No Substitute for Victory - William Kristol and Frederick W. Kagan, Weekly Standard opinion.

Can the United States win the war in Afghanistan? The antiwar left has long held the war is unwinnable. Now some conservatives are arguing that President Obama's weakness and indecision forecast American failure- - and that, if we're going to fail, we should just get out now. We would be the last to defend Obama's indefensible dithering. But the war in Afghanistan remains both winnable and worth winning - even with Obama as president. And no form of withdrawal or defeat is consistent with safeguarding key American interests in a volatile and dangerous region of the world.

President Obama's apparent reluctance to pursue the fight does not inspire confidence. But he did send General Stanley McChrystal to take command, along with 21,000 additional troops. Despite efforts by political operatives around the president to push him toward withdrawal now, the president may yet do the right thing - soon, please! - and provide General McChrystal with the forces he needs to pursue decisive operations in 2010. And the president might put real effort into explaining his decision and the war's importance to the American people. In any case, to the extent the administration doesn't seem sufficiently stalwart or —to provide those in the field the resources they need, a loyal opposition should press the administration to do the right thing, rather than relieving it of its responsibilities by preemptively deciding it won't...

More at The Weekly Standard.

Afghan Tribes to the Rescue? - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

While military officers wait for President Obama to conclude his agonizingly slow review of Afghanistan policy, they've been reading a paper by an Army Special Forces operative arguing that the only hope for success in that country is to work with tribal leaders. This tribal approach has widespread support, in principle. The problem is that, in practice, the United States has often moved in the opposite direction in recent years. Rather than supporting tribal leaders, American policies have sometimes had the effect of undermining their ability to stand up to the Taliban.

The paper by Maj. Jim Gant, "One Tribe at a Time," has been spinning around the Internet for a month. It contends that in an Afghanistan that has never had a strong central government, "nothing else will work" than a decentralized, bottom-up approach. "We must support the tribal system because it is the single, unchanging political, social and cultural reality in Afghan society," he insists. Gant recounts his experience leading a Special Forces "A-team" in Konar province in 2003. His soldiers briefly became part of the Pashtun tribal family, fighting alongside a local leader whose followers straddled the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. It's a passionate story that evokes an Afghan warrior culture that has enticed foreign adventurers for 150 years...

More at The Washington Post.

As Afghans Resist Taliban, US Spurs Rise of Militias - Dexter Filkens, New York Times.

American and Afghan officials have begun helping a number of anti-Taliban militias that have independently taken up arms against insurgents in several parts of Afghanistan, prompting hopes of a large-scale tribal rebellion against the Taliban. The emergence of the militias, which took some leaders in Kabul by surprise, has so encouraged the American and Afghan officials that they are planning to spur the growth of similar armed groups across the Taliban heartland in the southern and eastern parts of the country.

The American and Afghan officials say they are hoping the plan, called the Community Defense Initiative, will bring together thousands of gunmen to protect their neighborhoods from Taliban insurgents. Already there are hundreds of Afghans who are acting on their own against the Taliban, officials say. The endeavor represents one of the most ambitious - and one of the riskiest - plans for regaining the initiative against the Taliban, who are fighting more vigorously than at any time since 2001. By harnessing the militias, American and Afghan officials hope to rapidly increase the number of Afghans fighting the Taliban...

More at The New York Times.

Via Kings of War and Colonel Phil Ridderhof, USMC, (H/T to both) - The UK's Joint Doctrine Publication (JDP) 3-40: Security and Stabilisation: The Military Contribution.

JDP 3-40 provides joint, operational level doctrine for the military contribution to stabilisation.

This will usually take place during or immediately following conflict and in the context of weak or failed states that face a range of challenges to governmental authority that range from criminality to insurgency.

JDP 3-40 identifies the general priorities for stabilising failed or failing states, and determines the nature, level, principles and priorities that govern the UK military contribution and the guidelines governing transition to civilian and host nation control.

Download Joint Doctrine Publication (JDP) 3-40: Security and Stabilisation: The Military Contribution.

Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) What happens when the U.S. and Pakistan split up?

2) America's Asian allies examine their options.

What happens when the U.S. and Pakistan split up?

How close is the U.S.-Pakistan security relationship to a break-up? Self-interest, not affection, seems to keep the partnership going. That's fine until a better arrangement for one side comes along or emotion overrides logic. An even larger U.S. military expedition in Afghanistan will be at the mercy of this fragile bond.

