The Dispensable Nation: American Foreign Policy in Retreat

To defeat an insurgency, therefore, you must secure the populace.

COIN strategy recognizes that a rebel group does not always organize into regular military units or hold on to territory. Insurgents avoid fixed positions and hide among the people, denying them to the adversary. An insurgency wins by controlling people. Its center of gravity is not a place on the map, but its support base among a sympathetic (or at least cowed) population.

The country’s economy was a sum of the drug trade plus the money that international aid and military operations sloshed around

Karzai’s clan, unfortunately, looked a lot like the Sopranos. The president’s brother Ahmad Wali was actually the fixer in Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold. He worked notoriously with both the CIA and the Taliban and had his hand in every deal and all the political wrangling in that wayward city

The diplomat made the rounds in Beijing, meeting with the Chinese president, premier, foreign minister, and a host of other political players. Their answer was clear and unequivocal: “This is your problem. You made this mess. In Afghanistan more war has made things much worse, and in Pakistan things were not so bad before you started poking around. We have interests in this area, but they do not include pulling your chestnuts out of the fire. We will look after our own interests in our own way.” In short, “You made your own bed, now lie in it.”

In the cocoon of our public debate Obama gets high marks on foreign policy. That is because his policies’ principal aim is not to make strategic decisions but to satisfy public opinion—he has done more of the things that people want and fewer of the things we have to do that may be unpopular.

Pakistan has viewed the Taliban as a strategic asset that could keep India out of Afghanistan and under Pakistan’s control. That makes the Afghan insurgency a regional problem.

It was to court public opinion that Obama first embraced the war in Afghanistan. And when public opinion changed, he was quick to declare victory and call the troops back home. His actions from start to finish were guided by politics and they played well at home.

the Taliban are almost exclusively a Pashtun phenomenon and do not reach into every corner of multiethnic Afghanistan

the Taliban are almost exclusively a Pashtun phenomenon and do not reach into every corner of multiethnic Afghanistan