Summary

John Nagl began the discussion with an overview of the ends, ways, and means associated with the President’s new strategy for Afghanistan, with which he broadly agreed. The desired ends laid out in the strategy, Nagl explained, were largely satisfactory—the first priority of the United States should be to ensure that Afghanistan does not once again become a safe-haven for transnational terrorist groups. He said the next step for the United States is to ensure that the country remains stable and its population remains secure, given that increased instability in Afghanistan could very quickly spread to Pakistan and elsewhere in the region. The more quickly that Afghans perceive that their country has become stable and secure, the sooner American forces can be withdrawn—this is our surest exit strategy from Afghanistan.

Nagl stated that the “means” which President Obama described in the strategy—an increase of 17,000 troops along with 4,000 more trainers and advisors—is merely a down-payment on the vast force necessary to protect the Afghan people, that is, to effectively carry out a population-centric counterinsurgency strategy. An effort to expand the Afghan National Army (not mentioned in the President’s remarks) would be the most prudent means of resolving this manpower shortfall. While the deployment of a dedicated training and advisory force is an encouraging and long-overdue step, the number of troops in the country even after the announced increase will be insufficient to achieve even the limited short-term goals laid out by the Administration. What’s more, General McKiernan, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has not been given the entirety of the resources he requested—roughly 10,000 more troops than those announced by President Obama. But it can be argued that, given our commitments elsewhere and the resulting strains on the force, the 21,000 troops may be all we can afford to send in good conscience.

But the fact remains, Nagl explained, that there are insufficient international and Afghan forces to hold the areas that American troops have cleared. We don’t simply need more troops in the country, he said, we also need a different strategy for employing them—one that encourages Afghan National Army forces to hold or consolidate American security gains. The Americans must select the most important population centers in which to employ such a strategy, while working with the understanding that the “ink-blots,” or areas of security and stability, will take a long time to spread.

Robert Kagan praised President Obama’s renewed commitment to Afghanistan, as well as addressed the role of America’s allies in the supporting the mission in Afghanistan.

The Administration’s new strategy portends further encouraging trends in the Administration’s foreign policy, he explained. The President has said “no” to pulling back. Obama has renewed America’s commitment to the conflict in Afghanistan and set a precedent in the process; it seems unlikely for him to push forward in this case, but to retreat elsewhere. What’s more, he has done so in the face of skepticism and opposition from elements of his own party. The President’s plan for Afghanistan is not the minimalist approach that some of his political allies advocated. Indeed, it is a comprehensive strategy more along the lines of nation-building than simple counterterrorism. Recent remarks from Secretary of State Clinton regarding the necessity of ensuring good government in Afghanistan have reinforced this notion of a comprehensive approach. While there has been no mention of democracy in the President’s goals for Afghanistan, Clinton’s remarks have implied as much, and the promised infusion of civilian governance experts represents a commitment to supporting the Afghan political process and institutions.

But Kagan pointed out that while the President appears to have committed himself to a real, comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy—instead of a more minimalist counterterrorism approach—he risks under-resourcing the strategy, as Nagl suggested.

In terms of allied support for the mission, the United States should not expect too much more out of its NATO partners, many of which have already made significant contributions to the conflict, particularly in the southern part of the country. But inevitably, the ratio of U.S. to European forces in Afghanistan will rise dramatically in the coming years, the geopolitical consequences of which remain to be seen. There is the possibility that this process of allied withdrawal could undermine American support for its partners abroad, if not for the mission in Afghanistan as well.

Following Nagl and Kagan’s initial remarks, moderator Jackson Diehl pointed out that while the Administration’s stated goals—the removal of al Qaeda from Afghanistan—seem limited, commanders on the ground seem to have internalized the importance of prosecuting a counterinsurgency mission, and indeed, the Administration seems to be promoting a more maximalist plan than its stated goals would demand. Diehl asked, is it politically smart to avoid the label of nation-building?

In response, Nagl reiterated that to achieve success, the United States will have to maintain a substantial force in the country and take steps to grow the Afghan National Army beyond its projected end strength. The term nation-building may be unpalatable, he said, but we cannot deny that our mission in Afghanistan demands a long-term commitment. On the issue of allies, while our partners may not be willing to send more combat forces, their offers to contribute more trainers and advisors are welcome.

Asked about the sustainability of bipartisan U.S. political support for the conflict, Kagan argued that the Democrats will not want to run on the Afghanistan issue in 2010. At the same time, however, there is the potential for Republican support to become increasingly tenuous, as well. Nagl noted that there used to be a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy, especially when we were at war and stated that he was thus proud to be part of events such as this one.

In response to a question about the geopolitical implications of a precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, Nagl argued that the mission in the country is one in which American interests are consistent with American ideals: conscience demands that we defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, the sadistic enemies we face there, while our interests demand that we establish security in Afghanistan as a means of promoting stability in Pakistan.

