VICTORY IN AFGHANISTAN is in sight. The few remaining pockets of resistance have been isolated and the Taliban leadership can no longer control events. One-eyed Mullah Omar, Osama bin Laden, and their lieutenants are on the run, if they haven’t already been captured or killed. More than any attacks by the Northern Alliance, the precipitous collapse of the Taliban’s army was caused principally by the increasing application of American military power and especially the shift from cautious strategic bombing to more intense and tactical strikes. Further, the Taliban’s decision to defend a thin line throughout Afghanistan ensured that any breakthrough would quickly become a rout. In military terms, how do we seize the moment? The immediate task is to convert the many local successes of the Northern Alliance and the cracking of the Taliban coalition within Afghanistan into a larger victory. Remaining Taliban forces must be quickly defeated and disarmed; it is essential that we not let up, but continue exploiting the opportunities of an especially fluid battlefield. “The trick on this,” as retired general Wesley Clark, NATO commander in the Kosovo war said, “is to go quickly…. Put the pressure on and let this organization crumble right now. Don’t give it a chance to reform a defense; don’t let the command and control be reestablished; don’t let it be resupplied and re-equipped. Finish it now.” To be sure, finishing it now is a challenge. Last week the Northern Alliance could not keep up with the Taliban retreat, and now they have to consolidate their gains. Pacifying Kabul and preventing looting and atrocities by their undisciplined troops is just one of many such tasks. Another is refitting those forces for further advances. And it is up to the U.S. leadership to keep a close eye on them. Follow-up attacks by the Alliance–a confederation of mostly Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara tribesmen–in the largely Pashtun area of southern Afghanistan would complicate matters politically. Indeed, the Northern Alliance’s seizure of Kabul, even after a warning from the Bush administration not to do so, gives the Alliance a valuable chip in any negotiations over the future of Afghanistan. Other Afghan warlords will try to follow their example. For the United States, simply keeping up with the pace of events, let alone getting in front and leading them, will require fast and powerful ground forces able to move over longer distances and secure fleeting objectives. U.S. and allied heliborne infantry, backed up by massive on-call air power (including attack helicopters) is ideally suited to this mission. So are special operations troops, but a larger force should be deployed as rapidly as possible. Even if, as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared, a long-term peacekeeping presence is “highly unlikely,” a rapid deployment now would do much to set the terms of the peace. Moreover, it is necessary now to free up special forces for any unfinished business in tracking down bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and other leaders of the Taliban and al Qaeda. These are the missions that special forces do best. Capturing and killing these charismatic enemies is a matter of some urgency; if they slip out of our grasp at the final moment, victory in Afghanistan will be incomplete, and the larger war on terrorism will be more difficult and complex. The second task is to move as quickly as possible to stabilize the situation and shape a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Despite Rumsfeld’s declaration, recent history in the Balkans reveals that the success of peacekeeping operations depends on American leadership and almost always on the presence–the long-term and large-scale presence–of U.S. troops. In Afghanistan, it is useful and desirable to recruit an ad hoc coalition of the willing that includes troops from Turkey and other majority-Muslim states, but it will be equally important to ensure that some nations do not take a front-line role; the inclusion of Russian troops, for example, would be a mistake. And a U.N. mandate would be welcome, but only as a vehicle for assuring widespread agreement on American strategic goals. More important, the true test of American resolve in Afghanistan will be our staying power. While there will now be opportunity for economic, social, and judicial development, none of those can succeed without a foundation in the military power of a U.S.-led constabulary force. This has been the traditional role of great powers in Afghanistan and remains the role of today’s “sole superpower.” Indeed, it was our failure to stay engaged in the region after the Cold War that permitted the rise of the Taliban and turned Afghanistan into a safe harbor for terrorists. “Peace-keeping” and “nation-building” are tasks we do not want, but we avoid them at great risk to ourselves. Yet even as we move to terminate the fighting in Afghanistan and create an enduring peace in the area, we must prepare for the next campaign. This is what President Bush referred to as “Phase Two” of the war. “Phase Two” is a euphemism for Iraq. As the campaign in Afghanistan has progressed, a consensus has emerged that it is high time to remove Saddam Hussein from power. According to the polls, a large majority of Americans understand this, as do, increasingly, our friends abroad. In a remarkable column in the November 15 Wall Street Journal, Lord David Owen, former British foreign secretary and the frustrated first peace negotiator in the Balkan wars, wrote: “Now is the time to choose the next sequence of steps to counter international terrorists, destroy their safe havens, and suppress all state support. We cannot just stop with Afghanistan.” He argued that “the next step must involve Iraq” and “to pretend that Iraq can be put to one side this winter while we deal with the Taliban and the al Qaeda network in Afghanistan is foolhardy.” As in Afghanistan, a campaign in Iraq will involve local opposition forces, the Kurds in the north and the Shi’a tribes in the south. Enemies of Saddam Hussein are plentiful inside Iraq. But as in Afghanistan, the Iraq campaign must be premised upon the certainty of an American-led military victory and a commitment to remain engaged. We know how to fight this battle–having been to the outskirts of Baghdad in 1991–but today’s situation is more urgent. Once Saddam realizes we are coming, he will observe few restraints. He will attack Israel and his Arab neighbors and enlist every terrorist he can find. He will use whatever weapons of mass destruction he has. We must be swift, violent, and decisive. Finally, the fight in Afghanistan shows us the need to rebuild, restore, and reform our armed forces to meet the needs of a chaotic world in chronic need of American military help. For more than a decade, we have allowed the force that won the Cold War to atrophy while sending it into combat ever more frequently. Every arm of American military strength needs more muscle. To simply deal with its current missions–to complete the mission in Afghanistan and retain the capacity to win another large-scale war–the Army needs at least 50,000 more soldiers and perhaps $15 billion per year. The other services need proportionate boosts in budgets, weapons procurement, and manpower. Missile defense, too, is inadequately funded. And a “revolution in military affairs” is upon us: The American force needs not only new weapons but new thinking. The post-Cold War decade was marked by a series of military moments, from Iraq in 1991 through Kosovo in 1999, where small amounts of American military force held the potential to make a huge difference. There have been victories, to be sure, but none has been as full as it might have been or needed to be. Another such moment stands before us in Afghanistan. Tom Donnelly is deputy executive director of the Project for the New American Century. November 26, 2001 – Volume 7, Number 11
