By Christian Brose

When it comes to the reporting C.J. Chivers is doing from Afghanistan, I'm with Tom Ricks: The guy is indispensable -- a fearless correspondent and a masterful writer, with sound judgment to match. Which is all the more reason I was so puzzled reading his front-page piece in the New York Times today:

Insurgents in Afghanistan, fighting from some of the poorest and most remote regions on earth, have managed for years to maintain an intensive guerrilla war against materially superior American and Afghan forces.

Arms and ordnance collected from dead insurgents hint at one possible reason: Of 30 rifle magazines recently taken from insurgents’ corpses, at least 17 contained cartridges, or rounds, identical to ammunition the United States had provided to Afghan government forces, according to an examination of ammunition markings by The New York Times and interviews with American officers and arms dealers.

The presence of this ammunition among the dead in the Korangal Valley, an area of often fierce fighting near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, strongly suggests that munitions procured by the Pentagon have leaked from Afghan forces for use against American troops.

Parsing the media's coverage of national security is more Peter Feaver's domain than mine, but "stongly suggests"? We're talking about 17 rifle magazines here, and even then, only some individual rounds of ammunition within them. Couldn't this strongly suggest, I don't know, maybe that of the hundreds and hundreds of Afghan army and police forces killed over the past few years, the Taliban has made off with some of their U.S.-provided ammunition? After all, they are both using the same model of weapon.

I'm not saying it's impossible that Afghan forces somewhere are leaking their American munitions to the Taliban. I'd almost be surprised if some of them weren't. Still, this seems like an unbelievably small set of data from which to draw such strong conlcusions about one explanation, when a host of others are equally plausible, if not more so.

By Peter Feaver

I have not done a scientific sample of immediate blog reaction (if that isn't an oxymoron) to President Obama's decision to replace battlefield commanders in Afghanistan, and my initial impression is that there is a subtle but discernible partisan/ideological divide in the responses. Republicans/conservatives/pro-war-types have generally applauded or at least provisionally endorsed the decision (see, for example, Shadow colleague Tom Mahnken or the several thoughtful reactions over at the Weekly Standard), while Democrats/liberals/anti-war-types have generally expressed skepticism or worse (this is how I read the commentary over at Daily Kos or Dan Froomkin's take). This calls to mind (at least for me) a concern I have had for some time: the hardest job regarding the war in Afghanistan may be preserving public support for continuing it.

We (meaning the Bush Administration) long struggled with bringing the Baghdad and the Washington clocks into synch with each other. The Baghdad clock ran much slower than the Washington clock, meaning that progress in Baghdad would be slower than American domestic politics demanded. Of course, in 2006 the two-clocks problem got much, much worse when the situation was actually deteriorating in both capitals -- not just "too-slow" progress but a downward spiral. Yet even in 2007, after the shift in strategy and resources known as the "surge" offered the prospect of reversing the spiral in Baghdad, time was running off the DC clock so fast that the entire project hung in the balance -- arguably in the hands of a few Republican Senators who were wavering between continuing to support the Bush-Petraeus-Crocker surge effort or joining Democrats and stopping the surge so as to "end this war."

By my calculation, the Washington clock on Afghanistan still has more time on it than the clock had on Iraq during the 2006-2007 period. But the situation is in some respects more difficult now because, (1) the Kabul clock may be running even more slowly than the Baghdad clock was running (in part because the situation in Pakistan has been deteriorating so rapidly), and (2) the clocks in London, Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere matter more for the war in Afghanistan than they did in Iraq, and they are running out of time very rapidly indeed.

The leadership change buys Obama some time (it adds more time on the clock) because it makes plausible the "let's wait and see if the new guy can do something" argument. But it also subtly speeds up the clock because it draws attention to the dire situation ("if the situation weren't so dire, would he be taking such a dramatic step?"). Like changing coaches in mid-season, it is a gamble -- a worthy gamble and, the more I read about it, the more I think it was the right gamble, but a gamble nonetheless.

Which brings us back to the reaction to Obama's military command shake-up. He may be inching towards that awkward position of finding that the chattering class from across the aisle increasingly shows more support for his war policies than does his base counterpart. Some of the same groups that wanted to end rather than win the war in Iraq are now starting to lobby to end rather than win the war in Afghanistan. In so doing, they are increasingly seeing Obama as the problem not the solution, and they are willing to work against him on these issues. That is an indication that Obama, to his great credit, seems to be making war decisions on Afghanistan and Iraq based primarily on his team's assessment of the facts on the ground, rather than on what will serve partisan political interests. 

But it does complicate the job of building and preserving public support to continue the war -- a job that is inescapably political. Obama has the rhetorical gifts and political strength to build that political support, but it will require expending time and political capital on that effort. And, if my read of the chattering class' mood is correct, it will also require that he swim against the currents in his own party.

By Peter Feaver

I have three quick takes on the surprising news that General McKiernan, the senior U.S. military officer commanding operations in Afghanistan, has been relieved of his command

Is this proper? Absolutely. So far, the Obama administration has shown very well-tuned sensibilities to civil-military relations, and this move is no exception. It is absolutely proper for the commander-in-chief to relieve military commanders whenever he (or his chain of command) has lost confidence in them. I think the Bush administration would have been well-advised to do more of this and sooner. From the point of view of civil-military relations theory, and based on what we know so far (which is, admittedly, not much) this seems to be a textbook operation. Even the gracious words that Secretary Gates had for McKiernan, who by all accounts is a decent and honorable person who deserves the nation's gratitude for his long and noble service, were proper.

Is this fair? Possibly not. Initial reports do not indicate that McKiernan was a key stumbling block nor the reason that the situation in Afghanistan has been unraveling. Put it this way: compared to General Casey, who was given much more rope and who was not so much relieved of duty as promoted upstairs to the top post in the Army, or compared to Admiral Fallon who became notorious before he resigned, McKiernan seems to be getting a fairly quick hook. Casey actively sought to block the new surge strategy, and Fallon repeatedly told reporters and others that he saw it as his role to thwart administration policy. There are no such reports about McKiernan (though they may emerge).

