General McChrystal's recent report that
the Kandahar operation is on a slower track than expected puts the Obama administration's
familiar "two clocks" strategic dilemma in sharp relief. Any war has two
clocks, one driven by domestic politics and the other driven by battlefield
outcomes. The challenge for the commander-in-chief is to manage both
clocks so that success on the battlefield is achieved before time runs out on
the domestic political clock. The dilemma is particularly acute in
democracies, where the impatience of leaders far from the battlefront can put
in jeopardy the ability of the government to continue fighting, regardless of
the stakes. If you think this is a new, post-Vietnam problem associated
with small wars in far-off-lands, just ask General Washington about "sunshine patriots" or
President Lincoln about "Copperheads"
If the clocks get out of synch there are only two ways to re-synch them: Accelerate the battlefield clock or slow down the domestic politics clock.
General McChrystal's report was a warning that he does not think he can
accelerate the battlefield clock, at least not tactically/militarily on the
battlefield. Getting our NATO allies to deliver on promised resources to
help accelerate the training of the Afghan security forces would help, as
Jackson Diehl points
out in a perceptive column today, but even if they materialized tomorrow
their impact would not be felt for a year. I agree with Bill
Kristol that there are doubtless more things that could be done on the
civilian side of the Afghan surge, but they too would not have near-term
effects. Getting Pakistan to pressure the Taliban on their side of the border
more effectively would help even more, and perhaps it is time to consider some
out-of-the-box options like developing a very explicit quid pro quo arrangement
with Pakistan: drawing up a list of their strategic "asks" and putting a concrete
price tag in terms of anti-Taliban/pro-Afghanistan actions on each of them.
If Pakistan delivers more, we will deliver more. It would be worth
some strategic planning shop doing brainstorming on this point.
The inconvenient truth, however, is that notwithstanding Obama's courageous but
belated decision to authorize the surge last December, much of Team Obama's
efforts have unwittingly slowed the battlefield clock down. In fact, if
in January 2009 one had sat down and tried to formulate a plan for slowing down
the clock in Afghanistan, one might have devised the following:
- Foster the belief in the region that the United States is
about to abandon the effort, thereby encouraging your side to hedge and their
side to intensify their efforts.
The best way to do this is to announce arbitrary withdrawal timelines
that have nothing to do with conditions on the ground. Also, shortly
after reaffirming the campaign commitment to this "war of necessity," conduct a
follow-on, much publicized "should we even be here" review calling into
question the exact strategy you had just trumpeted.
- Convince your key ally that you are doing everything you can
to undermine him. The best way to do this is
to criticize him in public, to draw attention to his myriad deficiencies and to
brag to reporters about administering "tough love" to him. Also, promote
his domestic political rival, convincing him that your thumb is on the
electoral scale against him, incentivizing him to compensate with
ballot-stuffing of his own.
- Stir up civil-military friction by chastising your
battlefield commanders and accusing them of playing media politics. The best way to do that is to give a sympathetic reporter
unlimited access to White House political advisors who can brag about the way
the President dressed down the generals and also brag about trapping those
generals into committing to "win or leave" short timelines. Of course, it
will help if senior Administration officials contradict each other publicly and
in candid not-for-attribution comments as to the actual significance of the
arbitrary timeline.
To be fair, the administration has taken
pains in recent weeks to reverse course on many of these missteps but it is too
late to undo the damage of lost time and opportunity. These missteps are
double-edged because the single biggest factor driving the domestic clock is
the perception of progress on the battlefield. Accelerate progress on the
battlefield, and you add time on the domestic clock (cf. Iraq surge,
2007-2008). Suffer setbacks on the battlefield, and your domestic clock
speeds up (cf. Iraq war, 2006). Perception sometimes matters more than
reality (cf. Tet Offensive, 1968), but in general the best way to manage a war
at home is to achieve success abroad.
But there are some tactics that Obama can adopt to manage the domestic
clock, even without an acceleration on the battlefield. The classic move
is replacing key lieutenants. One promising place to start would be to
review the list of missteps and see if one advisor was a common factor in each
of them. If so, giving him his walking papers would allow the President
to reset the domestic clock a few ticks.
Most importantly: The key factor for the domestic clock under the control of
the Administration is the resolve of the commander-in-chief himself.
President Bush demonstrated in 2007 that a determined political leader
can buck even very strong political pressure. To be sure, preserving
enough political space to give the Iraq surge a chance to succeed was a very
close-run thing, but President Bush managed it. And he faced far greater
political pressure to get out than President Obama has faced thus far or is
likely to face for the rest of his term.
President Obama has his hands full with the Gulf oil spill problem and the
specter of a double-dip recession looming. But neither is in direct
competition with the war in Afghanistan and so far only the fringe elements --
the anti-war left and the neo-isolationist right - are loudly linking them.
The clamor will get louder, but it is not likely to reach vuvuzela
levels before this December, when President Obama has pledged to revisit the
decision.
The most serious domestic threat to the Afghan war is the possibility that the
general perception of Obama fecklessness will draft a primary challenger to his
left -- a Ted Kennedy to his Jimmy Carter. The window for such a threat
corresponds (not coincidentally, I suspect) with the arbitrary review and
timeline the Obama administration has set for the Afghan strategy. In
fact, a plausible rationale for the timeline is that it might defuse left-wing
anti-war pressure on Obama just enough to dissuade a serious primary challenge.
Heading into the general election, the political pressure on Obama might
actually reverse, with Obama's political advisors feeling the need to
demonstrate that the President has not lost the war on his watch.
One wild card in the domestic political situation is the impact of the midterm
elections. The Democratic caucus may well emerge out of the midterms even
more hostile to the Afghan war. President Obama could respond by following their
lead or by turning his focus from domestic policy to foreign policy where he
will have a comparatively freer hand to play.
These would all be daunting strategic challenges for any commander-in-chief,
but America's political leaders have confronted and overcome worse. I
suspect that President Obama's place in the pantheon of wartime leaders may
well be determined by how he manages his own set.
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