As a young man, Osama Bin Laden studied economics at the Management and Economics School of King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. At age 23 he joined fellow hardcore Sunni Islamists, unwelcome in Saudi and Egypt, in a virtual pilgrimage to Afghanistan to oppose the Soviet invasion.
Within two years of his arrival he and his fellow mujahadeen were receiving (indirectly, through Pakistan) Saudi and American arms and money. Within four years of his arrival he was heading up the Maktab al-Khadamat, actually handling the logistics of the guerilla war against the Soviets. Shortly thereafter he began to assume operational command of guerilla forces. Six years after his arrival in Afghanistan, in 1987, he won: The Soviet retreat began. It could not have escaped his notice that, just months after the withdrawal concluded in 1989, the entire Soviet Union began its abrupt collapse.
As illustrated in 1813 and 1944, The Russians have a tradition of absorbing and overcoming galling loss of life in their military endeavors. By this standard, the Afghanistan conflict was mild: all told, the Soviets lost just 15,000 dead and 53,000 wounded. The Soviets didn’t abandon the field because of the bloodshed. Nor could they be accused of not trying hard enough: Soviet generals killed an estimated 1,000,000 Afghanis. The Soviet withdrawal is better understood, and the 30-something former economics student probably understood it this way, as a matter of dollars and cents.
The Soviets kept between 80,000 and 100,000 soldiers and support troops stationed in Afghanistan throughout their occupation. The cost of maintaining this occupation is estimated to have cost the Soviets dearly; military spending accounted for 15-16% of their GDP by the mid-1980s, and in 1984 they budgeted another 45% increase in their five-year plan. They lost hundreds of planes, more than 100 helicopters, more than 100 tanks, thousands of vehicles and artillery pieces, plus they burned through loads money trying to prop up a puppet government and train a pet Afghan army.
Bin Laden would have watched the Soviets flee and collapse, and felt pride in his role. You can argue that the Soviet Union collapsed because of slowing growth, demoralization, weakening oil prices, Ronald Reagan’s defense spending… whatever, there’s some truth in all of that. It’s impossible to think, though, that from his perch on the roof of the world, Bin Laden wasn’t convinced, rightly, that by harnessing jihadist guerillas he helped bring a superpower to its knees.
The funny thing is, I distinctly recall Bin Laden explaining exactly how he intended to defeat the US (sound of me rummaging on Google) back in 2004. Here’s an awkwardly translated Bin Laden quote :
“Al-Qa’ida spent $500,000 on the event [9/11] while America lost in the event and its subsequent effects more than 500 billion dollars; that is to say that each of Al-Qa’ida’s dollars defeated one million American dollars, thanks to Allah’s grace. This is in addition to the fact that America lost a large number of jobs, and as for the [federal] deficit, it lost a record number estimated at a trillion dollars.”
We know his history. He’s showing us his playbook; he targeted the World Trade Center, for heavens sakes. The only way we can lose is if we spend our way into a macroeconomic hole; which is what we’re doing. It’s embarrassing, is what it is. The United States is burning almost $3 billion per week in Iraq alone; big picture, we’re blowing at least 20% of our federal budget (4.3% of GDP) on military spending (<–corrected; earlier version of this post read “20% of GDP). The indirect costs–in terms of security lines, gas prices, poorly allocated resources, international prestige–defy calculation. We are piling up debt with no new investments in infrastructure or education to show for it, and a record 44% of that debt is now held outside of the United States.
We don’t take Bin Laden seriously enough. He’ll be glad if we leave Iraq, but unsatisfied. For a true, Soviet-style victory, he needs us to continue hemmorhaging blood and treasure in a futile conflict on foreign soil.
Sources (partial):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_laden
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2008/pdf/apers/borrowing.pdf
July 27, 2007 at 12:33 pm |
This is pretty brilliant, Adam, and I’m embarrassed as a part-time strategic planner not to have thought harder about bin Laden’s possible macroeconomic goals.
I disagree with his assessment of the US’s vulnerability — warts and all, we are in nothing like the crumbling state of the USSR circa 1985 — but the theory of inflicting large-scale damage with small-scale attacks is straight out of Che’s On Guerrilla Warfare, and it is working like clockwork.
Clearly, we need to stop bleeding money (and, um, blood) on our ill-planned and perpetually unsuccessful anti-insurgency operations in Iraq. Disentangling ourselves will be ugly and almost certainly graceless, regardless of our intentions, but we cannot refuse to pull out just because none of the pullout scenarios look peachy. Each day brings a fresh decision to remain, and that decision is way past its pull date.
The best piece I’ve read on Iraq this week is Peter Galbraith’s in NYRB. A brief sample: “The Iraq war is lost…. The case for the war is no longer defined by the benefits of winning—a stable Iraq, democracy on the march in the Middle East, the collapse of the evil Iranian and Syrian regimes—but by the consequences of defeat.” (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20470)