22 October 2009
Sovereignty is Out-of-Date
Max Boot’s Op-Ed in the October 22, 2009 New York Times, “There’s No Substitute for Troops on the Ground,” accepts the mindset of the American commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, to whom, naturally, every problem looks like a military one. According to that approach, the recommended U.S. strategy going forward is to increase troop levels.
Corruption in Afghanistan’s political system, in fact, is not a problem for most Afghans—it is expected. It is not the job of the military to “watch” the politicos in order to make government there work in an honest Western way. It is their job only to prevent anarchy in that country from threatening the security of the U.S. and the rest of the world. With today’s technology, this monitoring and pre-emption can be performed without troops on the ground, e.g. through unmanned drones.
Yes, such methods are sometimes brutal and indiscriminate. However, the combination of Afghan resistance to responsible government and the universal availability of sophisticated communications and destructive technologies has made outmoded the concept of national sovereignty. If a country is unable or unwilling to maintain responsible order among its residents, then the community of civil states is entitled and compelled to impose order on it, if only to protect their own safety.
Afghanistan is an outlaw nation. Even if Afghans prefer to live that way, we can’t allow them to jeopardize our own way of life. Nevertheless, it is not intelligent to use costly methods, like armed occupation, that only make it appear that we are doing something about it and do not actually achieve that objective.
Max Boot’s Op-Ed in the October 22, 2009 New York Times, “There’s No Substitute for Troops on the Ground,” accepts the mindset of the American commander in Afghanistan, General McChrystal, to whom, naturally, every problem looks like a military one. According to that approach, the recommended U.S. strategy going forward is to increase troop levels.
Corruption in Afghanistan’s political system, in fact, is not a problem for most Afghans—it is expected. It is not the job of the military to “watch” the politicos in order to make government there work in an honest Western way. It is their job only to prevent anarchy in that country from threatening the security of the U.S. and the rest of the world. With today’s technology, this monitoring and pre-emption can be performed without troops on the ground, e.g. through unmanned drones.
Yes, such methods are sometimes brutal and indiscriminate. However, the combination of Afghan resistance to responsible government and the universal availability of sophisticated communications and destructive technologies has made outmoded the concept of national sovereignty. If a country is unable or unwilling to maintain responsible order among its residents, then the community of civil states is entitled and compelled to impose order on it, if only to protect their own safety.
Afghanistan is an outlaw nation. Even if Afghans prefer to live that way, we can’t allow them to jeopardize our own way of life. Nevertheless, it is not intelligent to use costly methods, like armed occupation, that only make it appear that we are doing something about it and do not actually achieve that objective.
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