By Dave Anderson:
If any nation that the US did not like and was not propping up spent 22% of its GDP on defense and projects to continue to spend at that level for most of a decade when its only enemy is an internal light infantry insurgency, the American foreign policy establishment would be very quick to correctly note that the country had massively imbalanced priorities, an unsustainable budgetary path and paranoid leadership. Now if you told the American foreign policy elite that this same country was relying on foreign donations and their attendant strings attached to pay for that outsized defense budget, those same elites would cluck about the long term lack of legitimacy this would imply as well as the smarter ones muttering about principal-agent problems.
Ahh well, we are not talking about a nation on the current rotation for our two minute hate. We are talking about Afghanistan as Danger Room summarizes the 'transition' plan for 'sustainable' local security operations:
Col. John Ferrari, the deputy commander for programs at NATO�s training mission, estimates that �sustainment� for the Afghan forces will cost $6 billion annually � at least. In response to a question from Danger Room on a blogger conference call Thursday, Ferrari said that those costs include �fuel, repair parts, salaries, uniforms, individual solider equipment,� as well as $300 to $400 million per year for �capital equipment.....
the CIA estimates Afghanistan�s gross domestic product is around $27 billion. Keeping soldiers and police fed, clothed, billeted, armed and equipped, realistically, will be a job for international donors for the foreseeable future.
Time to cut a deal as the Karzai government or any government that is willing to embrace American style militaries and American led counter-insurgency campaigns will have limited policy autonomy and even less local legitimacy because it can not afford what that embrace requires.
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