The world would not be grateful, Kagan added, if we left Afghanistan a mess.

Transcript

MR. SENOR: Thanks, everyone, for coming. I am Dan Senor, one of the cofounders of the Foreign Policy Initiative, this morning sort of serving as a welcomer and a glorified master of ceremonies.

We are a 501(c)(3) organization. Details are available on the website foreignpolicyi.org, where you can also register for our daily overnight brief, which is a daily email with analysis and news from around the world that will be available beginning today.

We have four panels, the one beginning momentarily which Jackson will moderate, a discussion between Bob Kagan and John Nagl. Following that, we will have a panel with our other experts on the strategic context of Afghanistan with General Barno, Dr. Ashley Tellis, and Dr. Fred Kagan.

Then we are going to take a very short coffee break, after which Bill Kristol will  moderate a panel with two of our lawmakers, Representatives Jane Harman and John McHugh.

And finally we will wrap up with a lunch discussion. Bob Kagan will host the discussion, a conversation with Senator John McCain. I think lunch will either be served right before that or after that. We will have a buffet, and people can grab a quick bite and come back in.

With that, I will turn it over to Jackson Diehl, who is the deputy editorial page editor of "The Washington Post," and a bi-weekly columnist with "The Washington Post," and a world affairs journalist guru, to moderate this discussion on the appetite domestically for continued American engagement abroad.

Thanks, Jack.

MR. DIEHL: Good morning, everybody. It is great to be here. I think we will have a great series of discussions today. Where we are starting off here is with a couple of overviews on the situation in Afghanistan and the new American strategy in Afghanistan from a couple of people  who can really give us a great big-picture view of whether or not the United States should be in Afghanistan and whether or not our plan there has a good chance of working, the plan announced by the President last week.

We are very lucky to have Dr. John Nagl, who is the new president of the Center for a New American Security, a post he just took up in February. As you know, that Center has been a great supplier of talent to the current administration, including many people who helped to author the plan that President Obama announced last week for Afghanistan.

Dr. Nagl has served as an army officer in the U.S. Army for more than 20 years, retiring with the rank of lieutenant colonel. And his last military assignment was as Commander of the First Battalion in Fort Riley, Kansas, training transition teams that are embedding with Iraq and Afghani units. And he was on the writing team that produced the U.S. Counterinsurgency Field Manual that is now the basis for the strategy that  is being pursued in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Other panelists who are well-known to you all: Dr. Robert Kagan, who is a board member of the Foreign Policy Initiative, and he is also a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He has written many books, including some excellent histories of U.S. foreign policy, a breakthrough study of relations between the United States and Europe.

And so he will be addressing also the larger context of whether political support can be generated for Afghanistan. I would like to hear him talk also a little bit about whether or not our alliances there are going to help us or hurt us as we go through with this plan.

So what I am going to do is ask each of our experts to speak for about ten minutes. Then I am going to ask them each a few questions, and then we will open it up for questions from all of you in the audience.

So if I could, I would like to begin with you, Dr. Nagl.

DR. NAGL: Thank you, sir, very much. I very much appreciate the "expert" label. I want to emphasize that I consider myself to be an expert about very, very little and certainly not about Afghanistan and Pakistan.

I am a longtime student of counterinsurgency, and I am going to approach my remarks this morning from that perspective as a counterinsurgent rather than as an Afghanistan or Pakistan country expert, although I do have a little time in Afghanistan and a bunch of time working with Afghanistan forces.

I was very honored to be present on Friday when the President announced his new strategy for Afghanistan. At the risk of being accused of cheerleading, allow me to discuss briefly the ends, ways, and means of the President's proposals, with which I broadly agree. And along the way I am going to highlight a few things that I think could probably be improved. So it will be an ends, ways, and means discussion.

First, the ends. In my opinion,  American efforts in Afghanistan today have suffered from perhaps the most fundamental of all strategic errors: Insufficient resources to accomplish maximus goals. Building a liberal democracy in Afghanistan may be possible, but after 30 years of war the country simply does not have the human capital and the institutions that democracy requires.

Creating that human infrastructure is a noble, long-term enterprise for the international community, but in the meantime the United States should focus on more achievable goals: Ensuring that terrorists never again have a sanctuary in Afghan territory from which to launch attacks on the United States and our allies and preventing Afghanistan from further destabilizing its fragile neighbors, especially the nuclear arms state of Pakistan, which has suffered egregiously from horrible internal terrorist attacks over just the past several days.

The President was clear on Friday that Pakistan is both the core of the risks to American  interests and an even harder problem than Afghanistan, and I agree on both counts.

While an expanded international commitment of security and development forces can assist in the achievement of these goals in the short term, ultimately, Afghans must ensure security and stability in their own country. Building a state, even if it is a somewhat flawed state that is able to provide a modicum of security and governance to its people, is the American exit strategy from Afghanistan. Achieving those minimus goals will be hard enough. So that is the ends.

