Obama Chooses the Middle Way in Afghanistan: An Initial Assessment

By: Tim Sullivan

Hopes that President Obama’s announcement last month of a 17 thousand troop plus-up in Afghanistan was simply an initial down payment on the way toward satisfying U.S. commander David McKiernan’s request for 30 thousand more combat forces have been dashed. According to officials cited in the New York Times, the the President’s long-awaited Afghanistan strategy calls for the deployment of only 4,000 more troops, who will serve as trainers and advisors to the Afghan National Security Forces, beyond the initial 17 thousand. The new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan will also feature a surge of U.S. civilian experts, along with a plan to establish “benchmarks” designed to elicit greater cooperation and accountability from the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

At the time, some commentators and analysts (myself included) had seen the 17K announcement as an encouraging move to the extent that the increased American force presence would enable U.S. troops to take steps toward prosecuting a population-centric counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy. The President instead appears to have decided upon a more limited, counterterrorism (CT)-focused approach to Afghanistan’s security challenges—a decision-making process outlined by Fred Kaplan in a recent article in Slate:

“According to close observers, the key debate in the White House is whether the United States and NATO should wage a counterinsurgency campaign—securing the Afghan population, helping to provide basic services, and thus strengthening support for the government—or whether we should devote most of our resources to going after al-Qaida terrorists directly. Obviously, any plan will wind up doing at least a bit of both; the debate is over priorities and emphasis.”

It appears likely that Obama will emphasize the latter. COIN is expensive, time-consuming, and—as even its most dedicated students will readily admit—exceedingly difficult. CT, on the other hand, involves strikes against high-value targets—in terms of blood and treasure, it’s not quite so messy, by comparison. A carefully executed hybrid of the two seems sensible enough on its face. But according to David Kilcullen, small wars guru and former COIN advisor to General David Petraeus, it may have unexpected consequences. In his recent testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kilcullen explained why such a “middle way” strategy is unlikely to work:

“Afghanistan is an independent sovereign state: why would it tolerate an approach that treated its territory as little more than a launch pad for strikes against Al Qa’ida, while doing little to alleviate poverty, institute the rule of law or improve health and education? What would be in it for Afghanistan? How would we gain the information needed for effective counterterrorism operations – much of it derived from human sources, human terrain intelligence and close-access signals intelligence – without maintaining a substantial coalition force in close contact with the local population? Why would that population cooperate with an effort which, in the absence of substantial development assistance and the creation of functioning responsive government, brought the people little but danger in return? Why would the Taliban obligingly put their insurgency on hold, if we ignored them to focus on Al Qa’ida? Wouldn’t Option B [a CT-only strategy] accelerate the loss of popular confidence among Afghans, and make the insurgency even more likely to overthrow the government? And how would we finesse our failure to honor the pledges we gave our allies and the Afghan people in the Bonn agreement, not to mention the campaign promises of a new and popular President?

The reality is that, like it or not, the short-term counterterrorism task (preventing another 9/11) can’t be separated from the long-term counterinsurgency and nation-building tasks (protecting the Afghan people and building sustainable institutions in preparation for hand-off to a viable Afghan state).

A middle option…would be even worse: it would cost almost as much as Option A [COIN], and be just as likely to fail as Option B [CT]. No, the hard fact is that however unpalatable, Option A is a hill we simply have to climb if we seek anything worthy of the name “success” in Afghanistan.”

One final encouraging note: administration officials also made clear that "this strategy is a strategy, it's not a straightjacket. It's designed to be flexible. We will re-asses as we go along." Let’s hope so.