A Measure of Security

How will we pay for the next Afghanistan policy?

President Obama’s speech on a new strategy for Afghanistan and what resources will be provided to support it is coming this week.  Congress, whose power over war comes through the power of the purse will have to decide whether to provide supplemental support to cover any increases beyond what’s already budgeted.  On the whole, Congress often involves itself with acquisition decisions but tends to be more reticent in dictating war spending.  However, there’s presently a rather new idea raised by Rep. Obey being debated when it comes to budgeting the war: raise funds to cover expenses.

Estimating the cost of an escalation would be difficult.  Cristi Parsons and Julian E. Barnes have an article in the L.A. Times that covers the range of opinions (via Matthew Yglesias and Spencer Ackerman).  Standard estimates run between $500 thousand and $1 million per troop, with the specifics obviously dependent on what the troops are doing what’s being included in the calculations.  A memo by the Pentagon Comptroller “said the yearly cost of a 40,000-troop increase would be $30 billion to $35 billion -- at least $750,000 a person. An increase of 20,000 would cost $20 billion to $25 billion annually, it said -- a per-soldier cost equal to or greater than the [million dollar per soldier] White House estimate.”

Key House Democrats, including three committee chairs and the chair of the party caucus are supporting a graduated surtax to pay for war in Afghanistan according to David Rogers of Politico (via Yglesias).  It isn’t yet clear how Speaker Pelosi feels about this approach and I haven’t read anything describing similarly united heavy hitters in the Senate.  Also, the tax wouldn’t kick in until 2011 and could be delayed another year if the President deemed the economy still in weak shape.  Nonetheless, the tax would be broad based and include the middle class, with the exception of those who served or lost an immediate relative in the war.

Will it pass?  I don’t know, Ackerman argues that Congress is interested in exercising more control  and Yglesias notes that if a large portion of Democrats obviously support the tax than Republicans will be in position to demand their own chance to influence war policy.  In either case, the consequences may prove important not just for Afghanistan but for future U.S. military engagements.

That's the amount, in 2008 dollars, we've spent on contracts performed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and their theaters since 2001.  Check the map for the breakdown.  It shouldn't surprise anyone that Iraq has the majority of the spending, Iraq has had many more troops and most of the spending goes to supporting them.  It's important to keep in mind that while private security contractors tend to make the most news, they're direct contracts only account for $6 billion of the $153 billion.  That said, if you want to account for sub-contracting than you can probably double or triple that figure.

Check back over the next week if you're curious who is spending that money and want details on what they're buying.  For those that are impatient, the results are available in this overview newsletter.

Part of my job is to follow and study financial and industrial aspects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  On this veterans day I do want to thank those that have served and also to do my part to help people understand this part of the wars.  So, if you've got any I'll do my best to help bridge the civil-military gaps in knowledge.

Afghanistan's Future: [Colombia]? Vietnam? Pakistan? Lebanon? Afghanistan's past?

As the administration works to formulate a new strategy for Afghanistan, popular and elite support appears to be dropping off and a string of attacks makes the stakes all too clear.

Dichotomies such as counter-insurgency versus counterterrorism, double down or fold, are useful ways to try to force prioritization rather than allow inertia to set strategy.  However, they preclude options that would vary the approach based on the region.  Another, still overly simple, way to look at Afghanistan is by comparing possible end states.

[Colombia]: The U.S. has had mixed success is strengthening the government of [Colombia] and cracking down on cocaine cultivation.  However, mirroring [Colombia]'s achievements would still be a boon to Afghanistan while still being a more realistic end-state than the mountainous and decentralized democracy of Switzerland.  Getting to [Colombia] in the mid-term would likely require a counterinsurgency approach and a substantial increase in resources and improvements in governance.

Vietnam: Joshua Kurlantzick raises Vietnam as a positive model of an end state. Namely after the withdrawal and the fall of South Vietnam, while the country is still authoritarian, the U.S. enjoys a close relationship with that country and the long-feared domino effect never occurred.   Whether a successor of the current government or the Taliban is in charge, the question of terrorist havens must be addressed.  However, that issues is by no means limited to Afghanistan.

Pakistan: Through the use of Predator drones support by good intel, the U.S. has been quite successful at targeting Al Qaeda leadership without a large scale military presence on the ground.   Austin Long discusses how such an approach could be applied in Afghanistan (via Michael Cohen).  On the one hand, civilian casualties from drone strike do raise tensions, on the other, many of the civilian deaths from airstrikes were a result of missiles and bombs being used to provide support to U.S. combat troops.  The experience in Pakistan shows that these target strikes alone will not defeat the Taliban, but may achieve the narrower objective of crippling Al Qaeda.  Implementing this strategy in the short-term should be manageable, but the sustainability, either in Afghanistan or Pakistan, is an open question.

Lebanon: According to Scott Wilson, one train of thought emerging in the Administration is that we attempt to weaken but not destroy the Taliban.  The analogy would be Hezbollah, which controls a portion of Lebanon and participates in its government as a minority party.  There is a risk that allowing this would destabilize Pakistan, but on the other hand the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban has often been far friendlier than the relationship between Hezbollah and Israel.  Such an approach could be population-centric in government strongholds while reserving the counter-terrorism for any Al Qaeda activity in the remainder of the country.

Afghanistan's Past: A way to pursue counter-insurgency with less troops would be to exclusively defend the cities.  As Matt Yglesias notes, this approach in some way mirrors the Soviet approach in the latter stages of their occupation, though of course would not seek to emulate many soviet methods.  The Soviet approach may be a subset of the Lebanon approach, the difference would be that a cities approach would pick key population centers nation-wide while a more Lebanon-like approach may abandon some larger population centers in Taliban sympathizing territory while protecting smaller but more sympathetic locales.

Successful pursuit of a strategy in a hostile environment typically requires providing a sufficient level of resources and sacrificing desirable objects that are not necessary for success.  More ambitious approaches require far more resources which will further tax the U.S. economy.  Less ambitious approaches, up to and including withdrawal, will not accomplish everything we would like to see happen in Afghanistan, but may prove the most efficient way to advance U.S. interests and values.  As the Status of Forces agreement in Iraq showed, these choices will be further limited by what the local politicians and population will support, but for such a negotiation to be practical we need to first determine what we are shooting for.

While determining the cost in casualties of any of these strategies is quite difficult, the cost in dollars is easier to estimate.  So, reader, do you think this is a good starting list?  Are there any other end-states to be considered?

This post is also available at ameasureofsecurity.org.

Update: Fixed a side-effect of living in Columbia, MD.

There are nearly 200,000 contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan but most aren't toting guns

There are presently more U.S. contractors than troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. James Glanz of the NY Times reported on this parity back in September citing data from March 2009 in a Congressional Research Service report by Moshe Schwartz.

I've seen the latest data and in June of 2009 the trend still held: there were 194,000 contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and only 190,000 troops. This high ration had first occurred during the U.S. mission in Bosnia where concerns about the size and duration of the U.S. peacekeeping mission made sending large numbers of troops politically costly. Waging two wars at the same time further strained the personnel side of the U.S. military and contractors handling support functions proved easier than a massive increase in recruiting, let alone restoring the draft.

The key word in that last sentence is support. While armed private security contractors spawn many news stories but as of June 2009 only represent 11% of the contractors in Iraq and 7% of the contractors in Afghanistan. Thus the typical face of contracting in Iraq may well be an employee at a base Cinnabon and not a Blackwater security guard.

This post is also available at Next America.