New Afghan endgame: To start talks
Rather than swift win, Trump seeks to pull Taliban to table
WASHINGTON — As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump promised to wage war with overwhelming firepower and to achieve victory with lightning speed. His strategy for Afghanistan offers neither.
In his speech to the nation Monday, Trump instead offered protracted fighting against resurgent Islamist insurgents who have gained ground over the past year and a promise that the 16-year war might end “some day” in a negotiated settlement — if the U.S.-led military effort is successful.
Rather than a clear-cut military victory, the goal of the Trump strategy is to convince Taliban fighters and other militants that U.S. forces are not leaving and they cannot depose the Kabul government on the battlefield, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters Tuesday.
“This entire effort is intended to put pressure on the Taliban, to have the Taliban understand you will not win a battlefield victory,” Tillerson said. “We may not win one, but neither will you. So at some point, we have to come to the negotiating table and find a way to bring this to an end.”
Trump’s plan may have the advantage of being vague enough to at least temporarily avoid alienating some supporters who were attracted by his militaristic vows on the campaign trail. It also could win over hawkish Republicans in Congress.
But it extends and again deepens U.S. involvement in a long and unpopular war that already has taken nearly 2,400 American lives and cost more than $700 billion in U.S. support — a direction that Trump acknowledged Monday went against his own instincts.
The shift in Trump’s thinking signals the influence of Pentagon commanders, led by retired Marine general and now Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, and top advisers Trump brought into the White House — in particular Army Gen. H.R. McMaster as national security adviser and retired Marine Gen. John Kelly as chief of staff.
Mattis said Tuesday on a visit to Baghdad that the new strategy for Afghanistan will try to replicate “a lot” of the military tactics that have successfully pushed Islamic State fighters from large parts of Iraq and Syria since 2014.
Key to those offensives has been a willingness to embed U.S. advisers nearer to the front lines, including close-in drone and helicopter support, to help ground assaults by local forces. The U.S. helps on battlefield strategy, fire artillery and coordinate airstrikes on enemy targets.
U.S. warplanes already have stepped up the Afghan war, dropping twice as many bombs and missiles so far this year compared with this time a year ago — 1,984 munitions through July 31 compared with 705 last year, according to Air Force statistics.
But Mattis said he is still awaiting a detailed plan from Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for how to implement the endgame strategy that Trump outlined Monday.
Trump didn’t announce a new troop surge, but he has given Mattis authority to send about 4,000 more, adding to 8,400 U.S. forces now deployed there. Mattis said he won’t decide a precise figure until he gets Dunford’s plan.
“When he brings that to me, I will determine how many more we need to send in,” Mattis said. “It may or may not the number that is bandied about.”
Their immediate mission will be to step up training and advising Afghan security forces, which suffered severe casualties as levels of U.S. forces dropped from more than 100,000 in President Barack Obama’s first term to the current levels.
After Obama declared an end to U.S. combat in the country in December 2014, and withdrew most U.S. forces, the Taliban regained control of large parts of northern and southern Afghanistan.
They now control 40 percent of the country’s 407 districts, according to the most recent assessment by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.
Though some U.S. troops may head for Afghanistan within days, Tillerson said it will take “some time” to expand the U.S.-led training and advising of Afghan forces.
“We believe that we can turn the tide of what has been a losing battle over the last year-and-a-half or so, and at least stabilize the situation and hopefully start seeing some battlefield victories,” Tillerson said.
Pentagon commanders long have argued that a negotiated settlement was the only likely outcome of the Afghan war. They cited the weakness of Afghan security forces, rampant corruption in the Kabul government and the ability of insurgents to operate from Pakistan.
Trump’s approach is not that different than those tried by Obama and his predecessor, George W. Bush, both of whom sought to draw the Taliban into peace talks by pressuring them on the battlefield.
But Obama also set tight limits on U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan and firm deadlines for withdrawing them, a source of Pentagon frustration. He also provided billions of dollars for reconstruction and democratization programs.
Trump said he would not provide a “blank check” for U.S. support to the Afghan government, would not support nation-building efforts and would not be hemmed in by deadlines.
Derek Chollet, a senior Pentagon official in the Obama administration, said the Trump strategy will take years to show results, testing the president’s notoriously short attention span, especially if the United States and its allies suffer battlefield setbacks.
“The underpinnings of this strategy go against every one of (Trump’s) instincts,” said Chollet, vice president of the German Marshall Fund, a Washington foreign policy organization. “Once the prevailing winds go the other way, is he going to say, ‘I got railroaded by the damn generals?’ ”