PCR Project Co-Director Karin von Hippel on The World Today | ABC Local Radio, Australia

Flikr photo by Todd Huffman used under a Creative Commons license.  Less than two-weeks in office, the Obama administration has made it clear that the war in Afghanistan is the most challenging issue on the U.S. foreign policy agenda.  Beyond appointing Richard Holbrooke special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and committing an additional 30,000 troops, much of the Obama strategy in Afghanistan seems to be in motion.  In a radio interview, PCR Project Co-Director Karin von Hippel commented on the strategic thinking of the Obama administration:

For the last three or four months the US military leaders have been saying the war can't be won by military means alone. Obama has, of course, repeated the same mantra, so. But it isn't clear to me yet how he plans on solving this. There are some people who think they will want to be out of Afghanistan in a significant way by the time of the next election. But in order to do that, they really need to capitalize on the planned surge, the planned military surge and really try to turn things around militarily.

It probably won't be enough, but at least in the interim, if they're deployed to the right places, if they can really make a difference where the fighting is the heaviest, then at least psychologically it could help shift things around.

The problem really is that we still haven't decided - we the United States, Government still haven't decided whether in Afghanistan to build some sort of basic democracy. I wouldn't say we're trying to build Switzerland, but some sort of democracy. Or, if we're really just there to try to fight al Qaeda and make sure that they can't use Afghanistan as a base.

I think that we need to come up with a narrative that our NATO allies, our NATO-plus including Australia and other countries - can agree on. At the moment, it's not clear why many of those countries are in Afghanistan. I think some are there because they're worried about the future of the NATO alliance; others are there because they're trying to get on the good side of the US Government.

And so, there are a number of different reasons where, that, I think we need to shift that narrative so that people really do adhere to the same beliefs, that they're all there for the same reason, trying to build - trying to establish some minimum security in governance.