This brings us back to Afghanistan and its feisty leader. Many might look at Karzai’s erratic behavior and especially his anti-US comments and consider him irrational. This is a mistake. Even though it appears Karzai is biting the US hand that feeds him and keeps away his enemies, the proverbial writing is on the wall: the US is leaving. If Karzai doesn’t want to end up swinging from the barrel of a Taliban tank after the US abandons him in 2014, he needs to take decisive action to prevent it. To many Afghans, the biggest (and perhaps only) “plus” of Taliban rule is that it is not rule of the (foreign/Western/infidel) US. Therefore, if he wants to hold his regime out as a viable alternative to the Taliban, the most rational course of action is for Karzai to at least appear to distance himself from the US, and the more dramatic way he does this, the better.
Karzai’s position seems weak; his small, landlocked country, surrounded by bad neighbors, is morally, politically, and economically bankrupt. It is wracked by civil war, hobbled by endemic corruption, and is almost bereft of easily-accessible natural resources. But Karzai is actually in a relatively good bargaining position with regard to the US.
He knows that that the US wants out of the political, economic, and military quagmire of Afghanistan, but at the same time, due to security concerns and a desire to preserve his presidential legacy, President Obama can’t abandon Afghanistan outright. Since the US win-set is consequentially rather large, Karzai can therefore push for major security, economic, and political concessions from the US. So his demands in the Level 1 game make total sense.
And since his state exists in an anarchic system, his country alone is responsible for its security and therefore its survival. Karzai knows that the steps he is taking now, specifically with regard to distancing himself politically from the US, is a key political move in ensuring his country’s survival. Karzai also knows that to satisfy his (Level 2) domestic constituency, he has to present a strong front and to do that, he has to take on the US.
He must create a domestic win-set that is sufficiently large enough to give him room to reach to meet his domestic constituency’s concerns, while still overlapping with US interests enough for a deal to actually be struck. The fact that he is doing all of this at the expense of the US is aggravating, but utterly rational on his part.
Karzai has to know that some of his demands are never going to be met. For example, President Obama is never going to issue an apology to the Afghan people, especially after the beating he took over his so-called “Apology Tour” early in his presidency.[4] There are other things that Karzai says he wants that he knows he’ll never get as well. However, Karzai’s posturing and bluster gives him political breathing room in the Level 2 game, and since ultimately “all politics are local,” this is the level that is more important to his long-term political future, his legacy as leader of Afghanistan, and quite possibly, his life.
At the same time, he cannot completely snub the US if he wants to win in the Level 1 game. Making a complete break with the US will be costly for both him and Afghanistan economically in the short and long runs due to a lack of secondary backing of rebuilding goals and the loss of the security of US protections for foreign businesses.
Karzai was placed in power by an international consortium as the least of all evils. He won the popular vote in the last election by having the backing of the strength of that international power base that desired a solidification of non-Taliban power and an effort to bring Afghanistan back to the level of prosperity (intellectually, economically and socially) it knew in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
America and Afghanistan need each other if the national interests of both countries are to be met. This makes the success of a two-level game highly likely, even in the face of political posturing and grandstanding on both sides. Most Americans, and particularly veterans, do not like Karzai. We don’t appreciate what he is saying. But we understand why he is doing it. While many of us would like to go back to completely ignoring pretty much everything going on in Afghanistan, we learned the hard way that ignorance isn’t always bliss.
The conditions of the international system and the two-level game of international relations drive individual behavior as well as the behavior of states. What we’re seeing from Karzai is a guy trying to do the best he can to survive. We don’t have to like it, but we should at least try to understand it for what it is.
© 2014 The Havok Journal
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Source:
[1] http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/1…efore-he-will-agree-to-terms-for-u-s-pullout/
[2] http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2706785.pdf?acceptTC=true&acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true
[3] http://townhall.com/columnists/jeff…ve-real-obama-apology-tour-n1743379/page/full
[4] http://townhall.com/columnists/jeff…ve-real-obama-apology-tour-n1743379/page/full
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