In its continuing search for an alternative to General Stanley
McChrystal's comprehensive counterinsurgency approach to the war in
Afghanistan, and with President Obama having eliminated the minimalist
counterterrorism plan of Vice President Joe Biden, the White House has
lately been floating a split-the-difference trial balloon: "McChrystal
Lite" or, to give the veep his due, "McChrystal for the cities, Biden
for the countryside."

Last week the New York Times was allowed a sneak-peak of what this
half-pregnant approach might look like. It reported that White House
advisers are aiming to defend "about 10 top population centers." A
number of press accounts indicate that the number of additional troops
would be capped at around 20,000--half the 40,000 recommended by
McChrystal--no more than four brigade-sized units and the needed
support. The Times also indicated that McChrystal had briefed the
White House on how he would employ any reinforcements: "The first two
additional brigades would be sent to the south, including one to
Kandahar, while a third would be sent to eastern Afghanistan and a
fourth would be used flexibly across the nation."

To the Washington punditocracy, half a loaf sounds about right; even
if they don't think it's the right strategy, they think it's what
Obama will do as a matter of domestic politics. But does it make any
military sense?

A troop ceiling of 20,000 reinforcements would present McChrystal with
painful choices. To begin with, it would sacrifice urgency, taking
longer to achieve any decisive effects--and McChrystal's assessment
concluded in August that the coming year was critical. The president's
middle-way approach would also force McChrystal to revisit the balance
between committing U.S. troops to combat and to training Afghan Army
and other security forces; and he might have to reconsider the trade-
offs between formal school-house training, embedded training teams,
and unit-to-unit partnerships, the approach that proved to be most
effective in Iraq. But even if he were to maximize the combat punch of
half a surge, he would face challenges in deploying the new forces.
Consider these possible courses of action:

McChrystal's planned deployment of additional forces as described in
the Times represents a sensible effort on the part of the general to
prioritize the most violently contested areas of the country and
address them as effectively as possible. Nevertheless, the "two south,
one east, one in reserve" disposition would force McChrystal to accept
a great deal of risk by spreading the force thin and failing to
achieve adequate counterinsurgent-to-population ratios, as a recent
study by Frederick and Kimberly Kagan, based on their many trips to
the region, makes plain (see www.aei.org/article/101059).

Let's begin with the "two south" slice of this plan. Southern
Afghanistan remains the heartland of the insurgency, and it is widely
understood that Kandahar City and the surrounding districts of
Kandahar Province are the Taliban's center of gravity. The Kagans
calculate the U.S., Canadian, and Afghan troops alreadydeployed around
the city to be a force of 4,800, which is responsible for maintaining
security among a population of 1,015,000. The counterinsurgent-to-
population ratio, then, is one to more than 200, or less than a
quarter what counterinsurgency doctrine dictates. Unlike Iraqis,
Afghans--including the Taliban--traditionally prefer to avoid fighting
in their cities. Even so, security in the city is essential, and at
the moment only Afghan National Security Forces conduct patrols there,
making the ratio inside the city even less favorable. Even if both of
the brigades McChrystal intends to send to the south were deployed to
the Kandahar City area, they would not improve the counterinsurgent-to-
population ratio there enough to have a decisive impact. The Kagans'
detailed study estimates that it would take roughly four and a half
brigades to reach the desired ratio. It's also worth noting that the
Canadians will be withdrawing their forces by mid-2011; if the area is
not secure by then, their departure will create a larger gap.

Placing both of the new brigades destined for the south in Kandahar,
moreover, would shortchange Helmand Province, nextdoor, where the
Marines, British, and Danes have made substantial progress in recent
months. Military operations there are complicated by the fact that
Helmand is the center of the poppy production that feeds the opium
industry which helps to finance the Taliban and corrupt the Afghan
government. By putting one brigade in Helmand and one in Kandahar,
McChrystal could likely consolidate and expand gains in Helmand, where
the current troop-to-population ratio in the contested river valley is
a reasonable 1:83 (though even with an additional brigade it would
fall short of the 1:50 ideal). This would also have the benefit of
consolidating the political partnership with Great Britain and
Denmark--the two NATO allies most committed to staying the course in
Afghanistan. Conversely, it would further shortchange Kandahar, which
is a greater strategic priority.

The third brigade-sized unit, meanwhile, would be deployed among the
volatile eastern provinces of Paktia, Paktika, and Khost--better known
as Greater Paktia--where the combined strength of U.S. and Afghan
forces is 8,200 and the force ratio is 1:79. The region is critical in
many ways. The western parts sit astride the key Kabul-to-Kandahar
highway, and the bowl-like area around Khost is just across the border
from North Waziristan, the sanctuary of the Haqqani network, a Taliban-
affiliated militia that operates in Afghanistan. The additional
brigade in this region would make a big difference, not only
consolidating recent gains but no doubt improving prospects for
counterterrorism strikes against the Haqqanis, the younger of whom,
Sirajuddin, is both a charismatic leader and highly radicalized.

