I explain why over at Danger Room. BLUF:
However the peace talks go, the Taliban have proven that they can remain a fighting force even as the U.S. military batters it. No U.S. officer, from Gen. David Petraeus on down, thinks the Afghanistan war can be won militarily. Hopes for Afghan President Hamid Karzai to step up his governing skills have evaporated, as Karzai spends more time denouncing the very U.S. troops who bolster his rule. The only Plan B is talking peace with the Taliban, something the Afghan and Pakistani governments both support.
That means the key criteria for determining how the Afghanistan war will end won’t be how fast the drawdown goes. It’ll be how the drawdown supports the peace talks. Obama could float temporary halts in hostilities to entice the Taliban to more serious negotiations. Or he could say that the fighting will continue in intensity if the Taliban are intransigent. It could go any number of ways.
But if Obama’s Wednesday speech doesn’t explain how the drawdown supports a political strategy for ending the war, it’ll mean one thing: he has no idea how to get out of Afghanistan.
It's almost like, in a counterinsurgency... political strategy should drive military focus! Karzai really teed this up. Strengthening his governance was Plan A, and that didn't work. (Let's admit it.) Peeling off Taliban through reintegration was Plan B, and that's underperformed. You can still do both of those. But without the Taliban talks, there's no political strategy in Afghanistan. And that means you withdraw with the war unsettled, its gains sure to be squandered, and Afghanistan once again a backyard for regional power struggles.
Maybe the talks won't work and that's the situation the U.S. will have to confront. But way, way better for the U.S. to do its utmost for the talks to succeed, so it doesn't have to put that proposition to the test.
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