Senate Armed Services Committee Issues Testimony From Colin F. Jackson
I look forward to discussing the challenges facing us in
The South Asia Strategy, Reconciliation, and the Prospects for
Complexity is not synonymous with hopelessness. The South Asia Strategy of
The South Asia Strategy
On of the greatest contributions of the South Asia Strategy of
The new strategy also marked a shift in the ways the
The South Asia Strategy also changed the means applied to the problem. The most obvious change was the introduction of roughly 4,000 additional advisors to increase the offensive striking power of the Afghan security forces. Equally important, the
Assessing the South Asia Strategy
Almost as soon as the strategy was announced, Secretary Mattis directed the Department to develop a means of assess its progress. The framework we developed broke the assessment into three logical elements: inputs, outputs, and outcomes. The external inputs of the strategy were mostly complete by the spring of 2018. The dispatch of additional advisors under the first
Predictably, the outputs of the strategy took substantially longer to emerge and the results were more mixed. The
The battle between the Afghan government and the
At the same time that the Afghan security forces and
The final set of outputs has been pressure on the
If reconciliation has always been the paramount objective of the South Asia Strategy, the military initiatives and political shifts have at the very least created promising openings.
Whereas the inputs and outputs have been to varying degrees controllable, the outcomes of the strategy have depended to a far larger degree on the interaction of independent actors including the
While the
The Search for Political Settlement: Good Deal, Bad Deal, No Deal
For the past 18 months, the focus of attention has appropriately been on the progress of political reconciliation. It bears restating that it is easier to pursue peace than secure it.
A bad deal with the
The opening position of the
Two fundamental threats in any negotiation are desperation and wishful thinking. Secretary Mattis repeatedly insisted that success in the South Asia Strategy depended on avoiding the appearance of desperation. Any opponent that senses his counterparty wants or needs a deal more than he does will be inclined to dig in and wait for concessions. For an array of reasons, public speculation about
If the history of
If a good deal would require some mix of Afghan power sharing, residual
Some of the leaders most exposed to the brunt of Afghan and
At the same time, it will become increasingly important to explain to the Pakistani leadership that the future of the bilateral relationship will hinge more on the final outcome in
What if we are faced with a choice between a bad deal and no deal? What can easily be lost in the larger narrative of the long war is how much more efficient in blood and treasure our campaign today is than at any other period since 2002; with only 10% of the troops we had at the peak of the surge, we are, with our Afghan allies, inflicting a similar level of damage on the
Is it worth it?
As
Even if insurance is the appropriate analogy, the question of cost remains. Are we overpaying to insure against the terrorism risks we face? There can be no certain answer to this question; the best we can say is that the resilience of
A more responsible approach to cutting the costs of the insurance policy would be to focus on driving the premiums down. Here the recent initiatives by
White House: 15 Nominations, Two Withdrawals Sent to Senate
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