The mission of the "reserve" brigade is less clear, although it is
true that forces in Afghanistan have been stretched so thin that
senior commanders have essentially been without a significant tactical
or operational reserve with which to shape or react to events. But a
reserve brigade is one thing in the context of a "Full McChrystal"
surge of eight brigades and quite another in the context of a half-
surge. First of all, under McChrystal Lite, chances are it wouldn't be
in reserve for long. It would be far more likely to be committed, or
tied down, as the result of having to react to an insufficient level
of force across the theater; that is to say, it would more likely be
used to prevent failure than to reinforce success. And there would
likely be a temptation to parcel it out piecemeal around the country,
lessening its impact and making it harder to support and sustain.

But this sequence of deployments--the one leaked to the Times--is
surely a derivation from the sequence planned for the full complement
of forces that McChrystal requested. Once he faces the reality of a
cap on the troops available, McChrystal may rearrange the deck chairs.
In particular, he may decide to mass all of the forthcoming brigades
in the area that's most strategically vital and presents the greatest
security challenge: Kandahar. Then there will be questions as to how
best to balance the forces within the province between those focused
on securing Kandahar City and those disrupting rural insurgent
sanctuaries and lines of communication in the surrounding province.

But there's a very strong argument for a Kandahar-centric surge. Not
only is Kandahar the Taliban's strategic center of gravity, but the
key area of operations--those parts of the province that are
contested--is the largest and most populous "battle space" in southern
Afghanistan. Beyond the city-focused forces described above, there are
now about 7,200 U.S. and Afghan forces deployed in the province. Three
additional brigades in the Kandahar City area would very nearly
provide the number of troops necessary to conduct a proper
counterinsurgency mission; another brigade elsewhere in the northern
portion of the province would help provide those focused on the city
with increased room to breathe and strategic space in which to
operate.

The downside of this approach, of course, is its opportunity costs:
Decisive action in Kandahar precludes decisive action elsewhere.
Helmand and the volatile provinces in the east would be left to fend
for themselves until the operations in Kandahar were complete. There
would likely be few demonstrable regional synergies in the short term,
either--the Kandahar "ink spot" would not be linked to any other save
that created by the new rurally focused brigade in Kandahar, which
could presumably provide support to the population center of Tarin
Kowt, north of Kandahar in Oruzgan province. But since the Dutch
battalion in Oruzgan is scheduled to leave next year, larger or longer-
term local success would be uncertain. Nevertheless, an all-in
approach to Kandahar would have good prospects for achieving at least
a localized example--and arguably the most decisive example--of
sustainable security.

This would be, to force an Iraq analogy, akin to having succeeded only
in Anbar in 2007, without the follow-on successes in the Baghdad belt,
in the capital, in Basra, and in chasing al Qaeda and the insurgents
northward. So even if an incomplete surge could chalk up some
successes, other risks would continue to rise. Violence has long been
festering in northern Afghanistan, with the Taliban resurgent there
and election tensions accelerating the trend; Kunduz and Mazar-e-
sharif are on the White House "Top 10" list of cities to be secured,
but it's hard to see how, with a semi-surge, anything more could be
done there. Likewise, in the west, Herat is critical but has been all
but neglected heretofore.

Officers in Afghanistan ruefully observe that you can't have an ink-
spot strategy without enough ink. A half-surge would increase the
amount of ink, but Afghanistan is a large and dry piece of paper;
McChrystal Lite would make it hard to connect the dots. It would also
be hard to synchronize the effort with the nascent counterinsurgency
campaign in Pakistan. It's good news that the Pakistani Army is
pushing into South Waziristan, but unless there is pressure across the
border in Khost and greater Paktia, the likelihood of Pakistan
advancing against the Haqqanis is negligible.

The biggest problem, though, is that a half-surge cannot produce a
meaningful result in a timely manner; we should remember that the
McChrystal plan proceeds from his assessment that the next year--
several months of which have already been lost--is critical to
regaining the initiative from the Taliban.

Time matters not only in Afghanistan, but also in Pakistan and, most
of all, in Washington and across America where, absent some sign that
the war can be won, political and public support is increasingly
shaky. If McChrystal Lite is problematic from a battlefield
perspective, it's worse from a strategic and political standpoint.

A clever commander like McChrystal and the capable troops he leads
will no doubt figure out how to make the most of what they've got. But
a half-surge would seem to cut their prospects of winning by more than
half.

Tom Donnelly is the director of the American Enterprise Institute's
Center for Defense Studies. Tim Sullivan is the Center's program
manager and a research fellow at AEI.

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