Marc+and+Daniel

=1AC - Afghanistan= = = The Advantages are Hegemony and Insurgency


 * PLAN: The United States federal government should reduce its military presence in Afghanistan to a level consistent of counterterrorism.**


 * Contention one: Hegemony**


 * We’re not leaving in 2011, but the deadline is seen as withdrawal**
 * Rogin, 10** - staff writer for Foreign Policy, Prior to that, Josh covered defense and foreign policy for Congressional Quarterly. Josh has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, and the Brookings Institution (Josh, “Petraeus: Withdrawal timeline does not mean "switching off the lights",” The Cable, 6/29, http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/06/29/petraeus_withdrawal_timeline_does_not_mean_switching_off_the_lights )

When General David Petraeus testifies today on Capitol Hill, his main job will be to carefully define the timeline for the beginning of America's exit from Afghanistan, a timeline that has stakeholders in Washington and throughout the region confused and concerned. "As the President has stated, July 2011 is the point at which we will begin a transition phase in which the Afghan government will take more and more responsibility for its own security," Petraeus wrote in his advanced questions submitted to the Senate Armed Services Committee and obtained by The Cable. "As the President has also indicated, July 2011 is not a date when we will be rapidly withdrawing our forces and -switching off the lights and closing the door behind us." His job will also be to defend President Obama's decision to set a public date for the beginning of the withdrawal in the first place, by arguing that having a time line in the public discussion helps pressure the Afghans to move faster toward being able to govern and secure their country on their own. "I believe there was value in sending a message of urgency -- July 2011... But it is important that July 2011 be seen for what it is: the date when a process begins, in which the reduction of US forces must be based on the conditions at the time, and not a date when the U.S. heads for the exits," he wrote to the committee. He stressed that multiple times that the pace of the drawdown would be "conditions based." But even in his own writing to the committee, Petraeus acknowledged that the enemy, the Taliban and other insurgents in Afghanistan, are waiting out the coalition and biding their time until foreign forces decide to leave. "Insurgent leaders view their tactical and operational losses in 2010 as inevitable and acceptable. The Taliban believe they can outlast the Coalition's will to fight and believe this strategy will be effective despite short-term losses. The Taliban also believe they can sustain momentum and maintain operational capacity," he wrote. One of the main enablers of any U.S. exit is the development of the Afghan National Security Forces, which has not gone at the pace the coalition had hoped. Petraeus wrote that he would review the situation of the ANSF within four months of assuming command, if confirmed. As of the latest review, only 5 out of 19 Afghan National Army brigades can function without a majority of their functions supported by the U.S., according to Petraeus, and only 2 out of 7 major headquarters can function properly without significant coalition support. As of June 27, there are 7,261 ANA troops in the city of Kandahar and 6,794 Afghan soldiers in Helmand province, Petraeus wrote. He also said that a comprehensive plan to reintegrate some Taliban fighters is under final review with President Hamid Karzai and "offers the potential to reduce violence and provide realistic avenues to assimilate Pashtun insurgents back into Afghanistan society." Petraeus promised to take a look at the rules of engagement that U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan feel are tying their hands in the fight, but he didn't say whether he was leaning toward changing them or not. Meanwhile, confusion over the president's timeline persists both in Washington and abroad as interested parties try to interpret the July 2011 date in a way that serves their own political interests. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, said Monday that there would be "a serious drawdown" next summer, seemingly getting ahead of the administration in an effort to appease the liberal wing of her caucus, which is threatening to not support more funding for the war. Two of the committee members Petraeus will face today, Sens. John McCain, R-AZ, and Lindsey Graham, R-SC, held a press conference Thursday to announce their opposition to setting any public date, no matter what the caveats. Foreign leaders are especially confused, particularly the Afghan and Pakistani governments, who see a difference between public promises of drawdowns and private assurances from the administration that the July 2011 date would not precipitate large scale troop reductions. One high level diplomatic source said that Pakistani and Afghan leaders believe that they were told by National Security Advisor Jim Jones that there was not going to be a big withdrawal and the there would be "no reduction in commitment" in July 2011. But regardless of whether the administration sent mixed messages, the nuance of their time line policy has been misunderstood or ignored in the region, as various actors start to plan strategies with the expectation that U.S. troops are leaving. "In retrospect, despite all the caveats, it was a mistake to put such a date certain for the beginning of withdrawal," said Shuja Nawaz, director of the South Asia Center at the Atlantic Council. "The word beginning was lost and it strengthens the ability of different interests to hedge, which is exactly what they've been doing."

** This destroyed the perception of US commitment to Afghanistan **
 * Rubin, 10** – resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute ; senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School's Center for Civil-Military Relations; and a senior editor of the // Middle East Quarterly //. (Michael, Public Square, 3/8, “The Afghanistan Withdrawal: Why Obama Was Wrong to Insist on a Deadline,” http://www.michaelrubin.org/7033/afghanistan-withdrawal-deadline )

It is true, as Schlesinger points out, that Obama did not set a date for the completion of the withdrawal, but he signaled its finite nature. And herein lays the problem. The reason Obama spoke of a deadline was not to pressure Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai but rather to assuage constituencies in the United States increasingly wary of open-ended U.S. involvement in the country. But in the Middle East and South Asia, perception matters far more than reality. Diplomatic affairs expert Omar Sharifi, speaking on Afghan television, declared, "Today the Afghans unfortunately lost the game and failed to get a long-term commitment from the international community." Likewise, Afghan political analyst Ahmad Sayedi observed, "When the USA sets a timeline of 18 months for troop withdraw, this by itself boosts the morale of the opponents and makes them less likely to take any step towards reconciliation." It is absolutely correct to say that Obama did not say that all—or even a significant fraction—of U.S. troops would withdraw in July 2011, but this is what was heard not only by U.S. allies and adversaries in Afghanistan but also by the governments and media in regional states such as Pakistan, Iran, and even Russia.


 * Counterinsurgency is overstretching the military and overall leadership – counterterrorism focus is key to stop rising challengers **
 * Kretkowski, 10 ** – Frequently assists think tank in conferences and other work products that aid DoD's long-term thinking about threats that may not be addressable via weapons platforms. Spent six months in Afghanistan working with Army public affairs. (Paul, “Against COIN, for CT in Afghanistan and Elsewhere”, 1/7, Beacon (a blog), http://softpowerbeacon.blogspot.com/2010/01/against-coin-for-ct-in-afghanistan-and.html)

Over the winter break I had an epiphany about the interrelation of U.S. hard and soft power: I now oppose a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan and advocate a purely counterterror (CT) strategy (PDF link) there instead. Blame history—or histories—that I've read recently, starting with Livy's works on early Rome (books I-V) last spring and Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War at the end of 2009. I've taken occasional dips back into Robert Kaplan's Warrior Politics and his source materials (Churchill, the Federalists, Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and several others). What I've taken from that reading is that the U.S. must pull back from its current efforts to remake Iraq and Afghanistan in the image of a Western democracy, or risk long-term political and economic exhaustion. What follows is not an argument about morality, and readers may find much of it amoral. It is about making cold-blooded political and economic calculations about where U.S. national interests will lie in the next decade. They do not lie in an open-ended COIN mission. The history of the Peloponnesian War is particularly relevant here. Athens began fighting Sparta with the resources of an empire and thousands of talents of silver in the bank—enough to fight expensive, far-flung naval and land campaigns for three years without lasting financial consequences. Athens was rich, and if peace with Sparta had come by the end of the third year, Athens would have continued to prosper and rule over much of the Mediterranean. (Athens had a "hard"—conquered or cowed—empire as opposed to the "soft" empire of alliances and treaties the U.S. currently has.) But the war with Sparta dragged on for decades, despite occasional peace overtures by both sides. By war's end—despite the spoils of battle and increased taxes and tribute extracted from its shrinking dominion—Athens was broke, depopulated by fighting and plague, bereft of its empire, and could no longer project power into the Mediterranean. Where its former interests ranged from Black Sea Turkey to southern Italy, it spent decades as a small-bore power and never regained its former strength or influence. I worry that the U.S. is similarly locked into an open-ended commitment to democratize a nation that is of regional rather than global importance—a parallel to Athens convincing itself that it had to conquer distant, militarily insignificant Sicily. "Winning" in Afghanistan The U.S. could "win" in Afghanistan where victory is defined as a stable, legitimate central government that can project power within its own borders. I don't doubt that the U.S. and its allies could accomplish this given enough time and resources. But I think—as many COIN experts also do—that it will take at least another decade or more of blood and treasure to produce such a result, if ever. Of course I'd like to see the results of a successful COIN campaign: a stable democracy, women's rights, and general prosperity for Afghans, who among all Asia's peoples surely deserve those things. I certainly want to end al-Qa'ida's ability to operate freely in South Asia and elsewhere. The U.S. is the only country that would both conceive of these missions and attempt to carry them out. But goals beyond keeping al-Qa'ida on the run don't serve the long-term interests of the U.S., and I am more interested in regaining and preserving U.S. hard power than I am in the rewards that would come from "winning" a lengthy COIN war. I fear the U.S. people and government becoming exhausted from the costs of a lengthy COIN effort, just as they are already exhausted from (and have largely forgotten about) the Iraq war. I worry that if this fatigue sits in, the U.S. will abandon foreign-policy leadership as it has done periodically throughout history. This outcome would be worse than a resurgent Taliban, worse than Afghan women and men being further oppressed, and worse than al-Qa'ida having plentiful additional caves to plot in. Here are some signs of an exhaustion of U.S. power: The U.S. is already overextended, with commitments in Iraq (shrinking for now), Afghanistan (expanding), Yemen (pending) and Iran (TBD). At home, the U.S. economy remains feeble and in the long term is increasingly hostage to other nations for goods and services it no longer produces (and increasingly, no longer can produce). Even more worrisome is the U.S. credit situation. The wars, and much other U.S. government spending, are now heavily underwritten by other countries' purchases of debt the U.S. issues. It has borrowed trillions from foreign countries and especially China, which continues its steady, highly rational policy of promoting exports while freeriding under the American security umbrella (just as the U.S. once rode for free beneath Britain's). Over time, those countries accrue enough debt to have a say in U.S. policies that may threaten the dollar's value, which is why you now see high U.S. officials flying to Beijing to soothe PRC nerves and explain why America keeps borrowing money. At home, there are few resources to apply following a major disaster, such as a Katrina-style hurricane or a major earthquake. The U.S. needs to start rebuilding its reserves—of capital, of credit, of political goodwill abroad, of military force—to be ready for these and more serious crises, for which we currently have few resources to spare. Such challenges may involve humanitarian crises (think Darfur, a Rwanda-style genocide, Indian Ocean tsunamis); Latin American instability (Mexico, Venezuela, post-Castro Cuba); rogue-state nuclear development (Iran, North Korea); or complex challenges from a rising power (China, a reinvigorated Russia).

