Waging an Economic War

[savanik]

Hey everyone, had an interesting idea: Here's the basic premise:

Afghanistan War, FY 2009: $55.2 billion dollars
Afghanistan GDP, FY 2009: $27.01 billion dollars

The amount of money being poured into the region as a direct result of our troops on the ground effectively is increasing Afghanistan's GDP by a huge amount, distorting their culture and economy. Fiven the amount of money we're pouring into the region: Why don't we just BUY Afghanistan?

How would we arrange such a thing? My thought would be to strike a treaty with whatever organization they have that claims to be the legitimate government - we pay their government $27 billion per year for the next 20 years, and they cede all territorial rights to the United States. With the caveat, of course, that if we have to turn around and spend money on local tribes, either by buying their villages or burning them to the ground due to a revolt, then we'll reduce that payout by that amount.

We can then spend the other $20 billion on improving infrastructure, mining operations, building factories, what have you, and turn them from a patch of sand with a lot of angry herdsmen with AK-47s into an industrialized trading partner.

Thoughts?

[Dark567]

Hey everyone, had an interesting idea: Here's the basic premise:

Afghanistan War, FY 2009: $55.2 billion dollars
Afghanistan GDP, FY 2009: $27.01 billion dollars

The amount of money being poured into the region as a direct result of our troops on the ground effectively is increasing Afghanistan's GDP by a huge amount, distorting their culture and economy. Fiven the amount of money we're pouring into the region: Why don't we just BUY Afghanistan?

How would we arrange such a thing? My thought would be to strike a treaty with whatever organization they have that claims to be the legitimate government - we pay their government $27 billion per year for the next 20 years, and they cede all territorial rights to the United States. With the caveat, of course, that if we have to turn around and spend money on local tribes, either by buying their villages or burning them to the ground due to a revolt, then we'll reduce that payout by that amount.

We can then spend the other $20 billion on improving infrastructure, mining operations, building factories, what have you, and turn them from a patch of sand with a lot of angry herdsmen with AK-47s into an industrialized trading partner.

Thoughts?

Colonization, which is basically what you are proposing, has had books written on why its a horrible idea. If we decide to buy them, those herdsmen with AK-47s are suddenly going to become a lot angrier. How would we enforce our territorial rights? Probably with a shit ton of "Police men", which would really just be soldiers, fighting a war. That part is already happening. I don't see how what your saying is really any different than whats happening now, except we will piss a lot more people off making it worse.

[savanik]

Seriously? Colonization, which is basically what you are proposing, has had books written on why its a horrible idea. If we decide to buy them, those herdsmen with AK-47s are suddenly going to become a lot angrier. How would we enforce our territorial rights? Probably with a shit ton of "Police men", which would really just be soldiers, fighting a war. That part is already happening. I don't see how what your saying is really any different than whats happening now, except we will piss a lot more people off making it worse.

Well, right now we're expending a lot of dollars - to what purpose? What sort of return are we seeing on those dollars? I would imagine that bringing long-term economic prosperity to the region would stabilize these countries a great deal more than what we're currently doing.

There would definitely be some policing going on. The only way to not do policing would be to pull out of the region entirely, which we've been told repeatedly would lead to extremely bad consequences for national security. (Whether or not that is actually true is not particularly relevant to this discussion.) However, if you could actually sit down and work with people in the region to build things together, you'd face a great deal less resistance - particularly in the long run, where dividends could seriously start to be realized.

There's a lot you can do over there with $20 billion, spent wisely. Schools, hospitals, fresh water supplies, sanitation. I would imagine they'd get much less angry when you show them what kind of things you intend on doing. Work with them to preserve their culture in the schools and churches and whatnot. I think it's a lot better idea than simply throwing $20 billion more guns into the mix.

[Zamfir]

There's a lot you can do over there with $20 billion, spent wisely. Schools, hospitals, fresh water supplies, sanitation.

Yes. Notice how this is different from "buying the country".

Also,your original proposal meant the US would give large sums of money to regimes it doesn't like, in order to "buy" their territorial claims from them. In other words, becoming a regime the US doesn't like is then a wildly profitable business.

[bigglesworth]

I thought this was the US modus operandi? Go in, topple a regime, then fund the next regime in return for them being a normal country and not launching attacks on them. See Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Japan...

[Zamfir]

I thought this was the US modus operandi? Go in, topple a regime, then fund the next regime in return for them being a normal country and not launching attacks on them. See Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Japan...

With some emphasis. There is quite some difference between paying your allies to support you, and paying your enemies to give up fighting you. The second can definitely work, and be quite effective. But it has troublesome long-term implications.

