Pentagon requests NATO troops return to Afghanistan
What the US policy makers precisely desire in Afghanistan is difficult to make out as the top leadership itself seems unsure of the course to be taken, and NATO, while grudgingly agreeable to US demand for thousands of troops, remains adamant that its soldiers confine themselves to non-combatant duties, such as training. It appears increasingly on the cards that the US administration under the unpredictable Donald Trump would likely go for another somersault and troop surge, hoping to inflict some battlefield defeats on the Taliban and force them to the negotiating table without pre-conditions. General Petraeus in 2010 and 2011 with 100, 000 US forces had tried to force a decisive victory, but his counterinsurgency warfare and air strikes, which resulted in thousands of civilian deaths, failed in achieving a clear-cut victory, and were counter-productive as his flawed strategy ruled out any chance of a political settlement, dragging the war into its present stalemate.
It has been well said that ‘we learn from history that we learn nothing from history’ and the ‘new’ US push for a Clausewitzean ‘battle of annihilation’ just won’t happen. Not in that impossible terrain and in the absence of full scale pitched battles. Karl von Clausewitz did not harp on minor guerrilla skirmishes and certainly didn’t visualise that deadly, morale-destroying Taliban secret weapon, the suicide bomber.
No wonder the war-weary Europeans and the US Defence Secretary revealed apparently divergent views at the NATO’s Defence Minister’s meeting on June 29 in Brussels. It became a study in evasion, with a lot of hemming and hawing, and little meeting of minds and certainly no concrete decisions. Fifteen of the 29 members pledged troops to bolster the present woefully inadequate 13,500 (8,500 US) and additional financial contributions to the Resolute Support Mission. But the US needs combat troops, which also implies body bags, and the final US Afghan strategy will be determined by President Trump from the inputs of the Defence Secretary and General Joseph Dunford, Chief of the General Staff, who recently visited Afghanistan.