** Kuhner, 9 - ** the president of the Edmund Burke Institute for American Renewal (Jeffrey, Washington Times, “Obama’s quagmire; US should look to its own interests,” 9/7, Lexis Academic)
 * Afghanistan is a quagmire of attrition warfare sapping our morale and readiness.**

America is losing the war in Afghanistan. Rather than change course, President Obama is sending 21,000 additional U.S. troops. This will bring the total to 68,000 American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan, bolstering coalition forces to 110,000. The troop surge, however, will not work. Afghanistan has become Mr. Obama's Vietnam - a protracted quagmire draining precious American blood and treasure. August was the deadliest month for U.S. forces, with 47 soldiers killed by Taliban insurgents. More than 300 coalition troops have died in 2009. This is the highest toll since the war began in 2001, and there are still four months to go. The tide of battle has turned against the West. The Taliban is resurgent. It has reasserted control over its southern stronghold in Kandahar. The Taliban is launching devastating attacks in the western and northern parts of the country - formerly stable areas. U.S. casualties are soaring. The morale of coalition forces is plummeting. Most of our allies - with the exception of the Canadians and the British - are reluctant to engage the Islamist militants. American public support for the war is waning. The conflict has dragged on for nearly eight years. (U.S. involvement in World War II was four years, World War I less than one.) Yet, America's strategic objectives remain incoherent and elusive. The war's initial aim was to topple the Taliban and eradicate al Qaeda bases from Afghan territory. Those goals have been achieved. Washington should have declared victory and focused on the more important issue: preventing Islamic fundamentalists from seizing power in Pakistan, along with its nuclear arsenal. Instead, America is engaged in futile nation-building. Mr. Obama, like President George W. Bush before him, believes Afghanistan must be transformed by erecting a strong central government, democracy and a modern economy. Washington argues this will prevent terrorism from taking root and bring about lasting "stability." Hence, following a recent reassessment of the war by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, the Obama administration is contemplating deploying 20,000 to 40,000 U.S. troops - on top of the 21,000 already pledged. Moreover, billions have been spent building irrigation canals, schools, hospitals and factories. Civilian advisers are being sent to encourage farmers to grow other cash crops besides opium poppies. Western aid money has been used to establish a massive Afghan army, a large police force and a swollen government bureaucracy. Gen. McChrystal said this week that the situation is "serious," but not impossible. He still believes victory is within reach. His new strategy is to protect Afghan civilians from Taliban attacks. He also wants to create a lucrative jobs programs and improve local government services. The goal is to win the "hearts and minds" of the Afghan people. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says we must combat Afghanistan's "culture of poverty." Call it humanitarian war through social engineering. Mr. Obama's policy will result in a major American defeat - one that will signal the end of America as a superpower and expose us to the world as a paper tiger. Afghanistan is the graveyard of empires. The mighty British and Russian armies were humiliated in drawn-out guerrilla campaigns. The country's mountainous geography and primitive tribal culture are ideally suited for insurgent warfare. By sending in more troops, Washington is playing right into the Taliban's hands: We are enabling the Taliban to pick off our forces one by one as they wage a campaign of attrition. The Taliban blend with the local population, making it almost impossible for U.S. forces to distinguish combatants from civilians. American counterinsurgency efforts are thus alienating some of the locals. Initially welcomed as liberators, we are now viewed in some quarters as occupiers. Moreover, much of the West's aid money is siphoned off by greedy politicians in Kabul. President Hamid Karzai's government is corrupt, venal and ineffective. It barely controls one-third of the country. It is despised by many Afghans for its brutality and incompetence. In addition, Mr. Karzai's vice-presidential running mate is a drug trafficker. The West's efforts to forge a cohesive national state based on federalism and economic reconstruction have failed. Warlords are increasingly asserting power in the provinces. The country is fractured along tribal and ethnic lines. The center cannot hold: Afghanistan remains mired in anarchy, blood feuds and weak, decentralized rule. U.S. troops should be deployed to defend U.S. national interests. Their lives should never be squandered for an experiment in liberal internationalism. In fact, such a policy is morally grotesque and strategically reckless. Mr. Obama should quickly withdraw most U.S. forces from Afghanistan. American air power and small, flexible Special Forces units are more than enough to wipe out al Qaeda terrorists. The Taliban is too hated to reoccupy the country - unless our huge military and economic footprint drives numerous Afghans into the evil, welcoming arms of extremists.


 * This will obliterate hegemony **
 * Pyne, 9 -** Vice Chair of the Utah State Legislative Compensation Commission and Vice President of the Association of the United States Army's Utah chapter and a Vice President of the Salt Lake Total Force Chapter of the Military Officers Association of America (David, “  Obama failing our troops in Afghanistan,” 11/7, http://westernfrontamerica.com/2009/11/07/obama-failing-troops-afghanistan/)

Since we invaded Iraq six and a half years ago and Afghanistan eight years ago, we have lost nearly 7,000 American soldiers and contractors killed in action with tens of thousands more severely wounded at the cost of a trillion dollars thus far. October has been the single deadliest month for US forces since the war began. It shouldn’t take a military strategist to realize that after fighting a war for over eight years without any real idea how to win, it might be time to consider a drastic change in strategy. This should include a sober assessment of the cost/benefit analysis of staying and fighting at a rising cost in American blood and treasure versus conserving our military strength and bringing our troops home to defend America from terrorist attack. The Soviets fought an eight year long war in Afghanistan before finally realizing that victory was not a possibility in a conflict which some say began a chain of events that resulted in the collapse of the Evil Empire thanks to Reagan’s support of proxy forces against the Soviet invaders. If the Soviet Union could not win after eight years of fighting in Afghanistan, what makes our leaders think that we can? The longer we keep large numbers of our troops fighting no-win counterinsurgency wars of attrition in Iraq and Afghanistan, the weaker and more vulnerable we will become to the point where eventually the American Empire, as some call it, may decline precipitously or perhaps even collapse altogether. Worse yet, America’s increasing military weakness highlighted further by Obama’s ongoing demolition of our nuclear deterrent might invite a catastrophic attack from our from our Sino-Russian alliance enemies. Already some of our retired generals have stated that they believe our Army and Marine Corps ground forces have been broken by their over-deployment in the desert sands of Iraq and Afghanistan. If the Soviet Union could not win after eight years of fighting in Afghanistan, what makes our leaders think that we can? The longer we keep large numbers of our troops bogged down fighting two no-win counterinsurgency wars of attrition in Iraq and Afghanistan, the weaker and more vulnerable we will become to the point where eventually the American Empire, as some call it, may decline 1precipitously or perhaps even collapse altogether. Worse yet, America’s increasing military weakness highlighted further by Obama’s ongoing demolition of our nuclear deterrent, might invite a catastrophic attack from our from our Sino-Russian alliance enemies. Already some of our retired generals have stated that they believe our Army and Marine Corps ground forces have been broken by their over-deployment in the desert sands of Iraq and Afghanistan. This high tempo of deployments has resulted in much of our military equipment to break down while procurement and readiness are at their lowest levels over the past quarter century. Our national security always suffers when we get bogged down in wars where our troops are asked to bleed and die, but are not permitted by our political leaders to win. Our brave soldiers should never be allowed to sacrifice in this way without the hope of victory! The best way to support our troops is to bring them home to their families and make a commitment that we will not let a week go by without thanking a soldier for their willingness to risk life and limb to defend us all. What is it going to take to get our political leaders to realize that the costs of staying and fighting the long war in Iraq and Afghanistan greatly outweigh the costs of redeploying out of theater? The same voices we hear calling for us to send another 40,000 to 100,000 troops to Afghanistan are the ones that would have called for us to keep surging and fighting in Vietnam in perpetuity at the cost of hundreds of thousands of our soldiers lives. It didn’t make sense to do that then and it doesn’t make sense to do so now. Ronald Reagan won the Cold War against the Evil Soviet Empire in part by employing proxies to fight and win our battles for us. We need to learn from Reagan and re-employ a strategy of arming and supporting proxies both states and insurgent movements to fight our wars so our troops don’t have to. America needs to conserve its military strength for a time when we they may be called upon to fight great power enemies, not waste it bogged down fighting Vietnams in the desert as we have been doing the past several years. Until we do, we will remain in a state of imperial overstretch and strategic paralysis with no reserve forces to fight new hypothetical wars of necessity and with a continuing window of vulnerability which our enemies will undoubtedly continue to exploit. North Korea has already been exploiting our window of vulnerability with their ongoing nuclear missile buildup as has the Islamic Republic of Iran is doing with its near imminent development of weaponized nukes. Even Russia has done so with their invasion of US-ally Georgia this past year.

Bounding Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan,” Small Wars Journal, 10/21, http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2009/10/toward-a-kilcullenbiden-plan/
 * COIN will collapse the dollar and economics leadership **
 * Corn, 9 ** – Ph.D. from the University of Paris and is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College, currently on leave from the US State Department (Tony, “Toward a Kilcullen-Biden Plan?

Just do the math - with 63,000 troops on the ground, the cost for the U.S. of the Afghan War is already 6.7 billion dollars a month. With a hypothetical 40,000 troop increase, it would rise to more than 10 billion a month. For how long? Though it gives a time estimate for the possibility of failure (12 months), the report does not provide any timeline as to the possibility of actual success. Most counterinsurgency experts appear to be in agreement that it will take more than two years to know whether the plan has a chance of succeeding, and at least an additional three years for the plan to actually succeed. In short, the recommended jump is a 500 billion dollar gamble that would come on top of the Iraq trillion dollar war. In these conditions, any responsible Administration - be it Democrat or Republican - would be justified in taking a closer look. That “endless money forms the sinews of war” (Cicero) is a timeless truth. The question is to what extent does the U.S. have endless money at this particular juncture? Among the numerous analogies made between the wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam lately, the one that has yet to surface concerns the monetary dimension. The first casualty of the Vietnam War was not the Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society project – it was the mighty dollar itself. Though the dollar had been the undisputed currency of the world ever since WWII, the Vietnam folly eventually forced Nixon to decouple the dollar from gold. From 1971 until roughly 2001, the dollar’s new status did not seem to matter much, since the European Croesus could always be expected to bankroll the American Caesar.4 Not anymore. Today, Croesus no longer speaks German and French, but Mandarin and Arabic; and Croesus is increasingly vocal in its call to put an end to the status of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Ironically, the only people on earth who don’t seem to realize the incredible advantage derived by America from the dollar’s status are the American people themselves. In last instance, America’s military “command of the commons” rests on America’s monetary command of the common currency.5 The fact that, five years from now, the implementation of the McChrystal plan could actually lead to “victory” at the theater-strategic level is a distinct possibility. The fact that, five years from now as well, the dollar would no longer be the world’s reserve currency is a quasi-certainty. The end of America as a monetary superpower would spell the end of America as a superpower tout court – the ultimate defeat at the national-strategic level. Bottom line - on the one hand, the U.S. does not have 500 billion dollars to waste in an open-ended escalation in one of the many ungoverned sandboxes of the world. On the other hand, an incremental (“middle way”) strategy would fail to create the psychological effect required in both the West and Afghanistan at this point. That said, a temporary 40,000 surge remains a realistic option, but only so long as the White House strategy rests on two pillars “bounding” the counterinsurgency campaign - on the one hand, a convocation of a new loya jirga as advocated by counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen - on the other, a regional diplomatic settlement as advocated by Vice-President Joe Biden.


 * Economic leadership prevents economic collapse—leadership preserves resilience**
 * Mandelbaum** **2005** – Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy Program at Johns Hopkins – 2005 [Michael, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts As the World’s Government in the Twenty-First Century, p. 192-195]

Although the spread of nuclear weapons, with the corresponding increase in the likelihood that a nuclear shot would be fired in anger somewhere in the world, counted as the most serious potential consequence of the abandonment by the United States of its role as the world's government, it was not the only one. In the previous period of American international reticence, the 1920s and 1930s, the global economy suffered serious damage that a more active American role might have mitigated. A twenty-first-century American retreat could have similarly adverse international economic consequences. The economic collapse of the 1930s caused extensive hardship throughout the world and led indirectly to World War II by paving the way for the people who started it to gain power in Germany and Japan. In retrospect, the Great Depression is widely believed to have been caused by a series of errors in public policy that made an economic downturn far worse than it would have been had governments responded to it in appropriate fashion. Since the 1930s, acting on the lessons drawn from that experience by professional economists, governments have taken steps that have helped to prevent a recurrence of the disasters of that decade.' In the face of reduced demand, for example, governments have increased rather than cut spending. Fiscal and monetary crises have evoked rescue efforts rather than a studied indifference based on the assumption that market forces will readily reestablish a desirable economic equilibrium. In contrast to the widespread practice of the 1930s, political authorities now understand that putting up barriers to imports in an attempt to revive domestic production will in fact worsen economic conditions everywhere. Still, a serious, prolonged failure of the international economy, inflicting the kind of hardship the world experienced in the 1930s (which some Asian countries also suffered as a result of their fiscal crises in the 1990s) does not lie beyond the realm of possibility. Market economies remain subject to cyclical downturns, which public policy can limit but has not found a way to eliminate entirely. Markets also have an inherent tendency to form bubbles, excessive values for particular assets, whether seventeenth century Dutch tulips or twentieth century Japanese real estate and Thai currency, that cause economic harm when the bubble bursts and prices plunge. In responding to these events, governments can make errors. They can act too slowly, or fail to implement the proper policies, or implement improper ones. Moreover, the global economy and the national economies that comprise it, like a living organism, change constantly and sometimes rapidly: Capital flows across sovereign borders, for instance, far more rapidly and in much greater volume in the early twenty-first century than ever before. This means that measures that successfully address economic malfunctions at one time may have less effect at another, just as medical science must cope with the appearance of new strains of influenza against which existing vaccines are not effective. Most importantly, since the Great Depression, an active American international economic role has been crucial both in fortifying the conditions for global economic well-being and 00in coping with the problems that have occurred, especially periodic recessions and currency crises, by applying the lessons of the past. The absence of such a role could weaken those conditions and aggravate those problems. The overall American role in the world since World War II therefore has something in common with the theme of the Frank Capra film It's a Wonderful Life, in which the angel Clarence, played by Henry Travers, shows James Stewart, playing the bank clerk George Bailey, who believes his existence to have been worthless, how life in his small town of Bedford Falls would have unfolded had he never been born. George Bailey learns that people he knows and loves turn out to be far worse off without him. So it is with the United States and its role as the world's government. Without that role, the world very likely would have been in the past, and would become in the future, a less secure and less prosperous place. The abdication by the United States of some or all of the responsibilities for international security that it had come to bear in the first decade of the twenty-first century would deprive the international system of one of its principal safety features, which keeps countries from smashing into each other, as they are historically prone to do. In this sense, a world without America would be the equivalent of a freeway full of cars without brakes. Similarly, should the American government abandon some or all of the ways in which it had, at the dawn of the new century, come to support global economic activity, the world economy would function less effectively and might even suffer a severe and costly breakdown. A world without the United States would in this way resemble a fleet of cars without gasoline.


