By tossing the COIN to Afghanistan, Obama can now aim at Pakistan
President Barack Obama's prime-time speech on his plan for withdrawing from Afghanistan left no doubt that he intends to run for reelection as the leader who ended two painful wars. Most notable was his intention to extract 10,000 soldiers this year and 23,000 more by next summer, before the height of Afghanistan's traditional summer fighting season. For some analysts, this would seem to be a large military risk, taken for purely domestic political benefit.
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Obama may have concluded that conventional U.S. ground forces in Afghanistan no longer provide much leverage over the military or political situation there. Obama realizes that the Taliban have established safe havens in both Afghanistan and Pakistan where they can wait as long as they need to. With those safe havens, he likely realizes that the coalition cannot obtain sufficient advantage over the Taliban to achieve a favorable negotiated settlement. Nor can anyone be sure how permanent the apparent progress in stabilizing southern Afghanistan really is.
The real permanent leverage over the Taliban comes in two forms. The first is Afghanistan's security forces, both the government's and local militias, which will presumably operate long after coalition soldiers have left the field. A favorable outcome ultimately rests not with U.S. combat patrols but with the long-term effectiveness of Afghan security forces, something which remains very much in doubt. For those officers responsible for U.S. military doctrine, Obama's speech would seem to bring to a close another unhappy encounter with counterinsurgency (COIN) theory. But true COIN -- winning over the population through security and better governance -- is not done by an outside intervening power like the United States, but by the host country itself. Although Afghanistan provides particularly poor raw material for U.S. COIN doctrine, U.S. military planners still need to solve the COIN puzzle for future contingencies, at a much lower cost than the United States paid in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Second, if Obama's drawdown decision implies giving up on leverage inside Afghanistan, it also provides him an opportunity to increase his leverage over Pakistan and by extension the Taliban and al Qaeda elements residing there. Obama specifically mentioned safe havens in Pakistan declaring, "that so long as I am president, the United States will never tolerate a safe haven for those who aim to kill us." This was a warning to Pakistan that if its leaders won't do something about the safe havens, he will. But Obama's leverage is minimal as long as he must supply a large coalition army in Afghanistan through Pakistan. Reducing the military presence in Afghanistan reduces dependence on Pakistan and increases Obama's leverage over Islamabad. Obama could then translate that leverage into more military strikes against Taliban and al Qaeda safe havens, actions which may do more for Afghan security than the coalition forces presently there.
The killing of Osama bin Laden provided Obama an opportunity to justify a quicker disengagement from Afghanistan. On this, it seems, he will get few arguments from either his prospective Republican challengers or the U.S. electorate. Pakistan by contrast will not welcome these changes as it loses its leverage over the United States and risks becoming even more of a target for U.S. raids. Finally, U.S. military planners will have to retreat to their offices to rethink their doctrines for stability operations. The American public and its political leaders did not have the patience for stabilization plans that required open-ended deployments of large armies. These planners will need to come up with a new approach.
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