The Long Game (10 page)

In a series of speeches in 2009, Obama set out to repair relationships and reintroduce America in order to, as he put it, “turn the page” on the George W. Bush era. The result was as ambitious a collection of foreign policy rhetoric as any president has delivered in a single year. Nearly all of the speeches were overseas, where Obama aimed to speak to great global challenges from the same perspective he had conveyed in Berlin—as a “citizen of the world.” Obama wanted to reach ordinary people, believing that his background, his identity, and his message could project a new way forward for America abroad. He also used these speeches to outline the ambitious policy agenda that he believed would be fundamental to winning the Long Game.

In Prague, Obama detailed his plan to deal with the issue that still concerned him most, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and outlined his aspiration to achieve a nuclear weapons-free world. In Ankara, Obama went to the Turkish parliament and pledged that the United States was not at war with Islam. In Accra, Obama stood before the Ghanian parliament and explained his hopes for democracy and development, urging Africans to embrace not “strong men” but “strong institutions.” In Moscow, Obama spoke of his hopes for greater global cooperation, observing that “the pursuit of power is no longer a zero-sum game” and that “progress must be shared.” And in Oslo, where Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize—an award he admitted was given prematurely, reflecting more hope than accomplishment—he delivered a message that the use of military force was at times necessary.

T
HE MOST HIGH-PROFILE
of these speeches was delivered on June 4, 2009 in Egypt, where Obama took the stage in front of an audience of 3,000 people at Cairo University to speak about America's relationship with the Muslim world. This was, as the writer James
Traub observed, “the most ambitious, the most eagerly anticipated, and the most excruciatingly crafted foreign policy address of [Obama's] first term and perhaps of his presidency.”
¹⁰

Obama spoke candidly about the tension between the United States and many of the world's Muslims, blaming “small but potent” extreme minorities on both sides who “sow hatred rather than peace,” fueling a “cycle of suspicion and discord.” He said the United States needed to accept its share of the blame, citing the legacy of colonialism and Cold War policies where Arab states were treated more as pawns than partners. By acknowledging such fallibility, Obama exposed himself to critics back home who decried his “apologizing” for America. But this concession was instrumental to the president's argument—by acknowledging America's own imperfections, Obama forced his listeners to consider their own.

Obama outlined his desire to launch a “new beginning” with the Muslim world. He did not promise any large policy shifts or announce any major policy “deliverables”—he continued to support Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, reiterated his commitment to fight terrorists, and pledged to work hard to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, Obama offered something less tangible: a promise to engage Muslims with “mutual interest and mutual respect.”

These words were well received, and for a time the Cairo message seemed to improve things. But it was soon undermined by the expectations it had created. Obama hoped, as Traub observed, a “change at the level of thought and feeling would in turn help bring about a change in policy.” Obama later said that he had intended to show that “the US would help, in whatever way possible, to advance the goals of a practical, successful Arab agenda that provided a better life for ordinary people.”
¹¹
That sounded good, but left the Muslim world wanting more. If there is a lasting lesson from the Cairo speech, it is that while the use of words to create new narratives is necessary to
reset the image of American leadership, words alone are not sufficient. Actions are needed, too.

Yet from the perspective of 2016, when the question of America's relationship with the Muslim world has again become politically explosive—exposing a strain of intolerant demagoguery in US politics—the core of Obama's message seven years ago in Cairo remains essential. As Obama said, “Islam is a part of America.”

RESURGE

These efforts to rebalance US foreign policy and reset the image of America in the world unfolded against the backdrop of armed conflict. Although Obama championed a message of peace, he remained a president at war. His decisions on fighting and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would be among the most consequential that he would make. Which brings us to the third component of Obama's initial strategic shift:
resurge.

Of all the tough decisions Obama confronted during his first year, perhaps the most difficult concerned the war in Afghanistan. During the 2008 campaign, Obama had made the flagging war effort in Afghanistan a central part of his foreign policy critique: instead of starting a “dumb war” by invading Iraq, we should have kept our eyes on the ball and finished the job where the 9/11 terrorist attacks had been conceived. Obama entered office calling for the need to resurge in Afghanistan—for more troops, more civilians, more assistance, more intelligence assets, and more international support.

During the 2008 transition, the outgoing Bush team conceded to those of us coming in that Afghanistan was “not where they wanted it to be,” and had begun their own policy review to take stock of what they would do if they had more time. Perhaps the most revealing—and concerning—thing the Bush team told us was that, a decade after the initial invasion of Afghanistan, the United States did not have a clearly defined
goal for what it was trying to do. You would get a different answer depending on whom you asked—to some, it was about fighting al-Qaeda; to others, we were there to help build a new society. Obama wanted his own assessment, so he ordered a process to be led by Bruce Riedel, a longtime CIA analyst and former Clinton White House official. Riedel's charge was to come up with a set of specific goals and a strategy to achieve them. (Having been on the NSC transition team and taken a position as deputy director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, I was assigned to Riedel's small team to help craft the document.)

For Obama, the most difficult questions were about military force. All of the campaign commentary that he was “antiwar” and therefore ideologically a dove grossly missed the point. He believed the military component was essential, and had pledged to do more. The challenge, however, was how much force to add and for what purpose. In Afghanistan, as elsewhere during his time in office, Obama was determined not to overextend the United States on projects it couldn't deliver on and, he believed, would only bleed the country further after it had bled for over a decade.

This is why Obama approached the question of how to resurge in Afghanistan so carefully. As a result of the “Riedel review,” the administration settled on a clearly defined goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and prevent their return to either country. This was reinforced by another strategic review the president initiated in the fall of 2009. Taking several months, this latter review—which was started after the military had asked for additional troops—was a far more systematic process in which the president was more directly involved (he had been distant from the Riedel-led review, focusing instead on the urgent priority of saving the US economy).