 * That goes nuclear without economic leadership**
 * Mandelbaum 2005** – Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy Program at Johns Hopkins – 2005 [Michael, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts As the World’s Government in the Twenty-First Century, p. 224]

At best, an American withdrawal would bring with it some of the political anxiety typical during the Cold War and a measure of the economic uncertainty that characterized the years before World War II. At worst, the retreat of American power could lead to a repetition of the great global economic failure and the bloody international conflicts the world experienced in the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, the potential for economic calamity and wartime destruction is greater at the outset of the new century than it was in the first half of the preceding one because of the greater extent of international economic interdependence and the higher levels of prosperity—there is more to lose now than there was then—and because of the presence, in large numbers, of nuclear weapons.


 * Hegemony outweighs—superior to all alternatives**
 * Thayer, 6 - ** professor of security studies at Missouri State (Bradley, The National Interest, “In Defense of Primacy”, November/December, p. 32-37)

A grand strategy based on American primacy means ensuring the United States stays the world's number one power‑the diplomatic, economic and military leader. Those arguing against primacy claim that the United States should retrench, ei­ther because the United States lacks the power to maintain its primacy and should withdraw from its global commitments, or because the maintenance of primacy will lead the United States into the trap of "imperial overstretch." In the previous issue of The National Interest, Christopher Layne warned of these dangers of pri­macy and called for retrenchment.1 Those arguing for a grand strategy of retrenchment are a diverse lot. They include isolationists, who want no foreign military commitments; selective engagers, who want U.S. military commitments to centers of economic might; and offshore balancers, who want a modified form of selective engagement that would have the United States abandon its landpower presence abroad in favor of relying on airpower and seapower to defend its in­terests. But retrenchment, in any of its guis­es, must be avoided. If the United States adopted such a strategy, it would be a profound strategic mistake that would lead to far greater instability and war in the world, imperil American security and deny the United States and its allies the benefits of primacy. There are two critical issues in any discussion of America's grand strategy: Can America remain the dominant state? Should it strive to do this? America can remain dominant due to its prodigious military, economic and soft power capa­bilities. The totality of that equation of power answers the first issue. The United States has overwhelming military capa­bilities and wealth in comparison to other states or likely potential alliances. Barring some disaster or tremendous folly, that will remain the case for the foreseeable future. With few exceptions, even those who advocate retrenchment acknowledge this. So the debate revolves around the desirability of maintaining American pri­macy. Proponents of retrenchment focus a great deal on the costs of U.S. action­ but they fall to realize what is good about American primacy. The price and risks of primacy are reported in newspapers every day; the benefits that stem from it are not. A GRAND strategy of ensur­ing American primacy takes as its starting point the protec­tion of the U.S. homeland and American global interests. These interests include ensuring that critical resources like oil flow around the world, that the global trade and monetary regimes flourish and that Washington's worldwide network of allies is reassured and protected. Allies are a great asset to the United States, in part because they shoulder some of its burdens. Thus, it is no surprise to see NATO in Afghanistan or the Australians in East Timor. In contrast, a strategy based on re­trenchment will not be able to achieve these fundamental objectives of the United States. Indeed, retrenchment will make the United States less secure than the present grand strategy of primacy. This is because threats will exist no mat­ter what role America chooses to play in international politics. Washington can­not call a "time out", and it cannot hide from threats. Whether they are terror­ists, rogue states or rising powers, his­tory shows that threats must be confront­ed. Simply by declaring that the United States is "going home", thus abandoning its commitments or making unconvinc­ing half‑pledges to defend its interests and allies, does not mean that others will respect American wishes to retreat. To make such a declaration implies weak­ness and emboldens aggression. In the anarchic world of the animal kingdom, predators prefer to eat the weak rather than confront the strong. The same is true of the anarchic world of interna­tional politics. If there is no diplomatic solution to the threats that confront the United States, then the conventional and strategic military power of the United States is what protects the country from such threats. And when enemies must be confront­ed, a strategy based on primacy focuses on engaging enemies overseas, away from .American soil. Indeed, a key tenet of the Bush Doctrine is to attack terrorists far from America's shores and not to wait while they use bases in other countries to plan and train for attacks against the United States itself. This requires a phys­ical, on‑the‑ground presence that cannot be achieved by offshore balancing. Indeed, as Barry Posen has noted, U.S. primacy is secured because America, at present, commands the "global com­mon"‑‑the oceans, the world's airspace and outer space‑allowing the United States to project its power far from its borders, while denying those common avenues to its enemies. As a consequence, the costs of power projection for the United States and its allies are reduced, and the robustness of the United States' conventional and strategic deterrent ca­pabilities is increased.' This is not an advantage that should be relinquished lightly. A remarkable fact about international politics today‑-in a world where Ameri­can primacy is clearly and unambiguous­ly on display--is that countries want to align themselves with the United States. Of course, this is not out of any sense of altruism, in most cases, but because doing so allows them to use the power of the United States for their own purposes, ­their own protection, or to gain greater influence. Of 192 countries, 84 are allied with America‑-their security is tied to the United States through treaties and other informal arrangements‑and they include almost all of the major economic and military powers. That is a ratio of almost 17 to one (85 to five), and a big change from the Cold War when the ratio was about 1.8 to one of states aligned with the United States versus the Soviet Union. Never before in its history has this coun­try, or any country, had so many allies. U.S. primacy‑-and the bandwagon­ing effect‑has also given us extensive in­fluence in international politics, allowing the United States to shape the behavior of states and international institutions. Such influence comes in many forms, one of which is America's ability to cre­ate coalitions of like‑minded states to free Kosovo, stabilize Afghanistan, invade Iraq or to stop proliferation through the Pro­liferation Security Initiative (PSI). Doing so allows the United States to operate with allies outside of the where it can be stymied by opponents. American‑led wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq stand in contrast to the UN's inability to save the people of Darfur or even to conduct any military campaign to realize the goals of its charter. The quiet effec­tiveness of the PSI in dismantling Libya's WMD programs and unraveling the A. Q. Khan proliferation network are in sharp relief to the typically toothless attempts by the UN to halt proliferation. You can count with one hand coun­tries opposed to the United States. They are the "Gang of Five": China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Venezeula. Of course, countries like India, for example, do not agree with all policy choices made by the United States, such as toward Iran, but New Delhi is friendly to Washington. Only the "Gang of Five" may be expected to consistently resist the agenda and ac­tions of the United States. China is clearly the most important of these states because it is a rising great power. But even Beijing is intimidated by the United States and refrains from openly challenging U.S. power. China proclaims that it will, if necessary, re­sort to other mechanisms of challenging the United States, including asymmetric strategies such as targeting communica­tion and intelligence satellites upon which the United States depends. But China may not be confident those strategies would work, and so it is likely to refrain from testing the United States directly for the foreseeable future because China's power benefits, as we shall see, from the international order U.S. primacy creates. The other states are far weaker than China. For three of the "Gang of Five" cases‑‑Venezuela, Iran, Cuba‑it is an anti‑U.S. regime that is the source of the problem; the country itself is not intrin­sically anti‑American. Indeed, a change of regime in Caracas, Tehran or Havana could very well reorient relations. THROUGHOUT HISTORY, peace and stability have been great benefits of an era where there was a dominant power‑‑Rome, Britain or the United States today. Schol­ars and statesmen have long recognized the irenic effect of power on the anarchic world of international politics. Everything we think of when we con­sider the current international order‑free trade, a robust monetary regime, increas­ing respect for human rights, growing de­mocratization‑‑is directly linked to U.S. power. Retrenchment proponents seem to think that the current system can be maintained without the current amount of U.S. power behind it. In that they are dead wrong and need to be reminded of one of history's most significant lessons: Appalling things happen when international orders collapse. The Dark Ages fol­lowed Rome's collapse. Hitler succeeded the order established at Versailles. With­out U.S. power, the liberal order cre­ated by the United States will end just as assuredly. As country and western great Rai Donner sang: "You don't know what you've got (until you lose it)." Consequently, it is important to note what those good things are. In addition to ensuring the security of the United States and its allies, American primacy within the international system causes many positive outcomes for Washing­ton and the world. The first has been a more peaceful world. During the Cold War, U.S. leadership reduced friction among many states that were historical antagonists, most notably France and West Germany. Today, American primacy helps keep a number of complicated rela­tionships aligned‑-between Greece and Turkey, Israel and Egypt, South Korea and Japan, India and Pakistan, Indonesia and Australia. This is not to say it fulfills Woodrow Wilson's vision of ending all war. Wars still occur where Washington's interests are not seriously threatened, such as in Darfur, but a Pax Americana does reduce war's likelihood, particularly war's worst form: great power wars. Second, American power gives the United States the ability to spread de­mocracy and other elements of its ideol­ogy of liberalism. Doing so is a source of much good for the countries concerned as well as the United States because, as John Owen noted on these pages in the Spring 2006 issue, liberal democracies are more likely to align with the United States and be sympathetic to the American worldview.3 So, spreading democracy helps maintain U.S. primacy. In addition, once states are governed democratically, the likelihood of any type of conflict is significantly reduced. This is not because democracies do not have clashing inter­ests. Indeed they do. Rather, it is because they are more open, more transparent and more likely to want to resolve things amicably in concurrence with U.S. lead­ership. And so, in general, democratic states are good for their citizens as well as for advancing the interests of the United States. Critics have faulted the Bush Admin­istration for attempting to spread democ­racy in the Middle East, labeling such an effort a modern form of tilting at windmills. It is the obligation of Bush's crit­ics to explain why democracy is good enough for Western states but not for the rest, and, one gathers from the argument, should not even be attempted. Of course, whether democracy in the Middle East will have a peaceful or sta­bilizing influence on America's interests in the short run is open to question. Per­haps democratic Arab states would be more opposed to Israel, but nonetheless, their people would be better off. The United States has brought democracy to Afghanistan, where 8.5 million Af­ghans, 40 percent of them women, voted in a critical October 2004 election, even though remnant Taliban forces threat­ened them. The first free elections were held in Iraq in January 2005. It was the military power of the United States that put Iraq on the path to democracy. Wash­ington fostered democratic governments in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Caucasus. Now even the Middle East is increasingly democratic. They may not yet look like Western‑style democracies, but democratic progress has been made in Algeria, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Ku­wait, the Palestinian Authority and Egypt. By all accounts, the march of democracy has been impressive. Third, along with the growth in the number of democratic states around the world has been the growth of the glob­al economy. With its allies, the United States has labored to create an economically liberal worldwide network character­ized by free trade and commerce, respect for international property rights, and mo­bility of capital and labor markets. The economic stability and prosperity that stems from this economic order is a glob­al public good from which all states ben­efit, particularly the poorest states in the Third World. The United States created this network not out of altruism but for the benefit and the economic well‑being of America. This economic order forces American industries to be competitive, maximizes efficiencies and growth, and benefits defense as well because the size of the economy makes the defense burden manageable. Economic spin‑offs foster the development of military technology, helping to ensure military prowess. Perhaps the greatest testament to the benefits of the economic network comes from Deepak Lal, a former Indian foreign service diplomat and researcher at the World Bank, who started his ca­reer confident in the socialist ideology of post‑independence India. Abandoning the positions of his youth, Lal now recog­nizes that the only way to bring relief to desperately poor countries of the Third World is through the adoption of free market economic policies and globaliza­tion, which are facilitated through Amer­ican primacy.4 As a witness to the failed alternative economic systems, Lal is one of the strongest academic proponents of American primacy due to the economic prosperity it provides. .


