1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036
-
-
Email Event
-
-
On December 1, President Barack Obama announced his administration's plan for the way forward in Afghanistan. The president called for an increase of 30,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan and provided the contours of a plan for withdrawal and handover of primary responsibility to Afghan security forces beginning in June 2011.
Listen to Audio
play
pause
Download Audio as MP3
The challenges that the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies will face in implementing the strategy are significant. The implications of a potential failure to achieve success in the Afghan mission—from regional destabilization to a pre-9/11 sanctuary for militant Islamists—are serious threats to America's security and global interests. Please join us for a discussion on the administration's vision for Afghanistan, the pivotal year ahead, and the myriad interests at stake for the American people and our allies.
U.S. under secretary of defense for policy Michèle Flournoy will deliver an address. Paul Jones, deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Brigadier General John Nicholson, the Joint Staff's director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell, will offer commentary. AEI's Frederick W. Kagan will moderate.
| 7:45 a.m. | Registration | |
| 8:00 | Introduction: | Danielle Pletka, AEI |
| Address: | Michèle Flournoy, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy | |
| Remarks: | Paul Jones, Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan | |
| Brigadier General John Nicholson, Joint Staff’s Director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell | ||
| Moderator: | Frederick W. Kagan, AEI | |
| 9:00 | Adjournment | |
1150 Seventeenth St., NW
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-5929
E-mail: maseh.zarif@aei.org
American Enterprise Institute
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 202-862-4871
E-mail: VRodman@aei.org
WASHINGTON, DECEMBER 7—A week after President Barack Obama's speech at West Point about Afghanistan, several Obama administration officials gathered at AEI to discuss the new strategy in greater detail and lay out the immediate and long-term vision for America's engagement in the region.
Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy delivered an address highlighting key elements of the Afghanistan strategy, including the decision making process, core objectives, and the resourcing plan. Flournoy said the final decision resulted from nearly a dozen full National Security Council meetings with input from General Stanley McChrystal and relevant officials over the past few months.
Flournoy reiterated that the core goal of the strategy--to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and prevent its return to Afghanistan and Pakistan--remains unchanged. One of the key elements of the strategy is the president's order for 30,000 additional American forces and a North Atlantic Treaty Organization contribution of 7,000 troops. These forces, Flournoy explained, would be rapidly deployed over the next nine months.
These 37,000 new troops, combined with the troops already in place, will focus on diminishing the Taliban's capability and reversing its momentum over the next eighteen months. Flournoy explained that the administration believes this approach, along with bolstering the size and abilities of the Afghan National Security Forces and local security forces, will allow for the beginning of a transfer for primary security responsibility to the Afghans in July 2011 and a gradual withdrawal of American combat forces. Flournoy cautioned that the scope and pace of the withdrawal would be based on the conditions on the ground with district-by-district security assessments. Even then, Flournoy added, "We will not walk away from Afghanistan when the combat mission ends," referring to a commitment to secure a long-term partnership with the Afghans.
Paul Jones, the deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, seconded this goal, adding that "There should be no doubt: the United States will remain politically, diplomatically and economically engaged long after the security situation improves in Afghanistan and our combat forces are able to come home." Jones focused his remarks on the civilian side of the effort, aimed at boosting capacity in diverse areas like agriculture, anti-corruption, and local dispute resolution.
Jones also announced a forthcoming "civilian surge" that would boost expertise on the ground beyond the roughly 1,000 American civilian experts anticipated to be on the ground by 2010. In Pakistan, Jones asserted that in addition to supporting Pakistan in their fight against extremists, the United States is making a long-term commitment to assist Pakistan economically to help the country alleviate resource crises, implement economic reforms, and consolidate efforts to eliminate safe havens within Pakistan's borders.
Brigadier General John Nicholson, the joint staff director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell, focused his remarks on the implementation of the counterinsurgency strategy. Nicholson discussed the steps that need to be taken in order to succeed in the mission; separating ordinary Afghans from the insurgency and then connecting them to their government. Nicholson said it is important to strike the right balance in this second, critical step, in order for Kabul to establish healthy cooperation with the people while at the same time empowering local structures and reviving forms of traditional social governance that have been degraded over three decades of war.
