Washington’s Gamble in Afghanistan - The National Interest

The U.S. decision to pursue talks with the Taliban is rife with risk, but it’s the right decision.
There’s a famous saying that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

By that measure, Washington has tested the limits of sanity with its strategy in Afghanistan: For seventeen years, it pursued the same policy while hoping in vain that it would produce the desired outcome.

Recent months, however, have brought a much-needed course correction. The new policy is rife with risk, but it’s the right policy—because it’s the only viable option Washington has left, the timing and conditions are right for it, and most importantly it puts America in a stronger position for an eventual but inevitable withdrawal from Afghanistan.

For nearly two decades, U.S. troops tried to wear the Taliban down on the battlefield, hoping that such relentless pressure would convince the insurgents to agree to negotiate an end to America’s longest-ever war.

That goal motivated the American troop surge a decade ago. More recently, it was reflected in the Trump administration’s Afghanistan strategy, which was announced by the president in 2017.

This consistent goal, however, has consistently failed. Years of U.S. war efforts have done little to convince the Taliban to stop fighting. This month, the insurgents announced the start of their annual spring offensive—a largely symbolic declaration, given that the Taliban now fights year round, even during the brutal winter months.

However, as President Donald Trump’s patience for fighting it out in Afghanistan has worn thin and his desire to bring troops home has increased, U.S. policy has changed significantly: It has given up on the idea of battering the Taliban on the battlefield and bringing the insurgents to the negotiating table from a position of weakness. Instead, it just wants direct talks with the terror group—in large part because it holds more territory than at any other time since the insurgency began in 2001, they have never been stronger.

To this point, there have been five rounds of talks, with the next round expected later this month. Zalmay Khalilzad, a seasoned Afghan-American diplomat, is the lead U.S. negotiator. The State Department—a marginalized agency during the early months of the Trump administration—is leading from the front in a determined effort to achieve what is now Washington’s prime objective in South Asia: concluding a deal with the Taliban that allows U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan. - Read More

Washington's Gamble in Afghanistan | The National Interest

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