 * We solve – counterterrorism focus creates sustainable presence and ensures consistency Stewart, 9-** Ryan Family Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, studied at Oxford and served briefly in the British army before working in the diplomatic service in Indonesia and as British representative to Montenegro (9/16/09, Rory, “The Future of Afghanistan,” http://www.hks.harvard.edu/news-events/news/testimonies/rory-stewart-on-afghanistan )

The best Afghan policy would be to reduce the number of foreign troops from the current level of 90,000 to far fewer – perhaps 20,000. In that case, two distinct objectives would remain for the international community: development and counter-terrorism. Neither would amount to the building of an Afghan state or winning a counter-insurgency campaign. A reduction in troop numbers and a turn away from state-building should not mean total withdrawal: good projects could continue to be undertaken in electricity, water, irrigation, health, education, agriculture, rural development and in other areas favoured by development agencies. Even a light US presence could continue to allow for aggressive operations against Al Qaeda terrorists, in Afghanistan, who plan to attack the United States. The US has successfully prevent Al Qaeda from re-establishing itself since 2001 (though the result has only been to move bin Laden across the border.). The US military could also (with other forms of assistance) support the Afghan military to prevent the Taliban from seizing a city or taking over the country. These twin objectives will require a very long-term presence, as indeed is almost inevitable in a country which is as poor, as fragile and traumatized as Afghanistan (and which lacks the internal capacity at the moment to become independent of Foreign aid or control its territory). But a long-term presence will in turn mean a much lighter and more limited presence (if it is to retain US domestic support). We should not control and cannot predict the future of Afghanistan. It may in the future become more violent, or find a decentralised equilibrium or a new national unity, but if its communities continue to want to work with us, we can, over 30 years, encourage the more positive trends in Afghan society and help to contain the more negative. Such a policy can seem strained, unrealistic, counter-intuitive and unappealing. They appear to betray the hopes of Afghans who trusted us and to allow the Taliban to abuse district towns. No politician wants to be perceived to have underestimated, or failed to address, a terrorist threat; or to write off the ‘blood and treasure’ that we have sunk into Afghanistan; or to admit defeat. Americans are particularly unwilling to believe that problems are insoluble; Obama’s motto is not ‘no we can’t’; soldiers are not trained to admit defeat or to say a mission is impossible. And to suggest that what worked in Iraq won’t work in Afghanistan requires a detailed knowledge of each country’s past, a bold analysis of the causes of development and a rigorous exposition of the differences, for which few have patience. The greatest risk of our inflated ambitions and fears, encapsulated in the current surge is that it will achieve the exact opposite of its intentions and in fact precipitate a total withdrawal. The heavier our footprint, and the more costly, the less we are likely to be able to sustain it. Public opinion is already turning against it. Nato allies are mostly staying in Afghanistan simply to please the United States and have little confidence in our objectives or our reasons. Contemporary political culture tends to encourage black and white solutions: either we garrison or we abandon. While, I strongly oppose troop increases, I equally strongly oppose a total flight. We are currently in danger of lurching from troop increases to withdrawal and from engagement to isolation. We are threatening to provide instant electro-shock therapy followed by abandonment. This is the last thing Afghanistan needs. The international community should aim to provide a patient, tolerant long-term relationship with a country as poor and traumatized as Afghanistan. Judging by comparable countries in the developing world (and Afghanistan is very near the bottom of the UN Human Development index), making Afghanistan more stable, prosperous and humane is a project which will take decades. It is a worthwhile project in the long-term for us and for Afghans but we will only be able to sustain our presence if we massively reduce our investment and our ambitions and begin to approach Afghanistan more as we do other poor countries in the developing world. The best way of avoiding the mistakes of the 1980s and 1990s – the familiar cycle of investment and abandonment which most Afghan expect and fear and which have contributed so much to instability and danger - is to husband and conserve our resources, limit our objectives to counter-terrorism and humanitarian assistance and work out how to work with fewer troops and less money over a longer period. In Afghanistan in the long-term, less will be more.


 * Obama will sell the plan as a lighter but permanent commitment– solves confusion over withdrawal deadlines and credibility **
 * Stewart, 10 ** - Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, studied at Oxford and served briefly in the British army before working in the diplomatic service in Indonesia and as British representative to Montenegro (Rory, “ Afghanistan: What Could Work”, New York Review of Books, 1/14,  http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jan/14/afghanistan-what-could-work/?page=3)

But this moderate tone gains Obama the leverage that Bush lacked. As long as the US asserted that Afghanistan was an existential threat, the front line in the war on terror, and that, therefore, failure was not an option, the US had no leverage over Karzai. The worse Afghanistan behaved—the more drugs it grew and terrorists it fostered—the more money it received. If it sorted out its act, it risked being relegated to a minor charitable recipient like Tajikistan. A senior Afghan official warned me this year “to stop referring to us as a humanitarian crisis: we must be the number one terrorist threat in the world, because if we are not we won’t get any money.” By asserting convincingly that Afghanistan is not the be-all and end-all and that the US could always ultimately withdraw, Obama escapes this codependent trap and regains some leverage over the Afghan government. In his politer words: It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security, and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan. But perhaps even more importantly, defining a more moderate and limited strategy gives him leverage over his own generals. By refusing to endorse or use the language of counterinsurgency in the speech, he escapes their doctrinal logic. By no longer committing the US to defeating the Taliban or state-building, he dramatically reduces the objectives and the costs of the mission. By talking about costs, the fragility of public support, and other priorities, he reminds the generals why this surge must be the last. All of this serves to “cap” the troop increases at current levels and provide the justification for beginning to reduce numbers in 2011. But the brilliance of its moderate arguments cannot overcome that statement about withdrawal. With seven words, “our troops will begin to come home,” he loses leverage over the Taliban, as well as leverage he had gained over Karzai and the generals. It is a cautious, lawyerly statement, expressed again as “[we will] begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.” It sets no final exit date or numbers. But the Afghan students who were watching the speech with me ignored these nuances and saw it only as departure. This may be fatal for Obama’s ambition to “open the door” to the Taliban. The lighter, more political, and less but still robust militarized presence that his argument implies could facilitate a deal with the Taliban, if it appeared semi-permanent. As the President asserted, the Taliban are not that strong. They have nothing like the strength or appeal that they had in 1995. They cannot take the capital, let alone recapture the country. There is strong opposition to their presence, particularly in the center and the north of the country. Their only hope is to negotiate. But the Taliban need to acknowledge this. And the only way they will is if they believe that we are not going to allow the Kabul government to collapse. Afghanistan has been above all a project not of force but of patience. It would take decades before Afghanistan achieved the political cohesion, stability, wealth, government structures, or even basic education levels of Pakistan. A political settlement requires a reasonably strong permanent government. The best argument against the surge, therefore, was never that a US operation without an adequate Afghan government partner would be unable to defeat the Taliban—though it won’t. Nor that the attempt to strengthen the US campaign will intensify resistance, though it may. Nor because such a deployment of over 100,000 troops at a cost of perhaps $100 billion a year would be completely disproportional to the US’s limited strategic interests and moral obligation in Afghanistan—though that too is true. Instead, Obama should not have requested more troops because doing so intensifies opposition to the war in the US and Europe and accelerates the pace of withdrawal demanded by political pressures at home. To keep domestic consent for a long engagement we need to limit troop numbers and in particular limit our casualties. The surge is a Mephistophelian bargain, in which the President has gained force but lost time. What can now be done to salvage the administration’s position? Obama has acquired leverage over the generals and some support from the public by making it clear that he will not increase troop strength further. He has gained leverage over Karzai by showing that he has options other than investing in Afghanistan. Now he needs to regain leverage over the Taliban by showing them that he is not about to abandon Afghanistan and that their best option is to negotiate. In short, he needs to follow his argument for a call strategy to its conclusion. The date of withdrawal should be recast as a time for reduction to a lighter, more sustainable, and more permanent presence. This is what the administration began to do in the days following the speech. As National Security Adviser General James Jones said, “That date is a ‘ramp’ rather than a cliff.” And as Hillary Clinton said in her congressional testimony on December 3, their real aim should be to “develop a long-term sustainable relationship with Afghanistan and Pakistan so that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past, primarily our abandonment of that region.” A more realistic, affordable, and therefore sustainable presence would not make Afghanistan stable or predictable. It would be merely a small if necessary part of an Afghan political strategy. The US and its allies would only moderate, influence, and fund a strategy shaped and led by Afghans themselves. The aim would be to knit together different Afghan interests and allegiances sensitively enough to avoid alienating independent local groups, consistently enough to regain their trust, and robustly enough to restore the security and justice that Afghans demand and deserve from a national government. What would this look like in practice? Probably a mess. It might involve a tricky coalition of people we refer to, respectively, as Islamists, progressive civil society, terrorists, warlords, learned technocrats, and village chiefs. Under a notionally democratic constitutional structure, it could be a rickety experiment with systems that might, like Afghanistan’s neighbors, include strong elements of religious or military rule. There is no way to predict what the Taliban might become or what authority a national government in Kabul could regain. Civil war would remain a possibility. But an intelligent, long-term, and tolerant partnership with the United States could reduce the likelihood of civil war and increase the likelihood of a political settlement. This is hardly the stuff of sound bites and political slogans. But it would be better for everyone than boom and bust, surge and flight. With the right patient leadership, a political strategy could leave Afghanistan in twenty years’ time more prosperous, stable, and humane than it is today. That would be excellent for Afghans and good for the world. Meanwhile, Obama’s broader strategic argument must not be lost. He has grasped that the foreign policy of the president should not consist in a series of extravagant, brief, Manichaean battles, driven by exaggerated fears, grandiloquent promises, and fragile edifices of doctrine. Instead the foreign policy of a great power should be the responsible exercise of limited power and knowledge in concurrent situations of radical uncertainty. Obama, we may hope, will develop this elusive insight. And then it might become possible to find the right places in which to deploy the wealth, the courage, and the political capital of the United States. We might hope in South Asia, for example, for a lighter involvement in Afghanistan but a much greater focus on Kashmir.1


 * Plan frees up resources to pay down debt **
 * Kretkowski, 10 ** – Frequently assists think tank in conferences and other work products that aid DoD's long-term thinking about threats that may not be addressable via weapons platforms. Spent six months in Afghanistan working with Army public affairs. (Paul, “Against COIN, for CT in Afghanistan and Elsewhere”, 1/7, Beacon (a blog), http://softpowerbeacon.blogspot.com/2010/01/against-coin-for-ct-in-afghanistan-and.html)

Benefits of a CT Focus Pulling the bulk of U.S. troops from the two active wars means military spending drops sharply, freeing up greatly needed funds for other uses: to stimulate the domestic economy, to aid in healthcare reform, or simply to reduce the need to issue more debt and thus begin paying down our current tab. (As an added benefit, China and others who want to extract wealth from a less-secure Afghanistan must then foot their own security bill.) Perhaps we become less hated in Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps not, but we get out of the nation-building business that President Bush used to deride and can use our political, economic and military assets elsewhere. At that point we begin to rebuild those all-important reserves without which a great nation cannot aid allies, warn off adversaries, and sway those in the middle.


 * Contention 2: Counterinsurgency failure**

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/jan/14/afghanistan-what-could-work/?page=3)
 * First - it’s inevitable – the mountainous terrain and impossible troop requirements mean the Taliban can hide forever **
 * Stewart, 10 ** - Professor of the Practice of Human Rights and Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, studied at Oxford and served briefly in the British army before working in the diplomatic service in Indonesia and as British representative to Montenegro (Rory, “ Afghanistan: What Could Work”, New York Review of Books, 1/14,

The counterinsurgency strategy and surge in Iraq led to a drop in violence (against predictions), but the same will not happen in Afghanistan. The Iraq insurgency was the movement of a minority sectarian group, the Sunnis, whose supporters have been driven from most of the neighborhoods in the capital city and whose leaders were tribal figures with a long-standing relationship to the central government. The Shia-dominated Baghdad government was a powerful, credible force, from the majority ethnic and sectarian group, and was supported by mass political parties, with their own militias. The challenge for Petraeus and his predecessors in Iraq was to grasp this political opportunity; provide support, money, and status to the losing Sunni groups to separate them from al- Qaeda; and convince Nouri al-Maliki to disengage from some of the Shia militias and endorse the settlement. In Afghanistan, neither the Karzai government nor the Taliban have the history, the structure, or the incentives to foster such a deal. Afghanistan contains a diffuse rural insurgency spread among a population of 30 million people, 80 percent of whom are scattered among 20,000 remote, often mountainous villages. It is different from Iraq, where the insurgency was largely centered around the flat urban areas surrounding Baghdad. Nor is it like the much smaller Malaya of the 1950s, where the British in their antiguerrilla operations were able to move villagers to walled and guarded camps. At least half of Afghanistan (a country almost the size of Texas) is now threatened by insurgency, and the COIN doctrine requires sufficient troops to secure and protect the population areas. This is why the architects of the COIN doctrine are calling for a ratio of one “trained counterinsurgent” (a category that includes Afghans, if they have been given the necessary skills) for every fifty members of the population or a combined total that would amount in Afghanistan to 600,000 troops, if they intended to cover the country (though most theorists believe it is only necessary to cover half). The effective, legitimate Afghan government, on which the entire counterinsurgency strategy depends, shows little sign of emerging, in part because the international community lacks the skills, the knowledge, the legitimacy, or the patience to build a new nation. In short, COIN won’t work on its own terms because of the lack of numbers and a credible Afghan partner and in absolute terms because of the difficulties of the country and its political structures.