Is this the right decision? Too soon to tell. While there are undoubtedly command problems in Afghanistan, the most egregious problems are on the NATO side, not within the U.S. structure. Evidently, McKiernan had lost the confidence of his superior, General Petraeus, and that by itself is both grounds for his dismissal and reason to believe that anyone who comes after him and has Petraeus' confidence will do better. But, as Tom Ricks suggests, this move only makes sense if it is in conjunction with other moves that would imply a more comprehensive strategic shift. Whether this move will turn out to be the right one depends on how all these other shoes drop, and that is not certain at this point.

One thing is certain: the senior military leadership have been put on notice. Spanning the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama administration, Gates has now relieved quite a few generals for cause -- more than any post-Cold War defense leader.

By Peter Feaver

A quick follow-up to my earlier post about the difficulty of exerting leverage over allies. A recent Washington Post story about President Obama's efforts to recalibrate the relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai reminds me of four additional lessons that pertain to this corner of statecraft.

First, presidents are the Diplomat-in-Chief, and this leads inevitably, for better or for worse, to "personal diplomacy." Candidate Bush criticized President Clinton for over-personalizing diplomacy, especially with regard to Yasir Arafat. And then over the course of his tenure, Bush followed similarly personalized diplomacy, especially with allies (cf. Blair, Merkel, Howard, Musharraf, Karzai, and the various Iraqi leaders). Obama arrives with the same critique about his predecessor. We will see whether he can resist the draw of personal diplomacy, but I rather doubt he will be able to do so because...

Second, personal diplomacy is grounded not in the narcissism of presidential politics but rather in some practical realities. What other leaders most want that is easiest to regulate (and thus use as leverage) is direct access to the president. Leader-to-leader diplomacy is often the most efficient way to cut deals that are stymied by lower level bureaucratic politics. Leader-to-leader diplomacy becomes the media story whether administrations want it to be or not because it fits the favored narrative arcs of reporters and commentators.

Third, because of the foregoing, minimizing leader-to-leader talks in an effort to "depersonalize" diplomacy is, in fact, another form of personal diplomacy (just as refusing to hold direct talks with adversaries is just another form of diplomacy). Bad personal interactions (think Bush and Chirac or Bush and Schroeder) can have the same degree of repercussions as good personal interactions, just in a different direction. Thus, the effort to depersonalize interactions with Afghanistan as a way of distinguishing from Bush-Karzai diplomacy will, paradoxically, generate its own story line about personal diplomacy. Witness the Post story itself.

Fourth, as Rumsfeld might have put it, one goes to war with the allies one has, not the allies one wants to have. One of the most frustrating things about conducting American foreign policy (as distinct from commenting on it from the outside) is the limits on American influence to get allies (or international institutions like the UN) to do what the strategy calls for them to do. Making progress on this usually involves some mix of bolstering a weak leader/institution and cajoling it into action by credibly threatening to go around or above the leader/institution. In the Afghan case, what we need Karzai to do -- for instance, crack down on corruption and the narcotics trade -- is viewed by Karzai as close to regime-threatening. So it is an open question whether he is more likely to take such difficult steps if he is reassured about his regime survivability (bolstering) or believes his regime is even more imperiled if he does not act (threatening go-arounds). Most statecraft evolves by trying a bit of this and then a bit of that and then ultimately making a bet on one side or the other. (By the way, for the political science students out there, this is the same analytical structure of the puzzle that confronted the Bush administration regarding getting the UN to enforce sanctions/inspections in Iraq in 2002).

I suspect this fourth lesson could prove especially frustrating as this year unfolds. The Obama administration might even flirt with the idea of seeking to influence the outcome of the Afghan elections in the hopes of getting a better leader. Such efforts, especially in fledgling democracies, are not impossible to pull off, but they tend to come with manifold unintended consequences even if they succeed. And an effort that fails, may be worse than no effort at all, because it leaves in place an embittered leader who now has every incentive to make political hay out of rebuffing American requests.

By Christian Brose

Reading the news out of Pakistan these past several days, followed by Dave Kilcullen's recent testimony on that subject, I am left with the desire to take a bath with a toaster. Here's Andrew Exum's more thoughtful yet equally glum conclusion:

Studying the past few years, one could arrive at the conclusion that Pakistan's army is epically incompetent. One could similarly arrive at the conclusion that Pakistan's army is competent -- but fighting for the other side.

Over the past 100 days, the Obama administration has argued that our success in Afghanistan is linked to progress in Pakistan -- on security and governance, among other things. In theory, that's right. In practice, though, to assume that success in Afghanistan requires near-term progress in Pakistan may be like waiting for Godot, or worse. I would challenge that assumption, for there is a lot we can achieve in Afghanistan on its own terms, right now -- from training and expanding the security forces, to building state capacity, to better coordinating our allied civil-military campaign. We should not link "Af" and "Pak" to such a degree that it leads us to underestimate what can be achieved in Afghanistan and overestimate what is possible in Pakistan.

The implications of this aren't pretty. As with any policy, our strategy toward Pakistan -- if, unlike John Kerry, you believe we have one -- is a mixture of aiming for the best but hedging against the worst. Is it time to start focusing more exclusively on the latter? In other words, do we need to begin shifting to a strategy of containment in Pakistan, either because the government and military can't contain their own domestic threats or because they won't (or maybe both)?

I hope I'm wrong on this, and I encourage experts (and readers in the comments section) to tell me so, and why. But if I'm not, then we may need to find concrete ways to delink "Af-Pak," rhetorically and strategically, lest the intractable problem of Pakistan sink the real gains we can make in Afghanistan.

By Christian Brose

Those who have read the recent posts from George Packer, Steve Walt, and Matt Duss on the latest doings of the "neo-con cabal" -- ahem, the Foreign Policy Initiative -- must be eagerly awaiting a report of what happened at today's conference on Afghanistan. Well, I won't leave you hanging.

