The Elusive Afghanistan Strategy

The ends and means of policy are difficult to disentangle in a place as complex and obscure to most Americans as Afghanistan. But clear thinking is essential-even more so than will, determination and boots on the ground, all of which are being alternately challenged and demanded by a growing cacophony of "AfPak" watchers.

Following its predecessor, the Barack Obama administration so far has advanced two aims in Afghanistan, each derivative of the other: to ensure that al Qaeda or similar groups do not use the country as a "base" to harm the US, its allies, or the global interests of either; and to set the country on a path to being governed effectively and "democratically."

Behind both of these aims is the assumption-also voiced periodically by the administration-that continued instability in Afghanistan threatens the viability, not to mention the prestige, of the Pakistani state. To a lesser extent, the same concern has been applied to NATO, but this holds less traction in the US, which has commandeered the lion's share of the Afghan counterinsurgency campaign.

Meanwhile public opinion throughout Europe and the United States is skeptical. It is only a matter of time before greater casualties transform skepticism to hostility.

To its credit, the Obama administration has put great energy into studying the problem. It has assigned some of the very best people to it. Yet in their public pronouncements, there is still some confusion and ambiguity about the overall mission.

Just as there is no single "AfPak" insurgency to defeat, the aim of removing all potential terrorists from Afghan territory is fantastical. The same could be said for any number of other countries. The United States cannot create and sustain viable governments for all of them. Doing so for Afghanistan is a means, not an end in itself.

The end is to reduce the incentives for outside powers, especially neighbors, to continue to feed regional, ethnic and other types of conflict and, in turn, enhance the potential for instability in Afghanistan to spread across borders. This has been a devil's bargain, to be sure. But it is a fact worth underscoring. There would be no Taliban in Afghanistan or Pakistan if the Bhutto and Sharif governments had not once been so worried about Pushtun nationalism, just as there would be no need to placate Tajik and Uzbek parties in Afghanistan if the ethnic and political balance across Afghanistan's northern borders were itself not so precarious.

For the United States and its major allies, the stability of Afghanistan's larger neighbors matters a good deal more strategically than the calculus of power within the country, however much the two are related. The potential for Afghanistan's insurgencies to cause a wider regional war may seem remote, but they exist. On the other hand, then, we need to ask why it is so important to expand the scope of intervention internally. Couldn't the US accomplish its overall mission without having to stabilize so much of the country directly?

Those charged with operations and tactics no doubt have ready answers. Protecting Kabul means hitting important concentrations of Taliban wealth and power, which demands curtailing the opium trade, which means pacifying Helmand, and so forth. But this is precisely how policymakers begin to lose sight of the big picture. The temptation to act and react becomes harder to resist as immersion with local problems intensifies.

By contrast, what the British once called "mastery inactivity" is seen as a sacrilege. Certainly it was in late 2001 when a few very unpopular souls tried to urge the United States to sit back and wait for the Taliban to self-destruct in Kabul and Kandahar-as some people suggested it was about to do, even after Ahmed Shah Massoud's assassination-rather than intervene, however impressively.

Now, it would be very difficult to convince the American people to sacrifice lives and treasure for the sake of a regional balance of power in Central Asia. There must be a determined enemy, a beleaguered ally, and a noble cause. So far, so good. But those in charge of executing the policy must be careful not to get too caught up in the rhetoric of commitment. Because friends and enemies can change-and they do with regularity in Afghanistan-while means can easily become their own ends. When they do, the campaign for prestige takes over, and a tough but manageable insurgency becomes a lost war.