[EdgarJPublius]

How would we arrange such a thing? My thought would be to strike a treaty with whatever organization they have that claims to be the legitimate government - we pay their government $27 billion per year for the next 20 years, and they cede all territorial rights to the United States. With the caveat, of course, that if we have to turn around and spend money on local tribes, either by buying their villages or burning them to the ground due to a revolt, then we'll reduce that payout by that amount.

This, right here (especially the bolded part, if that wasn't obvious) is the problem with Afghanistan. I really wanted to post Morbo on this, but this is SB, so I won't.

Anyway, the problem is that Afghanistan doesn't have a central government int he way you're probably thinking, it's mostly made up of clans and tribal groups that are effectively self-governing. What central government that does exist is currently filled by the Karzai administration that is already owned by the U.S./coalition by virtue of the fact that they set it up in the first place.

And you can't just 'buy' the tribes because they are poorly defined, notoriously fickle, and extremely fractious. membership in the various independent groups is not static, so you'll end up paying the same people multiple times as their allegiances and memberships shift.

You also have to deal with the fact that Afghanistan's economic system is more screwed up than most countries, and when you get down to the levels that actually matter, you're dealing with groups that may not actually produce anything other than what they need for self sufficiency, or rely on various levels of raiding and brigandage to sustain themselves at the expense of their neighbors. These groups would be extremely difficult to 'buy out'.

You'd also have to deal with the fact that opium farming forms a significant part of the Aghan economy, this supports organized crime and other unsavoriness and is also lucrative enough that it's proven extremely difficult to stop even with financial incentives.

On top of all that the country has been pretty severely 'broken' by near continuous war, unrest and instability. Significant portions of what remained of Afghan culture after the preceding wars was lost during the Soviet war and subsequent civil conflicts leading to the Taliban taking power, this has lead to all kinds of problems with radicalization and militarization as a whole generation grew up with the war but without any connection to their culture and history through parents or elders that were killed by the Soviets or the Taliban or whatever.

There are groups and fractions now that not only won't deal with the U.S. for some collection of reasons, but wouldn't understand our good intentions anyway, or would be directly harmed by attempts to stabilize the nation.

There's a reason they called Afghanistan the 'Grave of Empires' even before the Soviets tried and failed to control the country, and it's not just the difficult terrain.

seriously though AFGHANISTAN DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

[Zamfir]

Anyway, the problem is that Afghanistan doesn't have a central government int he way you're probably thinking

Well, they did have one under the Taliban. They don't have one now.

[EdgarJPublius]

Even the Taliban was largely decentralized, with local groups exercising most of the control based on vague and somewhat inconsistent fundamentalist interpretations of religious law. And what control the Taliban did exercise, was far from comprehensive, with many clans/tribal groups remaining independent to varying degrees (such as the Northern Alliance groups that remained wholly separate and independent from the Taliban for the most part)

[savanik]

[quote=EdgarJPublius]There are groups and fractions now that not only won't deal with the U.S. for some collection of reasons, but wouldn't understand our good intentions anyway, or would be directly harmed by attempts to stabilize the nation.[/quote]

I can grok people not understanding our intentions - you'll get some of that with any foreign culture. Similarly, people not wanting to deal with us - we should be able to deal with all that, though, with diplomatic efforts. Groups profiting from a destabilized Afghanistan, on the other hand, are probably not the people you want calling the shots, in any shape or form.

What we're doing right now isn't working. Actually, I think a better way to say that would be, 'What ARE we doing, anyway?' I've never seen any clearly deliniated goals in Afghanistan. We seem to be just generally 'involved' without wanting to get 'too involved'. If we don't have a reason to be over there, then why are we dumping all this money on it? It's not a sound decision.

Even if $50 billion isn't a 'lot' of money in America's standards, that much military money being funneled into the area isn't going to do anyone any good. If nothing else, they'll end up with more guns, more weapons, and more angry herders.

Side note: If there's no formal government, then who's drawing the borders on all the maps? Take it over on the Tribal level if nothing else.

[EdgarJPublius]

Afghanistan is already more or less at the 'critical mass' level of weapons and angry herders. Being armed is ingrained in the culture (and was already at least a part of the culture before before a couple of centuries of non-stop invasion and civil conflict made it a matter of survival too) to the point where AKs, PKMs and RPGs are practically legal tender and all of the herders are already in a constant state of being angry about something. After a country has spent ten years resisting being taken over by the Soviets, there's really nowhere to go but up. As horrible as the Taliban was, it's generally accepted that it was still a major step up from the Soviet period and the three Anglo-Soviet Wars before that interspersed with revolutions and civil wars.

