Decision Time in Afghanistan

This article from www.stratfor.com makes my point very well.


Afghanistan, A Key U.S. Decision Point

September 22, 2009 2046 GMT
DAVID FURST/AFP
Summary
U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration appears to be inching toward a seminal decision on strategy in Afghanistan. It is becoming clear that a shift in strategy is looming, but the nature and extent of that shift — as well as the implications for troop levels in Afghanistan — remain to be seen. Nevertheless, the decisions made by the White House now could well shape the Afghan war for the rest of Obama’s presidency.
Analysis
Related Links
Afghanistan: The Nature of the Insurgency
Strategic Divergence: The War Against the Taliban and the War Against Al Qaeda
Geopolitical Diary: U.S. Limitations in Afghanistan
Geopolitical Diary: Differing Expectations for Afghanistan
U.S. President Barack Obama is approaching a key decision point in his presidency: how to proceed with the campaign in Afghanistan. The initial assessment of the senior commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, was leaked to the Washington Post and published late Sept. 20. The classified report (the published version had redactions for operational security) was clearly intentionally leaked and done for maximum publicity. But the report — both explicitly and implicitly — expresses a great deal more than a simple call for more troops. In fact, it highlights the far-reaching implications of the strategic discussion currently under way within the administration.
Since Obama took office, key figures within the administration, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have been making public statements attempting to moderate popular expectations for the war in Afghanistan and discussing the need to shift away from a broad and wholesale exercise in nation-building to more focused and achievable goals like counter-terrorism and hunting al Qaeda specifically. And even with a small surge in troops, important changes to rules of engagement under McChrystal’s command and an offensive well under way in Helmand province, the situation in Afghanistan was slipping from bad to worse even before Obama took the oath of office. Matters have only deteriorated since. As a consequence, the strategic situation has continued to evolve and the administration has yet to make a definitive choice on the nature of the mission and the commitment of forces to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan.
That decision appears to be coming soon. There are two key historical examples to consider, the first of which is when U.S. President Lyndon Johnson escalated the Vietnam conflict in 1963. When U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, there were 16,000 American advisers in South Vietnam. When Johnson took the oath of office, a space race with the Soviets was in full swing and civil rights issues were heating up domestically. Few would have imagined that the war in Vietnam would come to define his presidency. But Johnson almost immediately committed to Vietnam, and by the end of his presidency the U.S. military was directly involved in front-line combat operations across Vietnam and there were more than half a million troops in country. The war and the failed American effort there have come to define his presidency.
In 1983, U.S. President Ronald Reagan made the opposite decision in Lebanon. Following the loss of nearly 250 U.S. servicemen in the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut on Oct. 23 of that year; the situation on the ground began to worsen. But instead of doubling down and committing more forces, he made the decision to withdraw on Feb. 7, 1984, less than four months after the barracks bombing. Reagan did not inherit this problem, but he was presented with it early in his presidency. As the situation worsened, he chose to cut his losses and leave rather than become tangled up in Lebanon. Though criticized by some at the time, Reagan was re-elected and the Lebanon issue hardly registers in the popular memory of his presidency.
The point here is not to debate the finer points of history or second-guess decisions, but rather to highlight the importance of the compatibility between military strategy and the commitment of military forces — both quantitatively and over time — to that strategy. The common theme in these two examples is a deeply intractable and complex political-military problem and the American reaction to it. In the first case, the decision was made to commit. But this commitment was made without an achievable strategy compatible with the forces the U.S. was willing to dedicate to it at the time. Indeed, at the time of Kennedy’s death, some 1,000 American advisers were slated to be withdrawn from Vietnam (this decision was secret at the time). Kennedy had concluded that committing additional U.S. forces could not solve the conflict in Vietnam. Johnson thought otherwise. Reagan recognized this same incompatibility in Lebanon. The objective of stabilizing Lebanon was a complex and dubious one at best, but in any event, it required far more troops than he was willing to commit to the problem. In other words, he did not have a strategy he thought could succeed with the commitment he was willing to make to the problem. He withdrew.
The Obama administration is now facing a similar problem. The commanding general of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has advised the White House that the current strategy is not achievable even with more troops. McChrystal’s assessment postulates a new counterinsurgency strategy but (at least the redacted version) makes no statement about how many troops would be required to execute that strategy or how long a commitment is necessary to achieve it (though these are undoubtedly figures that are part of the current internal debate within the administration).
The administration is struggling with a spectrum of problems:
The fundamental challenges of Afghanistan — rugged geography, highly localized loyalties, traditions of governance, warlordism and poor infrastructure — that defeated the Soviets, the British and Alexander the Great alike;
More recent developments that are compounding matters further: a resurgent and strengthening Taliban insurgency, the interrelated problem of Pakistan’s insurgency (though Pakistani security efforts have intensified significantly) and a political crisis following the disputed Afghan presidential election;
The ebbing of allied support and the looming withdrawal of NATO forces currently committed to the campaign (in the near future, the United States will have to commit additional forces to Afghanistan merely to keep overall troop levels constant); and
The ebbing of domestic support for the campaign and the lack of support even from Obama’s own party to put additional troops in Afghanistan.
In other words, in addition to the top-level constraints on the number of troops the U.S. can commit to and sustain in Afghanistan due to current U.S. Army and Marine deployment practices, troop commitments in Iraq and logistical considerations, Obama faces further other, domestic constraints on what is possible and sustainable. (The Soviets failed in Afghanistan with nearly 120,000 troops; it seems unlikely that the United States will be able to match that commitment.)
It is clear that some shift in strategy is necessary. To our eye, the key questions to consider in this shift are:
What will the new strategy be, and will it be obtainable?
Will the troops and resources committed to the new strategy be sufficient to achieve its objectives?
Can the commitment of troops and resources be sustained long enough to achieve the objectives?
It is too soon to assume that Obama will double down in Afghanistan, or that the strategy McChrystal has laid out can be properly resourced even if the White House chooses to pursue it. Whether such a strategy can be achieved on a timetable compatible with the already wavering will of the American people is certainly questionable.
Whether the Afghan campaign comes to be a defining part of Obama’s presidency remains to be seen. But it is increasingly clear that the impending decision regarding the strategy for the campaign and the troops committed to it will be critical to shaping the remainder of Obama’s time in the White House.
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