recipient countries have been significantly more likely to be attacked by their geopolitical rivals.

Most concerning is arms sales’ tendency to culminate in “blowback,” when a U.S. ally turns into an adversary. American troops and their allies have faced American-made weapons in almost every military engagement since the end of the Cold War. Moreover, weapons sales tend to have an entangling effect, leading the U.S. to take gradually more involvement in the areas it conducts such sales, most notably of late in the Syrian Civil War.

Despite this, there is limited manpower devoted to making sure weapons are not misused or end up in the wrong hands: the limited staff at the the Directorate of Defense Trade Controls, which oversees U.S. arms licensing agreements, and the Blue Lantern program, which conducts end-use monitoring of weapons. The latter has a staff of twelve, responsible for tracking billions of dollars in weapons sales every year.

The United States does not need the limited economic benefits arms sales provide—and it certainly does not need the strategic headaches that come with them.

President Trump should enact a strict, conditional approach towards arms deals, with a default policy of “no sale,” and should be sure to embargo nations that are likely to misuse or lose weapons they buy from the U.S. End-use monitoring programs should be strengthened, while Congress should also legislate for itself a more active role in approving arms deals. 

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The Forgotten Anniversary: September 14th, 2001

After 16 years of war, it’s time to reckon with the less-appreciated anniversary of September 14, 2001, when Congress gave the President a relatively open-ended power to make war…

Over the last decade and a half, we’ve heard over and over again that “September 11th changed everything”—but maybe September 14 was the pivotal date. 

Sixteen years ago today, Congress passed the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). Aimed at the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks and those who “harbored” or “aided” them, the AUMF has been transformed into an enabling act for globe-spanning presidential war.  

Two-thirds of the House members who voted for the 2001 AUMF and three quarters of the Senate are no longer in Congress today. But judging by what they said at the time, the legislators who passed it didn’t think they were committing the US to an open-ended, multigenerational war; they thought they were targeting Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Undeclared wars and drive-by bombing raids were hardly unknown before 9/11. But most of the military excursions of the post-Cold War era were geographically limited, temporary departures from a baseline of peace.

Barack Obama left office as the first two-term president in American history to have been at war every single day of his presidency. In his last year alone, U.S. forces dropped over 26,000 bombs on seven different countries. Seven months into his presidency, Donald Trump has almost certainly passed Obama’s 2016 tally already — all under the auspices of the AUMF.

The AUMF Congress passed in 2001 still serves as legal cover for current wars we fight in seven countries. War is now America’s default setting; peace, the dwindling exception to the rule.

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We Cannot “Win” in Afghanistan

President Trump’s Afghanistan strategy ignores the evidence amassed over 16 hard-fought years. There will be no winning for the U.S. in Afghanistan…

President Trump campaigned on a platform of pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. That no longer seems to be on the table. 

On Monday night, President Trump informed the nation that he is escalating America’s war in Afghanistan. That means that our longest war will continue for at least four more years, and likely longer. It also means that more Americans will be sent across the globe to fight — and die — in the pursuit of unclear objectives, and in a conflict that is not vital to U.S. national security.

While specifics about the new strategy are sketchy, it seems to be more of the same, and more of the same will not improve reality in Afghanistan; it may, in fact, make things worse. 

Trump assured Americans that he had the strategy for “winning,” but his strategy looked a lot like one that previous battlefield commanders have suggested is sorely wanting.

Trump’s “winning” rhetoric, like that of previous administrations, makes it sound as though this is America’s war to win or lose. It is not.

The failure of the Afghan government and security forces is, primarily, a failure of Afghans. The U.S. can adjust its strategy as often as it would like, but Americans should not expect substantially different outcomes until Afghans find their own way.

Despite invading two countries, toppling three regimes and conducting military strikes in seven nations, the estimated number of Islamist-inspired terrorists has grown from approximately 32,000 before initiation of the war on terror to 109,000 now.

That is an argument to end America’s involvement in Afghanistan’s civil war, not for more of the same.

President Trump’s new strategy ignores the evidence amassed over 16 hard-fought years, and, as a result, more American lives and resources will be lost as this unnecessary war continues. There will be no winning for the U.S. in Afghanistan.