Second, the means of American policy. We desperately need the 17,000 additional U.S. soldiers that the President has committed to the fight now. But over the long term, we must transition the Afghan troops supported by American advisers for the long haul.

The first requirement, the very first requirement for success in any counterinsurgency campaign, is security for the population. This  requires boots on the ground and plenty of them. Twenty to 25 counterinsurgents for every 1,000 persons is the historically derived ratio for success according to the Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual.

That force ratio dictates some 600,000 counterinsurgents to protect Afghanistan, a country larger and more populous then Iraq. And that force of 600,000 is about three times larger than the current Afghan and international force.

The planned surge of 17,000 U.S. troops to conduct counterinsurgency, plus 4,000 additional trainers and advisers, is merely a downpayment on the vastly expanded force needed to protect all 30 million Afghan people. The long-term answer has to be an expanded Afghan National Army, and this is the policy I hoped to hear on Friday, but did not.

Currently at 70,000 and projected to grow to 135,000, the Afghan National Army is the most respected institution in that country. It must be expanded to 250,000 and mirrored by  sizeable local police forces to provide the security to prevent Taliban re-infiltration of the population. Building Afghan security forces will be a long-term effort that will require American assistance and advisers for many years. There is simply no viable alternative.

The 4,000 advisers that President Obama is sending to the country is a downpayment, and a long-overdue one, and a long-term effort. More troops are desperately needed in Afghanistan. The troops alone are insufficient to achieve even limited goals for American policy in Afghanistan over the next five years.

Success in counterinsurgency requires the integration of military, diplomatic and economic assistance to a country afflicted by insurgents. General McKiernan, the American Commander responsible for the International Security Assistance Force, briefed just this sort of three-legged-stool approach to a group of scholars visiting Afghanistan in November. I was proud to be one of them.

Unfortunately, General McKiernan has not been given the resources required to accomplish this mission to date. The so-called surge of civilian advisers will help accomplish the American objective of a stable Afghanistan that over time can increase when governance stops.

But it is important to note that even the 17,000 troops and the 4,000 advisers are not sufficient but are merely everything we can afford to send right now in good conscience. We don't have enough civilian advisers to send, either; and we need an expanded, long-term civilian capacity to conduct development and security assistance and governance assistance over the long haul. That is the capability we don't have in our governance to the extent we need to, and that is a capability I have been arguing for a long time.

Finally, the best way to accomplish these goals with a counterinsurgency strategy that is clear and will build and hold an enduring, democratic foundation.

The additional troops that President  Obama has committed will be successful only if they are employed correctly. To date, there have been insufficient international or Afghanistan forces to hold areas that American troops have cleared of insurgents.

As a result, the troops have had to clear the same areas repeatedly, paying a price for each operation in both American lives and in Afghan public support, which suffers from Taliban reprisals whenever we clear and leave. The troops call it mowing the lawn.

The alternative requires not just more troops but a different strategy. After an area is cleared of insurgents, it must be held by Afghan troops supported by American advisers and combat multipliers, including artillery and air support. Inside this bubble of security, the Afghanistan Government can re-establish control and build a better and more prosperous community with the help of a surge of American civilian advisers.

Since 17,000 more troops will not be enough to secure the whole country and it is going  to take a while to build a bigger Afghan Army than security requires, we are going to have to select the most important population centers to secure first. These oil spots of security will then spread over time, a long time.

The single most important reason not to think that the new strategy is a surge for Afghanistan is that the term "surge" is associated with the relatively short-term ramp-up of forces in Iraq. In Afghanistan these additional forces will be required for the long haul.

Way back in September, Admiral Mike Mullen expressed the need for more security. He said, frankly, we are running out of time. The situation is worse. And since then I have argued it is worse in Pakistan. Just over the past several weeks it has become clear on how much worse it has gotten, and the clock is still ticking.

While a surge of troops is urgently needed, they must be a component to the new strategy. This ends, ways, and means formulation  is one way to think about where we want Afghanistan to go, and what it will take for us to get there. Thank you.

MR. DIEHL: Thank you.

Robert Kagan.

DR. KAGAN: Well, thanks a lot, Jackson. Thank you all for coming out this morning for this conference. It is nice to see so many of you here on what is a pretty important day. As you know, obviously Secretary Hillary Clinton is out in The Hague meeting with other countries to discuss what to do about Afghanistan. And the question that Jackson raised, which is how much support will the United States be able to muster for this new phase in Afghanistan from its allies, is going to be an interesting question, which I will get to in a second.

First of all, let me just reiterate what I wrote recently on Jackson Diehl's page in "The Washington Post," that I think that President Obama made both a gutsy and correct decision. And it is correct not only in terms of Afghanistan,  but I think from a much larger perspective.