All that you suspect is true. Bill Kristol, wearing a Viking helmet and a bone through his nose, exhorted the participants to invade Chad, just because. He may have listed other countries, but he was speaking in tongues and war whoops half the time, and my Neo-con-to-English translation kept dropping out. Bob Kagan followed, bare-chested (as usual), in full war paint, banging the Mayflower china with a combat boot, shouting that America needed to put 10 million men under arms to extend its hegemony (benevolent, of course) into the Arctic, shouting something about the road to Moscow leading through the North Pole.

I saw this with my own eyes, people.

If only. It would have been a lot more exciting, that's for sure. As it was, the conference was a pretty staid affair. Some might even call it a love-fest. There were countless expressions of support and admiration for President Obama and his new Af-Pak strategy from Kristol and the brothers Kagan, plus most of the other panelists, who aren't neo-cons. People like CNAS president John Nagl, who probably summed up the conference best when he remarked what an amazing show of bipartisan support it was for Obama's policy.

I say all this, believe it or not, to make a more serious point. The thing that always puzzles me about so much of the frothy commentary about the neo-cons is how it misses that their main antagonist always was, and still is today, as much (or probably more) fellow Republicans as it is Democrats.

When the infamous PNAC was founded, Congressional Republicans were on an anti-government crusade, which often included foreign policy -- especially when opposition to humanitarian intervention, nation-building, democracy promotion, increased spending overseas, and internationalism in general served the added purpose of scoring political points against President Clinton. One could even argue that PNAC was set up not to tar and feather Democrats for being weak-kneed appeasers of evil, but to encourage Clinton's more internationalist tendencies, and to give him political cover from the right to do so against his more nationalist, conservative critics. Judging by the conference today, my sense is that FPI has been founded with much the same purpose vis-a-vis Obama.

It's easy for critics of the neo-cons to cast them as marginal thinkers with out-sized influence, along with all the dark conspiracies that implies. Harder, though more honest, is to recognize that the neo-cons are really championing tendencies in U.S. foreign policy that run much deeper in American life than the pockets of their advocacy shops. Yes, the regular cast of characters signed those PNAC letters that get quoted all the time, but at one point or another, so did folks like Jim Webb, Bob Zoellick, Ivo Daalder, John Bolton, Jim Steinberg, Rich Armitage, Dennis Ross, Michael O'Hanlon, Philip Gordon, Richard Holbrooke, and many others who would sooner take your scalp than be called a neo-con.

Indeed, as was apparent today, the latest "conspiracy" is rather mainstream stuff, like supporting Obama's Af-Pak policy, and it enjoys healthy bipartisan support -- just as Clinton's Balkans wars did, and yes, just as Iraq did initially. Criticizing these policies is fair. But those criticisms should be aimed at a broad swath of the foreign policy establishment, on both sides of the aisle, not just at the neo-cons.

But go back to Iraq. Shouldn't the neo-cons be held accountable for their views? Yes. Them and a whole lot of other people -- Senators, Congressmen, and columnists, liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, who seemly want to believe that the votes they cast and the articles they wrote in support of the war had nothing to do with how we found ourselves in it. Iraq was all the neo-cons' fault, and blaming it on them absolves the rest of us. This is a convenient untruth for a lot of people in this town today.

The fact is, Iraq was a long-standing problem over which reasonable people disagreed, and many of those reasonable people came to believe in the aftermath of 9/11 that war was the answer. That they did says less about the neo-cons, I think, than it does about the prevailing mood at the time in America, and especially in Washington -- the willingness of many people, shocked by a national trauma, and seized by the transformational potential of American power, to support a high-risk course of action over the uncertainty of no action at all. Yes, there are serious criticisms to be made of the Bush administration's case for war, but it's worth going back and reading what Bill Clinton and Al Gore said about Iraq back in the 1990s. Most of their statements are indistinguishable from Bush's.

And here we are again. Obama is escalating America's involvement in a distant war, and like Iraq in 2003 or the Balkans before that, he is doing so with considerable bipartisan support, only a small fraction of which comes from the neo-cons. I support this policy. Maybe it will end tragically. Maybe the critics will be proved right. If so, I won't blame the positions I took on the Foreign Policy Initiative.

By Dan Twining

Fellow Republicans have hailed President Obama's new strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan. My hunch is they were so worried that a domestic policy president who wanted to rid himself of the nuisance of his predecessor's wars would take a self-defeating "minimalist" approach to the conflict that, when he surpassed their low expectations, they breathed a collective sigh of relief.

The new administration's strategy is welcome, both for its substance and, as importantly, for the profile it has given to the urgency of defeating the Taliban's resurgence in Afghanistan and its growing strength in Pakistan. But as with every strategy, it contains trade-offs and shortcomings that, after the warm glow that has accompanied the Washington establishment's reception of the president's plan has worn off, may become more apparent. These shortcomings will need to be corrected as the policy is implemented over the coming year.

Here are some questions that cut to the heart of these tensions and tradeoffs:

Is this a victory strategy or an exit strategy?

The president's speech suggested that he was doubling down to win the war in Afghanistan and end the safe-havens al Qaeda and its allies enjoy in Pakistan's tribal regions. But he undercut his own message earlier in the week when, on CBS' 60 Minutes, he cited limited American tolerance for prolonged engagement in the region and declared, "There's got to be an exit strategy." This is music to the ears of the Taliban and Al Qaeda; it feeds directly into their belief that they can outlast the international community in Afghanistan. Indeed, their propaganda pounds home this point, which is essential to their recruiting efforts in both Afghanistan and the tribal badlands. Why should the moderate majority of Afghans and Pakistanis risk their lives to stand up to local militants if it is clear they will outlast both foreign forces and weak civilian governments in Kabul and Islamabad?

