Breaking News: The US-UK Divide on Afghanistan

Enduring America, 8 December: It may well be that the Obama Administration has a strategy for “engagement” in Afghanistan, not just with the increasingly precarious central Government, but with opposition groups who are usually clustered under the umbrella term “Taliban”. If it doesn’t, however, I suspect that — as the Pakistan spillover from the Afghan conflict overtakes it in crisis intensity — America’s allies are going to agitate for a political alternative to more troops and more mercenaries.

On the eve of Barack Obama's inauguration, Afghanistan is shaping up as an immediate crisis for Anglo-American relations. Since we wrote those lines, there's been a steady spin out of Washington that the US is not happy with British hesitancy over a military "surge". Now comes the indication, which we predicted, that US forces will take over zones previously overseen by Britain troops:

THE United States is building a command structure in Kandahar that will
sideline the British general who takes command of southern Afghanistan in
May.

Brigadier-General John Nicholson, a senior American officer who previously
served in Afghanistan with the 10th Mountain Division, has already arrived
in Kandahar to oversee the Afghan surge.

Although technically he will be subordinate to the British general who
takes command in May, he will in reality have control of all US troops, UK
defence sources said last week.

The news accompanies a public-relations surge by US officials, setting out that up to 30,000 more American soldiers will be needed in Afghanistan in 2009.

The hitch is that the British military and most British politicians are uncertain --- rightly, I believe --- that the US surge will work. Instead, they are focusing on the political difficulties not only in central Afghanistan but even in Kabul: how will an American show of force win over local villages and lead to a stable central government?

I fear President Obama once again has boxed himself in: for all the talk that his Administration will be looking for "soft power" approaches to deal with crises, he has let his military pull him into a commitment that will undercut that strategy.