Admirably, the paper starts with basic principles — it’s even titled “Tell Me Why We’re There?” — and seeks to provide a ” clear articulation of U.S. interests in Afghanistan, a concise definition of what the coalition seeks to achieve there, and a detailed strategy to guide the effort.” It defines the worthy goals of policy negatively: “The Two No’s” — shades of CNAS’s “Three No’s” for Iraq in 2007, there — are “no sanctuary for terrorists with global reach in Afghanistan,” and “no broader regional meltdown.” If this sounds like a diminished expectation for policy, it’s not, really: authors and counterinsurgency luminaries David Kilcullen, John Nagl, Vikram Singh and Nate Fick says the strategy requires:

An internal balance between centralized and traditional power centers—not central government control everywhere—is the key to Afghan stability. Achieving this will require more military forces, but also a much greater commitment to good governance and to providing for the needs of the Afghan people where they live. The coalition will need to use its considerable leverage to counter Afghan government corruption at every level.

Oh, just that, fellas? Corruption in Afghanistan is, from what I saw, pretty endemic; and decentralized governance, from what people told me, was a contributing factor to it — the local leaders demanded kickbacks, and their provincial leaders demanded kickbacks, all the way up to Kabul. I’m not saying I have a better idea, just that CNAS’ proposals may be in greater tension than the paper discusses.

It also endorses integrating policy with Afghanistan and Pakistan’s neighbors, which presumably means the ’stans, Iran and India. Interestingly, the paper doesn’t say anything about the prospect of either negotiating with the insurgency to try and fracture it; or building up Iraq-style tribal militias, two recent proposals. I wonder what’s up with that.

Either way, if you’re about to work in the Pentagon policy directorate, you should probably save yourself time and get Flournoy your notes on the CNAS paper by Monday morning.

Judging from Hodge’s piece, McKiernan sounded many of the same themes he did at the Newseum –

Ultimately this will be a political solution, ultimately people will decide to stop fighting and come together for a better future. So I think the idea of reconciliation — or whatever term we want to use, that’s a very Western term, not an Afghan term — the idea of reconciliation, the idea of fighters putting down their weapons and agreeing to support a legitimate constitution of Afghanistan I think is a very powerful weapon and something that ought to be pursued.

– but he added something else that sounds like a useful concept for disaggregating the Afghan insurgency:

I like to refer to the Taliban as Taliban with a small ‘t’ — those who pick up weapons and fight for the Taliban because they are either unemployed, they are fighting for intra-tribal reasons, they are fighting because their family is intimidated, they are fighting for reasons of power, a variety of reasons — and to the Taliban with a capital ‘t,’ those who perhaps fight for ideological reasons.

Prudently, McKiernan didn’t guarantee that this difference could be exploited, at least judging from Hodge’s reporting. But it does offer, at the least, an intellectual framework for strategizing how to exploit the fissure.

My question is: How? Has the Taliban — any faction since 2004 or so — demonstrated itself to be a good-faith negotiator? If so (and even if not), how do you “methodically apply peaceful inducement” (whatever the hell that means) to convince Taliban members they won’t be thrown into Bagram’s torture cells the moment they stand down?

On the question of the Taliban’s good faith, I can’t speak to motives, and I’m just going off the reporting that I’ve linked to. To be clearer, the reports by Carlotta Gall, David Ignatius and the Voice of America on the Afgh-Pak mini-jirga all say that either a) the Afgh-Pak officials have some reason to think there’s a real shot at this, or b) some former Taliban officials are seeing a basis for an opening. In the final analysis, I guess all I’m saying is that it’s worth testing their seriousness, because a) the alternative is open-ended warfare and b) the potential upshot is tremendous and in our interest. I will admit that this is comes close to substituting hope for a plan. But attempting to negotiate is cost-free.