Abstract
The Obama Administration argued that a publicly announced withdrawal timeline would help further U.S. counterinsurgency (COIN) objectives in Afghanistan by incentivizing better behavior from the Karzai government and the Afghan people. In this article, I test the Obama timeline hypothesis to determine whether it is likely to produce the positive change that the Administration claims. By utilizing a mix of consistent historical predictors, deductive logic based on contemporary COIN theory, and currently available evidence, I conclude that the withdrawal timeline has not produced, and likely will not produce, these results and that, on the whole, it has likely engendered perverse incentives that run contrary to Americas COIN objectives. More broadly, the Afghan case should make U.S. policymakers deeply skeptical of assertions that withdrawal timelines can serve as an effective policy tool for changing the behaviors of key regional actors.
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