Galston 10 - Senior Fellow of Governance Studies @ Brookings (William, Senior Fellow of Governance Studies @ Brookings, “A Question of Life and Death: U.S. Policy in Afghanistan,” Brookings, June 15th, http://www.brookings.edu/opinions/2010/0615_afghanistan_galston.aspx)
 * Second – winning’s impossible – the Taliban can recruit faster than we can kill**

Are the basic premises of our current policy in Afghanistan fatally flawed? The fact that I feel compelled to pose this question so soon after the completion of President Obama’s painstaking review reflects the mounting evidence that the results of that policy have fallen far short of expectations. Let’s begin at the beginning, with Marja. The holy trinity of modern counterinsurgency is clear, hold, and build. Coalition forces are stalled at step one. After the initial military thrust, many Taliban fighters, including mid-level commanders, swooped back in to the area to intimidate local inhabitants who might otherwise be inclined to cooperate with the coalition and Afghan government. Many other Afghanis sympathize with the core Taliban message that we intend to occupy their country for the long-term with the aim of imposing alien cultural, religious, and political values. It is hard to see what will tip this stalemate in our favor, even harder to see how we can hand over governance and security function to the Afghans in Marja any time soon. Brigadier General Frederick Hodges, one of the leading commanders in southern Afghanistan, puts it this way: “You’ve got to have the governance part ready to go. We talked about doing that in Marja but didn’t realize how hard it was to do. Ultimately, it’s up to the Afghans to step forward.” It’s clear that Hodges is not holding his breath. The next shoe to drop was Kandahar. Ever since this Taliban stronghold was identified as a key target, the tension between the U.S. and Afghan governments on this issue has been palpable—so much so that the coalition is now hesitant to call what it has in mind an “offensive.” Just last week, we learned that the operation scheduled to begin in the spring would fall even farther behind schedule. As The New York Times reports, “The Afghan government has not produced the civilian leadership and trained security forces it was to contribute to the effort, U.S. officials said, and the support from Kandaharis that the United States was counting on Karzai to deliver has not materialized.” Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, has been admirably frank about a core difficulty: the residents of Kandahar are far from sure that they want the protection we claim to be offering them. On to Kabul, where President Karzai has reportedly lost faith in the coalition’s ability (and that of his own government) to defeat the Taliban and is secretly maneuvering to strike a separate deal with them. If these reports are correct—and Susan Rice, our UN ambassador, disputed them on Sunday (though, notably, she offered no new evidence in support of her assertion that Karzai remains a committed partner)—two events appear to be fueling his growing disenchantment: senior American officials’ claims that his reelection lacked legitimacy, and President Obama’s December announcement that he intended to begin reducing the number of American troops by July 2011. One might be tempted to chalk up the extent of our difficulties in Afghanistan to tendentious reporting. I was skeptical myself—that is, until I stumbled across a stunning NATO/ISAF report completed in March. This report summarizes the results of an in-depth survey conducted in nine of the 16 districts in Kandahar Province to which researchers could safely gain access. Here are some of the findings: Security is viewed everywhere as a major problem. When asked to name the top dangers experienced while traveling on the roads, far more respondents named Afghan National Army and Police checkpoints than roadside bombs, Taliban checkpoints, or criminals. And the Taliban were rated better than ISAF convoys and checkpoints as well. Corruption is viewed as a widespread problem and is experienced by respondents on a regular basis. In fact, 84 percent say that corruption is the main reason for the current conflict. Corruption erodes confidence in the Afghan government, and fully two-thirds of respondents believe that this corruption forces them to seek alternatives to government services and authority. Chillingly, 53 percent regard the Taliban as “incorruptible.” The residents of Kandahar overwhelmingly prefer a process of reconciliation to the prospect of continued conflict. Ninety-four percent say that it is better to negotiate with the Taliban than to fight with them, and they see grounds for believing that these negotiations will succeed. Eighty-five percent regard the Taliban as “our Afghan brothers” (a phrase President Karzai repeated word for word in his address to the recent jirga), and 81 percent say that the Taliban would lay down their arms if given jobs. Our military commanders in Afghanistan talk incessantly about the need to “shape” the political context in a given area before beginning activities with a significant military component—but if their own research is correct, our chances of “shaping” Kandahar any time soon range from slim to none. Based on General McChrystal’s own logic, then, we cannot proceed there because a key requirement for success is not fulfilled. And if we can’t prevail in Kandahar, then we’re stuck with the Taliban as a long-term military presence and political force in Afghanistan.

**Third - Nationalism means the US can’t beat the insurgency** **Dorronsoro, 09** - visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2/9/09, Gilles, The National Interest, “Going South in Afghanistan,” http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20794 )

Afghanistan may be the right war, but the United States could very well fight it in the wrong place. Present plans call for most of the new troops to be deployed to the southern and eastern regions of the country, where they could win every battle and still fail to hold the ground. In a land already notoriously averse to foreign invaders, the southern province of Kandahar is particularly hostile to outsiders. In the 1980s, when the Soviets or the Afghan government wanted to punish one of their soldiers, they sent him there. Helmand, the other hot spot in the south, has no cities and few towns—very little of strategic value, except the road to Herat. In the eastern provinces, it’s important for Obama and his team to recognize that regardless of how the United States revises its strategy, American troops and their NATO allies will still face “hit and run” attacks from across the Pakistani border to the east. There is no quick fix to this situation: even with the full support of the Pakistani government and military (a very optimistic hypothesis) the border will stay out of control for years. And even if Kandahar and Helmand could be secured, U.S. troops would be stuck there, unable to prevent a stubborn Taliban infiltration and progression in the north. And when U.S. troops inevitably withdraw, what little order had previously existed would dissolve overnight. Regardless of how well U.S. troops there fare, the Afghan National Army forces that eventually replace them will be simply unable to ward off the Taliban. This is the Taliban’s historical base and they understand the political dynamics of these regions better than any foreign forces ever could.

**The first impact is Pakistan-** **Akhtar, 10-** professor of international relations, and a senior analyst & writer. He was the dean of faculty of management, Baluchistan university, and former chairman of International Relations Department, Karachi university (1/26/10, Shameem, “Pakistan’s Instability : The US War Factor,” http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1262372328640&pagename=Zone-English-Muslim_Affairs/MAELayout#**1** **)**
 * A large counterinsurgency footprint drives insurgents to Pakistan and causes the nation to collapse**

If it is a war against extremists and militancy inside Pakistan, it is a civil war because its origins stem from the US, NATO occupation of neighboring Afghanistan. The conflict should be seen as an extension of the ongoing resistance of the Afghan people to alien domination. It is inaccurate to say that the US invaded Afghanistan because of the 9/11 attacks by Al-Qaeda. Former BBC correspondent George Arney reported on September 18, 2001, that Niaz Naik, the former Pakistani foreign secretary, had told him that he was informed by US officials at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan in Berlin during July that year that unless Osama bin Laden were handed over swiftly, America would take military action to kill or capture both Bin Laden and Mullah Omar. The wider objective, however, was to topple the Taliban regime and install a transitional government under King Mohammad Zahir Shah. The invasion was to take place in mid-October 2001. Mr. Naik went on to say that he doubted that the US would have abandoned its plan to invade Afghanistan even if Osama were handed over by the Taliban. Arney's story is corroborated by the Guardian correspondent David Leigh in his report published on September 26, 2001, in which he revealed that the Taliban had received specific warning by the US through secret diplomacy in Berlin in July that the Bush Administration would topple the entire regime militarily unless Osama is extradited to the US. This was part of the larger design of US military, industrial complex to bring about regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Iran. As the US needed bases in Pakistan to accomplish its pre-planned invasion of Afghanistan, the Bush Administration sought to use Islamabad as a cat's paw to pull the chestnuts out of the fire. Fortunately for President Bush, a usurper ruled there, devoid of all legitimacy, legal and moral, and he readily and willingly succumbed to US pressure and made a U-turn by severing all links with the Taliban. He even joined the war against Afghanistan instead of using his leverage with the Taliban to exhaust all means of peaceful settlement of the dispute. The entire region, including Pakistan, was declared a war zone by the US military command, and the flights of all passenger planes were prohibited over a certain altitude, while no merchant ships could enter the harbors of Pakistan, thus bringing maritime trade (which comprises approximately 95 percent of Pakistan's import-export trade) to a standstill. It is no wonder that Pakistan suffered a loss of 34 billion dollars because of its involvement in the Afghan war. America's War As one can see, it was America's war that was imposed upon Pakistan. Whether Pakistan could have avoided the war is a matter of controversy among politicians and political observers. But the war has fuelled insurgency in Pakistan's hitherto peaceful tribal territory adjacent to Afghanistan. This insurgency shows no sign of abatement, as terrorist attacks on military and civilian centers in the capital and major cities of the North-West Frontier Province and Punjab continue with a vengeance, posing threat to the security of the state. In the meantime, routine predator strikes by the US in Waziristan have taken a heavy toll of civilian lives amid accusations of Islamabad's complicity in the piratical attacks on tribespeople, which prompts them to resort to retaliatory strikes on the perpetrators. Not satisfied with Pakistan's military operations in the tribal region, the US Administration has compelled Islamabad's fragile government to pull out its troops from the tense Indo-Pak border and deploy them in the restive tribal belt along the Pak-Afghan border. Now Pakistan faces existential threat from the Taliban and not India, a perception which the country's military leadership is not prepared to share, given the unresolved disputes with New Delhi, which triggered four wars during the last 62 years. At the same time, speculation (not entirely unfounded) is rife about the involvement of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and the former Blackwater (now christened Xe Services) in murder, mayhem, and gunrunning as evidenced by the armed Americans who drive consulate vehicles through cities and, when intercepted, refuse to disclose their identity. It is here that one recalls with dismay the role of General Stanley McChrystal, who until last year headed the Joint Special Operations Command, which runs drone attacks and targeted assassinations with the assistance of the operatives of the former Blackwater. This was revealed by Jeremy Scahill's investigative report published in the US weekly the Nation. That may, perhaps, solve the mystery surrounding a series of assassinations of ulama belonging to various Islamic movements. The sinister motive behind such acts of terror is to incite sectarian violence in Pakistan and lay the blame at the doors of religious extremists. Similar death squads were organized by the CIA in El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua to carry out political assassinations of nationalists who were opposed to US intervention. At the time, the Sandinista government of Nicaragua complained to the International Court of Justice about the mining of Nicaraguan ports, the violation of the country's airspace, the killing and kidnapping of individuals on the Nicaraguan territory, and the threat or use of force by the US. The court in its decision in June 1986 held that the US was in breach of the customary rules of international law and international humanitarian law. The above case is titled the "Military and Paramilitary Activities in and Against Nicaragua." The precedent set by this case may be invoked by Pakistan to prevent the US drone attacks on its territory. Once the piratical attacks of the US have stopped, the irritant in the tribal insurgency would have gone, paving the way for pacification of the conflict. If this were Pakistan's war, the government would have exercised its own judgment in dealing with the militants at home, either by conciliation or by resort to force. But Islamabad's so-called operation against militants is subordinated to US military designs in the region, aimed at the encirclement of the People's Republic of China and the control of the transit of gas pipelines from Central Asia to South Asia. It is not aimless that China expressed its concern over the concentration of US, NATO troops in the region. India fits in the American scheme of things, hence the US-India nuclear deal. Pakistan's National Interest In this emerging security environment, Pakistan will have to be content with its role as a junior partner of India. Therefore, the sooner Islamabad extricates itself from the US "war on terror," the better it is for its security and independence. Doesn't Islamabad realize that its military operation against the militants would leave its border with India vulnerable to a New Delhi offensive? If Pakistan permits the US to attack the suspected training centers of militants on its territory, will it be able to prevent India from doing so? With Islamabad embroiled in internecine strife, it cannot negotiate with India from a position of strength. It may be forced to make a compromise that might be detrimental to its national interest. Pakistan's preoccupation with tribal rebellion would not permit it to deal with separatist ethnic forces in Baluchistan. Undoubtedly, this is a threat to the territorial integrity of Pakistan. After the total failure of the military operation in Baluchistan, the federal government has come round to the painful conclusion that political and not military action can bring militancy to an end. Granting general amnesty to the dissidents and engaging them in a meaningful dialogue on contentious issues is a laudable initiative. The same gesture should be made to the militants in the tribal areas. But Islamabad has adopted double standards in dealing with the Baluchistan militants and the Pashtun militants, as if there were good militants and bad ones. This discriminatory policy would intensify the Pashtun insurgency and might drive them toward even more escalation. The rulers have seen the consequences of military operations in the former East Pakistan, Baluchistan, Karachi, Sind, and FATA (federally administered tribal areas). If anything, the situation has only worsened. The surge of US troops, the expansion of war beyond the borders of Afghanistan, and the attacks on Quetta and Muridke as envisaged by Obama's new strategy would mean that US troops are at war with the people of Pakistan. Any Solution? The Obama Administration would be better advised to concentrate on its exit strategy, and to that end, it is imperative that it involve the UN in its peace-making efforts aimed at the establishment of a broad-based government in Afghanistan, because the Karzai Government has no legitimacy. To fill the vacuum, the UN peacekeeping force, made up of troops of states not involved in the Afghan war, may be deployed until a government of national unity is able to assume full responsibility. Here the US can contribute to the postwar reconstruction of Afghanistan under the aegis of the UN. The insurgency in the tribal region is the spillover effect of US military occupation of Afghanistan, but Pakistan faces a far greater threat: the threat of ethnic violence as manifested in the bloody clashes among various linguistic groups in urban and rural Sind. These have been overshadowed by the counterinsurgency operations in FATA, but they may erupt at any moment, thus destabilizing the state.


