When the senior special operations command officer handed me a thumb drive after explaining its contents, I asked “What’s a ‘lat long’?” I thought it was a reasonable question. I was halfway through a twelve-hour shift at the Counterterrorism Center Special Operations Division (CTC/SO) in the basement of the Old Headquarters Building at CIA’s campus in Langley, Virginia.
“You better figure that out real quick, kid,” he snapped, “because those are the locations we are going to start bombing in a few hours.”
I was still a trainee. I hadn’t even gone to the Farm (the CIA training facility for the National Clandestine Service) yet. The officer needed someone to ensure none of our intelligence assets were near the latitudes and longitudes of the targets of the upcoming Air Force bombing campaign in Afghanistan. Thank God there were other people around who knew how to do that.
It was October 7, 2001, less than a month after the horrific attacks on America on September 11. Al-Qa’ida and the Taliban were about to get firsthand experience in what air superiority really meant and what a posse really looked like. Five days earlier on October 2, after a half century of focusing on deterring Soviet aggression in Europe, NATO members committed tens of thousands of allied forces to suppress terrorism in Afghanistan. This was a follow-up to NATO’s decision on September 12 to invoke, for the first time, the Article 5 commitment of the NATO charter—an agreement that an armed attack against one or more NATO members in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.
Also on September 12, the UN Security Council passed a resolution calling on all countries to cooperate in bringing the perpetrators, organizers, and sponsors of the attacks to justice and that those responsible for supporting or harboring the perpetrators, organizers, and sponsors would be held accountable.
By early November, the Afghanistan capital of Kabul fell, and exactly two months after the start of that bombing campaign, in December 2001, the last Taliban stronghold in Afghanistan, the southern city of Qandahar, was secured by allied forces.
In three short months the Taliban was pushed out of Afghanistan and about 75 percent of al-Qa’ida had been killed. This successful operation was conducted by the most lethal air force the world had ever seen and about four hundred Americans on the ground in Afghanistan—a mix of U.S. Special Forces and CIA officers—supporting Afghan tribal forces.
America helped create NATO and the UN. We developed and sustained relationships with the member countries in times of peace. The U.S. intelligence community continued relationships with Afghan tribal leaders after Communist forces were kicked out of the country in the late 1980s. For decades, we maintained friendships both bilateral and multilateral—we were nice to nice guys. If you want friends in times of conflict, you must cultivate friends in times of peace.
The Afghanistan campaign was one of the most successful operations in history because we worked with allies. It was successful because Americans and Brits merged with Hazaras, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Pashtuns—the predominant Afghan ethnic groups—against a common foe for compatible interests. We were clear about who our friends and enemies were, and we were able to leverage old alliances to counter a global threat.
In a global battlefield, American national security needs to be based on strengthening alliances with our friends, not weakening them.
Famed Duke basketball Coach Mike Krzyzewski uses the analogy of a fist to illustrate the power of working together.
“If you hold your hand out with all five fingers flexed out and try to punch someone, you will cause yourself an extraordinary amount of pain and possibly break some fingers,” he explains to his players. “However, if you make a fist with all five fingers, you can really make a powerful punch.”
While Obama got being tough with tough guys wrong in Syria, President Trump got being nice with nice guys wrong in the Arab Republic. In 2019, I voted for a bipartisan resolution that opposed his disastrous decision to remove U.S. forces from northern Syria because it meant abandoning one of our oldest allies in the Mideast, the Kurds, who have been vital U.S. partners in our war against terrorism. Not only did we let our friends down and make our country less secure by creating a power vacuum in northern Syria, but we also ceded leadership in the region to our adversaries Russia and Iran.
President Trump’s America First foreign policy, which was really an America Alone policy, was the equivalent of trying to punch with your fingers flexed out. Trump showed little appreciation for the power of international agreements. He attempted to pull out of the World Health Organization, criticized the World Trade Organization, scuttled the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and declared that the U.S. would go at it alone on defense issues if NATO members did not increase their military spending. In the early months of Joe Biden’s presidency, he talked about how America is back to playing leadership roles in international organizations. However, his actions, such as not cooperating with allies in the withdrawal of military forces from Afghanistan, haven’t always reflected this sentiment in early tests of his foreign policy decision-making.