American leaders must broadcast our staying power, not fickleness or impatience. As Senator John McCain said yesterday on Meet the Press, "The best way to get out of Afghanistan fast is for people to think we're staying." The Afghan public still supports a leading role for international forces if they deliver progress toward stability, security, and human freedom; there is no public clamor for a U.S. troop withdrawal. America should stay in Afghanistan until we accomplish our goals and as long as we have the support of the country's elected government.

Is ending terrorist sanctuary the right goal to guide U.S. policy?

Denying al Qaeda safe haven in both Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal belt is a necessary objective. But is it sufficient? Cynical pundits enjoy mocking President Bush's commitment to nation-building in Afghanistan. But as Secretary Clinton, Richard Holbrooke, and others argued during the Obama administration's internal deliberations, beyond providing security for the population, only by supporting representative and accountable government that enjoys popular legitimacy, controls its territory, and creates an enabling environment for economic opportunity can the United States achieve its goals of eroding extremist safe havens and recruitment.

This is a generational task, and the American people will need to be mobilized to support it as well as to pay for it. America's most successful presidents -- including Democrats like Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman -- historically have framed such commitments expansively in terms of our exceptional country's obligation to help other peoples enjoy the blessings of liberty. The president shouldn't shy away from this ground truth.

What are the lessons of Iraq for Afghanistan?

Obama believes America paid a "strategic price" for taking its eye off the ball in Afghanistan in order to win the war in Iraq. But what would have been the strategic price in Afghanistan had the surge ordered by President Bush not succeeded in snatching victory from the jaws of defeat at the hands of the Iraqi insurgency? It is difficult to imagine that any president could have made a long-term military and political commitment to Afghanistan had the United States followed the recommendations of then-Senator Obama to withdraw precipitously from Iraq before U.S. forces and their Iraqi allies turned the tide.

Indeed, given that Iraq occupies a much more pivotal strategic position than Afghanistan and that the scale of U.S. commitment was much greater in the former, it is only too easy to imagine Washington, in the wake of defeat in Iraq, washing its hands of the mis-named "graveyard of empires" by withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Yet Obama's own Afghanistan strategy - the imperative of a comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy focused on population security, the importance of tribal outreach, and the possibility of taking large numbers of enemy combatants off the battlefield through reconciliation - builds on the lessons of Iraq. So who was right about it, and who was wrong?

Do we really want the neighbors involved in Afghanistan?

It has been publicly reported that Iran is providing lethal assistance to the Afghan Taliban. Tehran does not seek a Taliban victory but wants to keep U.S. forces off-balance, the Afghan government weak and pliable, and Taliban leaders favorably disposed to Iran in case they do come to power. It is not at all clear that Iran identifies with U.S. objectives in Afghanistan in a way that could make it a partner in Afghanistan's security and development.

Looking east, it is true that no Afghan strategy can be considered absent its regional context. But a major problem in Afghanistan has been that Pakistan's security services have been too involved in Afghanistan by virtue of their material support for the Taliban and associated militants. Moreover, rather than making progress in Afghanistan a hostage to progress in securing Pakistan's safe havens - another vital but generational task - the administration should focus equally on "hardening" Afghanistan against militant penetration from Pakistan, as U.S. commanders and others argue is possible. More generally, the best way to avoid unhelpful meddling by other neighbors in Afghanistan is to forego loose talk about any "exit strategy," which only encourages regional states to sponsor individual factions within Afghanistan in ways that undermine rather than support state-building.

Should we be "Americanizing" or "Afghanizing" the reconstruction effort?

The Bush administration resisted a full-scale civilian surge into Afghanistan not only because of lack of civilian capacity, but also for fear of "Americanizing" the war and relief effort -- as the United States did in South Vietnam. The Obama administration's strategy to surge civilians to provide reconstruction assistance is, on the one hand, a welcome acknowledgement that building a sustainable Afghan economy is essential to defeating the insurgency. On the other hand, it is not clear that the United States knows how to deliver such assistance in a way that builds local capacity.

The U.S. aid delivery model -- with its reliance on government bureaucracy, private (non-Afghan) contractors, foreign rather than indigenous supply chains that undercut local producers, and problems of scale -- risks hollowing out rather than building up indigenous capacity and strengthening local institutions. The president's strategy recognizes this risk on the security side, with its emphasis on training and equipping Afghan soldiers and police. But on the civilian side, the fear is that expatriate aid workers will unwittingly weaken rather than strengthen institutions and networks at all levels of Afghan society capable of putting the country on a self-sustaining economic trajectory.

Will Obama fight for trade liberalization with Pakistan and Afghanistan?

To his credit, the president called on Congress not only to pass major legislation to strengthen Pakistan's civilian institutions (legislation, incidentally, that the Bush administration supported, but that never made it out of the Democratic-controlled 110th Congress). He also called on Congress to pass legislation to create Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZ) that would allow duty-free imports from the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Will a Congress buffeted by protectionist pressures act on what the president described as a national security imperative to create jobs and economic opportunity in these impoverished, ungoverned regions by liberalizing trade?

The history of U.S. trade liberalization shows that strong presidential leadership, rooted in the national interest, is essential to take on Congressional opponents of free trade driven by localized interests. President Clinton took on his own party in Congress to pass both NAFTA and open trade with China. Will Obama actively lobby Congress to enact ROZ legislation for the tribal badlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan? (And if so, will he also demand that Congress approve far more strategically significant trade agreements with South Korea and Colombia?)

To his great credit, President Obama said on Friday:

The people of Pakistan want the same things that we want: an end to terror, access to basic services, the opportunity to live their dreams, and the security that can only come with the rule of law.

This is also true of the people of Afghanistan. They, not al Qaeda terrorists or Taliban mullahs, must be the real target of any effective U.S. policy. In General Petraeus's formulation, they are the "decisive terrain" that will decide the outcome of the conflict. Ending terrorist sanctuary is critical. But so will be investing for the long term in the civic core of these societies to build an enduring foundation for freedom and opportunity. Therein lies the true American interest.