 * Pakistan collapse causes global nuclear conflict**
 * Pitt, 9** - //a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." (5/8/09, William, “Unstable Pakistan Threatens the World,” // http://www.arabamericannews.com/news/index.php?mod=article&cat=commentary&article=2183 )

But a suicide bomber in Pakistan rammed a car packed with explosives into a jeep filled with troops today, killing five and wounding as many as 21, including several children who were waiting for a ride to school. Residents of the region where the attack took place are fleeing in terror as gunfire rings out around them, and government forces have been unable to quell the violence. Two regional government officials were beheaded by militants in retaliation for the killing of other militants by government forces. As familiar as this sounds, it did not take place where we have come to expect such terrible events. This, unfortunately, is a whole new ballgame. It is part of another conflict that is brewing, one which puts what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan in deep shade, and which represents a grave and growing threat to us all. Pakistan is now trembling on the edge of violent chaos, and is doing so with nuclear weapons in its hip pocket, right in the middle of one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world. The situation in brief: Pakistan for years has been a nation in turmoil, run by a shaky government supported by a corrupted system, dominated by a blatantly criminal security service, and threatened by a large fundamentalist Islamic population with deep ties to the Taliban in Afghanistan. All this is piled atop an ongoing standoff with neighboring India that has been the center of political gravity in the region for more than half a century. The fact that Pakistan, and India, and Russia, and China all possess nuclear weapons and share the same space means any ongoing or escalating violence over there has the real potential to crack open the very gates of Hell itself. Recently, the Taliban made a military push into the northwest Pakistani region around the Swat Valley. According to a recent Reuters report: The (Pakistani) army deployed troops in Swat in October 2007 and used artillery and gunship helicopters to reassert control. But insecurity mounted after a civilian government came to power last year and tried to reach a negotiated settlement. A peace accord fell apart in May 2008. After that, hundreds — including soldiers, militants and civilians — died in battles. Militants unleashed a reign of terror, killing and beheading politicians, singers, soldiers and opponents. They banned female education and destroyed nearly 200 girls' schools. About 1,200 people were killed since late 2007 and 250,000 to 500,000 fled, leaving the militants in virtual control. Pakistan offered on February 16 to introduce Islamic law in the Swat valley and neighboring areas in a bid to take the steam out of the insurgency. The militants announced an indefinite cease-fire after the army said it was halting operations in the region. President Asif Ali Zardari signed a regulation imposing sharia in the area last month. But the Taliban refused to give up their guns and pushed into Buner and another district adjacent to Swat, intent on spreading their rule. The United States, already embroiled in a war against Taliban forces in Afghanistan, must now face the possibility that Pakistan could collapse under the mounting threat of Taliban forces there. Military and diplomatic advisers to President Obama, uncertain how best to proceed, now face one of the great nightmare scenarios of our time. "Recent militant gains in Pakistan," reported The New York Times on Monday, "have so alarmed the White House that the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, described the situation as 'one of the very most serious problems we face.'" "Security was deteriorating rapidly," reported The Washington Post on Monday, "particularly in the mountains along the Afghan border that harbor al-Qaeda and the Taliban, intelligence chiefs reported, and there were signs that those groups were working with indigenous extremists in Pakistan's populous Punjabi heartland. The Pakistani government was mired in political bickering. The army, still fixated on its historical adversary India, remained ill-equipped and unwilling to throw its full weight into the counterinsurgency fight. But despite the threat the intelligence conveyed, Obama has only limited options for dealing with it. Anti-American feeling in Pakistan is high, and a U.S. combat presence is prohibited. The United States is fighting Pakistan-based extremists by proxy, through an army over which it has little control, in alliance with a government in which it has little confidence." It is believed Pakistan is currently in possession of between 60 and 100 nuclear weapons. Because Pakistan's stability is threatened by the wide swath of its population that shares ethnic, cultural and religious connections to the fundamentalist Islamic populace of Afghanistan, fears over what could happen to those nuclear weapons if the Pakistani government collapses are very real. "As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan," reported the Times last week, "senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities. In public, the administration has only hinted at those concerns, repeating the formulation that the Bush administration used: that it has faith in the Pakistani Army. But that cooperation, according to officials who would not speak for attribution because of the sensitivity surrounding the exchanges between Washington and Islamabad, has been sharply limited when the subject has turned to the vulnerabilities in the Pakistani nuclear infrastructure." "The prospect of turmoil in Pakistan sends shivers up the spines of those U.S. officials charged with keeping tabs on foreign nuclear weapons," reported Time Magazine last month. "Pakistan is thought to possess about 100 — the U.S. isn't sure of the total, and may not know where all of them are. Still, if Pakistan collapses, the U.S. military is primed to enter the country and secure as many of those weapons as it can, according to U.S. officials. Pakistani officials insist their personnel safeguards are stringent, but a sleeper cell could cause big trouble, U.S. officials say." In other words, a shaky Pakistan spells trouble for everyone, especially if America loses the footrace to secure those weapons in the event of the worst-case scenario. If Pakistani militants ever succeed in toppling the government, several very dangerous events could happen at once. Nuclear-armed India could be galvanized into military action of some kind, as could nuclear-armed China or nuclear-armed Russia. If the Pakistani government does fall, and all those Pakistani nukes are not immediately accounted for and secured, the specter (or reality) of loose nukes falling into the hands of terrorist organizations could place the entire world on a collision course with unimaginable disaster. We have all been paying a great deal of attention to Iraq and Afghanistan, and rightly so. The developing situation in Pakistan, however, needs to be placed immediately on the front burner. The Obama administration appears to be gravely serious about addressing the situation. So should we all.


 * The Second impact is terrorism –**


 * Nuclear terrorism inevitable by 2013 **
 * Hall, 10** (Mimi, USA Today, “Obama seeks front against nuclear terror”, 4/12, http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-04-11-nukesummit_N.htm

WASHINGTON — President Obama is asking world leaders to commit to a new international offense against nuclear terrorism — a threat so dire that it could challenge "our ultimate survival." At a first-ever summit of 47 countries to address the problem of "loose nukes," Obama will push for specific steps toward his goal of securing in four years the world's vast quantity of vulnerable nuclear material, such as uranium that could be enriched for a weapon. The summit begins today, but discussions will start in earnest Tuesday. Obama said "the single biggest threat" to U.S. security is the possibility of a terrorist organization with a nuclear weapon. "If there was ever a detonation in New York City, or London, or Johannesburg, the ramifications economically, politically and from a security perspective would be devastating," he said Sunday before meeting with South African President Jacob Zuma, who is attending the summit. Also attending: presidents, prime ministers and kings from countries such as Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Jordan. Obama continues one-on-one meetings with leaders today, and on Tuesday, the group will sign a "high-level communiqué" that recognizes the seriousness of the threat and outlines efforts to secure or eliminate vulnerable stockpiles, according to Gary Samore, the White House senior adviser for non-proliferation. The summit is "intended to rally collective action," White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes says. The meetings will present their own security challenge for the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies because there will be so many world leaders at one time in Washington. Samore says several countries will announce plans to eliminate or better protect their stockpiles. Securing nuclear material is a challenging but necessary job "because the global stockpile of nuclear weapons materials is large enough to build 120,000 nuclear bombs (and) because Osama bin Laden considers it his religious duty to obtain nuclear weapons and to use them against the United States," says Alexandra Toma of the Fissile Materials Working Group, a 40-member coalition dedicated to securing nuclear material. Five countries — the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, China and France — are internationally recognized nuclear powers and have signed on to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which pledges to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and technology. India, Pakistan and North Korea also have nuclear weapons, and Israel is suspected of having warheads, according to the non-partisan Arms Control Association. Israel does not admit or deny having them. The United States and Russia hold the overwhelming majority of highly enriched uranium and plutonium, the material that could be used to build a crude but devastating bomb. According to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nuclear-security group run by former Democratic senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, there is no comprehensive inventory of the world's nuclear material. But 672 research reactors have been built worldwide and 272 operate in 56 countries, most at universities or other research centers where security is lax, the group says. "Much of the nuclear materials that are potentially vulnerable or could be used for nuclear weapons are actually in the hands of private industry, so government regulation is a very important component," Samore says. Some of the material already has been stolen, according to Harvard University's Matthew Bunn, author of Securing the Bomb. "Nuclear theft is not a hypothetical worry," he says. "It's an ongoing reality." The International Atomic Energy Agency, a watchdog arm of the United Nations that monitors the use of nuclear power and technology, has documented 18 cases involving the theft or loss of plutonium or weapons-grade uranium, mostly occurring in the former Soviet Union. The IAEA says a majority of these cases have not had a pre-identified buyer and "amateurish character" and "poor organization" have been the hallmark of some of the cases involving unauthorized possession of materials. In Prague last year, Obama said, "Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound." Government efforts have been made to secure nuclear material in recent years. Last week, the National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA) worked with officials in Chile to remove nuclear material from reactors near Santiago and transport it to the USA. The agency has removed all significant amounts of highly enriched uranium from 18 countries, helped convert 60 reactors in 32 countries to the use of safer, low-enriched uranium and closed seven reactors. The NNSA also has secured highly enriched uranium in more than 750 buildings worldwide and safely stored 2,691 kilograms of nuclear material. Despite those efforts, in 2008, the Commission for the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction warned, "Unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack" by 2013.


 * Afghanistan is a vital safe haven for al Qaeda – US must drive them out **
 * Arkedis, 9 ** - director of the National Security Project at the Progressive Policy Institute. He was a counterterrorism analyst with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service from 2002 to 2007 (Jim, “Why Al Qaeda Wants a Safe Haven”, 10/23, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/10/23/got_safe_haven)