The end goal with international organizations is not just to participate in them. The end goal is to provide leadership in these organizations, so they can achieve their missions. This includes ensuring our partners are pulling their weight. NATO nations, for example, are expected to devote 2 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) to national defense budgets, and many members were not hitting that mark. President Trump made this issue his singular focus, and now NATO nations are spending close to that 2 percent mark. But Trump’s rhetoric and actions—being tough with nice guys—toward our most important allies eroded trust rather than improved confidence in us.
The WHO plays an important role in responding to global crises like COVID-19. However, throughout the pandemic, valid concerns about the WHO’s handling of the pandemic were raised. The organization developed a perceived unwillingness to hold the Chinese government accountable for the conduct expected of a WHO member. In response to these concerns, the Trump administration tried to take its ball and go home by vowing to pull out of the WHO. The correct response in that moment would have been working with our allies to get answers, and reforming the WHO. Anyone can complain and point fingers, but it requires real leadership to reveal to people a problem, and then get everyone committed to fixing it. This is what is required of American leadership in the international order.
Trump’s foreign policy, emphasizing isolationism, wasn’t brand-new. President Obama worked to reduce the U.S. defense budget and curb overseas entanglements—not just because he saw that as advantageous foreign policy, but also because he viewed that as a way to win elections. President Biden doubled down on this isolationism with his disastrous decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan while abandoning hundreds of American citizens and thousands of Afghan nationals who had risked their lives to help us over the last twenty years.
President Biden witnessed and participated in a similar debacle when he was vice president. President Obama, correcting what he perceived to be the error of the Bush Doctrine, which was unilateral preemptive war in Iraq, withdrew American combat troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, an action that created a power vacuum, enabling ISIS’s rise to power. President Obama entered office pledging to end the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan as well, and so did President Trump, but President Biden was the one to pull us out. While he has the distinction of overseeing the debacle that was the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the seeds of this disaster were sown when the Trump administration negotiatied directly with the Taliban without the involvement of the Afghan government.
There was bipartisan opposition to America having a continued role in Afghanistan. Our activity in Afghanistan was referred to as a “forever war.” According to the Costs of War project at Brown University, when you add up the expenses of the Departments of Defense and State, the cost of caring for the conflict’s veterans, and the interest on the money borrowed to cover it all, the price tag of our activity in Afghanistan from 9/11 through FY2022 was more than $2 trillion.
As of September 2021, a total of 2,461 U.S. military personnel had paid the ultimate price by giving their life in Afghanistan since the events of September 11, and at least 20,066 members of our armed forces had been wounded. This also means the lives of thousands of families have been irrevocably impacted forever.
This sacrifice of treasure and blood was for two reasons. The first was to respond to the attacks on our homeland on September 11, 2001, when 2,977 Americans died and thousands were injured in New York City; Shanksville, Pennsylvania; and Arlington, Virginia. This was the worst attack on our homeland since 1941, when 2,403 Americans were killed and 1,143 were wounded during a surprise bombing at Pearl Harbor which prompted the U.S. to enter World War II. The Institute for the Analysis of Global Security estimates that the loss of life, property damage, and economic volatility resulting from the attacks on 9/11 cost America more than $2 trillion.
The second reason for the twenty years of American sacrifice was to prevent another attack like 9/11. Many observers critical of American involvement in Afghanistan often ask the hypothetical question as to whether the trillions of dollars expended on the war in Afghanistan could have been better spent on things like healthcare, infrastructure projects, or education. I answer that hypothetical with another: How many similar 9/11-style attacks on our homeland did those trillions of dollars prevent? Having spent the first half of my adult life in the Central Intelligence Agency, I know the answer—many.
I find the use of the term “forever war” offensive because I think it devalues the sacrifices that have been made. Not just the sacrifices by the people who gave their life or limbs, but the sacrifices endured by the tens of thousands who spent time away from their families and toiled in a faraway place to protect us here at home. Many still have nightmares about what they had to witness to do their job.