The reasons for cooperation are well known. The United States could not prosecute its war in Afghanistan without access through Pakistan. Washington hopes the Pakistani government will deliver up more al Qaeda terror suspects to join Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The U.S. engages Pakistan on a variety of levels to keep Pakistan's nuclear weapons stockpile under control. Indeed, notable U.S. analysts such as Stephen Biddle and Steve Coll believe that stabilizing Pakistan is the best justification for continuing the U.S. military campaign in Afghanistan.

For its part, Pakistan counts on the United States to moderate its friction with India. More recently Pakistan has exploited its intelligence and military connection to the U.S. to target the Islamists at war with Pakistan's government. But Pakistan's enduring interest in America seems mostly to be about money.

On Nov. 15 the Los Angeles Times reported on the hundreds of millions of dollars the Central Intelligence Agency has paid Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)-- Pakistan's powerful internal intelligence agency-- since 2001. The article reported that in addition to "bankrolling the ISI's budget," the CIA paid the agency $10 million for high-ranking al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah and $25 million for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. According to the article, U.S. intelligence officers delivered many more brief cases stuffed with money to ISI officials in exchange for lower-ranking al Qaeda personnel.

These sums are little more than a rounding error for the U.S. intelligence community and most Americans would consider it money well spent. But it makes one wonder what kind of an ally Pakistan really is. Would a CIA officer need to deliver a thick cash-stuffed briefcase to a British, Canadian, Australian, or South Korean intelligence officer in order to gain custody of a terror suspect?

The article also discusses another well-known aspect of the ISI, namely that there are really two such agencies. The first eagerly cooperates with the CIA when the targets are the Pakistani Taliban who are fighting the ISI and the rest of the Pakistani government. Meanwhile the other ISI, off-limits to the CIA, supports the Afghan Taliban in its fight against U.S. troops.

In spite of the mutual dependence, the countries seem one step from a break-up. In her recent visit to Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton openly said what most Americans are thinking, that it is "hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they [al Qaeda's top leaders] are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to." Is Pakistan deliberately keeping the al Qaeda issue unresolved and the Afghan Taliban in the field in order to keep the U.S. aid pipeline open? Whether valid or not, such a perception risks a relationship-ending backlash.

On the other side, the United States is intensely unpopular in Pakistan. President Asif Ali Zardari's popularity has collapsed over concerns about corruption, ineffectiveness, and the view that Zardari cooperates too eagerly with U.S. policies.

Despite the anger and lack of trust on both sides, the relationship struggles on. Neither side wants a break-up. But neither side controls all of the emotions in play. Something to consider as more U.S. soldiers fly over Pakistan into Afghanistan.

America's Asian allies examine their options

This week the world focused on Asia as leaders from the Americas and Asia attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Singapore. President Barack Obama's three-day tour of China, plus a stop in South Korea, followed.

Obama began his trip in Japan, leaving the dispute over where to base U.S. Marine Corps helicopters on Okinawa unresolved. The dispute only worsened after Obama departed when Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama declared the working group appointed to resolve the dispute "meaningless."

Obama and Hatoyama both described the U.S.-Japan defense alliance as crucial. The arrangement has permitted Japan to spend less than one percent of its economic output on defense and to require a similarly trivial military manpower commitment from its population. A good deal for Japan, requiring only that its leaders occasionally tamp down grumbling from those Japanese who have to endure living next to U.S. military bases.

What would happen to Japanese defense planning if domestic politics no longer permit this arrangement? Japan would need to formulate alternative defense strategies if its relationship with the U.S. were to wither in the years ahead.

Perhaps Japanese defense planners are already thinking ahead. On Nov. 9 India's defense minister arrived in Tokyo for a three-day meeting on defense cooperation. The ministers focused on maritime security and the defense of sea lines of communication. There was no mention of any input from the U.S. Navy.

In May 2009, the Australian government released a defense white paper that described its planning assumptions through the year 2030. Chapter Four of the white paper acknowledged the necessity of the U.S.-Australian defense alliance. Yet the chapter also portrayed a future with the United States diminished and distracted and China becoming "the strongest Asian military power, by a considerable margin." The white paper recommended a very costly build-up in Australia's military power and much more direct military coordination with other powers in the region.

