Strategy

Will Afghanistan Be Obama's Iraq?

Potential for a “quagmire without exit.”

Bob Shrum is confident in Barack Obama's abilities to achieve a "Rooseveltian transformation in domestic policy" but he's less sure how the President-elect is going to handle his other crisis—Afghanistan. "Afghanistan has the potential to become what Iraq was for so long for Bush—a quagmire without exit," Shrum writes in The Week. It's the intimidating geography, the warlords and the poppy plants that will keep this war from being easily turned around. So what's the answer? Soft power, Shrum says. "This means economic reconstruction, jobs, schools, credible regional government and more culturally sensitive uses of armed force." Moreover, the key may lie in Obama's ability to settle on modest goals for Afghanistan. "A pragmatic President may be forced to conclude that we can’t remake Afghanistan in our own image—that it’s time to negotiate a 'very limited' deal that advances our security while freeing us from a rocky quagmire half a world away.”