The United States was potentially at a tipping point, and I think still is, between a desire to continue its extensive engagement in the world that basically remains steady since the Second World War or perhaps, for a variety of reasons, some of which are obvious like the economic crisis, some of which are less obvious, perhaps having to do with the experience of the last eight years, to pull back a little bit.

I think that one of the really important aspects of the President's decision is that it definitely -- he is definitely saying "no" to pulling back. If anything, he has clearly deepened and strengthened America's commitment to a difficult conflict in a far-off part of the world of which the American people know little. And I think, in a way, this may be one of the most important decisions he makes in his presidency, because this sets the tone. You are not going to be pushing forward in a difficult conflict like Afghanistan and pulling back everywhere else. So  I think that it is important from that perspective.

And it is a gutsy decision because I think that he probably faced a certain amount of opposition within his own administration, if the papers are correct, to making this deeper commitment. I think many of his own supporters, people who voted for him, probably would have preferred that he not make this decision. And, to some extent, he will be counting on a significant amount of support from his normally political opponents. And I'm hopeful, in fact, that he will get that support. But that is a difficult thing for a President to do.

Your own side is a little nervous about what you are doing, and you have to count on support from the other side as well. That is a gutsy decision.

If John Nagl is going to disavow his expertise on this issue, then I'm going to really disavow my expertise. I'm not going to talk at all, in fact, about the details of this planned  surge in Afghanistan. We have another panel with people whose expertise is innately greater than mine, although I won't say it is innately greater than John's.

But from my perspective what really is critical about this new plan that President Obama has laid out is that it is not the minimalist approach that some of his advisers recommended. I think there has been an attempt to spin it that way, in some cases especially with "The New York Times" extremely successfully, as a kind of minimal counterterrorism operation. You know, no more nation building. But I think that is clearly not the case. I think this is very much along the lines of a nation-building exercise.

I think that Secretary Clinton either just today or yesterday made this statement in The Hague, or maybe it was on the plane out to The Hague: ""A government that cannot deliver for its people is a terrorist's best recruiting tool."

Now, a government that cannot deliver is what we are trying to avoid; but in order for a  government to be able to deliver, that is a very extensive commitment. President Obama, in his statement announcing this plan, talked about a whole range of issues, including the really broad sense of being able to help the Afghan people fulfill the promise of a better future by rooting out government corruption, helping the elective government provide basic services, fighting the narcotics trade, and, in general, advancing security, opportunity, and justice.

Now, people point out that the word "democracy" is not there. I know that now, because of the Bush years, we have an allergy to the word "democracy." But I would argue that I have a hard time understanding how the Afghani people will feel that they have achieved the promise of a better future and security, opportunity and justice under some kind of brutal dictator that we allow to be set up or allow to occur to take power in Afghanistan, or a series of warlords by whom they will be governed.

It seems to me that whether you use the  term "democracy" or not, you are talking about what Secretary of Defense Robert Gates referred to as a legitimate, representative government. And I think that that is, in fact, what the Barack Obama Administration is aiming for, and I think that is why we are seeing an increase in civilian resources.

And, by the way, I entirely agree that the effort in Afghanistan has been under-resourced in recent years for a variety of reasons, which we can get into.

So, therefore, not only has President Obama made a commitment to Afghanistan and this difficult conflict, but he has made a commitment to a real counterinsurgency strategy. That is the way the Under Secretary of Defense Michèle Flournoy described it in her post announcing the briefing. She called it a counterinsurgency strategy, and it is a counterinsurgency strategy. The idea of a clear hold and build is, in fact, I think critical. I think that is what the Administration is about.

Whether it has, itself, devoted enough resources to that is an interesting question, one that I think the next panel can take up in greater detail.

Now, will this policy be able to sustain support in the United States? I mean I addressed that briefly. There clearly, on both the right and the left, is an allergy to this kind of commitment. And at a time of economic distress, one can worry that at some point there will be somebody out there of some political significance getting angry about the money and the resources that are being devoted to this difficult conflict. And it is going to be difficult because we are not going to see a tremendous amount of progress, I suspect, very soon.

So the capacity to make political hay out of this issue, really on either side of the spectrum, I think, is great. And while I personally don't believe there is a real isolationist tradition in the United States, it is hard for me to think of a single administration  for the last 100 years and more that truly attempted to pursue an isolationist approach to the world.

The isolationist critique of American foreign policy is always strong. It is usually found in an opposition party. If you look at what happened from the first Bush Administration through the present Administration, the Republicans were big internationalists and interventionists. They intervened in Iraq, and they intervened in Panama. The Democrats, as you may recall, were almost entirely in opposition. There were only ten votes for the first Gulf War from the Democratic party.

