Simon Shercliff

Last week I had an excellent few days in both New York and Boston talking to various scholars, think tankers and interested parties on Afghanistan and Pakistan policy. As expected, people were pretty opinionated over the current Obama review process. Whilst there were inevitably criticisms from some over western policy , I got the impression that  nearly everyone there felt that the main media debate over the last few weeks on whether to accept McChrystal’s suggested approach or not was not really the core issue at stake. 

Many of my contacts said we should get back to basics: start with the big questions such as “what are our objectives”, and then work back from there, walking through a clear, consistent process with full explanation along the way. We shouldn't invent, they said, artificial criteria  of success or failure or find ourselves trying to implement plans that required unsustainable levels of effort.  To be fair, I don't think that either the UK or US government would disagree with this approach, and this is what both governments have in fact tried to do.

 

A lot of the noise around the  discussion of "nation-building" in Afghanistan has become divorced from what we are trying to achieve. Put simply, we want to  get  the Afghan people to a stage where they are able to design and maintain their own way of life which is robust enough to repel the likes of Al Qaida from taking root there ever again (and from such a foothold in Afghanistan, then to attack us). Similar objectives exist for Pakistan. Ultimately, this means a long-term relationship  between our countries and the people of both Afghanistan and Pakistan built and sustained by mutual trust. That is why the Kerry-Lugar bill is so important – it sets the foundation for just such a relationship between Pakistan and the US. We want to reassure the Afghan people too that our commitment there will be long term, although of course not demonstrated by thousands of troops for the long term.  

So my big takeaway from these recent conversations outside the beltway was the need for us policy-makers to take a step back every now and then, raise our heads above the day-to-day grind, and keep our eyes fixed firmly on exactly what it is we want to achieve. Long term relationships are not single aiming points against which we can measure success or failure. But ultimately, I was persuaded, it is them which will keep us all safe from attack.