Afghanistan: How Much is Enough?

Abstract

US President Barack Obama's current policy favours escalation in Afghanistan. The idea is that as the United States’ military presence in Iraq is drawn down, the use of force can be refocused on Afghanistan to forge a more viable state. The principal instruments of this policy are more American troops with better force protection (a customised version of the counter-insurgency ‘surge’ employed with ostensible success in Iraq) and firmer bilateral diplomacy with Pakistan. The administration's policy appears to be overdetermined. The premise of the policy is that the United States must ‘own’ Afghanistan in order to defend its strategic interests. But that premise begs the question of whether US strategic interests actually require the United States to assume the grand and onerous responsibility of rebuilding the Afghan state. They do not.