Afghanistan has estimated that it will need up to $10 billion a year in economic assistance until 2025 and support until 2030 for army and police forces expected to total 342,000 by 2015. But international officials planning for Afghanistan’s overall needs think it will not be able to sustain the anticipated size of the force.
That’s not a conference. That’s a stickup.
Something like 90 percent of Afghanistan’s economy is international aid. Josh Foust has written eloquently on the distorting consequences of being a financial ward of the international community. But let’s put aside what the aid means for Afghanistan. What are we buying? More importantly, what do we want to be buying? [ http://americansecurityproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Expeditionary-Economics-ExpEcon-Part-One.pdf ]
Figure we have an interest in a functional Afghan security apparatus, to keep the place from imploding — or, if shit really goes bad, to work with us during an Afghan civil war. Then we have an interest in, minimally, bottling up the Pakistani safe havens and, maximally, disrupting them. Assume we don’t have Pakistani cooperation. Then we’ll need some air fields for the jump-off: Bagram, Kandahar, Jalalabad, mayyyyyybe Salerno. [ If Pakistan Denies U.S. Its Drone Bases, There’s a Backup Plan Next Door - http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/07/if-pakistan-denies-u-s-its-drone-bases-theres-a-backup-plan-next-door/ ]
That would satisfy our interests in Afghanistan, right? What am I missing?
So let’s negotiate that. You can’t fault Karzai for starting the bidding at $10 billion annually. Now we write “$1 billion” on a napkin, along with a stick figure of Karzai hanging from a lamppost in the wake of a full U.S. withdrawal, next to a caption saying THINK ABOUT IT, fold the napkin up, and pass it over the table.
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