Following the successful Afghanistan campaign in 2001, many mistakes were made. We failed to have clear goals on how to assist our friends, who helped us achieve our goal of nearly eliminating al-Qa’ida, rebuild their country. We failed to involve reasonable elements of the Taliban who hadn’t committed human rights abuses in that rebuilding. We diverted our attention away from Afghanistan in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq, and in 2006 when the Taliban began their slow ascent to where they are now, we failed to treat them with the same ferocity that we did al-Qa’ida. Instead of turning Pakistan into a steadfast ally, we bungled several opportunities to encourage them to distance themselves from the Taliban. As brilliant author and war correspondent David Halberstam, as well as many others, has noted: We failed to learn a lesson from the Vietnam War and were unable to adapt to the reality that our adversary controlled the pace of war depending on its needs at any moment.
I agree with the late senator John McCain, who said, “War is far too horrible a thing to drag out unnecessarily.” President Biden’s complete withdrawal from Afghanistan led to the Taliban having more control of the country than they did in the ’90s. Immediately after capturing the country, the Taliban claimed their rule would be different than their previous reign; however, within weeks of taking over they passed edicts forbidding women from playing sports, executed the families of opposition figures, killed girls who were in an orchestra, and selected a terrorist and close ally of al-Qa’ida for minister of interior affairs. A second Taliban reign will eventually create the same conditions that lead to al-Qa’ida having the capacity and ability to plot their deadly attack on America.
When we withdrew from Vietnam after nineteen years of engagement there, which saw the loss of more than fifty-eight thousand American lives, our allies, the South Vietnamese, ultimately surrendered to the North Vietnamese. Within a year of our departure, Vietnam became a unified country—our goal all along; however, it became unified under a Communist flag, which is what we spent nineteen years trying to prevent. Not only is our departure from Afghanistan creating a severely more unstable world that will eventually produce something that touches our shores, but our departure from Afghanistan tells our friends, and reminds our enemies, that our friendship can’t always be counted on, even when its ultimately in our best interests.
Continuing to have a small footprint in Afghanistan of around 3,500 troops would have been enough to conduct counterterrorism operations in the region and provide the necessary support to the Afghan military to repel the Taliban. Having this small of a force isn’t nation-building but what is necessary to deny a safe haven for terrorists and to prevent another attack like the one that happened on 9/11. To put this number in context, the United States spends roughly $8.5 billion a year maintaining 28,500 troops in South Korea and 55,000 troops in Japan. A review of our decades-long presence in Japan and Korea by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found this forward-deployed presence enables regional stability and security, defense capability and interoperability, emergency response, denuclearization and nonproliferation, and strong alliances. Basically, it makes the region more free and safer.
Since President Biden has taken this option of a small counterterrorism footprint off the table for the foreseeable future, to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a failed state he now must work with the international community, including Russia and China, on two issues: preventing a humanitarian crisis from taking over a country where more than half the population depends on foreign aid for their daily needs while also convincing the Taliban to go against their instincts and refrain from committing more human rights abuses. Being nice with tough guys is rarely a winning strategy.
Until World War II, the political leaders of the United States heeded George Washington’s warning in his farewell presidential address, “steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world… in my opinion it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.” This guidance was no longer relevant after the Second Great War, because in the 149 years between Washington’s farewell presidential address and the end of World War II, the world had become interconnected.
American leadership in organizations like NATO has enabled seventy years of peace and prosperity for hundreds of millions of people. The U.S. and our allies created a better world from the ashes of World War II. It’s been a period of overall peace and prosperity almost without precedent in the history of the world.
This peace has allowed our economy to become the world’s most important, because we had stable trading partners. The U.S. is a whole lot richer because of trade with Europe. Our combined economies make up half of all the goods and services produced in the world, and Americans enjoy a life the rest of the world envies. To continue this run at a time when the government of China is trying to replace us, we need to continue to collaborate with our friends. America leading, not America alone. America has a unique ability to form alliances, one that Russia and China have never been able to demonstrate. China and Russia don’t have alliances, they have dependents.
Building on alliances with our neighbors and pursuing trade pacts not only strengthens our ties with our friends, but it’s also good for our citizens. Trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada. It was negotiated by Republican President George H. W. Bush in 1992, then passed in the Democratic-controlled Senate and House of Representatives with a majority of votes in both chambers provided by Republicans. NAFTA took effect in the beginning of 1994 after being signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton.