So then Bill Clinton comes in. The Republicans become neo-isolationists. The Democrats become the party of intervention. You remember Condoleeza Rice's famous critique of the Clinton Administration policies in 2000, saying that the 82nd Airborne should not be walking kids to school; no more nation- building; we have to look out for own interests.

We turn around; the Bush Administration comes in. Now the Bush Administration are the interventionists and the Democrats, I think, after -- and, by the way, I'm not suggesting that there are not reasons why people change their minds, but basically the Democrats become the anti-interventionist party.

Well, now the Democrats are back in. The first move of the new President is to deepen a commitment in a foreign intervention.

So will the Republicans follow the traditional pattern here and move into a call for bringing the boys home and a reduced American commitment overseas? That is an interesting question. It remains to be seen. All I can say is that, as for myself and I think some other voices, we are certainly in favor of supporting President Obama in doing the right thing in Afghanistan.

So as for the allies, I know you mentioned the allies. You know, I don't expect a great deal from the allies, and I don't think the  Obama Administration expects a great deal from the allies. I think we are moving into a period of what I am almost tempted to call "the soft unilateralism of low expectation."

(Laughter.)

DR. KAGAN: It sounds good, doesn't it? It's a nice phrase. I kind of like it.

Which is to say it is not that we are not consulting with the allies. It is not that we don't want to be nice to the allies. We go to the allies; we say. Can you please do this; they say, well, really no. And we say, okay, and we will go do it ourselves.

That is basically where we can -- we are not doing it ourselves in Afghanistan, obviously. But I suspect that we are not going to really press the allies very hard for more troops, and that we are just going to wind up increasing the ratio of American troops to European troops quite substantially over the next couple of years.

Personally from a geopolitical point of view, I think this is acceptable. I worry about  its consequences from a political point of view, because if you now go back to the American domestic context, if the war is difficult, if the war is expensive, if the economic crisis proceeds -- and it is painfully obvious that the allies are not really willing to do as much as we wish they would do -- the twofold effect of that could be to undermine support for the allies, on the one hand, and undermine support for the overall operation, on the other.

Why does the United States not have to do this all by itself? I'm hopeful that won't come up, but I do worry that it will come up. And when I have spoken to European audiences and European officials, I have wanted to warn them that even if the Obama Administration is doing nothing but smiling at them, the American people may get a little disenchanted if the appearance is that they are not carrying their fair share.

So I will leave it there. Thanks.

MR. DIEHL: Thanks very much. And I would like to get the discussion going now. I  would like to start by bringing up this question, this very interesting question that Robert Kagan just raised: Is this nation-building or not that we are up to now in Afghanistan?

And, Dr. Nagl, I would like to ask you about this because you spoke in your remarks about minimalist goals, about achievable goals; and certainly that is the rhetoric we have been hearing from the Administration. And in his speech last Friday, President Obama laid out what sounded like a pretty minimalist goal, which is simply to prevent al-Qaeda from becoming entrenched again in Afghanistan or the Taliban from taking the power again.

And, yet, I spent last week in Afghanistan myself, and when you talk to commanders there, it is very clear that they have completely imbibed and absorbed the counterinsurgency strategy that you helped to author, which envisions getting to a goal like that by building governance, by reforming the Afghan economy, by a complete revamping of aid  programs that take a much more comprehensive approach, by conducting a whole lot of what sounds like nation-building.

And it seems to me that what commanders there have come to understand and what the Administration seems to have incorporated into its strategy is the idea that if you want to achieve the minimalist goal of preventing al-Qaeda from coming back, you have to, in fact, take on the rather maximum task of nation-building.

Is that right?

DR. NAGL: I think there is great truth to that, Jackson. But the fact is that we can accomplish our more minimalist goals of preventing Afghanistan from becoming a safe haven for terrorists without accomplishing the goals of nation- building or comprehensive counterinsurgency, but only so long as we stay there, so long as the United States is prepared to have a permanent commitment to maintaining troops inside Afghanistan. But we can't accomplish our counterterrorism objectives without conducting  nation-building.

If we ever wanted to leave, we are going to have to build an Afghanistan that can accomplish those goals on its own. And the primary component of that, the primary component of building an Afghan State that can secure itself, is going to be an army. And we need to then build, frankly, an Afghan Government that is worthy of its army, the Afghan Government that is the most effective, best-respected institution in their country.

That is a long-term project, but these are long, hard wars. And so the politically unacceptable, incorrigible words of "nation building," I think, are being disguised by what is, in essence, a long-term commitment to do that.

Let me push back a little bit again, Bob, if I can comment on the international role. I believe that both the Brits and the Australians are likely to increase their commitment. It may be advisers rather than so-called combat forces; but, as those who advise know, that looks an awful  lot like combat. Canadians have a higher casualty ratio per soldier deployed than the United States does. The Dutch have also performed remarkably well. You always hate to credit anyone specifically, because you then, by implication, denigrate the efforts of 41 other countries, the 41 total countries involved in this effort.