By Peter Feaver

Reading the commentary on President Obama's "Af-Pak" strategy, I think I have cracked the code: Obama and his team believe they can sell an ambitious, resource-intensive U.S. commitment if they describe this as what is needed for a minimalist set of counter-terrorism-focused objectives.

The reporting on the backroom negotiations says that there were two camps, the maximalist camp led by Ambassador Holbrooke and General Petraeus, who wanted a major escalation of both military and non-military commitments to Afghanistan; and the minimalist camp led by Vice President Biden, who wanted to define down success from the lofty democracy rhetoric of the Bush administration.

What Obama decided to do and actually announced was a major escalation of both military and non-military commitments to Afghanistan (the "maximalist camp" agenda) framed solely by the rhetoric of counter-terrorism (the "minimalist camp" agenda). The initial wave of press coverage largely went along with it, thus the Washington Post helpfully contrasted the rhetorical style of President Bush's last Afghanistan speech with Obama's first major Afghanistan speech -- and the rhetorical contrast is indeed striking.

But is there really a substantive contrast? What Obama committed the United States to do -- for the narrowest of counterterrorism objectives -- is build up the governance structures of Afghanistan and Pakistan with a massive influx of economic aid; build up the security structures of Afghanistan and Pakistan with a massive influx of military aid; enable the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan to exercise effective sovereignty over all of their territory; and shift the Afghan economy once and for all from a reliance on narcotics that, in Obama's words "undermines the economy" and "fuels the insurgency." (As Tom Donnelly has wryly observed, Obama has assigned Holbrooke to a counternarcotics program that is, in essence, the same program that Holbrooke called "the most wasteful and ineffective program I have seen in 40 years.") As my Shadow colleague Philip Zelikow has noted, this set of objectives appears to be largely the Bush agenda, as determined by the strategic review the Bush team completed at the end of last year.

I believe that Obama's straddle is a shrewd one in the short term. The right can largely applaud the substance, and they have. "All Hail Obama!" says Bill Kristol, and "hats off to President Obama for making a gutsy and correct decision," says Bob Kagan -- the last two you would accuse of being kool-aid drinking Obamacons. As for the left, they can largely applaud the rhetorical shift, and some have. But I wonder how sustainable this straddle is? Already, further out on the flanks one can hear nervous sounds with critiques from the ideological left and somewhat more gentle critiques from the ideological right.

One wonders if those critiques will get louder as the Obama team struggles to answer the simple question, best put to Ambassador Holbrooke by the Lehrer Newshour's Margaret Warner:

Now today, President Obama just minutes ago in his speech said, the ultimate goal was really quite a limited one -- to disrupt, dismantle, ultimately defeat al-Qaeda in Pakistan. But then the steps he laid out looked like nation-building. How is this different, Ambassador Holbrooke, in its goal from what President Bush's goal was?

The subsequent exchange is enlightening, but perhaps not in the manner the Obama team intended:

HOLBROOKE: The critical issue here is to integrate our Afghanistan policy and our Pakistan policy, which have essentially been stove-piped, to recognize that success in Afghanistan is not possible unless western Pakistan, where -- which is the current heart of the crisis, is brought under control. Now, some people say, OK, why then are we still in Afghanistan? The reason is simple. If we leave Afghanistan the men who did 9/11, who killed Benazir Bhutto, who did the attacks in Mumbai, will return to Afghanistan and in a larger terrain, so we cannot separate the two countries.

To abandon what you called nation-building -- and it isn't nation-building, Afghanistan has been a country for many, many centuries -- it is building a viable government that can take care of itself, a government that can defend itself. That'll take time; that's why the president today talked about increases in the police and the army and improving the army and the police and dealing with the corruption. Without that, the Taliban will have an opportunity to exploit grievances and continue the war.

WARNER: And how is that different from what President Bush was trying to do?

HOLBROOKE: It is an integrated policy. It's going to have far more resources; the president today announced hundreds of additional civilians. He mentioned agronomists and economists, were going to increase the agricultural effort. This is a rural country, but right now the U.S. mission in Kabul does not even have a really coherent, integrated agricultural-assistance program. We're going to make a much stronger effort to counter the propaganda of the Taliban and al Qaeda in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Kerry-Lugar bill is going to ask for much more money. We have way under-resourced this effort, and as you know, additional troops are on their way.

In other words, Holbrooke's answer to how this is different is: "Our nation-building is different because we are doing it." Or perhaps, "Because I am doing it." For how long will that answer satisfy those who believe in their hearts that nation-building is neither possible nor necessary to achieve what they consider to be true U.S. national security interests?

For my part, I sincerely hope that this strategy will be different in two more significant respects. First, that the Obama strategy will be more successful in eliciting a matching escalation in commitments of resources from our NATO and UN partners. The Bush team, for all its effort, was largely stymied in this respect. We will soon find out -- as soon as Obama's upcoming trip to Europe -- whether he will achieve more success.

Second, and more fundamentally: I hope this strategy will be different in that it will work. When Bush did his own "escalation" in Iraq with the surge, it reversed the trajectory of that war. We should all hope that Obama's will likewise reverse the trajectory of the Afghan war.

But this strategy will only work if it can be given enough time to work. And that will only happen if the American people rally to it. As I have argued, this can happen, but only if Obama commits the political capital to building that support, and only if the strategy actually produces measurable progress on the ground.

Obama got as good a start as we could hope for yesterday, but there is a long way to go and many questions to answer before we are done.

By Peter Feaver

The lede for the advance stories on the new Obama strategy for his central front in the Overseas Contingency Operation Formerly Known as the Global war on Terror (OCOFKGWOT) is "benchmarks." We will set benchmarks for ourselves, for the Afghan government and military, for the Pakistani government and military, for our NATO allies, for our UN partners -- heck, I bet there will be benchmarks for the Taliban and al Qaeda, too.

Benchmarks are a fine way to tether a strategy to reality and identify how to evaluate the implantation of that strategy. But benchmarks are not a panacea. And they could become the petard on which the Obama team finds itself hoisted in a year or so.

