High Places

This isn't the first time that Washington has been OK with "collateral damage".

Power thrives on historical amnesia—a power system can operate much more freely when nobody knows about all of the skeletons in its closet. And journalists should—if they want to challenge power—spotlight the fact that Washington’s Ukraine-war policy very much resembles what happened in the 1980s regarding Afghanistan.

In this piece I’ll talk about irrelevant populations, the horrors of the 1980s, and today’s hideous bargain.

Irrelevant Populations

Washington’s Ukraine-war policy is—as my 4 January 2023 piece points out—to prolong the war in order to weaken Russia. I interview Anatol Lieven in my 19 January 2023 piece—he says:

there’s a view in the American establishment that Ukraine offers the chance to degrade—at very low cost to the US—the Russian Armed Forces and Russian power. And this view doesn’t suggest a great deal of concern about—or attention to—the suffering of the Ukrainian people. So if that’s your perspective, it doesn’t really matter how many Ukrainians or Europeans freeze as long as America goes on funding the Ukrainian army and providing it with heavy weapons—the populations are irrelevant. 

I’m reminded of a conversation that I had way back in 1989—in Islamabad—with a US diplomat. I tackled him at a party and said: “Look, the Soviets are leaving—they’ve shown that they really are leaving. So why are you still pouring money into the Afghan mujahideen, who we know by now are profoundly problematic, deeply extremist, at odds with one another, and so forth?” And he said: “Getting the Russians to leave is not enough—we want to inflict the kind of humiliation on them that they inflicted on us in Vietnam.” There wasn’t a single scrap—not the slightest element—of concern for Afghanistan or the Afghan people in what he said. It was totally irrelevant to him how many of the Afghan people died in the process. 

It’s absolutely clear to me that some elements of the American establishment adopt this callous approach. But I think General Milley—for example—cares about the suffering populations. 

I also think he cares about the wider issues at stake, including the solidarity of the Western alliance—there are already fairly strong indications that the Europeans are increasingly aware that they’re suffering economically because of this war and that America is profiting from it rather handsomely. 

It’s disturbing to think that “some elements of the American establishment adopt this callous approach”.

You would have to be a real monster to want to prolong a war—with all of its horrors, all of its risks, all of its destruction—in order to degrade an adversary. That’s what Washington is doing, though—that’s also what Washington did in the 1980s.

The Horrors of the 1980s

Hillary Clinton says in a 28 February 2022 MSNBC interview: “remember, the Russians invaded Afghanistan back in 1980”; “although no country went in, they certainly had a lot of countries supplying arms and advice and even some advisers to those who were recruited to fight Russia”; “it didn’t end well for the Russians”; “the fact is that a very motivated and then funded and armed insurgency basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan”; and “I think that is the model that people are now looking toward”.

What’s the Afghan model? There’s an extremely good book on this topic—Diego Cordovez’s and Selig S. Harrison’s 1995 book Out of Afghanistan. I urge people to read the overview and Chapter 4:

Overview

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Chapter 4

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In the overview they write: “this account makes clear that Soviet objectives in Afghanistan were limited from the start”; “after stumbling into a morass of Afghan political factionalism, the Soviet Union resorted to military force in a last desperate effort to forestall what it perceived as the threat of an American-supported Afghan Tito on its borders”; differences “surfaced soon thereafter within the Soviet leadership over the wisdom of this decision, leading as early as 1983 to serious probes for a way out that were rejected by an American leadership bent on exploiting Soviet discomfiture”; the “advent of Gorbachev in 1985 immediately resulted in the intensified pursuit of a settlement”; the Red Army was—despite “the widespread stereotype of a Soviet military defeat”—“securely entrenched in Afghanistan when the Geneva Accords were finally signed on April 14, 1988”; the “Red Army did not withdraw in the wake of a Waterloo or a Dien Bien Phu”; and confronted “by a military and political stalemate, Gorbachev decided to disengage because the accords offered a pragmatic way to escape from the growing costs of the deadlock and to open the way for improved relations with the West”.

