Eight Years Later, Coherence Still Eludes U.S. Afghanistan Policy

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Malou Innocent, foreign policy analystminnocent@cato.org:

After the better part of a decade, the United States' military effort in Afghanistan still suffers from a lack of clearly defined objectives. In pondering his next moves in the region, President Obama needs to turn back to some basic, but still unanswered questions: Who is the enemy? What are the objectives? Is counterinsurgency meant to achieve the goal of counterterrorism (beating al Qaeda), state-building (bringing stability and democracy to Afghanistan), or both? What would "victory" in Afghanistan even look like? And how will the war stay won, after the United States leaves?

Many critics of the war are confusing the most important question when it comes to the eight-year campaign in Afghanistan: not whether the war is winnable, but whether the mission constitutes a vital national security interest. From that perspective the current open-ended strategy fails.

Success in Afghanistan would hardly be guaranteed even if President Obama were to commit several hundred thousand troops and decades of armed nation-building. And in the unlikely event that we forged a stable Afghanistan, al Qaeda might simply reposition its presence into other regions of the world. It is well past time for the United States to adapt means to ends. Rather than an indefinite military mission with large numbers of U.S. troops, U.S. strategy should focus on assisting and training Afghan forces in order to limit that country's future dependence on foreign troops for security.

Committing still more U.S. personnel to Afghanistan undermines the already weak authority of Afghan leaders, interferes with the ability to deal with other security challenges, and pulls the U.S. deeper into a bloody and protracted guerilla war with no end in sight.

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