Realpolitik, American style

IN THE NEWS
In foreign policy, it's just fine to put your own country's interests ahead of those of other nations. It's also OK to use public diplomacy to put a fig leaf of respectability over these hard-edged attitudes.

However, it doesn't logically follow that you need to blame other countries for what's obviously your own mistakes. In fact, the more obvious your culpability, the deeper a hole you dig for yourself by childishly pointing the finger at someone else.

Case in point: the Bush Administration's leaked memo about the out-of-control opium production in Afghanistan. Just as our man in Kabul, President Hamid Karzai, is arriving in Washington for an official visit, American officials leak a memo blaming Karzai for not cracking down on opium producers enough.

I can only guess that the Administration is hoping that we've all forgotten the following sequence of events:

1. After the fall of the Najibullah government, opium production explodes under the corrupt mujahideen government. Afghan farmers realize the astronomically higher profits they'll make growing poppies, and smuggling out of the country their processed form, opium, is relatively easy.
2. Later, the Taliban leaders reduce the opium problem, but never completely. The United States and its NATO allies invade Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies.
3. The United States is slow to deploy military presence needed to contain both the Taliban/Al Qaeda remnants and opium traffickers. The US proves even slower to deliver the foreign aid needed, in part, to remove incentives for opium production.
4. Having lost interest in Afghanistan, the Bush Administration races to an even costlier war in Iraq.
5. Whenever the topic of Afghan aid arises, US officials throw up their hands and say, "What can we do, while we're struggling with the ballooning Iraq crisis?"

Undoubtedly, Karzai and his ministers have made mistakes. However, it's the height of hypocrisy—and embarrassing finger-pointing—to blame Karzai for the latest Afghan opium boom. The more effective the Afghan government's efforts to crack down on opium producers and smugglers, the more threatening the Kabul government looks to the remaining warlords. If the Afghan army and police grow too slowly, the warlords and narcotics traffickers will have an easier time resisting any military or economic threat to their current position. Over time, it will become harder for the government itself to prevent corruption within its own ranks. (It's also not a terribly good sign that Afghan commanders have yet to get any operational authority over joint Afghan-NATO missions.) The Afghan government needs a lot more muscle, a lot faster, than it has been getting. That reality is indifferent to whatever opinion you have of Hamid Karzai as a leader.