The U.S. can't negotiate its way out of Afghanistan
Spencer Ackerman writes that the U.S. effort in Afghanistan is rapidly collapsing absent a new-found willingness to negotiate with the Taliban:
Without a settlement with the Taliban, there is no hope of ending an insurgency that withstood the U.S. troop surge of 2010-2012. The U.S. will either have to rely on an Afghan security force that has killed more than 50 U.S. and NATO troops this year alone, or end up prolonging its costly commitment to Afghanistan.According to The New York Times, U.S. officials have given up on their on-again, off-again talks with the Taliban, and are punting negotiations over to the Afghans after the major U.S. drawdown in 2014. Itâ??s entirely possible thatâ??s a negotiating tactic to compel the Taliban to come to terms. But if the U.S. isnâ??t bluffing, writes the Times, â??one of the cornerstones of [its] strategy to end the warâ? has crumbled.
Even the most earnest U.S. negotiating effort is bound to hit upon a major American disadvantage: at some point, U.S. forces will leave Afghanistan, while the Taliban remain. The U.S. is trying to paper over this dynamic with promises to never leave but how believable are those pledges? The U.S. and NATO presence is going to be scaled back after 2014, and given that the surge of U.S. forces wasn't able to blunt the Taliban's momentum, it's hard to imagine fewer forces would do any better. What incentive does the Taliban have to make major concessions - or honor them once Western forces are dramatically drawn down?
That leaves the U.S. with very little leverage to negotiate with. Perhaps the only remaining, credible threat would be to make clear that harboring international terrorists on Afghan soil is a U.S. red line that would invite air strikes and special forces attacks - the kind that swiftly collapsed the Taliban regime and drove them out of the country in 2001/2. Ultimately, preventing Afghan territory from serving as a base for global terror strikes is the only "vital" U.S. interest in the country anyway.
(AP Photo)
