What is Obama’s Af-Pak policy exactly?

By Christian Brose

A busy work schedule has kept me from commenting on President Obama’s Af-Pak speech (and policy White Paper) until now. So at the risk of coming to this a few days late and a whole lot of dollars short, here goes.

I am happy to see many conservatives supporting Obama for making the decision he did, though I am confident they weren’t following my call to do so. Obama was right to frame the issue as he did, around the elimination of terrorist threats to America’s national security. That is, after all, why we are in Afghanistan in the first place, and it is important to focus on our core interests there — even if achieving those interests requires a larger effort to strengthen a legitimate, representative government; support sustainable economic development; foster population security; and help Afghans peel the insurgency down to a level they can handle themselves.

This is Obama’s policy … I think. It’s what I took away from the White Paper, but if that same policy was contained within Obama’s speech, then you could have fooled me. Read side by side, as I have now done more than once, the two documents seem to be describing two different policies — a narrower counter-terrorism policy in the speech, and a broader counter-insurgency plus state-building policy in the White Paper. What gives? Peter Feaver offers the plausible explanation that Obama is adopting the latter while trying to sell it as the former. I hope Peter is right, and if he is, this is no way to explain a war to an already skeptical public. Still, I am more suspicious.

My fear is that this discrepancy is not just a matter of communications but strategy. It was reported over the weekend that the administration was divided over the policy review (no surprise there), with Biden calling for a minimal approach while Clinton and Holbrooke pushed for nation-building that dare not speak its name. Judging only by the two public documents we have on the new Af-Pak policy, my concern is that, rather than choosing one option over the other, Obama split the difference — opting for some elements of an enemy focused counter-terrorism strategy and other elements of a population-centric counter-insurgency strategy. Some might say this is a prudent compromise, taking the best of both approaches. Perhaps. Or it could just be the arithemetic mean between two principled positions that won’t lead to failure but might not be enough to produce success either.

So, for example, Obama increased U.S. troops, but not as much as his commanders wanted. He supported expanding the Afghan army and police, but not as much as many experts called for and way below what was reportedly being considered. As for the mission, the White Paper says, "Our counter-insurgency strategy must integrate population security with building effective local governance and economic development." This is right and laudable. But not only do the words "counter-insurgency," "protect," and "population" not appear anywhere in Obama’s speech, he gives the impression that our troops will just continue to be employed to chase around the enemy. Furthermore, he says, "we will shift our mission to training and increasing the size of the Afghan security forces." Which begs the question, as Philip Zelikow rightly asks: "Is this a stabilize/train/withdraw strategy or a clear/hold/build strategy?" I still can’t say, and no rhetoric can paper over that difference.

The same splitting of the difference could be seen in the communication of the new policy. Obama explained why we must succeed in Afghanistan, and though I agree with Sen. McCain that he should have prepared Americans more for how hard this will be, the president did a good job of making the case. The problem is, he did it on a Friday, where news is sent to die. This, after sending 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan in a press release. And then the president devoted his weekend radio address not to the war he just escalated, but to floods in Minnesota and the Dakotas (important though they are).

So after several days, and several readings, I’m still left wondering: What exactly is Obama’s Af-Pak policy? I hope it’s what’s in the White Paper, and I hope Feaver is right that the discrepancy between that and the speech is all a rhetorical matter. But if it’s not, if Obama did split the difference on the policy, he’ll need to be encouraged, as Dan Twining says, to improve it through its implementation. Either way, if I were a U.S. diplomat or soldier, I’d be rather confused right now as to what my commander-in-chief is calling on me to do.