What if NATO, or Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or anyone fails to meet the benchmark goal within the specified time? Will Obama declare the strategy a failure? And then what? What bailout plan is there for a strategy that does not meet its benchmarks? Will Obama walk away from Afghanistan, as a recent editorial in the Economist feared?

Those who praise benchmarks in the Afghan strategy are the same folks who rushed to declare the Iraq surge a failure because certain benchmarks were not met by 2007. Thank goodness the Bush team had a better understanding of strategy and war than that.

I hope the Obama team does, too. Yes let's track the progress of the strategy according to benchmarks. But if the OCOFKGWOT is really in the national interest then it must be won. And winning will require a commitment to develop new strategies, not just declare old ones a failure, if -- or more probably when -- benchmarks are missed.

By Christian Brose

Can you guess which think tank just released these key findings in its latest report on Afghanistan?

Short-term goals over the next 18 months

• Prevent Afghanistan from being used as a safe haven for terrorist and extremist groups with a global reach to attack the United States, its allies, and its interests
• Prevent a security vacuum in Afghanistan from destabilizing Pakistan and the region
• Couple efforts to stabilize Afghanistan with a parallel, integrated strategy for Pakistan, with a particular focus on helping Pakistanis build a stable civilian government committed to working toward the elimination of terrorist safe havens within its territory

Intermediate policy goals over the next three to five years

• Promote a viable Afghan economy that offers realistic opportunities for the Afghan people
• Sharply curb the poppy trade in Afghanistan and the region
• Promote democracy, the rule of law, and human rights in Afghanistan and the region
• Resolve or at least reduce regional tensions, particularly between Pakistan and its neighbors, which frequently spill over into Afghanistan

Long-term policy goals over the next 10 years

• Assist in creating an Afghan state that is able to defend itself internally and externally, and that can provide for the basic needs of its own people
• Prepare for the full military withdrawal from Afghanistan alongside continued diplomatic and economic measures to promote the sustainable security of Afghanistan

These goals cannot be achieved with the current level of resources and lack of coordination.... The problem is not that the Bush administration’s effort in Afghanistan failed. The problem is that it was never given a chance to succeed.

The addition of 17,000 U.S. combat troops and military support personnel by summer 2009—bringing U.S. troops to 55,000, their highest level to date—may be sufficient to freeze the security situation in Afghanistan for a while, but it is surely not enough to turn the tide. The United States must fulfill the request of General David McKiernan, the commander of the allied International Security Assistance Force, for an additional 15,000 U.S. troops, bringing the number of U.S. forces to 70,000, or about half the level in Iraq. This increase must include troops for combat as well as mentor teams for the Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police to fill critical gaps in the training effort.

Together with the 32,000 coalition troops already there, this increase will bring international forces to about 100,000—a nearly 300 percent increase over the average force level for the period from 2002 to 2007. This force level will most probably need to be sustained in the short term to intermediate term as Afghanistan’s army and police forces become more capable and ready.

This is brought to you by none other than those war-mongering neo-cons from the Center for American Progress. Considering that John Podesta was running Obama's transition, this nice piece of cover now appearing to the president's left is no coincidence, and I suspect it means that his policy review will almost certainly end up, as expected, escalating the U.S. role in Afghanistan. If so, the devil will be in the details, and we'll see those soon.

By Peter Feaver

Will the American public turn on Afghanistan in 2009 the way they turned on Iraq in 2006? I have a new academic book out, co-written by my Duke colleagues Christopher Gelpi and Jason Reifler, which explains how the mounting costs of any particular war affect public support for continuing that war. Our bottom line: support for war is a function of two attitudes: the retrospective attitude of whether the war was the right thing in the first place, and the prospective attitude of whether the war will be won. Both affect public willingness to continue the war, but the prospective attitude has a bigger impact. In other words, the long pole in the tent is the public's belief that the war can and will be won.  

Many other factors affect public support -- including partisanship, general support for the president, estimations of the president's resolve, the extent of elite consensus in support of the war, and so on. But the largest is this expectation of success. When the public believes the war can be won, then they will stomach mounting costs. When the public doesn't, then mounting casualties cause public support to erode fairly quickly. Senator Kerry famously suggested that no one wants to be the last person to die for a mistake.  He misunderstood the situation. No one wants to be the last person to die for a lost cause.

Thus, the public turned on the Iraq war over the course of 2006 not because the rationale for the war eroded (the public had long since realized that Iraq's WMD programs were not as far advanced as the Bush administration had claimed), but because the war looked increasingly unwinnable. The erosion in support stabilized in 2008, when the fortunes in Iraq reversed.

This puts President Obama's Dover decision in a different light. While much of the commentary about this decision to allow the media to film and photograph the returning caskets of Americans killed in action was framed by the question of whether this would mobilize public opposition to the war (with some fearing that it might and others hoping that it would), our research suggests that it would only intensify previous attitudes - attitudes that are moving up or down on the war for deeper reasons having to do with the likely success of the war.

But this means, as my co-authors and I have argued, that Obama is living on borrowed time in Afghanistan because the public is fairly pessimistic about the situation there. According to one recent poll, they are split roughly evenly between optimists and pessimists, and as many as 60 percent in a December poll claimed the United States was not winning in Afghanistan. By way of comparison, on the eve of the midterm elections in 2006, a little over half of the American public thought we were losing in Iraq.

I have yet to find a pollster who has asked the proper prospective question -- the crucial attitude is not how things are going right now but whether you believe things will eventually go well. (By analogy, what matters is not how the cancer patient feels about the chemo treatments right now, but whether the patient believes he will eventually beat the cancer). But I suspect prospective attitudes on Afghanistan are trending negative as well.

I see little reason for public optimism to improve in the short run. For starters, the Obama Administration has not yet made a credible effort to shore up public support for the war there (or in Iraq, for that matter). The White House is understandably focused on economic issues, but they have done a fair bit of messaging on Afghanistan. This messaging has addressed the expectations issue, and it is clear that the Obama team would like to define down success to make it easier to achieve.

