The fact that Ron Paul fared somewhat less well than Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses might be somewhat discouraging to champions of a more dovish foreign policy. Paul has been the most explicit champion of U.S. strategic retrenchment in a Republican primary since Patrick Buchanan in 1992 and 1996. (Incidentally, I have been accused of characterizing Paul’s views as “isolationist,” which is simply bizarre. Paul favors a form of strategic independence that involves cutting loose from permanent “entangling” alliances, which is an intellectually respectable and defensible view, despite my disagreements with it. It is less clear that Paul’s interpretation of, for example, the Israeli-Palestinian crisis is respectable or defensible and I definitely question his take on Iranian intentions. But his broader foreign policy views are not so far out of line with the views of noted scholars like Christopher Layne, who serves, somewhat ironically, as the Robert Gates Chair in Intelligence and National Security at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M. I’ve learned more from Layne’s historically rich work, despite my more hawkish leanings, than from all but a handful of foreign policy scholars. Moreover, Paul’s views are firmly in the U.S. foreign policy tradition, though of course they’ve been eclipsed in more recent years.) Santorum and Romney, in contrast, have distinguished themselves in part through their embrace of a more forward-leaning foreign policy, and calls for increased defense expenditures. Indeed, Santorum’s failed 2006 reelection bid for the U.S. Senate centered on his insistence that America focus on grave security threats from Iran and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, a stance that failed to turn back the Democratic tide.
So Alexander Benard’s call for an enduring U.S. military presence in Afghanistan is well-timed:
Central Asia is a hugely significant region for the United States. It sits at the crossroads of important rivals and rising powers, like China, Russia, and India, and next to threats like Pakistan and Iran. The region also boasts significant oil and gas reserves, as well as large quantities of lithium, copper, rare earth minerals, gold, and many other natural resources that are critical drivers to global commerce.
Yet most of Central Asia has very little US presence. Few US companies operate in the region, largely because the Russian and Chinese governments successfully use threats – both explicit and implicit – to prevent Central Asian republics from opening their doors to Western firms.
In the Middle East, the US has troops and security relationships with a variety of countries (Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates, among others) and can thus absorb the Iraq pullout without sustaining too much of a strategic blow to our regional interests. In Central Asia, however, America’s footprint is very light. It no longer has an air base in Uzbekistan and has only a few hundred troops at an air base Kyrgyzstan.
That leaves Afghanistan as America’s only beachhead – and a willing participant at that – altering the power dynamics in the region. The US certainly derives valuable intelligence and counter-terrorism benefits from having troops stationed in a country that borders Iran, Pakistan, and China. Even more important, however, a US presence in Afghanistan signals that the US is serious about Central Asia and that it will be a player there for the foreseeable future.
Having an American presence in Afghanistan breaks the China-Russia duopoly by providing an alternative power broker for the region. It thereby emboldens other countries in the area, giving them the confidence they need to stand up to their neighborhood bullies. An ongoing presence of around 20,000 to 30,000 US troops – similar in size to the number of troops in South Korea or in Japan – would be sufficient to accomplish these goals.
One of the interesting foreign policy questions of the next decade will be whether Benard’s view comes to represent the conservative foreign policy consensus, or something more in the vein of the Huntsman view, which is a few ticks closer to Benard than Paul.