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How many is enough?

The right question is not why U.S. troops need to stay in Afghanistan after 2014 but rather how many are needed to counter the resurgence of Al Qaeda there.  Fred and Kim Kagan say upwards of 30,000 and cast aspersions on the “amateurs” who call for fewer.  The Administration seems  to be focusing on 10,000, plus several thousand advisors from NATO allies.  The Administration has most of the qualified professionals in its employ.

I put myself solidly in the amateur category, which is clearly where the Kagans also belong.  But even an amateur sees the big hole in their argument.  They fail to consider the possibility that U.S. troop presence helps to generate the recruits Al Qaeda requires.  This is no small matter.  Any good military commander needs to ask whether offensive efforts are generating more enemy fighters than they are eliminating.  David Petraeus, who on this showed far better judgment than in his personal life, famously asked this question in Iraq about the U.S. detention policy there (and arranged to free a good number of people when those in charge told him the bad news).  There is ample evidence that this counter-productive effect is happening in Yemen, where the numbers of estimated Al Qaeda activists have grown markedly during the course of the U.S. drone war there.  Could the same thing be happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

I can’t answer that question, but others have tried  to do so.  It has been years since reasonable observers concluded that on balance drone strikes are counter-productive in Pakistan, which is the center of gravity of the war on extremists.  The problem is that there is a lot of collateral damage, and population anxiety, for every high-level target killed.  Three quarters of Pakistanis now regard the United States as an enemy.  If even a tiny percentage of them joins Al Qaeda to fight against us, we are in trouble.

There is another problem.  U.S. troops in Afghanistan will be vulnerable to asymmetric Iranian attacks if Israel or the U.S. goes after the Tehran’s nuclear program.  If you think preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons is a top U.S. priority, you should want to minimize the number of American troops exposed if military action becomes necessary.

The Kagans and many others will complain loudly if “only” 10,000 American troops are left in Afghanistan.  They also wanted to leave American troops in Iraq.  I find it hard to fathom what good that would have done, and easy to imagine how problematic it would have been as Prime Minister Maliki tries to exert more centralized authority over both Sunni and Kurds.  The notion that American commanders would necessarily stand up for truth, justice and the American way is not convincing.

The United States has more troops abroad than it can afford, and likely also more than some of the societies in which they operate find acceptable.   I’m just an amateur, but so is the man in charge.  He should want to keep those low options open.