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War on Terror is a Complete Failure

American foreign policy has destabilized the Middle East while doing little to protect the United States from terrorism…

In the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the United States launched an international war on terrorism defined by military intervention, nation building, and efforts to reshape the politics of the Middle East.

The presidencies of George Bush and Barack Obama saw 15 years of considerable strategic consistency. In his campaign rhetoric, Donald Trump broke sharply from Republican orthodoxy on Iraq and Afghanistan. However, he assumed office having promised to “bomb the sh—” out of ISIS and “defeat them fast.” Just this month, President Trump assigned 4000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, promising to continue the War on Terror.

Even by a conservative accounting, the War on Terror has been a failure. American military intervention has not only not accomplished its objectives, it has instead increased the threat of international terrorism

To date, the war and its continuing costs, including veterans’ care, will cost taxpayers $5 trillion, along with the lives of U.S. servicemen and women lost in the various conflicts. 

No major international terrorist groups have been destroyed, there have been more Islamist-inspired attacks within the United States since 9/11 compared to the same period before, and more Americans have died from terror attacks. 

Meanwhile, fatalities worldwide have risen to unprecedented levels. 

In 2015, 38,422 people were killed by terrorism — a staggering 397% increase from 2001. Terror attacks have risen 1,900% within the seven countries in which the U.S. has had military operations in the War on Terror, particularly in nations where the U.S. has conducted drone strikes.

This failure has two fundamental—and related—sources. The first is the inflated assessment of the terror threat facing the United States, which led to an expansive counterterrorism campaign that did not protect Americans from terrorist attacks. The second source of failure is the adoption of an aggressive strategy of military intervention.

The lessons from the War on Terror indicate that it is time for the United States to take a different approach.

Policymakers need to acknowledge that although terrorism is a serious concern, it represents only a modest security threat to the American homeland.

The United States cannot rid the world of all terrorist organizations. Instead, we must focus our efforts on homeland security.

The United States should abandon the use of military intervention and nation building in the War on Terror. Instead, the United States should push regional partners to confront terrorist groups abroad, while the U.S. returns to an emphasis on the intelligence and law enforcement paradigm for combating the threat against the American homeland.

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President Trump’s First 100 Days: Trade & Foreign Policy

Inaugurated on January 20, 2017, our 45th President will complete 100 days in office this Saturday, April 29th…

The “first 100 days” was a dictatorial metaphor from the start. It entered the presidential lexicon in 1933, when journalists likened FDR’s legislative onslaught to Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1815 breakout from Elba and subsequent three-month rampage, ending at Waterloo.

Thankfully, President Trump’s first 100 days haven’t been nearly so dramatic. But of course, we are less than 100 days into Trump’s presidency, so we cannot reach any firm conclusions yet

In his first three months, Trump has learned that the presidency can be an incredibly frustrating job. Of the long list of items in Trump’s “100-day action plan,” he’s barely moved on most, reversed himself on others, and been stymied by Congress and the courts on the few where he’s made a serious push.

For foreign policy wonks, Trump’s first hundred days have been a bit like a roller coaster ride.

 Trump has put additional boots on the ground in Syria, loosened rules of engagement designed to minimize civilian deaths, and dropped more bombs in Yemen than Obama did in any year of his presidency.

What we may get out of Trump’s trade policies is a more nuanced and targeted approach than was hinted at during the campaign, but his policy has been anything but predictable. 

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The Situation in Syria is Bleak. Let’s Not Make It Worse

Bombing Syria doesn’t provide humanitarian relief. It’s also unconstitutional and violates international law…

Last night, President Trump  ordered a missile strike on an airfield in Syria believed to be the base for the chemical weapons attack earlier in the week. 

Hurling 50 Tomahawk missiles at a single military base does not fundamentally undermine the Assad regime’s ability to harm its own people, and it has zero chance of altering the military and political realities on the ground. It is merely a symbolic gesture intended to deter further use of chemical weapons.

Bashar Assad regime’s most recent chemical weapons attack in Idlib province killed dozens of people and injured many more. It was a cynical and desperate move by a regime that has lost all legitimacy in the eyes of the world. But the attack was also our first opportunity to see what the Trump administration would do in response to such a situation. 

Sometimes the United States can and should act, as it often does in response to earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters. But many problems—like the civil war in Syria—are beyond America’s ability to solve.

