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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