NAFTA was responsible for tripling trade between the U.S., Mexico, and Canada, creating one of the largest and most important trade areas in the world—home to more than 480 million people (7 percent of the world population). It generated 28 percent of global gross domestic product and accounted for 16 percent of global trade.
Obama, not Trump, was the first to express skepticism of NAFTA. On the campaign trail, Obama pledged to open it up to renegotiations but dropped that promise once he took office, blaming the global economic meltdown. Critics of NAFTA failed to realize that the U.S., Mexico, and Canada are not competitors. We build things together.
The global economy has changed drastically since NAFTA was signed in my hometown of San Antonio a quarter century ago. So it needed to be updated. The United States Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA) reflects the modern demands of our economy, while boosting North American competitiveness against China. It sets a framework for digital trade in goods and services that bans customs duties on digital products and improves protections for intellectual property. Its aim is to prevent non-USMCA countries, like China, from unfairly taking advantage of liberalized trade in North America. Overall, the pact will generate jobs in America and grow our posse to prevent China from achieving its aim of displacing the U.S. as a global superpower.
The United States must also work with our international allies to counteract abusive Chinese practices that hurt the entire global trading system. This includes competing with China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the colossal state-backed economic campaign seeking global dominance. It is the most ambitious global infrastructure plan ever conceived.
The brainchild of Chinese President Xi Jinping, this “New Silk Road” developmental plan spans countries from East Asia to Europe. New roads, railways, power grids, oil and gas pipelines, ports, airports, and conference centers are being constructed—mostly funded by loans from China to developing countries. The “Belt” refers to economic and overland routes for road and rail transportation, while the “Road” refers to sea routes connecting through Southeast Asia to South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
As of 2021, 139 countries are participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. Including China, this group of countries accounts for 40 percent of global GDP and 63 percent of the world’s population. But the project has left many countries in debt as China lures developing nations into taking on unsustainable loans for the projects, enabling China to seize the assets when countries encounter financial difficulties, thus expanding Beijing’s military and extending its global influence. Just as ominously, it allows China to export to other governments surveillance technology that can be used to extend authoritarian abuses like curbing free speech and restricting civil liberties of their own citizens.
To counter the Belt and Road Initiative, the United States needs a National Economic Security Plan. The Marshall Plan for the Northern Triangle can be one element of a National Economic Security Plan that can be used to coordinate with our allies. However, when there is a lack of trust in America’s commitment to providing leadership, taking on challenges like the Chinese threat becomes more difficult. Our allies become more likely to go at it alone, while smaller countries become more apt to trust the Chinese than the U.S.
These types of economic threats to our national security don’t get the attention they deserve. With a more robust economic national security strategy, we can improve economic strength at home by increasing access to trading partners and deal with national security challenges before they reach our borders and shores.
Another way to solve problems before they get to our shores is to be deliberate in the use of our soft power. Harvard University’s Joseph Nye defines soft power as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments.” The most important tool to leverage this soft power is public diplomacy—informing and influencing public opinion in other countries to further our interests and promote our foreign policy objectives.
In the traditional sense, governments engage in public diplomacy through activities like educational exchange programs, language training, and hosting cultural events.
When I served in Pakistan, I would hear stories about the popular American Centers, affiliates of U.S. Consulates in Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad. In the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, Pakistanis flocked to them in order to listen to American music, peruse American magazines, and absorb the latest in American culture. They were the equivalent of community centers. However, the security safeguards put in place after the September 11 attacks severely curtailed local populations’ access to the centers, and an important tool used to leverage our soft power atrophied.
But in this interconnected world, public diplomacy is not just limited to governments. Our cultural assets and political views are owned by our entire society, so cities, non-governmental organizations, civic groups, and even private companies are engaging meaningfully with foreign publics and are participating in public diplomacy whether they recognize it or not.
The Russians are extremely skilled at exporting their culture for the purposes of disinformation. For example, the people of Moldova love Russian TV soap operas. So when the Russians beam them into this politically fragile former Soviet state, the shows are embedded with false data and destabilizing propaganda—for example, depicting Moscow and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine as valiant crusaders for justice.
