Ending the Afghan War
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The recent killing of at least sixteen Afghan villagers allegedly by a U.S. soldier has prompted condemnation from Afghan President Hamid Karzai (NYT), who has called for all foreign troops to be confined to regular bases, further complicating the international mission in Afghanistan. While such setbacks may not alter the “underlying strategic calculus of the war,” says CFR Senior Fellow Stephen Biddle, they will further strain the relationship between Presidents Barack Obama and Karzai, which may eventually reach a breaking point. On the Taliban’s announcement that it is suspending the preliminary peace talks with the United States, Biddle says it’s a tactical move designed to put some increased pressure on Washington to “sweeten the negotiations.” Biddle adds that the only solution to end the Afghan war is through a negotiated settlement.
How do you analyze these latest developments?
They are setbacks. There have been quite a few of those lately, but I don’t think they change the underlying strategic calculus of the war in any important way. If historians look back at this twenty years from now and decide that this was an important moment, it won’t be because anything fundamental about the military situation on the ground or the basic politics of the war had changed. But it might affect personal reactions by key individual leaders, especially President Hamid Karzai and President Barack Obama.
Both President Karzai and President Obama have been very frustrated with each other over the last couple of years, and over time, that builds. So far, it’s never crossed the limits of either man’s tolerance, but it has gotten close on lots of occasions, and it’s plausible to think that it eventually might, with respect to President Karzai’s announcement of his desire to have U.S. troops to be restricted to bases, for example.
What is President Obama’s view of the Afghan war today?
President Obama is ambivalent about the war for understandable reasons. He believes, and I agree with him on this, that the United States has a real but limited interest and stakes in Afghanistan. When you have a real interest, you want to do something about it. This is not World War II and Nazi Germany all over again. The natural instinct of most people is to pursue real but limited ends. The problem which has led to so much of the ambivalence on the part of Obama and the White House has been that you can’t do that for Afghanistan.
So what are the options then?
You can overspend and pay more than the stake is worth but then have a reasonable chance of securing it. Certainly the president believes that the military, especially since General Stanley A. McChrystal [former top commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan] took command, has been proposing that. Or you can under-spend what the stake is worth, and get nothing at all.
When you try to do something to hit a reasonable centrism, you end up with a big risk of a more expensive version of nothing. When Obama took office, he was committed to reinforcement; whether he felt deeply about the Afghan war is hard to say, but he campaigned on the basis of Afghanistan being “the good war” and needing reinforcements. My suspicion is that he was ready to write a blank check to the military to do this job right and get it off his desk, right after he took his office. He had a quick review and then essentially gave the Afghanistan commander, General David McKiernan, what General McKiernan had asked for. The trouble was that General McKiernan had self-censored his troop request and asked for a lot less than what I think he felt he really needed (25,000-30,000), because he felt that was all the market would bear. He was misreading the market badly.
The inadequacy of the McKiernan request became quite apparent when McChrystal took over and when McChrystal then asked for what he thought was actually necessary, the White House felt like they had been whipsawed.