Finally, just to make sure all of its positions are fully hedged, India just completed a two-day meeting with Iran's foreign minister to arrange joint army training, a naval patrol exercise in the Arabian Gulf, and cooperation on space satellite launches.

In the past, security planning in the Pacific region functioned on a "hub and spoke" system, with the hub being U.S. Pacific Command headquarters in Hawaii and the spokes being America's defense relationships throughout the region. The United States has usually encouraged a more Europe-like multilateral security arrangement in Asia. This will very likely happen, but in ways that could leave the U.S. on the outside looking in.

U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Workshop Videos - Watch the presentations from the COIN Center's COIN Leaders Workshop held 27 - 29 October 2009. Includes a COIN Center overview, COIN doctrine, urban simulation, COIN lessons learned from OIF and OEF, the Soviet approach to COIN and border operations in Afghanistan, security architecture and COIN in Pakistan's tribal belt, why Pakistan is secure, Air Force Special Operations Command overview and an address by General Jim Mattis, Commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command.

West Point's Combating Terrorism Center's CTC Sentinel - The November 2009 issue includes the following articles: Lashkar-i-Tayyiba: One Year After Mumbai, Success of the Meta-Narrative: How Jihadists Maintain Legitimacy, AQIM and the Growth of International Investment in North Africa, Allah's Domestic Containment and Regional Expansion Strategies, Jihadist Radicalization and the 2004 Madrid Bombing Network, The Past and Future of Deobandi Islam, Maintaining the Message: How Jihadists Have Adapted to Web Disruptions, and Recent Highlights in Terrorist Activity.

On the Knife's Edge: Yemen's Instability and the Threat to American Interests - Read this new Center for a New American Security policy brief by Andrew Exum and Richard Fontaine. This brief addresses the deteriorating situation in Yemen, which includes a growing al-Qaeda presence, a separatist movement in the South, and an active insurgency in the North, and the authors' opinion that the situation demands immediate U.S. attention.

New DoD Social Media Hub - Right now mostly feel good stuff and warnings - "How to Avoid Internet Coal in Your Stocking" is an example. That said and possibly of good use is the site's registry of DoD social media sites. RUMINT has it that the new DoD social media policy may make its debut here in the near future -- or not. Will check back and file a full report.

David Petraeus For D.C. Metro Police Chief - On the lighter side, or maybe not - might be a "progressive" and great idea - Spencer Ackerman spins off a Washington Times op-ed "lavishing praise on the greatest Army officer of his generation for his farsightedness in demonstrating how a thorough security presence/posture combined with bolstered support for a host nation's institutions of governance and rigorous subsidization of the tools for economic prosperity leads to a situation where a community comes "together to oppose and to confront the extremists."" Salinas, CA, seems to think this type of approach has merit.

Positive Petraeus Lessons - Mary Claire Kendall, Washington Times opinion.

The essence of counterinsurgency strategy (COIN), integral to defeating Sept. 11, 2001-type extremists infecting various Middle East countries, is building confidence among the population. The key is working hand-in-glove with the respective military and civilian authorities to help stabilize their combustible nations so they might be free of the specter of extremist violence, thereby enabling the buildup of family, community and nation, according to each culture's unique and beautiful character. This new, irregular warfare is fought largely on human terrain, about which Gen. David H. Petraeus has written in the COIN bible, aka "FM 3-24" - Field Manual 3-24.

He recently affirmed for me during the American Veterans Center conference that official Washington - far from bloviating when asserting what they would do to win these wars - "gets it" on the fundamentals of COIN and that it is reflected in Situation Room deliberations on Afghanistan. Fortunately, given the high stakes, especially vis-a-vis nuclear Pakistan, when it comes to executing COIN - not just bloviating, er, talking about it - Gen. Petraeus is an impresario...

More at The Washington Times.

The massacre at Fort Hood is a reminder that the War on Terror is not fought just in south Afghanistan or Mosul. It is a global war also fought in an office building inside a military base in Texas. Many counter-terror analysts focus on the Pakistan connection and preventing The Big One that could top 9/11. But the real problem may well be the self-motivated "small ball" players like Major Hasan or a future disciple of DC Sniper John Allen Muhammad. "Small ball" terrorism won't have the economic, political, or strategic impact that 9/11 did. But if there is enough of it, the public will eventually find political leadership that will provide an adequate response to the problem.

