DESIGNER

Alicia Lee

PROFILE/DESCRIPTION

Waiting (and waiting) for a plan The president continues to take his time From the Economist.com AS HIS plane was refuelling in Alaska en route to Asia, Barack Obama made a vow to the troops who greeted him at Elmendorf air base. “I want you guys to understand I will never hesitate to use force to protect the American people or our vital interests,” he said. It was an old campaign line, and it drew applause. But it sounded odd, given that Mr Obama has been hesitating to commit more forces to the war in Afghanistan, which he used to call “a war of necessity” that was “fundamental to the defence of our people”. Mr Obama told the troops that he would not risk their lives unless it was absolutely necessary. In that case, he said, “the United States of America will have your back. We will give you the strategy and the clear mission you deserve. We will give you the equipment and support that you need to get the job done. And that includes public support back home. That is a promise that I make to you.” As to what this might mean in practice, his audience was left in the dark. What is America’s mission in Afghanistan? Until Mr Obama spells it out—he said on November 18th that he would make a decision in the “next several weeks”—no one knows. But most leaks and hints suggest something a lot more modest than his pledge in March to use “all elements of our national power” to defend America’s allies and to help deliver “a new day” for the people of Afghanistan. Hillary Clinton, the secretary of state, recently warned that the days when Americans would “talk about how we were going to help the Afghans build a modern democracy and build a more functioning state” were past. Such wonderful things “could happen”, she said, but they are not America’s “primary focus”. She added that: “[W]e’re not interested in staying in Afghanistan. We have no long-term stake there. We want that to be made very clear.” Earlier this year, General Stanley McChrystal, America’s top military commander in Afghanistan, said he needed many more troops—around 40,000, it is thought, though the number has not been made public—to defeat the insurgency there. Since then, Mr Obama has been mulling his options. Widespread ballot-rigging at the recent Afghan election complicated matters: few Americans are ecstatic at the idea of working with Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s ineffectual president. It does not help, either, that Afghanistan was ranked the second-most-corrupt country in the world by Transparency International, a watchdog, this week—only Somalia was deemed more lawless. The American ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, has reportedly urged Mr Obama not to send more troops now, for fear that this will only make the Afghan government more dependent on America. Mr Obama is plainly unhappy with the options before him. He is prodding his advisers to come up with new ways of mixing and matching the best elements of four plans. As well as deciding how many troops to send, he wants to figure out how best to use them. How much of Afghanistan’s rugged territory can America realistically secure? How hard should it try to suppress the opium trade? How should it handle the border with Pakistan, across which Taliban insurgents often take refuge? Robert Gates, the defence secretary, says the aim is to “signal resolve” while at the same time making it clear, both to Afghans and to Americans, that “this is not an open-ended commitment”. Tricky. Whatever Mr Obama finally decides to do, he will face two powerful long-term constraints. The first is money. Even with savings from reducing the number of American troops in Iraq, military spending under Mr Obama could be a tenth higher than it ever was under George Bush, according to the New York Times. Bomb-proofing Humvees is expensive. So is delivering fuel to remote outposts in the Afghan mountains—some gallons of petrol cost as much as $400. Sending tens of thousands more American troops could cost tens of billions of dollars extra each year—more than Afghanistan’s entire GDP. That will be hard to sustain, given America’s fiscal woes. The second constraint is public opinion. Congress will probably vote to fund whatever Mr Obama asks for, since Republicans generally support the war and Democrats are reluctant to thwart their president. But only 36% of Americans think the war is going well, according to a Pew poll, and only 56% think that invading Afghanistan in the first place was the right decision, down from 64% in January. Many Americans feel queasy about propping up a regime in Kabul that has put warlords in charge of several provinces. But although several of these warlords are awful, some have proved quite successful, argues Dipali Mukhopadhyay of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think-tank. Outsiders cannot impose a modern state where none existed before, she argues. Rather, a “messy mix” of formal institutions and informal power may be the only way to provide basic security. And that is the key, argues Peter Bergen, an expert on terrorism at the New America Foundation. “The idea that we ought to provide services for every Afghan and Wi-Fi in their villages is just ridiculous. What we need to do is provide security, and that’s what we’re failing to do,” he told a conference in Washington this month. For example, taking the main road from Kabul to Kandahar was safe in 2005, he said, but would be “suicidal” now. Though the war is even less popular among European voters than among Americans, some European leaders are urging America to stay firm. Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, has promised a few more troops. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the head of NATO, warns that if the West abandons Afghanistan, “al-Qaeda would be back in a flash”. Mr Obama is said to want an exit ramp from Afghanistan. But how far is he prepared to travel before he turns off?