T
HE STRATEGY
'
S PREMISE
was straightforward: instability in Afghanistan contributed to terrorism and insurgency in Pakistan, and safe havens in Pakistan were driving the insurgency in Afghanistan.
Therefore, both issues needed to be addressed together. The innovation was to frame this as one interlinked challenge, and as one theater of operations—“Af-Pak.”

Militarily, this called for an initial surge of 20,000 troops into Afghanistan to add to the more than 30,000 already there, and replacing the American commander on the ground with a leader more focused on counter-insurgency, General Stanley McChrystal. Later in 2009, in response to McChrystal's request for more forces, Obama ordered more troops into combat. As of February 2010, just a little over one year after he took office, around 77,000 American troops were at war in Afghanistan, along with approximately 39,000 forces from forty other countries (while Americans were the bulk of the fighting force, Afghanistan was technically a NATO-led mission). By August 2010, the number of US troops in Afghanistan reached nearly 100,000.

Alongside these military deployments was a civilian surge. The administration sent hundreds of civilian experts to Afghanistan to administer rule of law, good governance, and agriculture programs, more than tripling the American government's civilian presence there.

The administration also restructured US civilian assistance to Afghanistan to reward good performance and ensure careful oversight and transparency (coming into office it found that too much of American aid was unaccounted for, and only 10 percent of US assistance flowed through the Afghan government—meaning our aid was actually undermining the government we were trying to build). In Pakistan, the administration initiated a massive influx of financial and development assistance to strengthen Pakistan's ability to partner with the United States and reassure them that we would be there for them for the long haul (in order to reduce their incentives to cut deals with extremist groups).

O
BAMA
'
S
A
F
-P
AK STRATEGY
followed several essential elements of the Long Game. It tried to achieve
balance
between the military,
political, and economic components of the strategy—although the question of troop numbers took the most time and got the most attention, everyone agreed that the political and economic aspects of the strategy were more important for long-term success. It also sought to balance the approach itself—it was not simply an Afghanistan problem, but one of “Af-Pak.”

Most broadly, Obama sought to design a policy aimed toward narrower goals, properly weighted relative to America's other global interests. The additional troops, civilians, and resources were never designed to be permanent—the idea was to escalate in order to exit, enabling and empowering the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistan to take control over time. No one ever believed that this approach would lead to perfection, but the administration sought to achieve an end state that, as we said at the time, was “good enough.”

What this meant—and I believe what in hindsight the strategy achieved—is a decimated al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and an Afghan government and security apparatus that is more capable of standing on its own (although that is relative—the Afghan government does remain weak and vulnerable). To be sure, Afghanistan in 2016 still faces endemic political turmoil and significant security challenges—and will require outside military support for some time, as Obama is prepared to do by leaving a small enduring presence of troops there beyond 2016.

The strategy was also
precise,
most importantly in military terms. The “disrupt, dismantle, defeat” formulation as the aim for military power was focused specifically on al-Qaeda and its affiliates, and denying the Taliban the ability to overthrow the Afghan government. This narrowed the goal militarily, but also left open the prospect of a diplomatic negotiation with the Taliban, which the administration would quietly pursue later. By emphasizing the core goal against al-Qaeda, such precision allowed us to assess progress better and hold
ourselves accountable (something that Obama was very focused on), and to prevent this from morphing into a massive, military-led nation-building effort like Iraq. The problem, however, was that the rhetoric of Obama's strategy sometimes veered beyond this more modest goal, embracing the logic of counter-insurgency (which at that time was the prevailing fad in the military) but without the kinds of resources necessary to achieve such ambition.

Finally, Obama's choices were driven by his assessment of what was
sustainable.
Throughout his deliberations Obama remained focused on the costs of the strategy, especially as his top priority overall was to deal with the financial disaster at home. This would be expensive—estimates were the US would spend $30 billion on Afghanistan in 2009 alone. One of the key lessons Obama had taken from the over $1 trillion war in Iraq was how it had helped drive the US economy off a cliff, and he did not want his strategy in Afghanistan to do the same. Beyond costs, he was determined not to allow the war in Afghanistan to consume US policy for another decade.

T
HIS LED TO
the most contested part of Obama's Afghan strategy in 2009—the announcement of a timeline to start withdrawing American troops in less than two years and to transition responsibility to the Afghan government. Announcing such a timeline divided his advisors: Hillary Clinton recalled the timeline was “starker” than she wanted and “there was benefit playing our cards closer to our chests.”
¹²
Unsurprisingly, some critics were harsher, asserting that this undermined the perception of US resolve, signaling to our friends that they couldn't count on us and to our enemies that they could wait us out.

The escalate-to-exit approach did make the strategy more difficult to communicate (I was in Brussels to brief NATO allies with Richard Holbrooke the day after the strategy was announced, and we labored to help them understand how these seemingly contradictory tasks would
work). Obama understood these criticisms, yet believed that such clarity was needed to sustain public support for the mission. As he said in one meeting, “The American people need to know that the war is ending.” Importantly, his secretary of defense agreed. “After eight years of war in Afghanistan,” Robert Gates reflected, “Congress, the American people, and the troops could not abide by the idea of a conflict there stretching into the indefinite future.” What after 9/11 had been a war of necessity to root out terrorists—the conflict Obama had believed was the one America needed to fight—had become, in Gates' words, “an albatross around the nation's neck, just as the war in Iraq had.”
¹³