The borders are largely a political invention of the colonial powers/Soviet Union/the neighboring countries. In some areas, these borders may be enforced by neighboring countries, or by local groups, but just as frequently, the local groups freely move in to the neighboring countries (this is especially a problem along the Pakistani border)

'taking it over at the tribal level' really wouldn't be much less of a fuck-up than what we're doing now, which combines inept attempts to befriend and support the local groups with a slightly less inept attempt to establish a central government. the problem is, as I mentioned, that the tribal groups themselves are not static and memberships can shift radically based on anything from the phases of the moon to who wants to marry who's sister.

In any given area, you may have two groups that are mortal enemies, but both hate a third equally and may cooperate to hurt the third group, but all three will agree that they could stand each for long enough to fight their neighbors, and then next year you may have three or four new groups formed from various intra-tribe feuds and inter-tribe marriages.
And it's not that the Afghan people are stupid or short sighted int he least, it takes a peculiar shrewdness and long-sightedness to live through the Soviet occupation and what came after, and even before that, the Afghan's had a reputation as skilled negotiators and cutthroat traders. They simply have there own values and interests, shaped largely by the nations tempestuous historical context.

It's not so much that we haven't tried negotiation with the tribal groups, it's that for the most part, the tribal groups are better at it than the U.S./Coalition officials and have been able to get what they want without having to give up anything they actually valued. Schools and infrastructure HAVE been built by the Coalition forces, and in many cases such projects have been quite successful, but it has to be done with finesse that can only really be gained by experience. If the Coalition just goes in and builds roads and schools and hospitals and what not, it doesn't do much good because there's no real relation to the needs and realities of the people who are uspposed to use them. But if the coalition goes in and tries to give them roads and schools and hospitals, then it either sounds too good to be true, or the Afghans will try to take advantage of the generosity and perceived naivete. There has to be some amount of give and take, the Coalition has to give something in return for something from the Afghans, and it has to be done in a way that is reasonable and acceptable to the Afghans.

You can't just go into a country and learn all the rules and make things better by throwing money at everything, and you especially can't do that in Afghanistan.

[savanik]

Well, another option might be to simply just start building there without asking anybody permission (if there really is nobody to ask permission of) and then just start assimilating the local population gradually through economic means - hiring locals, training them for whatever jobs are needed, etc. It'd be a much slower process, though. Could easily take a hundred years.

The biggest cultural difference I've seen between the west and countries in the Middle East that would cause major problems is tolerance of corruption - we're a lot less tolerant about that sort of thing over here, where it seems expected over there, and even up a bit into Eastern Europe. Bribes and 'fees' are commonplace, crime is often turned a blind eye if you can afford it. I'm not really sure how you can have any sort of functioning economy when you can't trust people to hold up their end of a contract. In the U.S., at least, you have legal recourse. If you don't have a functional government, that leaves you at the mercy of whoever has the biggest guns, doesn't it?

[Zamfir]

The biggest cultural difference I've seen between the west and countries in the Middle East that would cause major problems is tolerance of corruption

I'd be careful before attributing this all to 'culture'. Advanced economies tend to have very elaborate legal systems, that were built up over a long time. The same goes for enforcement you can trust, and a political system that is relatively aligned with the interests of more than an elite section of the people. Without such systems, corruption simply makes sense for individual people.

To put it another way, ever heard people complain about the godawful amount of lawyers and bureaucrats? Afghanistan doesn't have them, and if you do need them they are not there either.

[EdgarJPublius]

Well, another option might be to simply just start building there without asking anybody permission (if there really is nobody to ask permission of) and then just start assimilating the local population gradually through economic means - hiring locals, training them for whatever jobs are needed, etc. It'd be a much slower process, though. Could easily take a hundred years.

There's no real central authority for the whole 'nation' but the local authorities might not appreciate what you're doing. At least not this year, next year, whoever the local authorities are may be fine with you building whatever you want wherever you want to build it, the year after though, who knows? And if you don't build with any regard for what the locals want, then you aren't really doing anybody any good, they won't use it and they won't care to work there over what they're already doing.

What you're suggesting is basically naked imperialism, which worked out so well for the last guys that had it happen to them. Right?

