As you know, President Obama has not yet made a decision on whether to increase the number of troops in Afghanistan and there are any number of reports in the media about his decision-making process. The White House is signaling that President Obama is nearing his decision on Afghan war strategy:
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Tuesday that a planned meeting on Friday with the Joint Chiefs of Staff will be among the last events in the decision-making process. Gibbs said Obama then will take some time to evaluate the recommendations and decide what is best for the United States as well as for Afghanistan, Pakistan and that region of the world. […] Gibbs said the president will announce his decision in the coming weeks.
In previous posts I used this space to highlight recommendations by scholars and experts who study this issue. One of the key variables that Obama and his national security team are considering is the depth of public support for the war and the question of whether the U.S. public would support a long-term engagement. The consensus seems to be that the public would not support a long-term commitment to Afghanistan. I was reminded recently that the U.S. is not a stranger to long-term military commitments. Having fought WWII in Europe and Asia the U.S. still retains a large number of forces there, and as this AP report notes, the status of those forces often has profound implications for the domestic politics of host countries:
Japan cannot sign off on a planned reorganization of U.S. troops in the country before President Barack Obama visits Tokyo next month, its foreign minister said on Thursday, after the U.S. defense secretary bluntly called for the deal to be implemented. Friction over the military realignment deal could be the first big test for ties between the United States and Japan’s new Democratic Party-led government, which has pledged to steer a diplomatic course less dependent on its closest security ally. […] The daily Yomiuri newspaper said U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada on Tuesday that Japan should decide before Obama’s November 12-13 visit to go ahead with a plan to move a U.S. Marine air base to a less crowded part of Japan’s southern Okinawa island.
From this, I would draw two conclusions. First, If the status of U.S. forces in Japan is a hot-button issue for Japanese domestic politics I can’t help but note that sixty-four years after WWII it’s not at all an issue in U.S. domestic politics. No commitment phobia there. And second, perhaps if Japan no longer wants U.S. forces there we can move all our troops from that country to Afghanistan. I don’t really think that would happen, but we could do that…if we wanted to.
