Trump's secret plan for Afghanistan

Donald Trump looked presidential last night. He gave a serious speech to a national audience on an important topic. Though he looked awkward reading the teleprompters to his left and right, with his faced blocked by a too-high microphone, he avoided ad libs.

While his style was presidential, his substance raised more questions than it answered. He made clear he was not Obama [no artificial deadlines] and not George W. Bush [no nation-building or democratization]. In fact, his Afghanistan policy looks more like the counter-terrorism focus proposed by Vice President Biden in 2009. Other than promising "victory" without explaining how to achieve or measure it, he kept secret just what the administration will do. As Jim Fallows noted:

• He won’t say how many more troops he’s sending. (A stance that, with the kind of checks-and-balances Congress that a democracy depends on, or with a non-chickenhawk public exposed to the consequences of military commitments, he couldn’t get away with.)
• He won’t say what will constitute “victory” or an end point, in what he emphasized was already America’s longest war.
• Except for bromides, he won’t say why this new approach will work, when its predecessors for 16 years have failed. (The main bromide is: “We are not nation building again. We are killing terrorists.” This is an argument against George W. Bush’s ambitious and Wilsonian inaugural speech in 2005. It is more or less in sync with what Obama was doing.)
• He can’t say how the policy he’s proposing matches the staffing and budget he has put together. Tonight Trump said: “Another fundamental pillar of our new [sic] strategy is the integration of all instruments of American power—diplomatic, economic, and military—toward a successful outcome.” Both George W. Bush and Obama expounded exactly the same goal. The difference is that both of them backed it up with staffing plans and budgets. (Barack Obama had the redoubtable Richard Holbrooke as his Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Trump is dismantling the office, and of course most of his embassies and State Department posts stand vacant.)

Trump also hinted that we might attack safe havens in Pakistan and might side with India against its neighbor. Stay tuned.