So here we are, creeping up on Thanksgiving, and the Afghanistan / Pakistan strategic review still remains underway. Latest reports have it that President Obama will not unveil the new strategic direction until the conclusion of his Asia trip, and possibly not until December.
Should this be worrisome? Absolutely, if you read Fred and Kimberly Kagan, who recently lamented “The Cost of Dithering” in the Weekly Standard. Not at all, if you read Steven Metz’s “The Hurry-Up Offensive” in The New Republic.
So who is more nearly correct?
A few days ago I began making inquiries about this to a number of contacts both here at the Army War College and in the wider national security community. A very definite pattern soon emerged.
There’s a general consensus that completion of the strategic review is not time urgent in a military sense, because there’s no imminent tipping point in a military sense. Al-Qaeda is contained. It is unlikely that the Taliban would be foolish enough to re-forge an alliance with them, so the question for us is the extent to which we can live with the Taliban. We have considerable time to make up our minds about this because the Taliban is very unpopular among the general Afghan population and therefore any gains it makes will be incremental. In this respect, the Af Pak situation is not analogous to Iraq in the autumn of 2006, when the insurgency was getting out of control. (Even then, of course, the strategic review process took several months.)
The real division of opinion is about whether completion of the strategic review is time urgent in a political sense. Does the length of the review reflect deliberation or vacillation, strength or weakness? Where people come down on this essentially reflects their opinion of Obama. For instance, Dick Kohn, a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and an Obama supporter, is quoted in the WaPo as saying, “He’s stepping up to the problem, and he’s exercising a degree of skepticism and analytical depth that his predecessor didn’t appear to engage in.” Whereas Eliot Cohen, a professor at SAIS and an unreconstructed neo-con, maintains, “I don’t yet have the sense that he’s willing to commit that much of his political energy to this, and yet if he doesn’t, I do think there’s a serious risk of failure.”
Naturally, nobody wants to portray their political assessment as mere partisanship, so there’s an immediate extrapolation to how our allies and adversaries view the process. For instance: Allies will be reassured — and perhaps be more willing to hitch their wagons to a strategy that seems well thought out. Or conversely: Adversaries will be emboldened by a president who apparently lacks the guts to make a difficult call.
I myself am an Obama supporter, which means that I retain a basic faith in the president’s judgment. That makes it easier for me to see the wisdom, from a military perspective, of taking time to get the strategic process right, particularly since our assessment of Af Pak strategy ought to be firmly nested within the context of an assessment of national security strategy as a whole. So given that a quick decision isn’t militarily imperative, the length of the process doesn’t bother me — in and of itself.
What does bother me are the leaks, which have the effect of highlighting the length of the process — and if the critics are right, of amplifying Obama’s lack of decision — and at the very least of conveying the impression that Obama is not the master of his own house. I have seen some people praise the “openness” of the process, but I myself could not do that with a straight face. Consequently I was heartened by the SecDef’s recent, uncharacteristically blunt statement that the leaks had better stop. Because they’d better.
5 Comments
Good analysis of the military implications of the review. Most in the media seem to be conflating the military with the political realms. This obscures the divide between the two, and suggests a military issue where none exists. Like everything else though, it essentially seems to come down to whether or not one supports President Obama.
I take comfort in the “dithering,” in the province-by-province detailed review that the President asked for. There is no crisis in the war that demands fast action. There was a dearth of dithering before we invaded Iraq, which even the GOP faithful should admit was a disastrous error.
I haven’t heard an analysis of the military situation put quite so succinctly. When you think about it, the Taliban and Al Qaeda could not possibly win in the next few weeks, so taking time to decide properly (something we regret in Vietnam as well) is a sound move.
I would add that we didn’t debate Afghanistan at all between OCT 2001 and JAN 2009 so a few weeks wait doesn’t seem that unreasonable.
I am also an Obama supporter in terms of his domestic agenda at least. I do wonder if the leaks are not actually being done or condoned (with plausible deniability of course) by the administration as a form of trial balloon and to generate political cover for a variety of options.
Being that I’m trying to be impartial with the Commander in Chief, when I think optimistically, I hope the “dithering” is deliberate patience to make sure there is a solid political/diplomatic/development plan to assist Afghans in improving their own governance that will necessary for McChrystal’s plan to eventually be a success. The critic in me does believe it is dithering in the sense that I don’t think McChrystal left any stone unturned with consulting experts beyond the military for a comprehensive plan; therefore the national security team deliberating, though higher in the chain, has less knowledge and really can’t come to a more comprehensive picture or plan than what McChrystal has already achieved. But when you look at the urgency from McChrystal’s (or the military’s) point of view, it is not from a military standpoint that time is short, but from a domestic political standpoint that support for the war may not last more than a year (when military realists know, that once this campaign is properly resourced, which it never has been, it may still take several more years at a minimum).