Washington was “divided from the start between ‘bleeders,’ who wanted to keep Soviet forces pinned down in Afghanistan and thus to avenge Vietnam, and ‘dealers,’ who wanted to compel their withdrawal through a combination of diplomacy and military pressure”; the US government “did its best to prevent the emergence of a U.N. role”; once “the U.N. process started, Washington gave nominal support to the negotiations but refused to become even superficially involved”; “Gorbachev’s emergence encouraged the ‘dealers’ in Washington to work for greater U.S. cooperation with the U.N. diplomatic effort that is the focus of this book”; the “‘bleeders’ fought against the Geneva Accords until the very end, arguing unsuccessfully that the United States should insist on the replacement of the Afghan Communist regime as a condition for signing the agreement”; “both superpowers invoked noble objectives”; “both treated Afghanistan in reality as a pawn in their global struggle”; for “much of the war” US “policy amounted to ‘fighting to the last Afghan’ because the United States failed to couple its support for the mujahideen with support for the U.N. peace effort”; and “while Moscow is the villain, there are no heroes, except for the silent majority of Afghans who survived the horrors of the war years and are now left to rebuild their ravaged land with little help or sympathy from a world that has forgotten them”.

And Harrison writes in Chapter 4: “Moscow made its first serious attempt to find a way out of the Afghan quagmire during the fifteen-month tenure of Yuri Andropov, from November 1982 until his death in February 1984”; many “of his close associates cite persuasive evidence that Andropov was prepared to withdraw Soviet forces under the aegis of the United Nations despite opposition from the armed forces and from more orthodox Communist leaders”; precisely “what type of settlement he was ready to accept was never tested because Pakistan and the United States were in no mood to bargain”; with “the Cold War at full tilt, the dominant power groups in Islamabad and Washington deeply distrusted Soviet motives in the U.N. negotiations and regarded it as desirable, in any case, to keep Soviet forces pinned down in a no-win commitment”; and there “can be no doubt about the fact that the United States strongly disliked the U.N. approach to a settlement during 1983 and that the American attitude tipped the scales in the debate within the Pakistani leadership between April and June”.

Noam Chomsky says in an 11 May 2022 Truthout interview: current “U.S. policy calls for a long war to ‘weaken Russia’ and ensure its total defeat”; the “policy is very similar to the Afghan model of the 1980s, which is, in fact, now explicitly advocated in high places”; and since “that is close to current U.S. policy, even a working model, it is worthwhile to look at what actually happened in Afghanistan in the ’80s when Russia invaded”.

We “have a detailed and authoritative account by Diego Cordovez, who directed the successful UN programs that ended the war, and the distinguished journalist and scholar Selig Harrison, who has extensive experience in the region”; the “Cordovez-Harrison analysis completely overthrows the received version”; they “demonstrate that the war was ended by careful UN-run diplomacy, not by military force”; Soviet “military forces were fully capable of continuing the war”; the “U.S. policy of mobilizing and funding the most extremist radical Islamists to fight the Russians amounted to ‘fighting to the last Afghan,’ they conclude, in a proxy war to weaken the Soviet Union”; the “‘United States did its best to prevent the emergence of a U.N. role,’ that is, the careful diplomatic efforts that ended the war”; US “policy apparently delayed the Russian withdrawal that had been contemplated from shortly after the invasion”; the authors show that the invasion “had limited objectives, with no resemblance to the awesome goals of world conquest that were conjured up in U.S. propaganda”; the “chief CIA officer in Islamabad, who ran the operations directly, put the main point simply”; and according to this officer, the “goal was to kill Russian soldiers—to give Russia their Vietnam, as proclaimed by high U.S. officials”.

The bleeder-vs.-dealer distinction “shows up very often”; the “bleeders usually win, causing immense damage”; in “the Carter administration, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was a dealer, who suggested far-reaching compromises that would have almost certainly prevented, or at least sharply curtailed, what was intended to be a limited intervention”; “National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was the bleeder, intent on avenging Vietnam, whatever that meant in his confused world view, and killing Russians, something he understood very well, and relished”; “Brzezinski prevailed”; he “convinced Carter to send arms to the opposition that was seeking to overthrow the pro-Russian government, anticipating that the Russians would be drawn into a Vietnam-style quagmire”; when “it happened, he could barely contain his delight”; when “asked later whether he had any regrets, he dismissed the question as ridiculous”; his “success in drawing Russia into the Afghan trap, he claimed, was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet empire and ending the Cold War—mostly nonsense”; “who cares if it harmed ‘some agitated Muslims,’ like the million cadavers, putting aside such incidentals as the devastation of Afghanistan, and the rise of radical Islam”; and the “Afghan analogy is being publicly advocated today, and more importantly, is being implemented in policy”.

