Photo courtesy of U.S. Air Force

Last Friday, General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. ground commander in Afghanistan, briefed NATO defense ministers on his proposed strategy, apparently successfully. "I have noted broad support from all ministers of this overall counterinsurgency approach," NATO Secretary General Rasmussen said afterwards.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration continues its internal, but extraordinarily public, Afghan strategy debate. While NATO ministers were endorsing McChrystal, Vice President Biden, who opposes his recommendations, took on his predecessor, Dick Cheney. Risking his own oblivion even before his term ends, Biden responded to Cheney's criticism of the President's indecisiveness by asking "Who cares?"

In fact, the U.S. direction in Afghanistan is likely to be Obama's most important national security decision to date. By precipitating the current debate, and through his ongoing display of discomfort with a strategy he personally announced in March, the President has gravely impaired the confidence of many allies and Americans in his overall capacity to make hard national security choices. Either his initial Afghanistan decisions were poorly thought out, or today's irresolution over his hand-picked commander's operational proposals signals indecisiveness and a propensity for second-guessing. Neither explanation is presidential.

Beyond this evidence of Administration disorder and weakness, however, the United States and its NATO partners must agree on our fundamental strategic objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is what Obama should have done before his March announcement, and must in any event get right now. White House efforts to blame corruption in Afghanistan's August 20 presidential elections for rethinking its entire policy are inadequate. The Administration should have understood Afghanistan better, and factored the risk of corruption into its original decision, or should have done more to head it off. Apparently it did neither.

America's real objectives have not changed in the last six months. After 9/11, our principal strategic objective in Afghanistan was overthrowing the repressive Taliban regime, and denying Taliban and al Qaeda a safe haven from which to plot and execute terrorist attacks around the world. That objective was critical in 2001, and it remains critical today. It cannot be achieved by remote control warfare, but only through the systematic destruction of Taliban and al Qaeda leaders and fighters, and often literally in hand-to-hand combat.

But today the West has another critical strategic objective: preventing the government of Pakistan from destabilizing to the point where Taliban or other religious fanatics gain control over Pakistan's nuclear weapons. The danger in Pakistan grew after the overthrow of the Afghan Taliban partly because they and al Qaeda found refuge inside Pakistan, and from which they now threaten both countries. President Bush did not appreciate soon enough or respond effectively to the compound nature of the "AfPak" problem, and, his Administration's decision to push Pakistani President Musharraf from office was clearly a mistake and a contributing factor to Pakistani instability. Nonetheless, it is critical now to concentrate on the even higher nuclear stakes involved in not losing Pakistan to NATO's enemies.

In a curious analytical confluence, some proponents of NATO troop increases, most notably McChrystal, and opponents such as Senator Kerry have argued that extensive Afghan "nation building" is required to ensure Taliban and al Qaeda are eliminate as threats there. Kerry supposedly wants political stability before committing more troops, whereas McChrystal argues for nation building to solidify military gains.

Both sides miss the point, though McChrystal's military reasoning does correctly conclude we need more forces. Unfortunately, his socio-economic theorizing risks the kind of failure that underlies Kerry's argument, thus laying the predicate for future U.S. withdrawal whether Taliban is defeated or not.

Afghan legitimacy, stability and well-being do not affect the basic interests for which we are fighting. Our national security interest in destroying Taliban and al Qaeda exists whether Afghans are doing well or poorly economically or whether Afghan elections become more corrupt or less corrupt. These characteristics relate to military activity, but are neither prerequisites for troop increases nor the inevitable outcome of successful military operations. "Nation building" deserves our endorsement but cannot be the measure of our success, since it rests fundamentally with Afghans, not Americans. We are not in Afghanistan to spruce up its quality of life, but to protect America. Otherwise, we have no point being there.

This the hard truth: neither nation building nor military action guarantees forever against Taliban's return; there is only continuing struggle, which at the moment America and NATO are not winning in either Afghanistan or Pakistan. We need urgently to grind Taliban and al Qaeda between two military millstones: NATO in Afghanistan and stepped-up Pakistani military operations on their side of the border. That requires substantial U.S. (and European) troop increases, and soon. If Afghanistan thereby "nation builds" into a more pleasant country, so much the better, but Afghan wholesomeness is irrelevant to the strategic judgment President Obama is long overdue in making. 

John R. Bolton is a senior fellow at AEI.