Afghanistan Election: Does Obama Want a New Puppet?

Hamid Karzai finds himself under the same scrutiny usually reserved for allies of China and Russia. Afghanistan as an American protectorate may soon see change in management as has historically occurred when puppets didn't perform



In the eyes of the new reform minded regime in the White House, the Indian educated CIA man Hamid Karzai may have outlived his usefulness. Even as Karzai's vote total is inching closer to 50%+ needed to avoid a runoff, he finds himself in the same situation as Babrak Karmal in 1986. That means that just like the Soviet backed mayor of Kabul in the 80s, the new American backed mayor of Kabul has grown too comfortable in his expectation that a foreign force will prop his rule indefinitely. Sure, he tries to be a political middleman between various factions by not sticking his head out too much in siding with any one of them. That tactic of survival through doing nothing has historically worked only for a time. Eventually, somebody gets frustrated.

In this case it appears to be the American generals who saw soldier casualties rise every year since 2001 invasion. NATO's very existence is at stake in a mission that was supposed to give the obsolete alliance some relevancy. The rising casualties and disgruntled protests from alliance countries make the issue more urgent for the preservation of American power in Western Europe. Their recent insistence that the Afghan army get expanded and start pulling its weight is analogous to Soviet command's desire to expand Afghan army in mid 1980s after 6 years of escalating casualties among occupying troops.

What does it mean for a puppet army to do more work? It means creating conditions where the occupying power can delegate killing to others. In Soviet Union's case, it was pressured replacement of Babrak Karmal with Mohammad Najibullah. Najibullah has shown himself to be energetic, efficient, and very willing to crack skulls and use Afghans against other Afghans. Besides being a more aggressive and more capable puppet, he also had potential to gain more legitimacy among Afghanistan's population by also being very supportive of extended modernization efforts to raise quality of life.

Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's snappy "Western leaning" (usual catchphrase to refer to actual and potential American puppets as shown by the colored revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia) reformer challenger fits the role of a replacement puppet perfectly. For an occupied country (where corruption and election censorship is a lot worse than Iran), Abdullah has been getting unusually large amounts of American media coverage before and during election process. United States media does not usually focus on challengers taking on corrupt incumbents trying to influence election results in their favor unless these incumbents have become obstacles for American geopolitical strategy. US and its intelligence organs and NATO allies have been creating public relations victories and force multiplier effects for pro-Washington friendlies for decades. They recently had great success by dislodging Yanukovich, Shevardnadze, and Milosevich (with a possible attempt against Ahmadinejad in Iran this summer) by promoting "pro-Western" opposition to power through rapid creation of negative international media perception (character assassinating incumbents as corrupt and needing to go for the good of all). Even the Northern Alliance side in the 1996-2001 civil war was elevated to be a knight in shining armor with relatively great success.

Karzai has recently found himself under the same public relations attack that is usually reserved for allies of Russia or China. He has:

1) been warned by a US envoy to prepare for a recount. Although he is supposedly 2% away from reaching 50% to clinch the nomination, this week saw nullification of entire ballot districts, a process that can be modified to create whatever result is needed.

2) been object of major negative attention from key national propaganda papers like New York Times and Washington Post (that have some influence on wealthy American citizens).

3) has not been supplied with enough weaponry for more independent functioning in last 2 years even after personal requests. He subsequently threatened to acquire weaponry from "the other place" (presumably a non-NATO regional power)

Karzai and his family also have relatively strong ties to the previous regime in DC as their connections to Bush family and CIA go back 20 years. As India and Pakistan intelligence services begin to position themselves to end their conflict over who will have influence in Afghanistan, United States may very well decide to back Abdullah Abdullah as new puppet (his base of political support is in northern non-Pashtun Afghanistan). As we saw in the second phase of the Afghan civil war in the late 1990s, non-Pashtun northeners will have no problem slaughtering Pashtun Taliban even without an international Western force in the country. The spectacle of the Afghan election and the low turn out has shown that even the illusion of a democratic mask on a puppet regime is unworkable. Insurgency continues regardless of whether the leader is Pashtun and whether the leader is willing to not exert himself too much.

It is thus logical for an occupying force to leave a smaller ethnic group (or in Afghan case, an alliance of ethnic groups) that resorts to a lot more forceful and independent pacification methods to remain in power after the imperial withdrawal. It has been done like that throughout history. Getting members of a new leadership from the former Northern Alliance region is also more acceptable to European Union (whose members have more responsibility, connections, and personal hearts and minds contact there) and Russia (which wants a friendly Tajik/Uzbek buffer between Central Asia and fundamentalist Islam in southern Afghanistan. They already had spillover from Afghanistan once during the civil war in Tajikistan).

