×
As the administration's Afghanistan policy review continues, the Times highlights the debate with dueling op-eds from Les Gelb on one side and on the other Max Boot, Frederick Kagan and Kimberly Kagan (or, as Joe Klein calls them in an insightful post, "Max Boot and the Kagan Family Singers.") Both articles share some similarities -- the importance of building Afghan governmental and economic capacity -- but ultimately MB and the KFS want to send three more combat brigades to Afghanistan, but they don't articulate an end-state except to make Afghanistan a "functioning state." Gelb, on the other hand, is skeptical of U.S. ability to defeat the Taliban militarily and wants a plan for withdrawal in three years. Gelb is also more insightful on the topic of engaging regional players, especially Pakistan, along with India, Iran and China. Additionally, while the following analogy from Gelb's piece is far from perfect, I think it speaks effectively to the kind of trick that the new administration wants to pull in scaling back our military goals in the MIddle East:
Withdrawal need not mean defeat for America and victory for terrorists, if the full range of American power is used effectively. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger proved that by countering the nasty aftereffects of Vietnam’s fall to communism in a virtuoso display of American power. They did this by engaging in triangular diplomacy with China and the Soviet Union; brokering a de facto peace between Israel and Egypt; and re-establishing American prowess in Asia as a counterweight to emerging Chinese power. By 1978, three years after Saigon’s fall, America’s position in the area was stronger than at any time since the end of World War II.There's a scenario that you could envision, by no means an easy or likely one, where Nixon's trifecta is matched today with successful diplomatic engagement with Iran and Russia, movement on the peace process in Israel (with either Syria or the Palestinians) and some adroit economic diplomacy in the coming months to reform international financial markets and push back against the global recession. The other factor that Gelb raises is that the United States "should emphasize what we do best (containing and deterring, and forging coalitions) and downgrade what we do worst (nation-building in open-ended wars)." That's a fair assessment, I think, and it's compounded by the fact that there are so many emerging places that could offer terrorists sanctuary, as chronicled in the current "Axis of Upheaval" issue of Foreign Policy, particularly Jeffrey Gettleman's superb piece on Somalia. The United States need to look for a strategic model to deal with terror hot-spots that doesn't export the strategy of Afghanistan, which despite the campaign's various successes in hurting Al Qaeda and overthrowing the Taliban government, isn't something the United States should be in the business of doing with any kind of frequency.
-- Tim Fernholz