Some of the most successful strategies in Afghanistan so far (which are actually being explored) have involved going to the clan/tribal elders and working directly with them to build and improve local infrastructure with the help of local labor with the understanding that the locals should stay clear of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and report any insurgents they notice. This creates the understanding that the coalition is trading something (infrastructure) for something (information) and employs the locals in improving their situation, which means they are less likely to be swayed by insurgents.
The problem with this strategy is that the shortage of translators makes it difficult to carry out on a wide scale, and the elders will still try to take advantage of the coalition forces and either ask for food, guns and money rather than paying work and infrastructure improvements for the information/guarantees, or they will try to pass off their rivals as 'insurgents'. If the coalition officials in charge of negotiating aren't experienced enough in dealing with the Afghans or aren't aware of the risks (or are simply looking for an easy solution so they can move on) then things can get a lot more complicated.

However, this strategy is being used to an extent, and seems to be becoming more widespread as the coalition forces build up their staff of translators and experienced officers.

[savanik]

What you're suggesting is basically naked imperialism, which worked out so well for the last guys that had it happen to them. Right?

In that the countries who did it prospered economically during the colonization, and the colonies eventually split off and became one of the world's most powerful and successful countries, and the original countries are still around? I'd say it worked out pretty well in the 200-year-ish long run. The trick would be knowing a good time to say, after they're developed and capable of defending themselves, 'Kudos! Here's your country back.'

Some of the most successful strategies in Afghanistan so far (which are actually being explored) have involved going to the clan/tribal elders and working directly with them. . . the elders will still try to take advantage of the coalition forces and either ask for food, guns and money rather than paying work and infrastructure improvements for the information/guarantees, or they will try to pass off their rivals as 'insurgents'.

So you're saying we're trying to negotiate with liars and bandits? Or at the very least, liars and people with no long-term vision or sense of identity as a country. This doesn't sound like a winning combination to me.

[Zamfir]

In that the countries who did it prospered economically during the colonization, and the colonies eventually split off and became one of the world's most powerful and successful countries, and the original countries are still around?

Enlighten me.

[EdgarJPublius]

What you're suggesting is basically naked imperialism, which worked out so well for the last guys that had it happen to them. Right?

In that the countries who did it prospered economically during the colonization, and the colonies eventually split off and became one of the world's most powerful and successful countries, and the original countries are still around? I'd say it worked out pretty well in the 200-year-ish long run. The trick would be knowing a good time to say, after they're developed and capable of defending themselves, 'Kudos! Here's your country back.'

Because America is the only continent in history that was ever nakedly imperialized (and it turned out so well for the natives too right?) and let's just ignore that African continent thingy over there huh?

Some of the most successful strategies in Afghanistan so far (which are actually being explored) have involved going to the clan/tribal elders and working directly with them. . . the elders will still try to take advantage of the coalition forces and either ask for food, guns and money rather than paying work and infrastructure improvements for the information/guarantees, or they will try to pass off their rivals as 'insurgents'.

So you're saying we're trying to negotiate with liars and bandits? Or at the very least, liars and people with no long-term vision or sense of identity as a country. This doesn't sound like a winning combination to me.

Sure, some of them are liars and thieves (you find those every-where though), and many of them probably don't have much long term vision (it's hard to think about long term goals when you are simultaneously trying to survive a harsh environment and constant warfare). I don't think it's fair to say that they lack some nebulous 'sense of identity as a country' I'm sure their sense of national identity is just as strong as anyone elses, or stronger, it just happens to include their local family/clan and not much else.

We're dealing with people who want different things from us because they exist in a culture and an environment that is very different from ours, that is not necessarily bad or wrong, because their hierarchy of needs and wants is adapted for survival in a situation where the neighboring great power could invade and (almost literally) decimate the population over ten years.

Paying jobs aren't as desirable as money, not because the Afghans are lazy (or at least not especially any lazier than anyone else), but because a job building roads and schools doesn't do much good if next year, the Russians or the Taliban or some new antagonist swoops in and starts blowing up the roads and turning the schools into barracks and weapon storage, or starts blowing up the schools (with children in them) and using the roads to drive tanks on, or whatever.
If anything, the Afghans probably think that the coalition is short sighted for assuming that because Afghanistan is more or less stable now, that it will be more or less stable for a while, when the Afghans know that it's only a matter of time before someone else comes in and starts wrecking everything, and for all we know, they may be right, we may build up there economy and get everything running smoothly just in time for Iran or China or who knows, maybe even Pakistan or India to come on in and blow everything up again.

[Zamfir]

Russians or the Taliban or some new antagonist

Just to make this explicit: like us. Even Nato's own figures for the civilians it has killed in Afghanistan comes to many 9/11s. You need to build a lot of schools before people forgive you killing people they know, no matter how often you say it was an accident.