This week brought the additional criticism of the current occupational arrangement from Western European NATO members after the fuel tanker bombardment. Although the German command ordered the bombing, the Anglo-American tactics of long distant bombardment is what's criticized here. Clearly Europeans want to accelerate the process of passing their duties to their connections in northern half of the country (who will then have a more intimate violent contact in pacifying the south while aided by generous donations of cash and weapons). Even Russia jumped on the bandwagon this week by asking to help NATO plan the process that it has so much experience with.

Dealing with Karzai will not be a matter of creating another orange revolution since he has managed to make a lot of connections in central and southern parts of the country (even if he has no control over them). He can't be simply assassinated either was the South Vietnamese puppet in the old days. It remains to be seen whether Obama administration can be creatively proactive in restructuring the regime of this American protectorate by itself (and thus show leadership and get respect to preserve its status as first among equals in NATO) or if it will defer to designs of other NATO members.

Future of NATO: Europe's Security Requires That Germany and France Take Charge

US style minimal state capitalism has proven to be structurally unstable and ideologically bankrupt. As Obama tries a domestic top down restructuring to save remnants of capitalism before the dollar defaults, central European region is left destabilized.




The process of wrestling NATO's control away from the Anglo-American partnership should start immediately while the international recession is relatively young. American economic collapse is forcing US leadership to copy its former ideological colonies of Germany and Japan when it comes to implementing state capitalism. That in turn will result in a power vacuum created in central Europe and major risk involving NATO's structure the way it is led presently.

US always had elements of state capitalism although private sector was far less regulated compared to US's more state centered ideological colonies in Western Europe. However, decades of de-industrialization, social/structural decay, and military build up brought the need to accelerate ideological compromise. We now see an American president insist on the need for state champions in energy and car production as well as utilization of state organs to shape private sector development. US still has what it takes to pull that off peacefully. If De Gaulle's France and Putin's Russia managed to create successful state backed champions under conditions bordering on civil war then Obama's America can do the same.

There is sufficient amounts of managerial experience and efficiency enforcement talent to be found domestically. Subsidizing cars and green energy will do for those industries what subsidies for agriculture did. That is, create industrial base for mass cheap exports abroad after years of hard work and political coalition pressure. That will take time however and in the meantime it makes strategic sense to extend state capitalism to biomedical, natural resource extraction, electronics, and agriculture sectors. These three fields, have the most potential for economic stimulation since they are one of the few things US still has an edge on internationally. American oligarchic demands and semi-privatized medical system have created the most advanced pharmaceutical and bioengineering research and development in the world. Bioengineering, organ growing, genetic modification, and resulting transhuman augmentation and life extension, are the best potential kernels of a new American economy. As such, if US government wants to take serious stabilizing steps to save bits of the old capitalist system, it needs to nurture, subsidize, and promote the biomedical sector the way it wants to with the car industry. Biomedical product exports are potentially worth trillions of dollars long term, especially if Koreans and Japanese can be brought aboard as collaborative partners.

If Obama administration is smart and wants to really make US economic decline gradual (rather than sharp and potentially violent), it will also use increasing state capitalism to try to catch up or collaborate with Japan in robotics. A friendly US-Japanese competition in robotic exports, to aging Europe, will bring additional stream of steady revenue to claw out of future dollar default. State control of agriculture and resource extraction is self explanatory when it comes to additional money for disgruntled desperate population. Global warming will allow more land cultivation for crops and the land is rich in coal, uranium, and gas (especially if Canada is brought on board to collaborate in Arctic exploration/extraction). Obama has taken the first steps of taking control of strategic sectors and the pace of state acquisition will accelerate. Proper state subsidies and investments must be made immediately so the lifeline industries are nurtured before the default on the dollar occurs.

How does this relate to central Europe? Central European states have embraced American style free market capitalism with open arms. Legions of US capitalist commisars have flown to educate the fresh faced leaderships of Baltic states and dissolved Warsaw pact members. The Soviet collapse has been so rapid and demoralizing that the ideology of minimal state capitalism has taken root deeply and broadly as far as the core states of the former Soviet Union itself. In many ways, central Europeans even outdid their American teacher (and new NATO master) in terms of lack of regulation, taxation, and lack of investment in real industry. The supposed success stories, of minimal state capitalism, have been shown in nearly double digit growth rates throughout the former socialist space. The small Baltic countries have shown their proud ability to stand tall next to other speculative paper tigers of Ireland and Iceland. Even the normally cautious American satellite of Germany got into the housing bubble creating action in the 1990s. Supposed post-industrial financial wizardry was so visible, that in 2003 Donald Rumsfeld even proposed to make central Europe the new ideological arm of American power projection.

