The White House began its review of the Afghan war strategy in earnest Tuesday, with senior administration officials meeting via videoconference with the top commander in Kabul, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, at the start of what could be weeks of debate over whether to send thousands of reinforcements. White House officials said President Barack Obama will join in the discussions Wednesday, when he is expected to meet with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, among other top officials.
The White House unexpectedly decided to review its strategy in Afghanistan after a series of recent setbacks in the war, including allegations of fraud following last month's presidential elections and surging violence throughout the country. It begins just days after Gen. McChrystal submitted his request for as many as 40,000 additional troops to the Pentagon. Some in the administration, notably Mr. Biden, have argued for a smaller military footprint and a tighter focus on counterterrorism as the best way forward. Advocates of such a shift point to the effective use of Predator drone strikes to kill Taliban leaders in Pakistan...
More at The Wall Street Journal.
Comments
Tequila:
I totally agree -- my point was based on the CATO / Ted Galen Carpenter long standing position on US Forces in Korea from 1980 until the late 90s.
No question that Korea -- and thus our perceived need to be there -- changed mightily in the 1990s. Changes there and internationally have radically modified the parameters from conditions that prevailed earlier. Now we have no rational need to be there other than so we can say we are in an I believe vain attempt to influence things in the Far East. I rarely agree with Michael Lind on much but he's got <a href=http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2009/end_pax_americana_…; The End of Pax Americana (LINK)</a> about right.
From 1953 until about 1963, we were there to keep the North from heading South and had the strength present to make that stick. From then until 1973, the issue was in transition. From 1973 forward, the object was to restrain the South.
CATO came into existence in the late 70s and adopted their 'out of Korea' position in the early 80s when I was still a member /supporter. They may have had a good idea but their stated rationale was exactly backwards.
For Korea, by 1993, yet more change occurred as did still more in 2003 -- Probably proving correct the idea that 3 is the most prominent number which generates everything on earth according to Taoism...
Ken, I think things have changed radically in RoK due to the advent of democracy and the corresponding decline in power and influence of the military high command.
The RoK nowadays, despite the recent change of government, definitely does not want to go north. Beyond the remarkable political costs that incur upon launching a conscript army into a bloody war in a quite competitive democracy as RoK has, the cost of reabsorbing a place as dysfunctional as North Korea would be one their economy could not absorb. 1997 and 2009 inflicted quite massive shocks on South Korea which made clear just how vulnerable their economy can be, though also how resilient it is, but I doubt they are in any hurry to cripple it for years through an invasion/occupation/rebuilding of North Korea.
Information superiority has been lost by the lack of a coherent, consistent and thoughtful mission statement by our national command authority. Our lack of purpose is in direct contrast to the enemys decisive intent to kill, maim and embarrass our soldiers, nation and effort. Additionally, the lack of purposeful direction or perception of uncertainty precipitates target audience resistance to US message themes.
The bottom line up front is that information superiority cannot be achieved if there is not a unified dependable message established by national leaders.
Seaworthy:
Nope, not kidding at all. In addition to the 50 and 52 trips to the land of the morning calm for fun and frolic with 1MarDiv, I had two peacetime Army tours there in 59 and 75. They were quite educational -- if one stayed alert and paid attention. Consider the true deterrent power on the North of one quite understrength Division that could be very easily and totally bypassed. Consider the deterrent power on the South of a US four star being 'in charge' of Peninsular defense...
Japan is going to do what Japan is going to do -- and Korea is but a minor concern to them -- and Japan will do it on their schedule. They also have not forgotten and will not forget that they owe us one. Patient folks, they. That's why they're nudging us out the door in both the main islands and in Oki, we were never welcome but they think, probably correctly, they're in good enough shape to let the umbrella be stowed. With all that entails. Thus I suspect the Chinese look at it as I do. Not 'if;' when...
China has numerous grave concerns; Japan with nukes would be a minor concern that brought forth massive and loud wails of protest -- but I seriously doubt it would be a grave concern to them. Numbers count and Mandarins know that. Warheads, people or SDRs...
I also strongly doubt you'll have to worry about top down in the 'Stan.
Ken White - Out of curiosity you were kidding when you mentioned our troops stationed on the Korean Peninsula, below the 38th, were there to keep the S. Koreans from going north - weren't you? :)
Were we to withdrawa from Korea, it would surely lead Japan toward a military buildup that might include nuclear weapons. Which in turn would be of grave concern to China.
That asked, back to the topic at hand concerning Afghanistan. Let's hope it isn't nation building from the top down again, as our record in doing so is quite dismal.
Eric Price:
All those questions were asked prior to November 2001. The then Decider elected to ignore the answers and go anyway with an eye to some payback AND to do what was recently reaffirmed by the current Administration:<blockquote>"...the strategic ends as outlined in the administrations strategic review of March 2009, which stated that the "core goal of the U.S. must be to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan"</blockquote>As you say one can argue the merits of that idea and that apparently is being done in many places.
