In studying drug trafficking, analysts talk about a balloon effect. The balloon effect holds that if you repress drug production in one country, say Colombia, then demand for the drug will cause production to increase in other areas, say Peru and Bolivia. As long as the demand for the drug exists, suppliers will find a way to meet it.
Terrorist groups are another example of the balloon effect . Operation Enduring Freedom disrupted Al Qaeda's safehaven in Afghanistan, but that was obviously not the end for Al Qaeda. It regenerated a safehaven across the border in Pakistan, and stepped up its activities from Africa to Southeast Asia. Al Qaeda is unlikely to run out of poorly governed areas in which to set up safehavens, nor of operatives willing to fight for its cause.
The balloon effect therefore shows the error of nation-state focused counter-narcotics or counter-terrorism policy. Focusing on the national level is insufficient, one also has to focus on attacking these organizations at their own, network-level. This means attacking their sources of funding, their recruitment, mid- and upper-level management, and using intelligence operations to rob them of the trust that makes such networks possible. This is necessarily a transnational fight, and it incorporates, though is not limited to, military operations.
Andrew Exum, and I think it's safe to say that he speaks for the consensus of policy makers in DC right now, has said that we're in Afghanistan to deny Al Qaeda the use of the country as a safehaven from which to plot terror attacks. I agree, and this is a very important mission. It has some interesting repurcussions, however, that Ryan Smith mentions in a comment to Exum's Charlie Rose interview:
"If the primary U.S. interest in Afghanistan is denying safe havens to transnational terrorist organization, I would argue this is hardly worth more American blood and treasure. Non-state actors--as the name implies--do not have a return address and can thus operate with a certain level of freedom in a number of weak of failed states. As it stands now, al Qaeda is operating with some autonomy in areas in Pakistan. Additionally, U.S. intelligence assessments have noted many more al Qaeda members are moving into states like Yemen and Somalia. Will we pursue them here as well? We should instead be focusing on military operations that leave a smaller foot print to kill high value targets, containing these organizations to the greatest degree possible, and building more robust intelligence assets to accomplish this. Afghanistan is simply not worth it."
While I disagree with Ryan Smith on the subject of Afghanistan specifically, he brings up an important issue: if the goal in Afghanistan is to deny Al Qaeda a safehaven, doesn't that goal apply to many other areas? And what is President Obama's policy going to be in those areas? Clearly the US will not be able or willing to make Afghanistan-sized commitments to half a dozen different countries; a global counter-insurgency is a pipe dream.
So where do we go from here?
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