The flaw with Walt, as is so often the case, is that he fundamentally believes that most states, and indeed most organizations are merely security seeking, that is to say that all they really want is to keep on doing what they are doing without interference. Although he does not explicitly state so in these articles, he is a well known and perhaps even the leading advocate of Defensive Realism.
In the Afghanistan case, this is fatal in several ways:
1) Even assuming that the Taliban and any Taliban inspired successor state are merely security seeking, their very presence in the region is destabilizing, as proven by how things were prior to 9/11. Neither Pakistan (as long as it is secular, but with large Islamist contigents), nor Shi'ite Iran can allow a Salafi regime exist unmolested in their neighborhood, to say nothing of Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakstan, or Uzbekistan, which all have their own problems.
2) There is reason to believe that the Taliban, even if they have no designs on attacking the U.S., are more than security seeking insofar as they also wish to convert Pakistan to a Islamic state. Witness the seizure of Swat Valley. If Pakistan became a "Taliban" state, then we would have a Pashtun-Islamist Nuclear Superstate in Central Asia.
3) Even if the Taliban fails to seize power in Pakistan, as actually seems likely, the biggest threat for training camps and safe havens is not attacks against the US, but attacks against China, India, and Pakistan. All three countries have significant Muslim minorities/groups, and are nuclear powers. Indeed, there are more nuclear states within driving distance from Kabul than from Berlin. While there may be reason to doubt that the US would be their target in any meaningful timeframe there are already Salafist groups operating in all three countries, and we have every reason to believe that at least in Pakistan and India there are direct and indirect ties between those groups and the Taliban.
These three reasons are not proof that the war is a war of necessity for the United States, but it is proof that the war is necessary for a super-power. It is no secret that many realists, and many political scientists believe that the doctrine of primacy (i.e. holding on to superpower status) is a case of the juice not being worth the squeeze. However, such ideas are not common in the American Foreign Policy community. If the U.S. were to abandon Afghanistan, it would be exatly like Britain abandoning Greece in the opening hours of the Cold War. In essence, we would be signalling to the world that we are abandoning all pretence of Superpower status, leaving areas like Central Asia to the Great Powers of the region, and becoming one great power among many.
This all goes unsaid, because the President and his staff neither wish to seem like they are pursuing the same strategy as Pres. Bush, nor do they wish to admit that if they abandon Afghanistan, they have essentially presided over the demise of the American "Empire". Walt, for his part, knows that even outside of the United States, in spite of protestations to the contrary, the idea of the return to multipolarity is not popular, because most countries are freeriding off the US. Therefore he cannot openly say "we need to accept that we are no longer a superpower". Even returning to a position of hegemonic offshore balancer seems like a step down from the titanic power the US has had for the past twenty years.
Bookmarks