I spent five years as a counterterrorism analyst for the Pentagon and rigorously studied plots from Madrid to London to 9/11. The above arguments may have merit in a piecemeal or abstract sense, but fall apart in the specific case of what we all dread: a large-scale, al Qaeda operation aimed at the United States. It is certainly true, for example, that terrorist groups can accomplish much online. Individuals can maintain contact with groups via chat rooms, money can be transferred over the Web (if done with extreme caution), and plotters can download items like instruction manuals for bomb-making, photographs of potential targets, and even blueprints for particular buildings. But all the e-mail accounts, chat rooms, and social media available will never account for the human touch. There is simply no substitute for the trust and confidence built by physically meeting, jointly conceiving, and then training together for a large-scale, complex operation on the other side of the world. As the 9/11 plot developed, mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) put the future operatives through a series of training courses along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Courses included physical fitness, firearms, close combat, Western culture, and English language. The 9/11 Commission report notes the extreme physical and mental demands KSM put on the participants -- even if the operation didn't require extensive firearms usage, KSM would have wanted the operatives to be proficient under intense pressure, should the need arise. Juxtapose that with an online learning environment. While you can no doubt learn some amazing things from online courses, it is far preferable to have a dedicated professor physically present to supervise students and monitor their progress. Or think of it another way: You wouldn't want the U.S. Marine Corps to send recruits into battle without training under a drill instructor, would you? KSM was somewhere between a professor and sergeant. Second, critics argue that the Madrid bombings of 2004 (which killed 191) as well those in London a year later (which killed 56) were largely -- though not entirely -- conceived, prepared, and executed within their respective countries, thus obviating the need for a safe haven. True enough. However, unlike 9/11 (which killed nearly 3,000), those plots' successes were possible due to their simple concept and small scale. In both cities, the playbook was essentially the same: Four to eight individuals had to find a safe house, download bomb-making instructions, purchase explosive agents, assemble the devices, and deliver charges to the attack points. Without trivializing the tragic loss of life in the European attacks, building those explosive devices was akin to conducting a difficult high-school chemistry experiment. On that scale, 9/11 was like constructing a nuclear warhead. In every sense, it was a grander vision, involving 20 highly skilled operatives infiltrating the U.S. homeland, who conducted a series of hijackings and targeted four national landmarks with enough know-how, preparation, and contingency plans to be success. In one instance, KSM taught the 9/11 operatives to shoot a rifle from the back of a moving motorcycle, just in case. You can't do that in someone's bedroom -- you need space, time, and the ability to work without worrying that the cops are listening in. In other words, as a plot grows in number of operatives, scale of target, distance from base, and logistical complexity, so does the need for space to reduce the chances of being discovered and disrupted. The final argument is that denying al Qaeda a safe haven is an exercise in futility: Drive Osama bin Laden from Afghanistan and he'd relocate to some place like Sudan, southern Algeria, Somalia, or other swaths of ungoverned territory. However, this logic makes two faulty assumptions: that al Qaeda is mobile, and that the group's international affiliates would automatically roll out the red carpet for the jihadi refugees. Neither is true. Bin Laden and his senior and mid level cadre are well-known to intelligence services the world over. Any attempt to travel, let alone cross an international border (save Afghanistan-Pakistan) would fall somewhere between "utterly unthinkable" and "highly risky." Moving would further require massive reorientation of al Qaeda's financial operations and smuggling networks. Nor would bin Laden's senior leaders be automatically welcomed abroad in areas their regional partners control. Though al Qaeda has established "franchise affiliates" in places like North Africa and Southeast Asia, relationships between al Qaeda's leadership and its regional nodes are extraordinarily complex. Groups like the North African affiliate "al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb" (AQIM) are happy to co-opt the al Qaeda "brand" for recruiting and financial reasons, but they don't necessarily share the al Qaeda senior leadership's ideological goals. AQIM is much more focused on attacking the Algerian government or foreign entities within the country, having not displayed much capability or desire for grandiose international operations. And last, recruits come to North Africa more often through independent networks in Europe, not camps along the Durand Line. Think of the relationship like the one you have your in-laws: You might share a name, but you probably don't want them coming to visit for three full weeks. Regional leaders aren't terribly loyal to senior leadership, either. Take Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the deceased leader of the group's Iraq affiliate. He was summoned to bin Laden's side numerous times in an attempt to exert control as the Iraqi commander's tactics grew more grotesque and questionable. Zarqawi declined, not wanting to risk travel or accept instruction from bin Laden. In the end, a safe haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border is as good as it gets for al Qaeda's chances to launch a large-scale attack against the United States. Certainly, smaller, less complex attacks could be planned without "Afghan real estate," but any such plot's death toll and long-term effect on American society will be far more limited. Unfortunately, that's a risk President Barack Obama has to accept -- no amount of intelligence or counterterrorism operations can provide 100 percent security. But to avoid the Big One, the U.S. president's best bet is to deny al Qaeda the only physical space it can access.


 * Extinction **
 * Morgan, 9 ** - Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Yongin Campus - South Korea (Dennis, Futures, November, “World on fire: two scenarios of the destruction of human civilization and possible extinction of the human race,” Science Direct)

In a remarkable website on nuclear war, Carol Moore asks the question ‘‘Is Nuclear War Inevitable??’’ [10].4 In Section 1, Moore points out what most terrorists obviously already know about the nuclear tensions between powerful countries. No doubt, they’ve figured out that the best way to escalate these tensions into nuclear war is to set off a nuclear exchange. As Moore points out, all that militant terrorists would have to do is get their hands on one small nuclear bomb and explode it on either Moscow or Israel. Because of the Russian ‘‘dead hand’’ system, ‘‘where regional nuclear commanders would be given full powers should Moscow be destroyed,’’ it is likely that any attack would be blamed on the United States’’ [10]. Israeli leaders and Zionist supporters have, likewise, stated for years that if Israel were to suffer a nuclear attack, whether from terrorists or a nation state, it would retaliate with the suicidal ‘‘Samson option’’ against all major Muslim cities in the Middle East. Furthermore, the Israeli Samson option would also include attacks on Russia and even ‘‘anti-Semitic’’ European cities [10]. In that case, of course, Russia would retaliate, and the U.S. would then retaliate against Russia. China would probably be involved as well, as thousands, if not tens of thousands, of nuclear warheads, many of them much more powerful than those used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, would rain upon most of the major cities in the Northern Hemisphere. Afterwards, for years to come, massive radioactive clouds would drift throughout the Earth in the nuclear fallout, bringing death or else radiation disease that would be genetically transmitted to future generations in a nuclear winter that could last as long as a 100 years, taking a savage toll upon the environment and fragile ecosphere as well. And what many people fail to realize is what a precarious, hair-trigger basis the nuclear web rests on. Any accident, mistaken communication, false signal or ‘‘lone wolf’ act of sabotage or treason could, in a matter of a few minutes, unleash the use of nuclear weapons, and once a weapon is used, then the likelihood of a rapid escalation of nuclear attacks is quite high while the likelihood of a limited nuclear war is actually less probable since each country would act under the ‘‘use them or lose them’’ strategy and psychology; restraint by one power would be interpreted as a weakness by the other, which could be exploited as a window of opportunity to ‘‘win’’ the war. In other words, once Pandora’s Box is opened, it will spread quickly, as it will be the signal for permission for anyone to use them. Moore compares swift nuclear escalation to a room full of people embarrassed to cough. Once one does, however, ‘‘everyone else feels free to do so. The bottom line is that as long as large nation states use internal and external war to keep their disparate factions glued together and to satisfy elites’ needs for power and plunder, these nations will attempt to obtain, keep, and inevitably use nuclear weapons. And as long as large nations oppress groups who seek self determination, some of those groups will look for any means to fight their oppressors’’ [10]. In other words, as long as war and aggression are backed up by the implicit threat of nuclear arms, it is only a matter of time before the escalation of violent conflict leads to the actual use of nuclear weapons, and once even just one is used, it is very likely that many, if not all, will be used, leading to horrific scenarios of global death and the destruction of much of human civilization while condemning a mutant human remnant, if there is such a remnant, to a life of unimaginable misery and suffering in a nuclear winter.


 * Gradual withdrawal while maintaining a counterterrorism strategy allows more effective US leadership in the war on terror and maximizes US credibility**
 * Chellany, 9** - professor of strategic studies at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi (9/14/09, Brahma, Japan Times, “An Advantagous U.S. Exit,” http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20090914bc.html )

When the administration's principal war target is not the Taliban but rather al-Qaida remnants on the run, why chase a troop-intensive strategy pivoted on protecting population centers to win grassroots support? In reality, what it calls a "clear, hold, build" strategy is actually a "surge, bribe, run" strategy, except that the muddled nature of the mission and the deepening U.S. involvement crimp the "run" option. America's quandary is a reminder that it is easier to get into a war than to get out. In fact, Obama undermined his unfolding war strategy last March by publicly declaring, "There's got to be an exit strategy." The message that sent to the Taliban and its sponsor, the Pakistani military, was that they ought to simply out-wait the Americans to reclaim Afghanistan. Before Afghanistan becomes a Vietnam-style quagmire, Obama must rethink his plan for another troop surge. Gradually drawing down U.S. troop levels indeed makes more sense because what holds the disparate constituents of the Taliban syndicate together is a common opposition to foreign military presence. An American military exit from Afghanistan will not come as a shot in the arm for the forces of global jihad, as many in Washington seem to fear. To the contrary, it will remove the common unifying element and unleash developments whose significance would be largely internal or regional. In Afghanistan, a vicious power struggle would break out along sectarian and ethnic lines. The Taliban, with the active support of the Pakistani military, would certainly make a run for Kabul to replay the 1996 power grab. But it won't be easy to repeat 1996. For one, the Taliban is splintered today, with the tail (private armies and militias) wagging the dog. For another, the non-Taliban and non-Pashtun forces now are stronger, more organized and better prepared than in 1996 to resist the Taliban's advance to Kabul, having been empowered by the autonomy they have enjoyed in provinces or by the offices they still hold in the Afghan federal government. Also, by retaining Afghan bases to carry out covert operations and Predator missions and other airstrikes, the U.S. military would be able to unleash punitive air power to prevent a 1996 repeat. After all, it was the combination of American air power and the Northern Alliance's ground operations that ousted the Taliban from power in 2001. Against this background, the most likely outcome of the Afghan power struggle triggered by an American decision to pull out would be the formalization of the present de facto partition of Afghanistan along ethnic lines. Iraq, too, is headed in the same direction. The Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and other ethnic minorities would be able to ensure self-governance in the Afghan areas they dominate, leaving the Pashtun lands on both sides of the British-drawn Durand Line in ferment. Thanks to ethnic polarization, the Durand Line, or the Afpak border, exists today only on maps. On the ground, it has little political, ethnic and economic relevance. As in Iraq, an American withdrawal would potentially let loose forces of Balkanization in the Afpak belt. That may sound disturbing, but this would be an unintended and perhaps unstoppable consequence of the U.S. invasion. An American pullout actually would aid the fight against international terrorism. Instead of staying bogged down in Afghanistan and seeking to cajole and bribe the Pakistani military from continuing to provide succor to Islamic militants, Washington would become free to pursue a broader and more-balanced counterterrorism strategy. Also, minus the Afghan-war burden, the U.S. would better appreciate the dangers to international security posed by Pakistani terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e- Mohammed. The threat of an Islamist takeover of Pakistan comes not from the Taliban but from these groups that have long drawn support from the Pakistani army as part of the deep-rooted military-mullah alliance.


 * A substantial drawdown to a purely counterterrorism presence will maximize US influence in Central Asia and contain instability and terrorism**
 * Simon, and Stevenson, 9** * adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, AND Professor of Strategic Studies at the US Naval War College, (Steven and Jonathan, “Afghanistan: How Much is Enough?” Survival, 51:5, 47 – 67, October 2009 http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a915362559&fulltext=7132409)

An effort on that scale would garner majority US domestic support only if the public sees likely victory and Congress, the White House and the Beltway punditry line up decisively behind the policy. The emerging trends are pointing in the contrary direction. As monthly and annual US casualties in Afghanistan reached historical peaks in August 2009, and the Afghan national election loomed, a poll conducted by ABC News and the Washington Post indicated that most Americans did not support an extended US military commitment in Afghanistan.31 Congressional Democrats are balking at anticipated requests for more troops.32 And even conservative columnists, like the influential George F. Will, have turned against a maximalist Afghanistan policy.33 Overall, increasingly strong perceptions of the Karzai government as inept and corrupt are making prospects that the United States could enlist it as an effective counter-insurgency partner and lend it the legitimacy required to rebuild the country seem more and more baseless. The upshot is that only if the United States establishes a well-calibrated limited policy now will it have the political flexibility to sustain it over the longer-term and thereby to effectively contain the jihadist threat in Central Asia. If, on the other hand, the Obama administration promises more than it can deliver in Afghanistan, a reprise of Vietnam may occur: once failure becomes clear, domestic support will evaporate, the administration will be compelled to withdraw precipitously, and the United States will lose considerable traction in the region. Congressional democrats are balking at anticipated requests for more troops These factors suggest that the United States should limit its Afghanistan/Pakistan policy to counter-terrorism and disown country-wide counterinsurgency and state-building in Afghanistan. At the same time, Washington must remain highly sensitive to the dynamic whereby decreased military activity in Afghanistan combined with robust operations in Pakistan could induce al-Qaeda to return to Afghanistan and render it a main threat once again. In that light, any abrupt wholesale American military withdrawal from Afghanistan would be too risky. Instead, the United States should seek to facilitate a glide-path to a substantial drawdown - and with it fewer casualties and lower expenditures in Afghanistan - over the next few years. Doing so would involve continuing to suppress al-Qaeda in Pakistan with selective and discriminate drone strikes and denying al-Qaeda access to Afghanistan. The former would require bases within Afghan territory from which to deploy airpower and special-operations forces against terrorists and terrorist infrastructure, as well as the troops and equipment to secure these bases. The latter would call for reinforced border security and force protection within Afghanistan, which in themselves would entail a surprisingly large number of soldiers. For these purposes, the United States would continue to bring extensive human intelligence and surveillance capabilities to bear on Afghanistan to detect and assess potential threats to American interests. To mitigate and eliminate such threats, the generous deployment of US special-operations forces to Afghanistan - which currently comprises some 50% of all US special-operations personnel - would have to be maintained over the medium term. Meanwhile, US train-and-equip programmes for Afghan security forces should be intensified in contemplation of a gradual and controlled hand-off of the domestic counter-terrorism mission to them when they are ready, as well as to prepare them for counterinsurgency operations, should the Afghan government wish to use them for that purpose. The United States should also provide strong political and economic support for the Afghan government, which is likely to remain under Karzai once the votes of the 20 August election are counted and certified. Kabul, however, should be left to take the lead in managing its relationship with the Taliban (as well as anti-narcotics policy). With US encouragement, the Karzai government should make it clear to Pashtuns in the southern and eastern parts of the country that if they support insurgents or terrorists aiming to destabilise the Afghan or Pakistani governments, they will suffer financially and militarily. Again, some US forces would be needed to give such arrangements teeth, but not at the levels required for an all-out counter-insurgency. American insurance against a militant Islamist coup or an uncontrollable level of destabilisation also should be left in place. This could entail a standby stabilisation force with tactical air capabilities based in or near Kabul, along with a robust quick-reaction force. That policy would reflect the reality that a deeply committed counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan is potentially counterproductive, probably unwinnable and in any event unnecessary. The United States can protect its interests and fulfil its international security obligations with a far more circumscribed counter-terrorism effort focused on Pakistan. Under such an approach, US policy would recognise Afghanistan as the residual problem that it has, in fact, become.


