Differing Views On What U.S. Should Do Next

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ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.

MICHELE NORRIS, host:

And I'm Michele Norris.

What's next for Afghanistan? That's the question we've addressed during this entire hour. You can hear all the segments of this special at our Web site, npr.org.

SIEGEL: We've heard about the mission in Afghanistan, as it's now being pursued, about the Taliban and about the many obstacles to success. Well, now, what are the options for the future? President Obama could choose from the major options under discussion or pull parts from those options or decide to carve out his own course. In this last part of the hour, we're going to hear from four advocates of four different options.

NORRIS: First is what General Stanley McChrystal wants to do. He's the commander chosen by President Obama. Military historian Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations says that's what President Obama should do: implement General McChrystal's plan.

Mr. MAX BOOT (Military Historian; Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations): Really the only plan that offers any hope of a satisfactory outcome in Afghanistan, switching to a counterinsurgency strategy of the kind which has worked before in Iraq and other places, and that will in turn require more resources because the war has been dramatically and severely under-resourced for years, and General McChrystal needs at least 40,000 more troops to implement his strategy. So I would urge the president to give the general what he needs.

NORRIS: As Max Boot says, General McChrystal thinks this is ultimately a war for the Afghan security forces to fight, but there just aren't enough of them.

Mr. BOOT: So the essential issue that General McChrystal faces is it's going to take time to train the Afghan security forces. The army can fight well, but it doesn't have enough troops to take on the well-resourced Taliban insurgency, and then it'll take years to develop that kind of capacity. That's our ultimate exit strategy out of Afghanistan is to build up the Afghan security forces, but in the meantime, there is a very real risk that the war will be lost, and that's what General McChrystal is seeking to avert by asking for more American troops to serve as a filler until the Afghans can take over the fight themselves.

NORRIS: So that's the McChrystal counterinsurgency option. It entails more U.S. troops and more training of Afghan troops.

SIEGEL: There's an alternative approach, one said to be favored by Vice President Joe Biden. Instead of counterinsurgency, this option stresses counterterrorism. Focus on al-Qaida as opposed to the larger indigenous Taliban movement. Austin Long of Columbia University is a counterterrorism strategy advocate.

Professor AUSTIN LONG (International Security Policy, University's School of International and Public Affairs): The counterterrorism option is to focus U.S. efforts solely in Afghanistan on al-Qaida, to essentially concede parts of the country to the Taliban and to focus our efforts solely on preventing it from becoming a haven in the sense that it was before September 11th, 2001.

SIEGEL: Militarily, how do you do that?

Prof. LONG: Militarily, the focus of that effort would be to hold a couple of key positions, I would say one in the south and one in the east. These would be essentially bases for special operations forces. You need some conventional forces, as well, that would provide quick reaction force and force protection for these forces, and you would also need to maintain strong ties to at least local communities, if not to the national government.

SIEGEL: And would you need more troops than the U.S. now has in Afghanistan, or could you do it with fewer troops?

Prof. LONG: You could do it, I believe, if you shift over time to a much smaller footprint. I think somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 would be generous to do this.

SIEGEL: That's political scientist Austin Long of Columbia University.

NORRIS: Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, proposes something in between the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism approaches. In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Kerry described both options as extreme and unnecessary. He said the U.S. simply doesn't have enough troops to meet McChrystal's demands, but he also said the U.S. cannot draw down its mission, either.

Senator JOHN KERRY (Democrat, Massachusetts; Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee): No doubt it is part of the endgame, but I don't think we're there yet. A narrow mission that cedes half the country to the Taliban could lead to civil war, there's no doubt in my mind, and put Pakistan at risk. Moreover, the hardest part of counterterrorism, operations, isn't killing the terrorists, it's finding them. Developing intelligence assets and capabilities needs to be an even stronger priority for us because it lets us transition to a more limited presence that still safeguards our interests, and I believe there are ways to set up various platforms and capacities to achieve that far more effectively than we are today. But for now, we need the boots on the ground to get that kind of information and protect our interest.

NORRIS: So Senator Kerry says increase troops but not by the 40,000 proposed by General McChrystal. First, he says, build up credible Afghan partners.

SIEGEL: Our fourth option comes from retired Marine Colonel Thomas Hammes of the National Defense University. He says step away from Afghanistan and keep your eye on the ball, on the countries in the region that matter more to us than Afghanistan does.

Colonel THOMAS HAMMES (United States Marine Corps, Retired): India and Pakistan are by far the most important relationship in the area. Pakistan is the country under enormous pressure and needs our assistance, and therefore, anything we do in Afghanistan should be seen through the lens of Pakistan. We currently are doing things in Afghanistan that are destabilizing Pakistan. Pakistan is clearly more important, 170 million people, 50 to 100 nukes and currently the home of al-Qaida. Yet we're spending all our resources in Afghanistan.

SIEGEL: So, what should we do with all those resources that we're spending in Afghanistan?

Col. HAMMES: First off, I would significantly reduce the resource in Afghanistan. We are not going to have - the American people don't have the patience for a five- to 10-year, population-centered counterinsurgency campaign. So you have to come up with a different way to do it, and that is not a large U.S. footprint.

SIEGEL: Scale back our ambitions in Afghanistan.

Col. HAMMES: Drastically scale back our ambitions.

SIEGEL: Thomas Hammes' ideas might be called the reduce-forces-in-Afghanistan-and-worry-about-Pakistan option.

NORRIS: Thomas Hammes, Max Boot and Austin Long have agreed to answer some of your questions about military strategy in Afghanistan. Send them to Afghanistan@npr.org, and you can look for their answers on our Web site early next week.

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