And I think it is important to think of Afghanistan and Pakistan not just in light of those two countries, but also in terms of this long war, what we are now calling an "overseas contingency operation." Apparently I still prefer the phrase "a long war." I will admit to never having been a fan of the phrase "global war on terror."

But if, in fact, we continue to be confronted by al-Qaeda and its affiliated movements which remain dedicated to doing us and our friends harm -- and I strongly believe that that is the case -- then the fact that there are 40 countries engaged in an effort against that is incredibly important, regardless of the material  contributions those countries make. And some of those material contributions are more significant than others. All of them are significant.

But in terms of winning this global narrative, I think that it is incredibly important that we have that many countries engaged in this effort with us. I do agree that increasingly the Americans are going to bear a higher percentage of the total weight, but to quote someone who will not otherwise be quoted here, "From each according to his abilities."

(Laughter.)

DR. NAGL: We all have a role to play in this fight. And I also believe that the President is going to ask for more, and it is going to be very hard for our allies internationally to say "no" to this President when he asks for more in what I really believe is a global struggle.

MR. DIEHL: Robert, you may want to respond to that.

And I also want to ask, again, following up on this nation-building discussion, if what we  are really doing there is nation-building? Is it politically smart to pretend that that is not what we are doing?

DR. KAGAN: Well, in answer to -- on the allies question, you know, as I say, I am comfortable with what the allies are doing, and I totally agree that it is important to maintain as much of the international elements of this for all the reasons that you stated. And I hope that your line will be repeated early and often by the Administration, even if the allies do not quite cough up everything we want, just so we can

maintain basic support in the United States.

But I was recently at a meeting at the Brussels forum in Brussels where one of the senior German officials got up and said, well, you know, the Germans have been in the north, and the north is now completely pacified.

(Laughter.)

DR. KAGAN: And the audience, which was almost entirely European, laughed like that, and he didn't mean it as a joke.

(Laughter.)

DR. KAGAN: So some of this is a German problem, obviously.

(Laughter.)

DR. KAGAN: In the sense that I think that is the country that people are looking at and maybe forgetting about, as you say, the role of the British and the Australians and others, which has been significant.

So, on the nation-building question, you know, there are people who are in the White House being paid to make smart political decisions, and I'm not prepared to -- I mean, I know there that has been a fair amount of criticism, and I intend to be concerned that you are doing one thing, and you are selling something else.

On the other hand, let me make the argument for this tactic. The thing that they are selling is not insignificant. But if there saying to the American people this is about al-Qaeda and not getting hit again, you can sustain that for a long time. So that even if you are, in fact,  engaged in a nation-building exercise and you are calling it a moral anti-al-Qaeda exercise, that might be enough.

I mean I think they found the point to make that is not easily dismissed by the American people. So as long as he keeps making that point -- which by the way, is going to make him, as it already has, raise the political salience of the war formerly known as the war on terrorism -- that will have interesting implications on other issues as well. I think that that is interesting.

I think that you sometimes got the feeling during the campaign that had this Administration had its druthers, it would have shifted emphasis dramatically to something else. The need to to do what he is doing in Afghanistan has forced him to put al-Qaeda front and center again in a way that I am not sure was what they had in mind. I think that is a good thing. So it may, in fact, be sustainable.

MR. DIEHL: I just want to follow up on the politics of this a little bit. Another thing  I heard when I was in Afghanistan was a lot of concern among U.S. Commanders, U.S. civilian professionals about how sustainable the bipartisan political support for this was going to be in the United States.

I heard one person say that, you know, he had been warned by a senior Republican Senator that this year the war in Afghanistan is a bipartisan war. Next year it will be Obama's war. And particularly in 2010, if we are continuing to see heavy fighting, heavy casualties during the summer season, which, frankly, many people expect, that that will be the time when Republican Senators who used to support this war and who supported the war in Iraq will suddenly decide that this is Obama's war and that he is messing it up.

Is that something we have to be concerned about; do you think?

DR. KAGAN: I think it is something we have to be concerned about. And, again, I think they might find some allies even in the Democratic  Party, and certainly you might find some in the Democratic Party saying, we have got to get off of this issue, because we don't want to run on this issue in 2010.

I mean there is also the danger of pre-emptive political surrender, which is in the face of a potential backlash you begin to pare back.

I mean, look, in the Iraq context Republicans on the Hill were very shaky and, themselves, not wanting to run amiss; and some of them have turned out with good reason for not wanting to run on. And so, you know, politics does come into play; and, you know, about that potential development, the stronger we can build a consensus in favor of the continuing commitment to Afghanistan now, the less likely it will be for people to fall off later, I think.

