The economics of war

President Obama declared an end to the U.S. combat role in Iraq this week, but his speech didn’t include the word victory. One reason is that the U.S. combat role isn’t entirely over; 50,000 American troops are still in Iraq, and some of them probably will be drawn into battle again. Another is that Iraq isn’t at peace and doesn’t have a stable government yet.

As a political matter, the president would rather have been talking about the economy — the crisis on the minds of most Americans — instead of an almost-forgotten war that has taken too many lives, too much money and too much time.

Still, the occasion gave Obama a chance to talk about what may be his favorite and most important national security goal: reducing the costs of U.S. foreign and military strategy so they no longer drain the domestic economy. That’s how, quite legitimately, he managed to make his speech about the economy after all.

“Our nation’s strength and influence abroad must be firmly anchored in our prosperity at home,” he said. “Unfortunately, over the last decade, we have not done what is necessary to shore up the foundation of our own prosperity. We have spent over a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has shortchanged investments in our own people and contributed to record deficits.”

If that sounded a little like he was blaming our current economic crisis on George W. Bush’s wars, he was, at least in part. But he was also building a case for subjecting future decisions — about war, or troop strength in Afghanistan or the size of the defense budget — to more stringent economic analysis.

Obama put it even more crisply last December, in his speech at West Point unveiling the current 18-month buildup of troops in Afghanistan. “We can’t simply afford to ignore the price of these wars,” he said then.

Bush’s foreign policy was about fighting terrorism and spreading democracy around the world, almost heedless of the cost. Obama’s is about fighting terrorism with one eye on the balance sheet, and supporting democracy where it can be done at low cost. Given the state of the economy and the lessons we should have learned after seven years in Iraq, his message is likely to fall on receptive ears.

One of the lessons of our recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has surely been this: Invasions are relatively easy, but counterinsurgency is far more difficult. Invasions draw on our advantages: size, wealth, technology. Counterinsurgency taxes our weaknesses; it requires deep understanding of local culture, a willingness to take casualties and, above all, patience — none of which we possess in much quantity.

The wonder is that the U.S. counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq has accomplished as much as it has. But it has been costly and has taken most of a decade. And we’re still struggling to make progress in Afghanistan.

There’s no discernible appetite in Washington for trying to fix another country that way soon. Ask American intelligence officials what countries they worry about most, and they name Yemen and Somalia — but nobody’s proposing an invasion, an occupation and elections.

When Obama talked this week about the unfinished war in Afghanistan, he merely repeated his most minimal definition of the U.S. goal there: not implanting democracy but “preventing Afghanistan from again serving as a base for terrorists.” And he put special emphasis on his intention of sticking to his deadline — next July — for beginning to draw down the number of U.S. troops there.

“The pace of our troop reductions will be determined by conditions on the ground, and our support for Afghanistan will endure,” he said. “But make no mistake: this transition will begin, because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people’s.”

After months of wrangling over what that deadline means, administration officials insist that everyone is on the same page now. But they still seem to be pointing at different spots on the page. Only hours before Obama spoke, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made the point that although a drawdown will begin on schedule, it won’t be hasty.

“If the Taliban really believe that America is heading for the exits next summer in large numbers, they’ll be very deeply disappointed and surprised to see us still very much in the fight,” he said.

We’ll see. When a president uses a phrase like “make no mistake,” he’s usually trying to send a message. Obama often says he puts great store in keeping his promises, and expresses surprise when others doubt him on that point. He also knows where he wants to be in the presidential campaign year of 2012: with almost all U.S. troops out of Iraq, and a clearly diminishing U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan.

Gates may be right about the summer of 2011; there will likely still be almost 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan then. But a year after that, make no mistake: Army Gen. David H. Petraeus or his successor will be trying to work out how to complete the mission under the new Obama doctrine of more limited resources.

doyle.mcmanus@latimes.com