The Turf War Brewing Inside the White House

In effect, the Jones plan is a partially demilitarized version of the counterinsurgency strategy Petraeus and his planners have envisioned for Afghanistan. U.S. commanders understand that local political and economic development operations are central to an effective counterinsurgency strategy. They also know non-military, civilian-run operations are also the most expensive and difficult to mount and coordinate with military operations in a conventional command-and-control system.

It is increasingly clear that Obama buys into robust political and economic development programs for Afghanistan, using provincial reconstruction teams and a corps of civilian aid workers. It is also clear that the natural lead agency to provide political, economic, and diplomatic expertise for Afghanistan will be Hillary Clinton’s State Department, perhaps with the aid of non-governmental organizations such as the United Nations. Even so, Defense Secretary Gates and Gen. Petraeus are likely to argue with good reason that the military command-and-control system is already in place for a full-blown counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

This has the potential makings of a monumental interagency turf war. How it will play out is uncertain. Gen. Jones' first major test as national security advisor may well be hammering out a budget plan with Gates and Clinton to shift development funds from Defense to State to field non-military government development programs. Simultaneously, the new national security adviser will face the daunting task of cobbling together a working command-and-control system that Gates, Clinton, and Obama can live with to coordinate the complicated moving parts of an effective Afghan policy.

“The war in Afghanistan will be won or lost in the next fighting season, i.e., by the time of the September [Afghan] elections,” recently warned David Kilcullen, a top Washington counterinsurgency strategist and military adviser. Jones will have to play hardball with the generals as well as the diplomats and soft-power advocates. Worse, he will have to carry it out at warp speed. That is a tall order.

Russ Hoyle is the author of Going to War (Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press, 2008), a detailed account of the18-month run-up to the Iraq war. He is a former senior editor at the New York Daily News, Time, and The New Republic. Hoyle is at work on a new book about counterinsurgency and the U.S. military.