WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 06th March, 2020) The US Defense Department and the military-industrial complex seem willing to exit Afghanistan to pursue more profitable opportunities in expanding nuclear and space programs and preparing for regular wars, former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik.
US and Taliban officials signed an agreement in Doha last weekend that calls for Washington to withdraw troops over the next fourteen months and the commencement of intra-Afghan talks.
"The moneymakers in this war finally have a sense that there is more US cash in other pursuits, namely the upcoming wars against China and Russia, space wars and the rehabilitation and regrowth of the US nuclear arsenal," Kwiatkowski, whose career at the Pentagon included work in the Near East and South Asia directorate (NESA), among other positions, said.
Last month, President Donald Trump submitted to Congress a $740.5 billion budget request for fiscal year 2021 that if passed would represent the largest annual military expenditure in US history since World War II.
US Defense Secretary Mark Esper, she added, is looking to where the "big money" can be made and this is no longer Afghanistan which was the war of choice under the Bush administration and then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
"Afghanistan... was always Cheney's resource war, and one that mostly left the [US] Navy and the Air Force out of the big money," she said.
The Pentagon and defense contractors seem satiated by the promised buildups for dealing with a major two-front "traditional'" war, Kwiatkowski added, new spending on Space Command, battlefield nuclear weapons, and the steady regular increases in military budgets under Trump.
Moreover, Kwiatkowski indicated that continuing and expanding the war seems practically unfeasible. In fact, she added, Trump's supporters expected him to end the war more quickly.
"Most Americans have mentally moved on, easily forgetting this longest and one of the most expensive US wars in history, in a country most still cannot locate on a map," the former Pentagon aide said. "It's an exotic end to an exotic little and largely pointless war, one Americans won't remember unless they served, or lost a loved one."
In terms of the pact with the Taliban, Kwiatkowski said last year's firing of John Bolton as White House National Security Adviser was likely the overarching predictor that this kind of agreement could be signed.
The former Defense Department analyst indicated that there other reasons the deal might be viable.
"Because the specifics on [US] troop withdrawal are detailed, the prisoner returns/exchanges are significant, and the lifting of sanctions are significantly helpful to the recovery of the Afghanistan economy, this agreement could actually work," she said.
Kwiatkowski also suggested that US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, could prove politically skillful in extracting US forces from Afghanistan considering he seems to get along with Trump.
"He may be a Chairman who can make a withdrawal happen in a way that 'looks good' politically, in the same way he handled the coverage of the 2017 ambush of US troops in Niger. He may be just the guy to make Afghanistan go away," she said.
Four days after the peace agreement was announced, US forces carried out an airstrike against Taliban militants. The Pentagon said it was a defensive measure after the Taliban resumed operations against Afghan forces earlier in the week.
Despite these developments, members of the establishment may not over-think leaving Afghanistan given the prize awaiting the Pentagon due to Trump's handouts.
"I think the bones being thrown to the Pentagon now are so big and juicy, Pentagon leadership and corporate CEOs will not think twice," Kwiatkowski concluded.
Karen Kwiatkowski is a retired US Air Force lieutenant colonel who spent her final four and a half years in uniform in the upper echelons of the Pentagon.