MR. DIEHL: John Nagl, you have a lot of friends in the Administration. How solid is the support for the strategy of counterinsurgency for fixing Afghanistan as opposed to, say,  counterterrorism? We hear a lot that there are people in the Administration, perhaps including the Vice President, who would prefer not to go the route of counterinsurgency.

DR. NAGL: The extraordinary thing for me on Friday -- and I don't think the television cameras showed this particularly well, but the President had his entire national security team behind him when he gave this speech: General Jones, Bruce Riedel, Michèle Flournoy, my former boss, Secretary of Defense Gates, Secretary of State Clinton, all behind him shoulder to shoulder.

And the statement was, I thought, very clear and very unmistakable, the President very resolute; and he committed his Administration to this fight. This was an all-end statement. I do not believe that this Administration will waiver. And I do think that meetings like this, gatherings like this, bipartisan groups of people dedicated to the security of the American people, the defeat of our enemies around the world, really truly  believe in that.

So I think forming what -- there used to be a bipartisan consensus in this country on foreign policy, in particular when we have our sons and daughters at war. And I am hopeful that events like this will contribute to that. That is why I am so proud to be a part of it.

The people I have talked to in the Administration understand counterinsurgency. They understand that the long-term objective has to be building into Afghanistan -- and into Pakistan even more difficult -- the ability to secure themselves. They understand how long and how hard that effort is going to be. But they understand that there simply is not any alternative if we are ever going to withdraw in large numbers from this conflict. So it presents what to me is the most clear and present danger to the security of our country.

So I think they understand all of that. I think that there is, perhaps, some unwillingness to talk about the full extent of the time  commitment that is likely to be required for this. But as an initial statement of the result and determination, I thought it was hard to beat what the President did on Friday.

MR. DIEHL: Well, there are a lot more questions, but I see we have a huge number of really expert people in the audience here. So I want to open it up to questions from the audience. There will be a roving microphone. And the only thing I ask is that before you ask your question, you simply identify yourself.

Who would like to go first?

MR. CRUTZOS: My name is Demetrius Crutzos. I am with Global for Local Strategies. I was formally the Country Director for the International Republican Institute in Afghanistan.

My question is regarding the upcoming presidential elections in Afghanistan and the potential, both political in the United States and strategic, on-the-ground ramifications for the Obama Administration regarding the question of:  Do we support President Karzai, or do we look for someone else, especially when with all of the current president's shortcomings most of the presidential candidates that are being talked about have some pretty visible warts?

I am very curious to hear the panelists' thoughts on both the upcoming elections but, more specifically, what the ramifications could be for the Obama Administration.

MR. DIEHL: John Nagl. When I was just there, just to add to that, I heard a lot of paradoxical things about the election. People seemed to say that, on the one hand, Karzai is quite unpopular in many parts of Afghanistan because people blame him for government inefficiency and corruption.

On the other hand, he is likely to be re-elected, and Afghans are likely to blame us for the fact that he gets re-elected if we don't appear to back anyone else. How do you manage this kind of problem?

DR. NAGL: Anyone who is married knows that  it is always your fault. I am going to get in trouble for that.

(Laughter.)

DR. NAGL: Bob talked a little bit earlier about the democracy, and I think it is worth pointing out that the Administration just committed $40 million to assist in the Afghanistan presidential elections. And we are expecting $160 million from other countries to help with that.

This election, to coin a phrase, is an accountability moment. And we are either going to see, I believe -- I believe that there is going to be a real election. There are real candidates lining themselves up. There are going to be real alternatives to Karzai. The Afghanistan people I have spoken to, when I asked them who is likely to be elected to be president, they always answered whoever the United States picks.

So we are having -- I have talked about the human infrastructure problem a little bit. It is a little hard in some cases to get them to understand that it really is their choice. We  really do mean that.

I believe that either President Karzai will improve his performance, which has been lackluster, to say the least, and universally derided as the Mayor of Kabul -- he will either improve his performance over the next three or four months through the summer, or he will not be re-elected. I do not believe the United States is going to put its thumb on the scales.

I think the elections will be as free and as fair as they can be in that troubled country. The 17,000 troops are going to primarily provide security for the elections. That was the reason why the deployment process had to start before the completion of the Afghan strategy review.

And so whether we have Karzai or whether he is replaced, I believe it will have to be a better Karzai if he is re-elected, or I think there are other credible candidates. I was able to chair, honored to chair, a committee and met -- I had a press conference a month or two ago --  someone who has the obvious credentials and a lot of credibility. Arshar Khani is a man who has the intellectual capacity to do a lot of the technical responsibilities.

So I think there are credible alternatives. I really think it will be up to the Afghan people to decide, although convincing them of that is going to be a real trick.

MR. DIEHL: Robert Kagan. We found ourselves in this situation before.

DR. KAGAN: Yes, many times.

MR. DIEHL: El Salvador, Vietnam, Iran. How do you manage the situation where either we pick somebody or we don't pick somebody, and we avoid being looked upon as the public master either way?