 * A counterterrorism posture empirically works – it reduces the threat of terrorism and can provide actionable intelligence without undermining US credibility **
 * Long, 10 ** - assistant professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (Austin, “Small is Beautiful: The Counterterrorism Option in Afghanistan,” Orbis, Spring 2010, Science Direct)

It will therefore take about three years to get to this posture. But will it work? First, this is clearly not the U.S. posture before September 11, 2001, so any comparisons to that period are inapt. Second, arguments that this was essentially the United States posture from 2002-2006 are much closer to the mark. However, here the argument is that this posture ‘‘failed’’ because the militants have made a comeback. Yet this misinterprets the strategic goal completely. If the strategic goal is a stable Afghanistan, then the strategy was a failure. If the strategic goal is to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan, it was a success: there are, at present, few al Qaeda members in Afghanistan and certainly no senior leadership. In an interview on October 5, 2009 national security adviser James Jones noted of al Qaeda in Afghanistan that the ‘‘maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.’’41 The counterterrorism option merely seeks to ensure that this minimal level of al Qaeda presence continues in the future. Alternately, this argument conflates all militants under the rubric al Qaeda. This is problematic: if any thug with a Kalashnikov is a threat to U.S. national security then readers should prepare for a rough future as there are millions of them spread across the globe. It is this conflating of the local fighter with the global terrorist that David Kilcullen’s Accidental Guerilla rails against, so it would behoove the United States to avoid this error.42 More generally, Riedel and O’Hanlon claim this small footprint posture will be ineffective because actionable intelligence will not be obtained without a substantial conventional force ground presence. Yet this is belied by the fact that the United States gains actionable intelligence against targets in even very dangerous areas in which it has essentially no ground forces. In Somalia in 1993, a small U.S. task force, supported by a small conventional force, was able to collect intelligence on the Habr Gidr clan.43 CIA and special operations personnel were also able to collect intelligence in Iraq before the 2003 invasion.44 The United States also has a good track record of gaining actionable intelligence specifically against al Qaeda in hostile environments without conventional forces. At least three times in 2007-2009, the United States collected sufficient intelligence to enable strikes on al Qaeda affiliates in Somalia, where there are no conventional U.S. forces.45 A similar strike was launched in Yemen in 2002, another country lacking U.S. conventional forces.46 Across the border from Afghanistan in Pakistan it has struck even more targets (according to one source at least thirty eight from September 2008 to March 2009) despite having no conventional presence.47 Some will protest that the Pakistanis serve as the ground presence in Pakistan, but they do not have a substantial security force (or in some cases any at all) presence in many areas where the United States has targeted al Qaeda. For example, in the militant redoubt of South Waziristan, where the United States has launched multiple drone strikes, Pakistan had no significant conventional ground force presence until October 2009.48 Others argue Somalia and Yemen are poor comparisons because they are mostly flat and on the coast, making offshore intelligence collection easy. While true, this argument stresses access, not ground force presence, which enables collection. Yet with the posture recommended in this article, the United States is assured vastly greater access than it has in either Somalia or Yemen. In the period immediately after September 11, 2001, even with essentially no conventional ground presence in Afghanistan, small teams of U.S. intelligence and special operations forces worked with local allies to gain substantial intelligence on al Qaeda in an environment filled with hostile Taliban. A poorly executed operation at Tora Bora enabled Osama bin Laden to escape, but this was not because intelligence was unavailable. Even this failure resulted in the deaths of many al Qaeda associates and forced its leadership to flee the country.49 It seems implausible that a vastly more robust presence in Afghanistan would be significantly less capable of collecting intelligence than these small teams, or similar U.S. efforts in Somalia and Pakistan. At best, large numbers of U.S. troops make the work of intelligence collectors easier. Their presence helps prevent militants from massing forces to attack small units and provides readily available quick reaction forces, allowing collectors to assume more risk in collection. Conventional forces also collect some intelligence organically via patrols and engagements. With a reduced force posture, collectors will have to be more circumspect and work harder. Yet as the above examples of collection in hostile environment demonstrate, this will not prevent them from operating. Another argument against the small footprint is that U.S. ground forces in substantial numbers in Afghanistan have given the United States more leverage over Pakistan. According to this explanation, the increase in troops in Afghanistan provides the rationale for Pakistani offensive operations against militants in 2009 and also why U.S. drone targeting has been more successful in the same period. Yet the timing suggests that this change in behavior has more to do with Pakistani perceptions of the militants’ threat. Pakistani operations began when in April 2009 militants broke a ceasefire that was only a few weeks old and sought to expand their control towards the Punjabi heartland of Pakistan.50 This timing seems significant in explaining Pakistan’s offensives. In contrast, U.S. drone strikes increased in tempo beginning in late 2008, months before a decision to send more troops to Afghanistan was made.51 Even if troops do give leverage over Pakistan, how much is that leverage worth in U.S. blood and treasure? There is no sign that additional troops will cause Pakistan to stop supporting its proxies. In terms of the strategic goal of disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda, Pakistan was aiding U.S. intelligence collection and began allowing drone strikes in June 2004 when there were less than 18,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Thus, it seems likely they will not simply stop it with 13,000 there.52 The final argument marshaled against this small footprint posture is that it hands al Qaeda a major propaganda victory. It could claim it drove another superpower out, that the West lacks will, and the like. There is some merit in this argument but with 13,000 U.S. military personnel in the country hunting for al Qaeda day and night, it would probably not prove to be a resounding victory. More importantly, it is far from clear what this propaganda victory would mean in terms of the strategic goal. It would not appear to have much effect on the first two goals, as al Qaeda would continue to be disrupted and dismantled by operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the latter of which will remain highly unsafe for al Qaeda. It might make it harder to achieve the third goal, defeat. Yet it is this goal that is most unclear anyway. In fact, Thomas Rid and Marc Hecker argue in War 2.0 that, while it has become impossible for al Qaeda to ‘‘win’’ in any meaningful sense, its existence as a transnational social movement using various media means it cannot be totally defeated either.53 Finally, the United States has to leave Afghanistan at some point, so it is inevitable that it will make the claim to have driven the United States out. As policymakers have sought to grapple with the challenge of Afghanistan, the lessons of Vietnam have been invoked and debated by both those favoring an increase in U.S. troops and those against it.54 Yet Vietnam was not the United States only experience with irregular warfare in Southeast Asia. The U.S. experience in Laos provides a better historical analogy for U.S. strategic ends and means in Afghanistan. In Laos, the United States supported both a weak central state and minority tribes, principally the mountain dwelling Hmong. The U.S. goal was limited, seeking both to interdict the use of Laotian territory to supply Communist forces in South Vietnam and to tie down as many North Vietnamese units as possible. Beginning in 1961 and with only a handful of CIA case officers, development workers, and Special Forces personnel, the U.S. mission worked with Hmong leader Vang Pao to create an effective guerilla force. This force had notable successes against the Communists, evolving into a force capable of holding territory when supported by U.S. airpower and small numbers of Thai ground forces. Other CIA-supported irregular units and even a few Laotian government units were also effective. In addition, the strategy was able to tie down multiple North Vietnamese divisions and ensure that the Laotian government held about as much territory in 1972 as it did in 1962.55 As with Laos, U.S. goals in Afghanistan are strictly limited and do not require a major state building enterprise. If anything, U.S. goals in Afghanistan are more limited than in Laos, as the goal in the former is to keep out at a few hundred irregular fighters while the latter sought to oppose tens of thousands of disciplined soldiers. The limited goals in Laos could be achieved with limited means, making it sustainable for more than a decade. A similar limited means strategy will likewise make U.S. strategy in Afghanistan sustainable for the long term. To return to the point from which this analysis began—strategy is matching means and ends. If the ends desired are about al Qaeda, the counterterrorism option is the best fit in terms of means. It is sustainable, always crucial in prolonged conflict, as it limits the expenditure of U.S. blood and treasure. It is also less dependent on Pakistan choosing to abandon its proxies, a possibility that seems remote at present. The counterterrorism option is not only possible, but as Steve Simon and Jonathan Stevenson argue, it is the best alternative for the United States.


 * Withdrawal of combat troops will immediately turn the population against the Taliban and shore up Afghan government legitimacy**
 * Dorronsoro,9 - **Visiting Scholar, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (January 2009, Gilles, “Focus and Exit: An Alternative Strategy for the Afghan War,” http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/afghan_war-strategy.pdf )

This three-zone strategy is not, per se, a gamechanger, and it must be accompanied by an incremental, phased withdrawal. The withdrawal would not be a consequence of “stabilization,” but rather an essential part of the process. Since the presence of foreign troops is the most important factor in mobilizing support for the Taliban, the beginning of the withdrawal would change the political game on two levels. First, Jihad would become a motivation for fewer Afghans; instead, the conflict would be mostly seen as a civil war. Second, the pro-government population (or, more exactly, the anti-Taliban one) would rally together because of fear of a Taliban victory. Why Withdraw the Combat Troops ? Reframing the War There is an argument against withdrawing combat troops: namely, that al-Qaeda would retain its sanctuary in Afghanistan because the Afghan state would not have control of some parts of the country, especially in the east. Though superficially compelling, this argument is weak for two reasons. First, the international coalition lacks the resources to control the periphery of the Afghan territory anyway. Second, the withdrawal of combat troops does not preclude targeted operations with the agreement of the Kabul government. So, in terms of physical security, the withdrawal of combat troops does not bring clear gains for al-Qaeda. There are two important reasons for withdrawal. First, the mere presence of foreign soldiers fighting a war in Afghanistan is probably the single most important factor in the resurgence of the Taliban. The convergence of nationalism and Jihad has aided the Taliban in extending its influence. It is sometimes frightening to see how similar NATO military operations are to Soviet ones in the 1980s and how the similarities could affect the perceptions of the population. The majority of Afghans are now deeply opposed to the foreign troops on their soil. The idea that one can “stabilize” Afghanistan with more troops goes against all that one should have learned from the Soviet war. The real issue is not to “stabilize” but to create a new dynamic. The Taliban have successfully framed the war as a Jihad and a liberation war against (non-Muslim) foreign armies. The concrete consequence of this moral victory is that the movement has been able to gain ground in non-Pashtun areas. The situations in Badghris Province (northwest) and in Badakhshan Province (northeast) are extremely worrisome, because the Taliban have been able to attract the support of some Pashtun tribes and fundamentalist networks. A province like Wardak, initially opposed to the Taliban in the 1990s, is now one of its strongholds. Insecurity bred by the narcotics trade and the infighting of local groups in the north also provides the Taliban opportunities to find new allies on a more practical, rather than ideological, ground. This trend is extraordinarily dangerous, since the spread of the war geographically would put Western countries in an untenable position. Second, withdrawal would create a new dynamic in the country, providing two main benefits. The momentum of the Taliban would slow or stop altogether, because without a foreign occupier the Jihadist and nationalist feelings of the population would be much more difficult to mobilize. Furthermore, the Karzai regime would gain legitimacy. If Karzai (or his successor) receives enough help from the international coalition, he would be able to develop more centralized institutions in the strategic areas or at least keep local actors under control. The regime would remain corrupt but would appear more legitimate if it succeeded in bringing security to the population in the strategic zones without the help of foreign troops. The support of the urban population, which opposes the Taliban, is a critical issue. Corruption is a problem primarily if it accelerates the independence of Afghanistan’s peripheral regions.