Unfortunately, explaining the decision to do nothing is never easy, especially in the face of tragedies like Syria or the rampant fears stoked by acts of terrorism at home and abroad. 

Too many U.S. critics of Assad tend to see the Syrian civil war as a political melodrama, featuring the Syrian dictator as an archvillain and his adversaries as noble freedom fighters seeking a better, more democratic Iraq. The reality is far more complex and murky. Assad is assuredly an odious ruler, but most of his opponents are hardly admirable pro-democracy advocates. Other than ISIS, the strongest faction consists of the Nusra Front (until recently, Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate) and other allied Islamist groups. Washington’s vain search for a strong “moderate” Syrian rebel force has persisted for years, but frequently borders on being a farce.

With his decision to launch missile strikes against an airfield in Syria, President Donald Trump has apparently learned a lesson that eventually dawns on all American presidents, especially in the post-Cold War era: with great power comes great responsibility.

Trump’s repeated invocation of the doctrine “America First,” coupled with his past vocal opposition to getting involved in the Syrian Civil War, suggested that he would not be swayed by those who insist upon “doing something” when little really can be done. 

Cato scholars have long warned against U.S. military intervention in Syria. There is no U.S. military solution to the Syrian conflict, and the options that do exist risk exacerbating regional insecurity and humanitarian strife and would require a massive commitment in blood and treasure that the American people seem unprepared to tolerate.

The question is whether President Trump, in the face of all this uncertainty, will be able to resist the temptation to escalate. If he succumbs, Americans could find themselves sucked into yet another elective military quagmire in the Middle East.

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Nobel Peace Prize Winner Obama Leaves a Legacy of War

President Obama will leave office as the first two-term president in American history to have been at war every day of his presidency, having dropped over 25,000 bombs on seven countries in 2016 alone….

As a young state senator in 2002, Obama gave an antiwar rally speech railing against the “dumb,” “rash” rush to war in Iraq. As a presidential candidate five years later, he promised to “turn the page on the imperial presidency” and usher in “a new dawn of peace.” In a speech to US troops last month, he denounced the “false promise” that “we can eliminate terrorism by dropping more bombs,” and piously proclaimed that “democracies should not operate in a state of permanently authorized war.”

And yet, 2008’s “peace candidate” has launched two undeclared wars (in Libya and against ISIS), ordered 10 times as many drone strikes as George W. Bush — including the remote-control execution of an American citizen, and, this summer, bombed six different countries just over Labor Day weekend.

By the time Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he’d already launched more drone strikes than “war president” Bush managed during his two terms. 

It is Obama who is largely responsible for warping the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force—passed three days after 9/11 to target Al Qaeda and the Taliban—into an enabling act for endless war, anywhere in the world.

Where Bush secured congressional authorization for the two major wars he fought, Obama made perpetual warfare the new normal, and the president the ultimate “decider” in matters of war and peace.

Alas, political tribalism warps people’s perceptions of basic reality, convincing partisans they’re entitled to their own facts.

Even during the heyday of resistance to the Vietnam War, the criticism became more intense after Republican Richard Nixon took over the White House than it had been under Democrat Lyndon Johnson. There was far more criticism of Republican George H.W. Bush’s Persian Gulf War than there was of Democrat Bill Clinton’s wars in Bosnia and Kosovo (a distressing number of prominent liberals even found reasons to praise Clinton’s military crusades in the Balkans).

Left-wing groups mounted a fairly serious effort to thwart Republican Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But when Democrat Obama escalated U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan and led a NATO assault to remove Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi from power, the reaction was very different.  Except for a few hard-left organizations, the sounds coming from the usual supposed anti-war liberal quarters were those of crickets. Likewise, there has been little push-back to Obama’s gradual return of the U.S. military presence in Iraq or the entanglement of the U.S. military in Syria.

With Trump’s inauguration near, Obama has described the transfer of presidential power as ”a relay race” where he’ll pass the baton to his successor. In private, he’s occasionally used a more ominous metaphor: leaving “a loaded weapon” behind for the next president.

And, now, Obama will pass that weapon on to Donald J. Trump, a man he’s flatly declared “unfit” for the office — someone who can’t be trusted with a Twitter account, let alone the nuclear launch codes.

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