DR. KAGAN: In countries where the United States is deeply involved, it is impossible not to look like the puppet master, unless your worst enemy gets elected. We have achieved that in El Salvador.

(Laughter.)

DR. KAGAN: It just took a while to validate the true democracy that was established in El Salvador. I actually mean that sincerely.

(Laughter.)

DR. KAGAN: And so, if the Afghan people are going to assume that whatever happens in these elections is what we wanted to happen -- and I think there is nothing we can do to avoid that. And I'm not sure we should bend over backwards to try to avoid it unless we really were prepared to pick a different candidate, which I think is too late to do now. I mean to to pick a candidate.

So I would say I agree with John. I think that our obligation at this point is to try to make sure that the elections are as free and fair and certified -- as free and fair as possible; whoever wins, wins. And then whoever wins, if it is Karzai or somebody else, is going to have to deal with the problems and may be the beneficiary of an improved American strategy, in which case a lot of the downside of having Karzai, if it is Karzai, in power may be mitigated.

MR. CONSTANTINO: My name is Phillip Constantino. My question is: You have talked about Karzain and the very narrow kinds of goals in Afghanistan and slightly the broader, entire kinds of insurgency goals. But could you talk a little bit briefly about how Afghanistan fits into the security goals of the United States in sort of a global way? Is there something to be gained by being determined or sort of leaving as soon as possible?

MR. DIEHL: Do you want to take that?

DR. NAGL: By leaving as soon as possible?

MR. CONSTANTINO: To what we would be thought about, the way the rest of the world will view our prestige and commitment if we are very, I guess, publicly willing to accept that we leave Afghanistan absolutely as soon as possible, regardless of what our objectives are?

DR. NAGL: It is important to talk, I think, about the popularity of the United States in Afghanistan. We have fallen dramatically, but  we remain above 50 percent, the approval ratings in Afghanistan. That exceeds President Karzai, whose ratings are in the single digits, and the Taliban, who are also in the single digits. So the Taliban is not a popular alternative in Afghanistan.

The Afghans that I have spoken to are not upset that the United States is there. They are upset that we don't stay, and we are not there in sufficient numbers. And I think they are likely to start changing that.

So certainly in that country there is no hurry for us to leave. They would like more ground security, particularly more provided by Afghans and fewer air strikes. And I feel the same way about my neighborhood.

It is important as well to note that Peter Bergen had a good piece over the weekend, Afghanistan is not the graveyard of empires that it has been classified before. They tend not to respond well if you sell land mines designed to kill children, and my neighborhood agrees that  with philosophy. But, in fact, there is widespread appreciation that the United States is trying to help and to try to do the right things.

The real danger here and the reason Afghanistan is so important -- and Afghanistan, it is an extraordinary moment. It doesn't happen that often, but American interests and American ideals actually both go the same direction in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So we are fighting a horrible enemy who does horrible things. While I was in Afghanistan in November, that was when some Talibans -- I am blanking out the expletives here -- sprayed "S" on the faces of some girls who were going to school.

So we have almost a cartoon enemy who is so horrible, who does such horrible things, that it is really hard to argue that we should not be there for humanitarian reasons to help this godforsaken, poor country, the fifth poorest country in the world, just devastated by 30 years of war.

But American national interests also  demand that we be there. A stable Afghanistan does not guarantee a stable Pakistan, by any means. But an unstable Afghanistan does contribute to instability in Pakistan. And instability in Pakistan, of which there is already a surplus, is not something we want to encourage and, frankly, not something the international community wants to encourage.

So, I actually think we are going to see an increased international commitment. I think the Obama strategy announced on Friday, already recognized with some approval by President Karzai, will achieve an awful lot of international consensus. So I don't think there is going to be extraordinary international pressure for us to leave soon.

I also think events like -- the more you know about Afghanistan and Pakistan -- the more the American people know, the more committed I believe they will be to a continued American presence there for what I believe will be the decade that is going to be required to stabilize  that region.

DR. KAGAN: Well, I think this is true of both Iraq and Afghanistan. However anxious or unhappy much of the world may be about our continuing presence in these places, it will be less than their anxiousness and anxiety and anger if we pull out and leave them to blow up into a million pieces. And so let's not overestimate the pleasure that will be gained.

If we withdraw from Afghanistan prematurely and it becomes an al-Qaeda base again and it becomes a Taliban disaster area again, the world will not be grateful.

So, I think we have to just bear -- you know, we have to bear the burden of world unhappiness with some of our actions without kidding ourselves that the world will thank us if we leave it in a mess.

MR. DIEHL: On that cheerful note --

(Laughter.)

MR. DIEHL: -- we have come to the end of our time for this panel, but there is much more  discussion to come. So thank you very much to Dr. John Nagl and to Robert Kagan.

(Applause.)