WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s withdrawal plan for Afghanistan marks the beginning of the end of a troop-intensive approach to countering a Taliban insurgency that until recent months had fought the U.S. and its NATO allies to a standstill.
As the war grinds on, the Obama administration will shift the U.S. military’s focus more toward targeting terrorist leaders, while giving Afghans more of the lead in fighting — and eventually reconciling with — the Taliban.
What remains in doubt is the endgame: finding a political solution to the conflict.
Are the Taliban under enough military pressure to compel them to enter serious peace talks with Kabul? Robert Gates, the soon-to-retire defense secretary, thinks not — at least not before the end of this year. But recognizing that Afghans and Americans alike are weary of war, Gates concedes that the current troop-intensive U.S. approach is not sustainable.
So, the U.S. troop withdrawal will accelerate next year. As the force shrinks, so will the scope and ambition of the U.S.-led military campaign.
The shift is a setback for the war’s current commander, Gen. David Petraeus, the author of the military’s guidebook for counterinsurgency. A year ago, Petraeus and the like-minded commander he replaced, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, were talking about a “fully resourced, comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign” in Afghanistan as the key to turning around a stalemated war.
Petraeus is slated to retire from the Army, and the next Afghanistan commander, Gen. John Allen, will be trimming the U.S. sails.
Obama’s speech heralds a historic turning point in the war, but not the first since Obama took office in January 2009. That spring, he fired his top commander in Kabul, Army Gen. David McKiernan, in favor of McChrystal and the “a fundamentally new approach” that he advocated.
In an assessment for Gates, McChrystal wrote that the war could be lost unless Obama redefined the fight and sent thousands more U.S. troops.
The president accepted the core of that advice, which included McChrystal’s view that the central objective must be to protect the Afghan population, not just from Taliban violence and intimidation but also from “corruption and coercion.”
Obama balked at McChrystal’s request for some 40,000 additional forces, however, and settled on roughly 30,000.
The phased drawdown of U.S. troops beginning this summer will not signal an immediate abandonment of the “protect-the-people” approach. But it does suggest that with the 2012 presidential election looming, Obama is ready to begin scaling back his war goals.
“From the standpoint of the American psyche, I think this will be welcomed,” said Kiron K. Skinner, director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Center for International Relations and Politics and a former adviser to the Pentagon.
She said the White House also calculates it will help Obama as he heads into a re-election fight.