I think that it is—given the 1995 book’s importance—absolutely remarkable how little impact Out of Afghanistan has had on American culture and society. A brief 1995 Foreign Affairs review calls the book “a rich, impressively documented account” and says: “Harrison, a longtime student of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and Cordovez, the United Nations’ principal intermediary through much of it, team up to give the first detailed and behind the-scenes account of how the Soviets stumbled into, floundered in, and worked their way out of the last of the great duels of the Cold War.” And a brief 1996 International Affairs review says: “The book certainly contains much that will surprise or interest.” The volume is utterly damning and the authors have stellar reputations, but the account has been kept in the shadows and denied the spotlight it deserves—the contents are too inconvenient to be given attention.

David N. Gibbs writes in his 2000 review essay “Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect”: it “has always been assumed that the Soviets welcomed the opportunity to occupy Afghanistan, and that Soviet officials viewed the occupation in a manner very much like that of Western officials, i.e., as a major strategic asset”; “Out of Afghanistan, in contrast, presents new evidence that directly contradicts this interpretation”; the “divisions in the Reagan Administration are discussed in considerable depth”; certain “Administration officials sought to cooperate with UN mediation efforts, and these officials argued that military support for the Mujahiddin must be coupled with diplomatic efforts”; this “group, ‘the dealers’ as Harrison terms them, initially appear to have been in the minority, although their clout grew toward the end of the Reagan years”; “a second group, the ‘bleeders’, welcomed the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and sought to ‘bleed’ Soviet forces”; this “latter group, which was influential in the CIA and other ‘operational’ departments, disdained UN diplomacy”; “they sought a military defeat for the Soviet Union”; and the authors “emphasize that the bleeders were uncooperative with UN mediation efforts and sought to sabotage them”.

Gibbs says:

Part of American skepticism resulted from a conviction—unjustified as it turned out—that the Soviet Union would never leave Afghanistan via a diplomatic settlement. However, Cordovez and Harrison offer an additional reason: CIA director William Casey and other key Reagan Administration officials sought to prolong the war as much as possible and to delay a withdrawal. General Edward C. Meyer, who was US Army Chief of Staff, stated: “Casey would say that he wanted them out, but he actually wanted them to send more and more Russians down there and take causalities” (quoted in Cordovez and Harrison, p. 103).

It has long been assumed that the United States and Pakistan wanted the Soviets to leave Afghanistan and that US military pressure had the long-term objective of ending the Soviet occupation. Cordovez and Harrison argue that this interpretation is inaccurate and, on the contrary, key American and Pakistan officials sought to keep Soviet troops in Afghanistan as long as possible to maximize their losses. These officials also sought to block any diplomatic efforts that might enable a face-saving Soviet withdrawal.

It’s utterly shocking to think that key US “officials sought to keep Soviet troops in Afghanistan as long as possible to maximize their losses”. And “also sought to block any diplomatic efforts that might enable a face-saving Soviet withdrawal”.

I don’t know how much has been written on the question of how much horror, suffering, and destruction it would’ve been possible to avoid if the Soviets had withdrawn in the early 1980s—surely an enormous amount could’ve been prevented. It was obviously grossly immoral to do what Washington did—that’s not in question.

Richard Cohen writes in a 22 April 1988 WaPo piece: “it was never the goal of Reagan administration ideologues to win the war in Afghanistan”; “that seemed beyond reach”; their “intention was to pay the Soviets back a bit for the humiliation of the United States by their clients, the communists of Vietnam”; the “intent in arming Afghan rebels was to bleed the Soviets”; it “was, of course, immaterial that Afghans were being bled too (life is not fair; you have to break some eggs to make an omelet)”; and it “was equally immaterial that Afghanistan, with U.S. aid, could become an Islamic fundamentalist state as anti-American as the ayatollah’s across the border in Iran”.