What should be that response? How should Western societies respond to the generalized problem of terrorism, especially the domestic variety? Constitutional law professor and former National Security Council staffer Philip Bobbitt attempted to provide a comprehensive answer in his grandly ambitious book Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-first Century. In a message that ruffled feathers on every point on the political spectrum, Bobbitt argued that in order to defend Western values of liberty and the rule of law, both domestic and international law would need to become more muscular. Bobbitt rejected that there is a trade-off between civil liberties and government power. In a future world of "market-state terrorism" he fears we are headed to, Bobbitt argued that more law authorizing more surveillance and more foreign intervention would be the only way to protect basic liberties.

After an initial flurry of attention, Terror and Consent seems to have been shelved to collect dust. Without another 9/11 or even any small ball terrorism inside the U.S., no one has had any need for Bobbitt's theories.

Major Hasan's case may reintroduce us to Terror and Consent. Many want to know why the electronic surveillance over Hasan was not used to stop him in advance of his rampage. A fair question. Are there other Major Hasans who have similarly self-radicalized and are preparing to strike? Or about to self-radicalize even if they don't know it yet? Is there a government agency responsible for monitoring and preventing this? If so, what should be an acceptable level of false positive identifications and apprehensions?

Bobbitt attempted to address these and other questions in a dense and theoretical way. But maybe it won't be just theory for much longer.

Counterinsurgency: The Challenge for NATO Strategy and Operations (250 pages - pdf). Produced by the NATO Defense College and edited by Dr. Christopher Schnaubelt, this document includes an introduction and 11 chapters covering NATO's COIN challenges and implications, lessons from Afghanistan, hybrid adversaries, balancing civil-military operations, measures of effectiveness, local security forces in Afghanistan, NATO special forces in Afghanistan, police training in Afghanistan, and COIN foreign assistance.

Mr. Obama's Task - New York Times editorial.

There is no doubt that the prospects for success in Afghanistan are so bleak right now because former President George W. Bush failed for seven long years to invest the necessary troops, resources or attention to the war. But it is now President Obama's war, and the American people are waiting for him to explain his goals and his strategy. Mr. Obama was right to conduct a sober, systematic review of his options. We all know what happens when a president sends tens of thousands of Americans to war based on flawed information, gut reactions and gauzy notions of success. But the political reality is that the longer Mr. Obama waits, the more indecisive he seems and the more constrained his options appear.

It has been more than eight months since Mr. Obama first announced his strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, warning Americans that, for them, the border between the two - where Taliban and Qaeda forces have found safe haven - is "the most dangerous place in the world." And it has been more than a month since his top general in Afghanistan asked for 40,000 more troops, warning that "failure to gain the initiative" over the next year could make it impossible to defeat the Taliban. Americans are deeply anxious about the war. As the debate among his advisers has dragged on, and became increasingly public, many are asking whether the conflict is necessary or already a lost cause. Democratic leaders are among the loudest questioners.

It has become a cliché in Washington that there are only bad choices in Afghanistan. But it seems clear that this is not the time for a precipitous withdrawal, nor can the United States cling to the status quo while the Taliban gains ever more territory and more power. To move forward, Mr. Obama needs to explain the stakes for this country, the extent of the military commitment, the likely cost in lives and treasure and his definition of success...

Much more at The New York Times.

Debate Shifts to Afghan Exit Plan - Peter Spiegel and Yochi J. Dreazen, Wall Street Journal.

President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have turned the focus of Afghan war planning toward an exit strategy, publicly declaring that the US and its allies can't send additional troops without a plan for getting them out. The shift has unnerved some US and foreign officials, who say that planning a pullout now - with or without a specific timetable - encourages the Taliban to wait out foreign forces and exacerbates fears in the region that the US isn't fully committed to their security. "It's not a good idea," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D., Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "When the area has been stabilized...then it's time to go home. But to set up a timetable for people in that neck of the woods, they'll just wait us out," said Rep. Skelton, a prominent supporter of proposals by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Kabul, to send more troops for a counterinsurgency campaign.

Mr. Obama isn't asking for the firm, publicly declared handover dates in Afghanistan that were the feature of early Iraq war plans, according to senior administration and military officials. Instead, the officials said, the administration wants the Pentagon to identify key milestones for Afghanistan to meet, in its governance and the capability of its security forces, and then give a rough sense of when each objective is likely to be achieved. Reaching these goals would allow the US role to shift away from direct combat, allowing troop levels to decline...

Much more at The Wall Street Journal.