Foreign Policy -- Bob Blackwill's bad, bad Afghan Plan B: Let's surrender but then keep fighting! --- I was curious about what my CNAS colleague General David Barno, who was commander in the war in Afghanistan a few years ago, thought of the article in the new issue of Foreign Affairs by Robert Blackwill proposing a new approach in the war there. -- Barno has some issues with Blackwill's suggestions, as you can see here. Basically, he gives this Plan B a big fat F: -- Ambassador Bob Blackwill's recent piece ("Plan B in Afghanistan") in Foreign Affairs is a stunner. Not wanting for bold formulations, it is most notable for the inconsistent logic that permeates the piece -- and a lack of understanding of war. It is indicative, most of all, of the degree of desperation with which far too many in the Washington establishment view Afghanistan. -- Blackwill's essay is best read in tandem with the companion piece in the same issue "Finish the Job" by Paul Miller, formerly Afghanistan director on the NSC staff. The truth, if there is such a beast in Afghanistan, lies somewhere in between these two widely divergent outlooks. -- Miller argues that, "The United States is not yet winning the war in Afghanistan, but it is not losing as swiftly or as thoroughly as the current crisis of confidence would suggest." Blackwill asserts: "The United States and its allies are not on course to defeating the Taliban militarily." -- Miller notes, with some solid facts to support him, that, "Although Afghanistan remains poor, violent, and poorly governed, it is richer, freer and safer that it has been in a generation." -- Yet Blackwill contends, "With all these individual elements of the United States' existing Afghanistan policy in serious trouble… [the] time has come to switch to the least bad alternative -- acceptance of a de facto partition of the country." --- This desperate leap to a de facto partition of Afghanistan -- echoes of Senator Joe Biden in Iraq in 2006 -- makes absolutely no sense, either as a "least worst case" option or as an odd adjunct to Blackwill's other (surprising) suggestion: "The administration should stop talking about exit strategies and instead commit the United States to a long-term combat role in Afghanistan of 35,000-50,000 troops." -- While the argument for sustained and substantial U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan is a sound one (and one that Andrew Exum and I recently proposed in our CNAS report "Responsible Transition: Securing U.S. Interests in Afghanistan Beyond 2011"), to argue for such a sustained combat role while at the same time preemptively surrendering the Pashtun southern half of the country simply fails the common sense test. --- The Afghan people are pretty much left out of Blackwill's formulation. Although Afghanistan has existed as a country longer than the United States (1747 vs. 1776), little regard is given to the reality that most Afghans want to remain a unified state of diverse ethnic groups - existing as Afghans, not as a collection of independent ethnic fiefdoms tied to neighboring states. To carve out a Pashtunistan separately from the current Afghan state not only shatters the reality of 250-plus years of Afghan history, but could well upend the regional balance of power -- especially regarding Pakistan. A Pashtun mini-state on the Pakistani border could rapidly threaten to undermine Pakistan's tenuous hold on its significant internal Pashtun minority. Blackwill also notes oddly that his plan would not be supported by any of the neighboring states, but breezes over this serious chasm. - More, Thomas E. Ricks, at: http://ricks.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/01/06/bob_blackwills_bad_bad_afghan_plan_b_lets_surrender_but_then_keep_fighting