AEI resident scholar Frederick W. Kagan closed by urging that America's policy in Afghanistan "is an issue that should not, need not, and must not be a partisan issue" and that supporting our troops on the ground and having a new strategy that has a reasonable prospect for success should overcome domestic politics.
-
Video, audio, and event materials
Speaker biographies
Michèle Flournoy was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the under secretary of defense for policy on February 9, 2009. She serves as the principal staff assistant and adviser to the secretary of defense and the deputy secretary of defense for all matters on the formulation of national security and defense policy and the integration and oversight of Department of Defense policy and plans to achieve national security objectives. Prior to her confirmation, Ms. Flournoy was appointed president of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) in January 2007. Before cofounding CNAS, she was a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where she worked on a broad range of defense policy and international security issues. Ms. Flournoy previously served as a distinguished research professor at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University (NDU), where she founded and led the university's Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) working group, which was chartered by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop intellectual capital in preparation for the Department of Defense's 2001 QDR. Before joining NDU, Ms. Flournoy was both principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and threat reduction and deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy. In that capacity, she oversaw three policy offices in the office of the secretary of defense: Strategy; Requirements, Plans, and Counterproliferation; and Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasian Affairs. Ms. Flournoy was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service in 1996, the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service in 1998, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Joint Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 2000. She is a former member of the Defense Policy Board and the Defense Science Board Task Force on Transformation.
Paul Jones has served as deputy to the special representative and deputy assistant secretary of state for Afghanistan and Pakistan since February 2009. He is a career member of the State Department's Senior Foreign Service. Mr. Jones has served in a variety of assignments in Asia, Europe, and Latin America. As deputy chief of mission and charge d'affaires in the Philippines, Mr. Jones coordinated thirty U.S. government agencies, implementing counterterrorism, poverty reduction, and business development programs. He led an interagency team to support peace talks with Muslim insurgents and negotiated personally with insurgent leaders in jungle camps. Prior assignments include deputy chief of the U.S. Mission to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and deputy chief of mission in Macedonia during the refugee crisis resulting from the conflict in Kosovo. He has also served in Colombia and Russia. In Washington, D.C., Mr. Jones twice served on the staff of the secretary of state, as director of the secretariat staff and in the twenty-four hour Operations Center. He was also the director of the European Bureau's Balkans office. Mr. Jones's awards include the Presidential Meritorious Service Award, the Robert C. Frasure Memorial Award for building peace, Senior Performance Pay, and Superior Honor Awards. He speaks Spanish and Russian.
Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar and the director of the Critical Threats Project at AEI. He served as an adviser to General Stanley A. McChrystal this summer, and his most recent reports, based on multiple trips to Afghanistan, focus on force requirements and analyses of how various stakeholders in Afghanistan and Pakistan would respond to different U.S. policy scenarios. He is the author of Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq, the first of four reports by the Iraq Planning Group at AEI. His most recent book, Ground Truth: The Future of U.S. Land Power, coauthored with Thomas Donnelly, was released in 2008 by the AEI Press. In 2006, he also published End of the Old Order: Napoleon and Europe, 1801–1805 (De Capo Books) and Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy (Encounter Books). Mr. Kagan was previously an associate professor of military history at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. A contributing editor at The Weekly Standard, he has written numerous articles on defense and foreign policy issues for Foreign Affairs, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and New York Times, among other periodicals.
Brigadier General John Nicholson is the director of the Pakistan/Afghanistan Coordination Cell for the Joint Staff. He has had a long, distinguished career in the U.S. Army, culminating in the rank of brigadier general. Before his current assignment, Mr. Nicholson served as the deputy director for operations at the National Military Command Center and as the deputy commander for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's Regional Command South, International Security Assistance Force Afghanistan. He has received several awards throughout his career, including the bronze star and army commendation medals.
Danielle Pletka served for ten years as a senior professional staff member for the Near East and South Asia on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Since coming to AEI, Ms. Pletka has developed a conference series on rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, directed a project on democracy in the Arab world, and designed a project to track global business in Iran. She recently edited a publication on dissent and reform in the Arab World and coauthored a report on Iranian influence in the Levant, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Ms. Pletka comments frequently on foreign and defense policy issues on television and in major American newspapers.
