Joe Biden’s role as in-house skeptic of the US mission in Afghanistan seems to be the topic du jour. Michael Crowley of The New Republic recently penned a piece describing Biden’s transition from hawk to realist on the issue. A major factor in his change of heart seems to be a loss of faith in Hamid Karzai’s government:
“Whereas [Biden] had once felt that, with sufficient U.S. support, Afghanistan could be stabilized, now he wasn’t so sure. ‘He’s aware that a basic rule of counterinsurgency is that you need a reliable local partner,’ says one person who has worked with Biden in the past.”
Biden is also increasingly frustrated by the lack of clear American objectives in the country. With al-Qaeda almost entirely defeated in Afghanistan, he argues, it’s much more sensible to move resources from Afghanistan to Pakistan, where al-Qaeda is much stronger.
Courtesy US National Guard
A Times piece from today repeats some of the points in the Crowley article and also sets the vice president’s concerns in a domestic political context:
“I think a big part of it is, the vice president’s reading of the Democratic Party is this is not sustainable,” said Bruce O. Riedel, who led the administration’s review early this year. “That’s a part of the process that’s a legitimate question for a president — if I do this, can I sustain it with political support at home? That was the argument the vice president was making back in the winter.”
I must admit that I, too, am starting to buy into the much more limited goal of counterterrorism in Afghanistan. Biden makes a good case against an attempt at counterinsurgency, and I’d be surprised if his recommendations don’t have some noticeable effect on the president’s final report on the war effort.
UPDATE: When it rains, it pours. Newsweek‘s cover story puts some background on Biden’s influence in the administration:
Across the board, Biden’s real value to the president is not really his specific advice. It’s his ability to stir things up. Senior government officials who have participated in small meetings with the president and vice president have noticed Obama and Biden engaged in a duet. “The president will lean over, and they will quietly talk to each other. Biden will then question someone, make comments, and the president just leans back and seems to be taking it all in before he speaks,” Attorney General Eric Holder tells NEWSWEEK.
Nice blog! I landed here Loogling for Biden’s White Paper, “Counerinsurgency Plus.” Didn’t find it (of course). But I’m hoping for a elitist, stand-up policy that leads with an exit strategy.
If America is to remain a global Leviathan, and make safeguarding globalization’s evolution its primary task, why not just go back to the pre-9/11, “limited regret” strategic management style? You know, we come, we kill, but we don’t clean up.