Germany and France were no longer seen as reliable footholds to violently spread capitalism throughout the world. Franco-German leadership of Chirac and Shroeder were fine with the split between US and Western Europe since it allowed them to pursue their own independent state capitalism with European characteristics. They decided that US lacks the industrial production to continuously exert influence in central Europe. Leading Western European leadership decided to gradually play Americans and Russians against each other while competing with US and Russians in central Europe when it comes to financial investment. With no massive global ideological alternative to warn of the risks, even the neutral well managed Swedish banks poured money into"New Europe" states like Hungary and Latvia.

When the underutilized communist built infrastructure once again reached full capacity (and when a run on the banks collapsed structural pillars of American union's capitalism), central Europe went into an even deeper tailspin than United States. Not only did the ideology preached to them by America failed but now America itself is heading into the state capitalist direction of Germany, France, and Russia. We saw what happens when the core of an ideology promoting empire changes direction. The power elites of peripheral colonies (even those within the empire sponsored military alliance) often become disillusioned, demoralized, and run into increasing conflict with their own population. Khrushchev's thaw caused social unrest and colonial rebellion. Then of course Gorbachev's top down restructuring and liberalization didn't just pressure ideological satellites to split and pursue their own political development. It didn't just result in development of cultural/ideological differences so great that a common military alliance was deemed undesirable. It actually caused backward conservative regions of the federal union itself to secede so they can be free from the betrayal and influence of the liberalizing "capitalist" center.

Now it's unlikely that Obama's move towards restructuring of the state capitalist economy to make it more efficient will cause anything as drastic as any American region wanting to secede. After all, the great American melting pot and intermingling of ethnic groups produced a much more durable artificial nationality compared to the violence born Soviet one. Surely American evangelicals, blacks, northeastern secular liberals, and Hispanics can work out a way to peacefully decline and restructure without resorting to Yugoslav style nastiness. The last statements are not meant as sarcastic or alarmist. US state capitalist political system allowed some social popular pressure to be released continuously at the polls without being angrily pressurized for decades.

However, the demoralizing effect and demonstration of the minimal state capitalist failure will mean another economic/ideological collapse in the heart of Europe. We are seeing industrial drop offs in Hungary, Ukraine, and the Baltic states that resemble the early 90s and American reversals in the early 1930s. US never even had a large enough financial presence in their new ideological colonies since most of the housing bubble money came from EU heavy weights. That means that central Europe will drag economies of Western Europe down with them to an undetermined degree as German and Scandinavian Banks find themselves in a Baltic sub-prime mess of their own. With decrease of EU's economic support, American ideological betrayal, and Obama administration's lowered priorities for NATO expansion, regional vacuum can only be filled rapidly by Russia. Kremlin has tangible natural resource and energy exports as well as over 200 billion dollars in saved wealth. China's 500 billion bailout to create internal demand for its products is beginning to push oil price up again. This means that the oil based ruble is strengthening and can be used to rapidly exert political pressure in the region filled with devaluing currencies.

This is why the need for joint French/German take over of NATO is required. Rapid expansion of Russian influence, into a collapsing and socially unstable region (that is still overseen by American puppets like Yuschenko with approval rating of 4%), can result in a potentially violent confrontation with Anglo-American led NATO. US and England still have disproportionate influence within NATO's structure. Many within the Anglo-American leadership are ideological capitalist internationalists who might not want an American regional rollback. We have already seen how even the puppet leadership of the NATO aspiring country of Georgia can create a hysterical American led reaction. We cannot rely on Anglo-American internationalists within NATO, to properly handle the situation of minimal state capitalist collapse under the direct NATO umbrella itself. Potential for escalation and violence, would be much greater than during the daring NATO aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999. The world cannot rely on military leadership of an ideologically bankrupt and collapsing society to do the right thing and retreat when the dollar is devalued, social tensions are up, and elections are coming up.

French and Germans should begin efforts to become the new negotiating power center of NATO. If US decides to dissolve the alliance in retaliation, that is fine. Europeans already have protocols to make use of NATO facilities for a new European alliance. If US decides to stay (and still provide a nuclear umbrella to augment those of France and England), then that is the perfect outcome for the continent. It'll show American people that they are still relevant and soothe England's fears of being marginalizing completely. Berlin, Paris, and Rome can then pragmatically negotiate with Moscow on security arrangements for the continent. Only negotiation untainted by reactionary ideology can bring results. This solution allows coordinated preservation of North-Hemispheric stability in a time when state capitalism faces serious challenges from economic and social stagnation. Situation that leads to serious Western infighting, further deterioration of investor confidence, and potential escalating violence must not be allowed to happen. That would allow only China to remain the biggest planetary center of influence with 1 trillion dollars of saved wealth and the only major growing economy. Even briefly, that risks giving an opening that might prove difficult to close.