The folks from CATO are Libertarians, great people and I agree with many of their positions. On foreign affairs and defense, not so much -- they're borderline isolationist and I'm afraid those days are gone. They long advocated returning the troops in Korea to the US on the grounds that the South could take care of itself. True -- but CATO completely missed the point that those troops were not there to keep the North from coming South; they were there to keep the South from going North. They tend to miss little nuances like that in their position papers. Insular views will do that...
That said, those questions are as valid today as they were in 2001. I think the answer's going to be pretty much the same as it was then. We'll see.
Despite some impatience with the delay, perhaps taking a step back is in fact the right approach. Is counterinsurgency really the right strategy for Afghanistan? It might be, were we fighting an insurgency.
The CATO institute released a white paper today entitled <i>Escaping the "Graveyard of Empires": A Strategy to Exit Afghanistan</i> located <a href="http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10533" target="_blank">here</a>. The author's argument, is as follows, quoting from the summary:
<i>"Given the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan, a definitive, conventional "victory" is not a realistic option. Denying a sanctuary to terrorists who seek to attack the United States does not require Washington to pacify the entire country, eradicate its opium fields, or sustain a long-term military presence in Central Asia. From the sky, U.S. unmanned aerial vehicles can monitor villages, training camps, and insurgent compounds. On the ground, the United States can retain a small number of covert operatives for intelligence gathering and discrete operations against specific targets, as well as an additional small group of advisers to train Afghan police and military forces. The United States should withdraw most of its forces from Afghanistan within the next 12 to 18 months and treat al Qaeda's presence in the region as a chronic, but manageable, problem.
"Washington needs to narrow its objectives to three critical tasks:
"Security. Support, rather than supplant, indigenous security efforts by training and assisting the Afghan national army and police and, where appropriate, paying off or otherwise co-opting regional militias...
"Intelligence and Regional Relations. Sustain intelligence operations in the region through aerial surveillance, covert operations, and ongoing intelligence-sharing with the Afghan and Pakistani governments...[and s]eek cordial relations with all of Afghanistan's neighbors, particularly Russia and Iran...
"Drugs. Dial back an opium eradication policy to one that solely targets drug cartels affiliated with insurgents rather than one that targets all traffickers, including poor local farmers."</i>
The body of the paper asks important questions about the current strategy and its link to our actual national objectives and contains several key insights as to why leaving might be better than staying. Their primary argument is that we don't understand that our goals in Afghanistan are not achievable, and that our goals arent consistent with our overall aim to make the U.S. more safe from the threat of terrorism. I would add that we fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the conflict in Afghanistan as well.
We are not fighting against an insurgency in Afghanistan, although we are attempting to employ a counterinsurgency approach. We are not talking about "an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and armed conflict" as insurgency is defined in Joint Publication 1-02. Instead, we are facing that fuzzier conflict described in the very first chapter of FM 3-24, <i>Counterinsurgency</i>, the "resistance movements, where indigenous elements seek to expel or overthrow what they perceive to be a foreign or occupation government." There is no issue of perception regarding our role in the country - we are, in fact, an occupying force. As such, the government is seen by the largely xenophobic Afghan populace as our government instead of theirs. Therefore, any 'insurgency' against the government is really a proxy for attacks against the U.S.
The authors of the CATO Institute white paper dont argue the point about whether this is an insurgency or not, but I think that the reasoning behind their arguments and mine is the same. Namely, that we simply did not understand the culture in which we would be operating when we started this effort. And as the war has progressed, we've moved from the very achievable goal of striking back at those who attacked on 9/11 to socio-cultural reforms that are beyond our grasp.
Weve given our commanders and troops on the ground tools to better understand the culture in which they are operating. This is the problem. Ive had two tours in Iraq and even without HTS team, it hasnt been that difficult to sort out whos who and how to interact at the tactical level. If there is a real area where cultural understanding is lacking, it is at the policy level. A basic understanding of the history of the region, and the history of the Afghan culture in particular, and culture in general, would make clear that the concept of establishing centralized government from the top down and the imposition of our own cultural values regarding gender rights, rule of law, etc. was untenable from the start. It is one thing to try and foster these ideals through international relations (trade, diplomacy, mil-to-mil contact, etc.). To think that we could achieve those ends through direct intervention, in an area with "[m]any tribes living in rural, isolated, and sparsely populated provinces have little interest cooperating with "foreigners," a relative term considering the limited contact many have with their countrys own central government" seems the height of folly. Would we react any differently.
One can argue whether we can meet the strategic ends as outlined in the administrations strategic review of March 2009, which stated that the "core goal of the U.S. must be to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan" is possible using only advisors, special operations forces, and drones, an approach put forward in this paper and in many recent discussions on the milblogs. But that isn't the only question, or even necessarily the most important one.
The authors of this paper, at least, seem to be asking the right, if hard, questions.