In December 2009 President Barack Obama finally revealed his administration’s long-awaited Afghanistan strategy in a speech delivered at West Point. The pundits and talking heads wasted little time before weighing in on the plan. While many applauded the announcement of a 30,000-troop surge to turn the tide of what had been labeled a “forgotten” war during President George W. Bush’s second term in office, others were dismayed that President Obama also established a timeline. He announced that U.S. troops would begin leaving Afghanistan in July 2011. How could the United States execute an effective counterinsurgency campaign that would ensure the survival of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s regime in only 18 months? Would the enemy simply outwait the United States, in effect “run out the clock,” and then move against Karzai’s government after his American backers left?
So now, here we are 18 months later. What have we accomplished in that time and what might the future hold? In this issue we take a look at the state of play in Afghanistan as we reach the prescribed starting point of the U.S. withdrawal.
On 10 June, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates delivered a parting shot in a speech to the NATO Council in Brussels before stepping down later in the month. In it, he asserted that NATO has become irrelevant, most notably because its members are not supporting the organization in combat operations as much as they should. But two U.S. Army officers involved in training Afghanistan’s police officers and army soldiers would beg to differ. Lieutenant General William B. Caldwell IV teams with Captain Nathan K. Finney—the officer in charge of the training mission there and one of his principal operators—to tell the story of the successes seen so far and the challenges that lie ahead. The bottom line: U.S. and NATO presence in Afghanistan will last much longer than expected.
It would be self-deluding to try to rate our success in Afghanistan based on money spent, personnel sent, or how many experts we deployed to guide the Afghans to a modernized system of governance; such figures are meaningless if the values underlying the imposed political structures fail to take hold, as retired U.S. Army Major William S. McCallister points out in “Metrics: Impossible.” We need to be realistic, he notes, about the results we can expect in the face of entrenched kinship-based power brokerage there.
Even more significant to U.S. security interests, argues Professor Timothy Hoyt of the U.S. Naval War College, is Pakistan, a nuclear power, host to terrorists, and enemy of India. Though Pakistan is a nominal ally in the war on terrorism, the killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad once again has strained its ever-contentious relations with the United States. But Dr. Hoyt sees the incident as an opportunity for a re-evaluation of U.S. strategy in the region as we try to manage this difficult alliance, one he describes as our most challenging since that with the Soviet Union during World War II.
From the moment China purchased the unfinished Russian carrier Varyag in 1998, Sino-watchers have breathlessly speculated on what role it might play in the People’s Liberation Army Navy. Some thought China acquired the ship merely for research purposes, as a guide to building its own carriers. Or was it the first in a fleet of Chinese flattops? At one point there was even a bizarre proposal to turn it into a floating casino. Docked at Dalian shipyard for nearly a decade, it now appears the carrier is close to becoming operational, with sea trials possibly taking place later this year. This would appear to validate the concerns of those who view China as a peer competitor in the Pacific and consider a future conflict almost inevitable.
But hold on, says Lieutenant Commander Matthew Harper: Those gloomy prognosticators haven’t factored in the most important aspect—the economy. Going against the grain of those who have written for this and other professional journals, he points out that while China’s ramped-up military capabilities—particularly its naval buildup—are legitimate cause for concern, we may have lost some perspective on international economic ties when pondering any potential increase in U.S.-Chinese tension. His article, “Chinese Missiles and the Walmart Factor,” restores those economic realities to the debate. The author provides an intriguing counterpoint to the usual fare on China, and we’re pleased to have him lead off this month. Keep those contrarian fires burning, Lieutenant Commander Harper!