The Disengagers

Withdrawing from Afghanistan is a popular idea in the United States.

The tentative suggestion, made by America’s Deputy National Security Adviser, that the United States might reduce troop levels in Afghanistan to zero in 2014, fits nicely with President Obama’s already-stated foreign and security policy plans. The basic concept: America won’t give up its global military dominance, but will change the way that it exercises it, thereby saving money. In a nutshell: fewer soldiers, more unmanned drones.

Also fitting nicely into this picture are the nominations of John Kerry for Secretary of State, Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense and John Brennan for Director of the CIA. The former are both Vietnam War veterans with little inclination to put more boots on the ground; the latter is an architect of the U.S. unmanned drone strategy. Foreign Policy magazine calls the combination “The Disengagers.”

The withdrawal from Afghanistan, favored early on by President Obama, is popular with Americans. It’s not likely that more troops will be deployed anywhere in the world between now and the end of Obama’s second term in 2017.

But it would be absurd to therefore conclude that Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize because of that. Military force will remain a permanent element of U.S. foreign policy. Anyone who thinks it compares to U.S. engagement in El Salvador in the 1980s and Colombia in the 1990s need only consider that these were “low-intensity wars” only for the United States. The local populations might think otherwise.

But isn’t that preferable to the warmongering wishes of the neoconservatives and their profiteering friends in the military industrial complex? In America’s view, certainly. And at least it’s a lot smarter.