Ben Buckman.net

The administration has been engaged in a long reassessment of strategy in Afghanistan. I feel assured that they've got the best minds bringing all the options to the table, so whatever they come up with won't be half-assed or group-thunk. But I don't see how there are any satisfactory options available.

Counter-insurgency doctrine (as explained so well by David Kilcullen, for example) is premised on a prolonged effort to build up support for a legitimate government. The insurgency wants an alternative political system - in this case a restored Taliban state - and they're winning now because they're gradually achieving that. They're winning by achieving de facto sovereignty over ever more territory, supported for the long term by deep roots (of marriage, commerce, law, etc) in the communities. The counter-insurgency solution is to establish a legitimate government that provides law, security, stability, and respect for ethnic/tribal/national identities instead of the Taliban; convince the people that a Taliban resurgence is not inevitable; that their best interests lie with the government (and in the interim, with the NATO troops backing up said government). Sustain that for long enough to push the Taliban out and back, until the government can take over the whole endeavor, and the mission is "won."

That's the theory. But the central government of Hamid Karzai is totally corrupt and inept. His brother is a drug lord, his democracy is a sham, and as a dictator he has little public support. It would be complicated enough for a legitimately elected, clean leader to control a land of such fundamental divisions, but with him in power, it seems like a waste of time to prop him up.

Would a unanimous declaration by the UN and NATO that the elections were a farce do any good? That would risk political chaos, undoing all the counter-insurgency's efforts. The UN for its part seems to be admitting the fraud was widespread but it's not worth harping over; I assume that position is in line with NATO's.

Is there another leader that could take over, in a coup let's say, and reform the government enough to gain support? I didn't follow the candidates closely enough to know, but I doubt any one is strong enough to do so without a struggle.

It seems that an overt attempt to weaken Karzai is counter-productive or doomed to fail. We've spent eight years propping up a corrupt government and now we're stuck with it. That makes the alternative approaches (like that proposed by VP Biden) make a lot of sense. The end-game is most likely either a weak and corrupt government in a few cities making alliances with war lords; or a return to the Taliban. Neither is worth another 5-10 years of full-scale American commitment. So maybe the U.S. should withdraw support for support Karzai, and try a 3-pronged approach: force new elections or a coup that brings in a better government; direct development aid to build a functioning non-Taliban civil society; while simultaneously hitting the strategic points of Al Qaida and the hardcore AQ-affiliated Taliban.

But a rural insurgency in the toughest terrain on Earth doesn't offer magic strategic bombing targets. (Even insurgencies that supposedly did, like in North Vietnam, couldn't be defeated that way.) And a hospital or school built by the coalition today is a Taliban stronghold or a pile of rubble tomorrow.

And of course Pakistan is unavoidable: maybe the Afghan Taliban is inevitable, but the Pakistani Taliban just attacked military HQ (successfully, given the suicidal nature of the mission), illuminating again the fragility of the whole Pakistani political structure. Suddenly (again) a scenario of Pakistani nuclear weapons falling into the wrong hands doesn't seem so far-fetched. So the Taliban is in many ways a real national security threat to the U.S. and NATO, and dropping the impossible mission of defeating the Afghan Taliban is itself an impossible option.

Republicans like Lindsay Graham and John McCain are saying it's Iraq all over again, so hurry up with another "surge." But most of the violent factions in Iraq had no plausible political alternative; they were nihilistic whereas the Taliban seems fiercely devoted to a winnable cause. In some ways, the chaos in Iraq was a fire that burnt itself out; that doesn't seem to apply in Afghanistan. The surge ultimately worked because it bought off the Sunni militias and made some room for political reconciliation. How can you buy off warlords funded by endless crops of lucrative drugs? The only reconciliation to be had is a devil's bargain with the Taliban and war lords, accepting the realities of divided, violent, undeveloped lands.

The recent attack on a US outpost was eerily like Dien Bien Phu, the French defeat in 1954. Weapons hidden in the mountains, mortar fire from all directions, a little fortress outpost under siege. The troops defended themselves as best they possibly could, albeit with their outpost mostly burnt down. But the appointment of Richard Holbrooke, who started his career in Vietnam, to the top civilian AfPak post is no accident. There may be no good end to this story. So the administration might as well take its time delivering the bad news.

Here's another way to frame this: suppose President Obama knew for certain that this would end exactly like Vietnam. We could stay another year or 20, with rising casualties and material costs, but the Taliban would regain power the minute we left. If the future were known, would it make the policy decisions any simpler?