As the administration works to formulate a new strategy for
Afghanistan, popular and elite support appears to be dropping off and a
string of attacks makes the stakes all too clear.
Dichotomies such as counter-insurgency versus counterterrorism, double down or fold,
are useful ways to try to force prioritization rather than allow
inertia to set strategy. However, they preclude options that would
vary the approach based on the region. Another, still overly simple,
way to look at Afghanistan is by comparing possible end states.
Colombia: The
U.S. has had mixed success is strengthening the government of Colombia
and cracking down on cocaine cultivation. However, mirroring Colombia's achievements would still be a boon to Afghanistan while
still being a more realistic end-state than the mountainous and
decentralized democracy of Switzerland. Getting to Colombia in the
mid-term would likely require a counterinsurgency approach and a
substantial increase in resources and improvements in governance.
Vietnam: Joshua Kurlantzick raises Vietnam as a positive model of an end state.
Namely after the withdrawal and the fall of South Vietnam, while the
country is still authoritarian, the U.S. enjoys a close relationship
with that country and the long-feared domino effect never occurred.
Whether a successor of the current government or the Taliban is in
charge, the question of terrorist havens must be addressed. However,
that issues is by no means limited to Afghanistan.
Pakistan: Through
the use of Predator drones support by good intel, the U.S. has been
quite successful at targeting Al Qaeda leadership without a large scale
military presence on the ground. Austin Long discusses how such an approach could be applied in Afghanistan (via Michael Cohen).
On the one hand, civilian casualties from drone strike do raise
tensions, on the other, many of the civilian deaths from airstrikes
were a result of missiles and bombs being used to provide support to
U.S. combat troops. The experience in Pakistan shows that these target
strikes alone will not defeat the Taliban, but may achieve the narrower
objective of crippling Al Qaeda. Implementing this strategy in the
short-term should be manageable, but the sustainability, either in
Afghanistan or Pakistan, is an open question.
Lebanon: According to Scott Wilson, one train of thought emerging in the Administration is that we attempt to weaken but not destroy the Taliban.
The analogy would be Hezbollah, which controls a portion of Lebanon and
participates in its government as a minority party. There is a risk
that allowing this would destabilize Pakistan, but on the other hand
the relationship between Pakistan and the Taliban has often been far
friendlier than the relationship between Hezbollah and Israel. Such an
approach could be population-centric in government strongholds while
reserving the counter-terrorism for any Al Qaeda activity in the
remainder of the country.
Afghanistan's Past: A way to pursue counter-insurgency with less troops would be to exclusively defend the cities. As Matt Yglesias notes, this approach in some way mirrors the Soviet approach in the latter stages of their occupation,
though of course would not seek to emulate many soviet methods. The
Soviet approach may be a subset of the Lebanon approach, the difference
would be that a cities approach would pick key population centers
nation-wide while a more Lebanon-like approach may abandon some larger
population centers in Taliban sympathizing territory while protecting
smaller but more sympathetic locales.
Successful pursuit of a
strategy in a hostile environment typically requires providing a
sufficient level of resources and sacrificing desirable objects that
are not necessary for success. More ambitious approaches require far
more resources which will further tax the U.S. economy. Less ambitious
approaches, up to and including withdrawal, will not accomplish
everything we would like to see happen in Afghanistan, but may prove
the most efficient way to advance U.S. interests and values. As the Status of Forces agreement in Iraq showed, these choices will be further limited by what the local politicians and population will support, but for such a negotiation to be practical we need to first determine what we are shooting for.
While determining the cost in casualties of any of these strategies is quite difficult, the cost in dollars is easier to estimate. So, reader, do you think this is a good starting list? Are there any other end-states to be considered?
This post is also available at ameasureofsecurity.org and Next America.
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