Afghanistan has three overland routes of supply — Pakistan, Iran, and the former Soviet Union. This has obvious implications for the resupply of American forces in Afghanistan.

I think the time will soon come when it is no longer in America’s best interests to supply the multinational forces in Afghanistan through Pakistan. Given Pakistani threats to cut off supplies and/or arm the Taliban, Pakistan’s usefulness as a partner is limited. Multinational forces need another route of supply.

For the time being, Iran is out of the question as a route to Afghanistan. This leaves Russia. The Russian rail system would be a highly effective means to transport supplies to our forces in Afghanistan. There’s only one catch — Russia would expect political concessions that would be regarded as unacceptable in western capitals.

There is a way around this dilemma. We need to reconfigure our supply network. For some supplies such as cash and troop rotation, we can still access Afghanistan by air. (Pakistani protests of sovereignty aside, there would be a heavy price to pay if Pakistan were to challenge American air supremacy.) For food, we can buy local produce from Afghan farmers. Buying Afghanistan’s wheat crop has an additional bonus of making farmland unavailable for the opium crop, thus depriving the Taliban of revenue.

This leaves weapons and ammunition. We can use Russian economic interests to our advantage here. Although Russia may be loathe to let American military supplies go through its rail network without an exorbitant political price, it would be difficult to imagine how Russians would be upset with supplying American forces with weaponry. It may seem weird for American soldiers to use Russian weapons and ammunition, but there are times when it may be wiser to use second-rate weaponry that comes with a robust supply line instead of first-rate weapons whose supplies can be cut off by Pakistan.

Buying Russian weaponry for cash has the benefit of gaining access to a Russian supply line while not giving any political concessions to the Russian state. Any weapons contract should not only include the cost of the weapons but also the cost of the transportation, so the Russian arms contractor would have the responsibility (and risk) for delivering the weapons to Afghanistan. Moreover, the Russian government could not shut off American access to its weaponry even if it wanted to, given the domestic incentives for profit and employment. What is a Russian politician going to tell an unemployed worker in a factory town when American dollars for Russian arms are available and yet spurned? Vladimir Putin may be popular, but he isn’t that popular.

The United States should also station a major machine shop in Afghanistan, not only to keep spare parts for our troops, but also to refurbish and upgrade Russian weaponry so it can be used to best effect. This installation would definitely need defense in depth.

Any military conflict with Iran would likely close down the Pakistani supply route for our forces in Afghanistan, if only in response to domestic political pressure. In any case, Pakistan thinks it can dictate terms of alliance to the United States. This is not good. At the very least, the United States needs to construct a strong enough alternative to a negotiated agreement so Pakistan is in no position to dictate terms. Reconfiguring our supply network in such a manner so we don’t need a Pakistani supply route would also allow our forces to enter the Northwest Frontier Provinces to fight the Taliban on their home territory, something our forces have been reluctant to do so far.