However, I suspect that this effort could backfire, at least insofar as public opinion goes. The message involves first acknowledging that previous goals are unattainable ("success as you previously understood it is impossible") and then persuading the public that new goals are worthwhile ("here is a better measure of success") and more attainable ("the things that doomed the earlier effort won't doom this"). That is not an impossible hurdle to clear, but it is a very high one.

The job is made more difficult because many of the secondary props of public support may be eroding. For instance, for quite a while now I have worried about the partisan divide on Afghanistan. I was struck by a poll cited by Morton Kondracke from last summer that showed only 55 percent of Democrats viewed the decision to invade Afghanistan as the right one. Republicans and Independents still supported the original decision by the super-majorities that the war had enjoyed from the beginning. In other words, most of the erosion in support had happened among Democrats. 

Fifty-five percent is still a majority, but it is a remarkably low number, given the fact that leaders of both parties have repeatedly emphasized that Afghanistan is a just war, and that Democrats in particular have labeled it the "good war." Perhaps that number has stabilized now that the Democrats "own" the war, what with the White House and both chambers of Congress under the control of the Democratic party. But I suspect that the underlying convictions that soured the Democrats on Afghanistan have not changed that abruptly.  

In light of this, the claim my co-authors and I offered -- that "[w]e suspect the public is likely to continue to believe the war in Afghanistan was right" -- probably warrants a footnote caveat or two. Support even on the retrospective question could erode (albeit more slowly than it did in Iraq) if Democrats do not rally to "their" war, or if President Obama inadvertently knocks down the case for the war by successfully implanting the idea that the terrorists who attacked us are no longer in Afghanistan but in Pakistan, and that Pakistan is the more urgent problem.

Another prop of public support is elite consensus. Right now, the public seems to be mirroring elite confusion on what to do. The most recent poll I have seen has the public equally split between increasing troops, decreasing troops, or keeping the troops in Afghanistan about the same. The military and other experts likewise seem to hold many conflicting opinions on what should be done (contrast this with this). And, for a real blast from 2006, you can't get much more retro than this: Les Gelb arguing for the Baker-Hamilton solution in Afghanistan, while Max Boot and Fred and Kimberley Kagan argue for a surge.

This is a quandary we have seen before -- in Iraq and, before that, in Vietnam. The situation stabilized in Iraq, but only after the Bush administration actually found a winning strategy (the surge) and spent virtually all of its remaining political capital implementing it. The situation never stabilized in Vietnam.  

I am sure it did not please the White House team to see Newsweek label Afghanistan "Obama's Vietnam." But the analogy may be apt in one important respect: Obama may find himself spending far more time trying to mobilize public support to continue this war than he ever expected. And if he does not find a strategy that will reverse the situation on the ground in Afghanistan -- and if he cannot explain this strategy to the American people -- then he may find public support dropping faster than he can prop it up.

By Christian Brose

Shadow Government is assigning a lot of Afghanistan homework today. First there's Sen. John McCain's solid speech at AEI yesterday. Then check out Kissinger's op-ed in the Post. There's a short pairing in U.S. News on whether an escalation in Afghanistan is worth it from John Nagl (pro) and Andrew Bacevich (con). Afghan Foreign Minister Spanta spoke at the Center for American Progress today, and though there's no printed remarks yet, according to Spencer, Spanta warned the Obama administration against adopting a "reductionist" new approach -- by which he meant giving up on democracy in favor of counter-terrorism alone. And then in the think tank world, CSIS has a new report on Afghanistan-Pakistan policy.

But if you read just one thing on Afghanistan, make it Marin Strmecki's comprehensive and outstanding testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee today. There's a lot being said about Afghanistan these days by people who don't always know what they're talking about (I among them), but Strmecki has been working on this issue for over 20 years, and intimately at the Pentagon from 2003-05.

Do yourself a favor and read the whole thing. But the main point is that the United States cannot lower its sights in Afghanistan. We must fully resource a counterinsurgency strategy that integrates security, development, and good governance to "harden" the Afghan state, while peeling away the outer layers of the insurgency to isolate the hard core. We can then increasingly pass that effort off to our Afghan partners over time. That's how we should define success, and it's an "attainable goal."

Here are a few other important points I took away:

1. If you look at Afghan history, the country is not ungovernable, and there is precedent, contra Kissinger, of a central government extending its writ across the territory. That's not to say that local and provincial governance is unimportant; they're extremely important. But we should not give up on our support for state-building, a point McCain also makes.

2. Historically, stability in Afghanistan was rooted in a regional compact among the neighbors and Kabul over the nature of influence that all would have in Afghanistan. This was replicated in the Bonn Process, and it helped immensely to stabilize the country. Such a regional compact is desperately needed again. And Strmecki lays out perhaps the best set of ideas I've seen yet for what would encompass it and how it would work.

3. The precedent for what we need to do in Afghanistan in 2009 and beyond is what we were doing in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, under the country team leadership of Amb. Zalmay Khalilzad and Gen. Dave Barno. So this isn't exactly unchartered waters.

4. Investing in the Afghan National Army must be a primary strategic goal, and we should be devoting more and more of our Special Operations Forces to train them up, rather than conduct raids that alienate us from the population. The army's end strength should be 250,000 troops, which I believe is also the number Nagl cites.

5. Make Afghanistan's ministries the vehicle for delivering development assistance, rather than working around them through Western contractors, as we mostly do now. This only makes the Afghan state more feeble and dependent on external largesse.

I'll stop there. Seriously, though, read the whole thing.

By Christian Brose

So at long last, Dennis Ross has been tapped for, er, something:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Monday appointed Dennis B. Ross, a seasoned Middle East negotiator under Republican and Democratic presidents, as her special adviser for the gulf and Southwest Asia, a portfolio that will include Iran.