Elisabeth Leake writes in her 2022 book Afghan Crucible: the “Afghanistan of the 1980s was a place of potentials”; “Afghan modernizers’ ideas and aspirations mattered and reflected a time and place where it seemed possible that either side could succeed in fundamentally reshaping Afghanistan”; aspirations “for a reinvigorated modern Afghanistan crumbled under the weight of a war that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions”; “Afghanistan in the 1980s was one of the Cold War’s killing fields”; it “was a battlefield in the worldwide superpower competition between the United States and Soviet Union that devolved into widespread, life-shattering violence”; and “what was left in 1989 when the Soviets finally withdrew their troops was ruin and ruination”. Rodric Braithwaite writes in his 2011 book Afgantsy: “probably somewhere between 600,000 and 1.5 million Afghans were killed in the Soviet war”; millions “more were driven from their home to seek refuge in Pakistan and Iran”; the “complex relationships which governed the Afghan way of life were overturned almost beyond repair”; and “the Communist regime and the Soviet intervention” caused “physical, social, moral, and political damage” that was—due to “more decades of war and foreign intervention”—“almost impossible to repair”. And regarding the Soviet–Afghan War’s civilian deaths, John W. Dower writes—in his 2017 book The Violent American Century—that “civilian fatalities may have ranged from as many as 850,000 to almost twice that number”.

Today’s Hideous Bargain

In the 11 May interview Chomsky comments: the “dealer-bleeder distinction is nothing new in foreign policy circles”; Paul Nitze prevailed over George Kennan, “laying the basis for many years of brutality and near destruction”; Henry Kissinger had a conflict with William Rogers regarding Middle East policy; “Kissinger, whose ignorance of the region was monumental, insisted on confrontation, leading to the 1973 war, a close call for Israel with a serious threat of nuclear war”; regarding dealers and bleeders, these “conflicts are perennial, almost”; and today “there are only bleeders in high places”.

Regarding the current war in Ukraine, Chomsky says: the bleeders’ ongoing policy “entails that we reject out of hand the kind of diplomatic initiatives that in reality ended the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, despite U.S. efforts to impede them”; Washington’s ongoing policy means gambling that the Russian leadership won’t “resort to the means of violence they unquestionably possess to devastate Ukraine and set the stage for possible general war”; and as “for the ‘collateral damage,’ they can join the ranks of Brzezinski’s ‘agitated Muslims’”.

I find it interesting—and horrifying—that “there are only bleeders in high places”. There was Paul Nitze vs. George Kennan; there was Henry Kissinger vs. William Rogers; and there was Zbigniew Brzezinski vs. Cyrus Vance. But now there’s no conflict—today there are no dealers at the top.

An 18 November 2022 piece says: “from numerous perspectives, when viewed from a bang-per-buck perspective, US and Western support for Ukraine is an incredibly cost-effective investment”; “Russia is a primary adversary of the US, a top tier rival not too far behind China, its number one strategic challenger”; in “cold, geopolitical terms, this war provides a prime opportunity for the US to erode and degrade Russia’s conventional defense capability, with no boots on the ground and little risk to US lives”; “US spending of 5.6% of its defense budget to destroy nearly half of Russia’s conventional military capability seems like an absolutely incredible investment”; the “US military might reasonably wish Russia to continue deploying military forces for Ukraine to destroy”; “on so many levels, continued US support for Ukraine is a no-brainer from a bang for buck perspective”; “Ukraine is no Vietnam or Afghanistan for the US, but it is exactly that for Russia”; and a “Russia continually mired in a war it cannot win is a huge strategic win for the US”.

You can ask whether our policy actually is a bargain from the bleeders’ point of view—there’s a risk of escalation, things might get out of control, and the bleeders might not be at all happy with the outcome.

But this hideous bargain means killing Ukrainians, destroying Ukraine, and starving people worldwide—the risk of escalation adds a further dimension of immorality. The ethics are definitely ghastly—there’s no question about that. The bleeders’ policy requires us to put even more skeletons into our overfilled closet—our skeletons join Brzezinski’s.