Beijing has also gotten into this game, using culture as a political weapon to soften its image abroad. This is why the Chinese government has endorsed the financing of some of America’s biggest movie blockbusters, buying theater chains and teaming up with Hollywood producers, who are relying more and more on the Chinese markets to make profits. Which means the Chinese are increasingly turning up as the “good guys” in all sorts of flicks. For example, in Gravity, Sandra Bullock survives by getting herself to the Chinese Space Station.
Additionally, American filmmakers are coming under pressure that, if they want to enter the Chinese market, they can’t cross certain red lines of the Chinese state—like Taiwan is not its own country. This is what led to a situation in 2021, when Fast and Furious actor John Cena made a public apology for referring to Taiwan as a “country.” To understand the current history of Taiwan we have to go back to a time when it went by another name.
In 1895, the island of Taiwan, referred to as Formosa by Europeans until the twentieth century, was ceded to the Empire of Japan by the Chinese Qing Dynasty at the conclusion of the First Sino-Japanese War. A little over forty years later in 1937, the Japanese invaded mainland China where the government, the Republic of China (ROC), was led by Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek.
During this occupation Japan controlled roughly 25 percent of China’s land and more than a third of its entire population. Following the Japanese defeat in World War II, Taiwan was given back to the official government of China—the ROC. By 1949, after years of civil war, Chiang’s ROC was pushed to the island province of Taiwan by Mao Zedong, the leader of Communist forces, and Mao created the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Until the 1970s, the US recognized the ROC as the true government. In 1971, during the presidency of Richard Nixon, the United Nations sat the PRC as the official representative of China and expelled the ROC representative. Then in 1979, during President Jimmy Carter’s administration, the U.S. government recognized the PRC as the sole legal government of China; however, the U.S. did not recognize Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan (the preferred official name for the island government after deciding to de-recognize the ROC). The Carter Administration did acknowledge, rather than recognize, the Chinese position that Taiwan was part of China. In response to the Carter administration’s moves, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979 to protect American security and commercial interests in Taiwan. This legislation provided a framework for continued relations in the absence of official diplomatic ties.
In 1982 under Ronald Reagan, the United States government stated it had no intention of pursuing a policy of “two Chinas,” but added six assurances attempting to clarify the U.S. position on Taiwan. This “one China” position where the U.S. recognizes the PRC as the sole government of China but only acknowledges the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China, has been America’s official position since the ’80s and has allowed the U.S. to maintain formal relationships with the PRC and unofficial relations with Taiwan. While Taiwan is the eleventh largest trading partner of the U.S. and the twenty-second largest economy, only fifteen countries have recognized it as a sovereign nation, not including its most important ally, the United States. Complicating a complicated situation even further is that the Chinese government understands that if it wants to surpass the United States as the global superpower, then Chinese culture will have to spread faster and farther than America’s. As part of this effort, the Chinese government has extended its censorship and control over American movies over the last decade. Hollywood producers, script writers, and directors are increasingly making creative decisions to avoid antagonizing Chinese officials.
Our popular culture is a manifestation of our values, and throughout the world, it is admired and emulated. Our movies, our food, our style, and our music—all are eagerly consumed worldwide. When our global public image takes a hit, it makes it harder to use all our tools of national power.
An old Swahili proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” In a world that is shrinking because of constantly evolving technology, and an adversary who is bigger than us and wants to replace us, we will be unable to continue our success without allies and partners. If we want our enemies to fear us and our friends to love us, then we need to be tough with tough guys and nice and with nice guys. Adopting a foreign policy strategy that distinguishes between our adversaries and our friends, and treats them accordingly, is a strategy we can adopt now.
But our eyes also need to be on the future, to look where our enemies and our allies will be headed tomorrow.
Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky once had a smart observation about his goal-scoring strategy—skate to where the puck will be, not to where the puck has been. But too often, when it comes to developing a national security strategy, the U.S. skates to where the puck was. We rely too much on the past being prologue to the future, rather than preparing for new, dangerous challenges ahead.