The United States, as the leading world maritime power, must draw three important lessons from the failure in Afghanistan – 1) to focus on the world’s trade and production waterways and the states that border them, 2) avoid involvement in insignificant landlocked or semi-landlocked states, and most importantly, 3) avoid the temptation to repeat the folly of such involvement.
The painful withdrawal from Afghanistan teaches three important lessons to the leader at the helm in the White House:
• First, failure in Afghanistan is an important reminder where the United States should be in the coming years and why. The rushed, shameful and bloody withdrawal reminds the leader in the White House that the key objective of a global power is the ability to maintain the freedom of the seas, which is the key to the continued economic viability of the United States and the key to maintaining one of the US’s greatest strategic asset – a web of alliances with like-minded states around the globe, neither China or Russia could dream of. To achieve this objective means maintaining maritime power, including air power in areas ruled by states along the major water trade and energy supplying routes.
• Second, the failure in Afghanistan also teaches us where the United States should refrain from expending resources – in insignificant, landlocked and semi-landlocked states, which are ideal places to dissipate precious resources and few in this regard could compete with the likes of Afghanistan.
• How easily a world power can be enticed into making the mistake of being in the wrong places is the third and no less important lesson. It is almost mind-boggling how the two greatest world maritime powers in the past two centuries – the British in the 19th century and then the United States, at the beginning of the present century – made the same mistake in the most landlocked and insignificant space of them all, Afghanistan.
SO WITH these three lessons in mind, the task remains of identifying the arenas the United States should and (definitely) should not, be expending its energies.
Obviously, where it should most focus its geostrategic resources is in meeting the Chinese challenge in one of the world’s major waterways – the South China Sea rather than protecting Chinese assets in Afghanistan in the past two decades.
Bolstering the maritime state allies in the area – principally Japan, but Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia as well – states committed to the freedom of the seas – comes a close second. All of these states are well within the Pacific Pivot that former president Barack Obama identified as the US’s major geostrategic objective a decade ago. Unfortunately, he also wrongfully gave the ok to a surge in commitments to Afghanistan at much the same time.
Further afield lie India and Pakistan, with the crucial difference that India should be cultivated as a democratic maritime power, while relations with Pakistan should be much more modest based on a quid pro quo that rests on Pakistan’s role in fighting or facilitating jihadi terrorism against the West internationally and against India, an ally of the United States.
Dealing with Iran certainly falls under this maritime focus. Iran is an important, but dangerous, ocean-facing state that not only produces and exports energy commodities of strategic importance but also threatens the status quo in key maritime routes from the Persian Gulf to the Suez Canal. It is also attempting to increase its footprint in the gas rich and politically combustible eastern Mediterranean area. Tilting towards the Pacific pivot should never mean a smaller US footprint against Iran in support of US allies in the Middle East.
THEN, HERE are the areas where the US should avoid getting involved.
Obviously, Afghanistan tops the list, mostly due the considerable costs of being there, but also because withdrawal from Afghanistan can easily burden China with the same Afghanistan that dissipated American resources due to the implications of a jihadi victory so close to its borders and one that involves its precarious control over the vast expenses of northwestern China with its Muslim majority.
Expending resources in dealing with the Palestinian problem should also be avoided. The Palestinians, woefully divided, with one half firmly committed to jihadi terrorism and the other half committed to rhetorically supporting terrorists as well as providing the welfare base to the families of terrorists financed indirectly by European and United States aid, are not important strategically, as the Abraham Accords process between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Morocco indicate.
Both the need to contain Iran and to avoid the Palestinians, means that the United States must also redefine its relations with many of its European allies to assure meeting the objectives of a maritime power. The Europeans should be listened to less and cajoled more to meet their commitments in bolstering the trans-European alliance rather than continuing free riding on American protection.
Above all, a judicious US president should avoid the pitfalls of falling into the ideological traps of either neoconservative or liberal biases. Afghanistan is an excellent example why the most moral outcome is a strong United States true to its interests as the world’s leading maritime democratic power.
The writer is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies and professor (emeritus) in the Departments of Political Studies and Middle Eastern Studies at Bar-Ilan University.