That appears to be what Panetta was talking about, though in order to become formal policy the change would have to be endorsed at the NATO conference this May in Chicago. And it makes a great deal of sense: Commanders have to be prepared to sacrifice some tactical gains in order to prepare Afghan forces to take over at the end of 2014. But "makes sense" is very different from "will work." The premise of the ambitious counterinsurgency strategy that Obama agreed to adopt in 2009, at the urging of Petraeus, then the overall commander for the region, was that U.S. forces would clear out the Taliban from Afghan territory, train Afghan forces to take over, and help build a sufficiently effective government that would encourage the Afghan people to choose the state over the insurgents. That enterprise has largely failed, and since the White House knows very well that it has failed, officials cannot expect that even adequately trained Afghan forces will be able to sustain the fight against the Taliban. The "transition" is thus an exercise in kabuki as much as it is in counterinsurgency doctrine.
Leaks from two classified reports have confirmed what is already obvious. A January National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan drawn up by the CIA and other intelligence agencies concluded that the incompetence and corruption of the Afghan government, along with the resilience of an insurgency sheltering across the border, could make it impossible for the Afghan state to survive on its own after U.S. and NATO support dwindles after 2014. And a NATO report based on the interrogation of some 4,000 Taliban prisoners asserted that Afghan security forces are collaborating extensively with the Taliban, and that Afghan civilians "frequently prefer Taliban governance over the Afghan government." (Critics have noted that Taliban prisoners may not be the most reliable sources.)
Still, senior military officials appear to be sincerely convinced that the battle is tipping towards the NATO alliance and away from the Taliban. Perhaps they'll be proved right; but based on current trends, the Taliban is all too likely to fill the vacuum created by the departure of U.S. and NATO forces. The best chance to avoid such a debacle is not a successful hand-off to the Afghan military but a successful negotiation which persuades the Taliban to lay down its arms in exchange for a significant role in the Afghan government. The White House is increasingly focused on that goal. The effort, based in Doha, is being led by Marc Grossman, the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. But so far, Pakistan's intelligence service -- which, the NATO report noted, exercises almost total control over the Taliban -- has opposed the talks. Even Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, has spurned the effort, preferring to conduct his own alleged negotiations in Saudi Arabia. The boys at Ladbrokes are probably laying long odds on this outcome, too.
And this brings us to the endgame of the endgame. Afghanistan is a relic -- though one that keeps reaching out from the crypt. We've already moved on. The Pentagon's "strategic guidance" issued last month stated that "U.S. forces will no longer be sized to conduct large-scale, prolonged stability operations" -- read, Iraq and Afghanistan. And while the United States will not be leaving the Middle East, it "will of necessity rebalance towards the Asia-Pacific region." Washington is pivoting from the Middle East to Asia, and from an immensely frustrating decade of regime change, occupation, nation-building, and counterinsurgency to a much more familiar and, dare we say, rational era of great-power deterrence. The president, and the American people, would like to see the back of Afghanistan.
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