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The Cable goes inside the foreign policy machine, from Foggy Bottom to Turtle Bay, the White House to Embassy Row.

White House nearing decision on Afghanistan; Kerry says McChrystal plan “reaches too far, too fast”

As Barack Obama met with his principals to review their Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy Monday for the sixth time, administration sources told The Cable that the White House hopes to announce a decision on whether to send more troops before the president departs for Asia on Nov. 11 – Veterans’ Day — but cautioned that the date ...

By Josh Rogin

October 26, 2009, 9:04 PM

As Barack Obama met with his principals to review their Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy Monday for the sixth time, administration sources told The Cable that the White House hopes to announce a decision on whether to send more troops before the president departs for Asia on Nov. 11 - Veterans' Day -- but cautioned that the date is by no means set in stone.

As Barack Obama met with his principals to review their Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy Monday for the sixth time, administration sources told The Cable that the White House hopes to announce a decision on whether to send more troops before the president departs for Asia on Nov. 11 – Veterans’ Day — but cautioned that the date is by no means set in stone.

As for whether Sen. John Kerry is taking over Afghanistan policy, according to the White House, he’s just helping out. After months of the administration delivering tough messages to Kabul through envoys such as Richard Holbrooke and Joe Biden, a fresh voice isn’t such a bad thing, the narrative goes.

“It’s a good cop, bad cop routine,” one administration official said, acknowledging the strained personal relationships some other Obama officials have with the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai following the marred presidential elections from August and the subsequent dispute over how to deal with the massive vote fraud there.

Regardless, after personally mediating a constructive way forward by working personally with Karzai last week, Kerry’s views on Afghanistan, which haven’t always been in line with the administration’s, are now getting much more attention.

For example, he said upon returning that no announcement on troop decisions should come before the Nov. 7 runoff elections in Afghanistan.

And today at the Council on Foreign Relations, Kerry got out ahead of the administration’s ongoing strategy review, arguing clearly for a limited counterinsurgency strategy focusing on population centers and resourced below the levels that Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal is calling for.

“We cannot and we should not undertake a manpower-intensive counterinsurgency operation on a national scale in Afghanistan,” said Kerry, D-MA, sounding a lot like his Senate cohort Carl Levin, D-MI, who has also advocated for a strategy centered around building up Afghan forces, not adding U.S. combat soldiers.

“I am convinced, from my conversations with General Stanley McChrystal … he understands the necessity of conducting a smart counterinsurgency in a limited geographic area,” Kerry went on, “But I believe his current plan reaches too far too fast.”

Kerry said that the key questions were whether or not there was a credible Afghan force to partner with, whether local leaders who were on board, and whether the U.S. would follow a troop increase with increased development assistance.

Overall, his speech very much expressed an interest in narrowing the goals in Afghanistan and separating “hardcore” Taliban from those that could be convinced to lay down arms.

“Absent any truly good choices, we have to ask ourselves the question, what is doable, what is possible, and not set some impossible, far out of reach, or hole-digging strategy,” Kerry went on, eschewing the idea of defeating all the Taliban or building a “flawless democracy.”

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.

Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.

A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.

Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin

Tag: Afghanistan