Biddle on Afghanistan: We Can Win. Maybe.

Yesterday, the Council on Foreign Relations hosted a conference call with CFR senior fellow Stephen Biddle, fresh off a month-long stint in Afghanistan where he and other policy professionals worked on a strategic review of the war. Biddle's assessment was stark: the challenges are immense, the prospects for success are slim but on balance it's worth attempting a counter-insurgency strategy to stabilize the country.

Biddle argued that the U.S. had two reasons for sticking it out: 1. to prevent al Qaeda from regaining a state sanctuary in the event Afghanistan collapsed; 2. to prevent Taliban elements from taking root that could destabilize Pakistan.

It was this second factor which loomed larger for Biddle. He suggested that to leave Afghanistan only to watch Pakistan implode would be a foreign policy blunder far worse than the Iraq war.

But if those are the stakes, laboring to bring forth an Afghan government that is competent, moderately less corrupt and capable of governing the entire country is a sizable challenge, Biddle said. It is arguably more difficult than defeating the Taliban itself, he added.

Key to that effort will be to predicate American assistance on changes in Afghan behavior. We have "enormous leverage" over events there, he said. Biddle suggested as an example, withholding travel visas to the children of prominent Afghan officials to the U.S. unless they clean up their corruption.

Biddle covered some of the same ground that he had sketched out in his article in the American Interest, which is well worth reading.

Either way, Biddle said that the clock is ticking and that if our new strategy does not show serious progress in 12 to 24 month, we should be ready to liquidate our presence there.

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Afghan President Hamid Karzai with supporters at a campaign rally. Photo credit: AP Photos