Mr. Ross, whose appointment had been rumored for weeks, will provide Mrs. Clinton with “strategic advice and perspective on the region, offer assessments and also act to ensure effective policy integration throughout the region,” said the acting State Department spokesman, Robert A. Wood.

And where, exactly, is that region -- Southwest Asia? Give me a map, and I can show you Central Asia, Northeast Asia, and Southeast Asia, but I'm less clear on Southwest Asia.

Now, obviously, this is a euphemism for Iran, because there's no way Southwest Asia includes Afghanistan and Pakistan, as it logically would. Over Ambassador Holbrooke's dead body. Nor, presumably, does it include India, which could technically be construed as Southwest Asia, but would make little sense as a regional portfolio without Afghanistan and Pakistan.

So Iran it is. But while Ross has been waiting to take his seat at the table, others it seems have been eyeing his lunch. Or worse. It would be one heck of a coincidence to me if Holbrooke has no designs whatsoever on U.S. Iran policy, and yet his old protege from the Balkans negotiations -- Chris Hill -- ends up strangely and abruptly being tapped as ambassador to Iraq, while Holbrooke himself has hired one of the country's best Iran experts -- Vali Nasr -- to work for him, naturally, on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It's highly possible that whatever engagement with Iran the Obama administration may launch could begin with bottom-up efforts to cooperate on regional issues of common interest. So that could mean continuing meetings with Iran in Baghdad on Iraq issues, which Ryan Crocker led under the Bush administration, and maybe creating (or reviving) a dialogue on Afghanistan issues. This engagement could also be multilateral. Which could mean continuing the so-called Neighbors Group meetings from the Bush administration, which included Iran, and forging a similar regional concert for Afghanistan, as the Obama administration has already suggested it is considering.

And who would then be the logical people on the tip of the spear of U.S. diplomacy for this engagement with Iran? Ambassador Holbrooke and Chris Hill, both of whom made their bones dealing with unsavory characters. But of course, all of this is just a coincidence.

Good luck in Southwest Asia, Ambassador Ross.

By Christian Brose

Kudos to anyone who waded all the way through my loooonnnngggg rumination on Afghanistan. Some actually have commented on it, particularly my point about continuing to support democracy. Here is Spencer Ackerman:

[I]f the idea is indeed that the Afghan people are the center of gravity, they won't bandwagon away from the Taliban-led insurgency without having their material and aspirational needs met, so some degree of -- for lack of a better term -- Central-Asian-Valhalla-ness is probably appropriate, even if you take the position that the core interest of the United States in Afghanistan-Pakistan is to eliminate Al Qaeda's safe havens. The question is how much Valhalla-ness? Christian, I think, doesn't offer a compelling argument for the necessity of democratization, providing instead a contention that such a thing is desirable. It certainly is, but the question is what's achievable and what's related to the national interest.

And here is Dan Kennelly:

I think a democratic Afghanistan is worthy, wise and achievable goal. But we musn't fall into the trap of thinking that if, say, $150 billion per year isn't doing the trick, then surely $300 billion will. The time scale for successfully shepherding a stable and democratic regime in Afghanistan needs to be geological, involving the minimum amount of pressure on our part over a very long period of time.

I know this wasn't Spencer's point, but all this talk of Valhalla is a red herring, which Dan's argument reflects. Is there anyone who seriously thinks we can or should be trying to turn Afghanistan into Germany or Japan in Central Asia -- ever, let alone in the near term? Of course democratic practices and institutions are going to take a long time to become durable in Afghanistan. So, what then? We should give up on it entirely right now? We should support some alternative political order? Which is what, exactly? If not, then all of this boils down to: let's keep helping the Afghan people build their own democracy, but let's be prudent about it. Well, obviously.

All I'm saying is this: The Obama administration keeps talking about how it wants to "deal with the world as it is." OK, I'm all for that. And the world as it is in Afghanistan, according to the poll I cited before, is an overwhelming majority of people who want a democratic government. We don't want it for them. We're not imposing it on them. It's their stated preference.

The key question is Spencer's: democracy is surely desirable, but is it necessary? One answer is that there has to be a government in Afghanistan, and most Afghans want it to be democratic. That seems like a pretty good case for necessity to me. But let's put that aside.

Here is the general line of reasoning that gets me to necessity: My starting assumption is we need a counterinsurgency strategy to succeed in Afghanistan, not just a counterterrorism one. If that's the case, we need local partners to build a political order that advances the interests (most of all security) and redresses the injustices of the population, especially the so-called "reconcilable" members of the insurgency. What, then, should that political order look like? A few basic things seem obvious and unarguable: It needs to be legitimate in the eyes of most Afghans. It needs to be accountable for understanding and helping to solve their problems. It needs to take the side of justice -- so not, say, leaders who enrich themselves from the narco-trade while the average Afghan remains destitute.

If this is the kind of political order we need to defeat the insurgency in Afghanistan, then how are we going to achieve those goals without supporting some form of democracy? And by democracy I mean mechanisms that enable the popular will to be expressed and that root the Afghan government, at all levels, in the consent of the governed. In short, the best way to get to legitimacy, accountability, responsibility, and justice is through a form of government that looks an awful lot like democracy.

Yes, such a government in Afghanistan must incorporate and reflect Afghan tribal customs and culture, and we should be respectful and deferential to that. This point is key, and General Petraeus was very good and eloquent on it in Munich. Still, it's hard to imagine the political order we need in Afghanistan and call it anything other than democratic.

One last argument for necessity: What makes the Taliban an insurgency is that it's trying to establish an alternative political order to the one the Afghan people freely elected to govern them. And we've all seen the Taliban's idea of justice and popular legitimacy. This helps to explain why another fascinating recent poll shows that just 4 percent of Afghans say they want the Taliban to rule Afghanistan. Since this is "the world as it is," supporting anything other than the will of the Afghan people, and thus a democratic government that reflects it, would be to preemptively surrender the single best value that aligns us with the Afghan population and differentiates us from our common enemies.