[Senate Hearing 116-149]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                                                          S. Hrg. 116-149

                 UNITED STATES STRATEGY IN AFGHANISTAN

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                                 HEARING

                                 OF THE

                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                     ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION

                               __________

                           FEBRUARY 11, 2020

                               __________

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                      COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES

                  JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma, Chairman
                   
ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi		JACK REED, Rhode Island
DEB FISCHER, Nebraska			JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire
TOM COTTON, Arkansas			KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York
MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota		RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut
JONI ERNST, Iowa			MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
THOM TILLIS, North Carolina		TIM KAINE, Virginia
DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska			ANGUS S. KING, Jr., Maine
DAVID PERDUE, Georgia			MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota		ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts
MARTHA McSALLY, Arizona			GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
RICK SCOTT, Florida			JOE MANCHIN, West Virginia
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee		TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri                	DOUG JONES, Alabama                                    
                                   
                                     
   		John Bonsell, Staff Director
		Elizabeth L. King, Minority Staff Director

                                  (ii)

                            C O N T E N T S

     _________________________________________________________________

                           February 11, 2020

                                                                   Page

United States Strategy in Afghanistan............................     1

                           Members Statements

Statement of Senator James M. Inhofe.............................     1

Statement of Senator Jack Reed...................................     2

                           Witness Statements

Keane, General John M., USA (Ret.), Chairman, Institute for the       3
  Study of War, Former Vice Chief of Staff, Army.

Jackson, Dr. Colin F., Professor, Strategy and Policy Department,     6
  United States Naval War College, Former Deputy Assistant 
  Secretary of Defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central 
  Asia.

Field, Brigadier General Kimberly C., USA (Ret.), Executive          13
  Director, Albritton Center for Grant Strategy, Bush School of 
  Government and Public Service, Former Senior Advisor to the 
  Commander, Operations Resolute Support.

                                 (iii)

 
                 UNITED STATES STRATEGY IN AFGHANISTAN

                              ----------                              


                       TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2020

                              United States Senate,
                               Committee on Armed Services,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m. in room 
SD-G50, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator James M. Inhofe 
(Chairman) presiding.
    Committee Members present: Senators Inhofe, Wicker, 
Fischer, Rounds, Ernst, Tillis, Sullivan, Perdue, Cramer, 
Blackburn, Hawley, Reed, Shaheen, Gillibrand, Blumenthal, 
Kaine, King, Heinrich, Peters, Manchin, Duckworth, and Jones.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JAMES M. INHOFE

    Chairman Inhofe. Our meeting will come to order.
    We meet today to receive testimonies on the United States 
strategy in Afghanistan.
    We welcome our witnesses, and we know them well: General 
Jack Keane, a four-star general who completed over 37 years of 
public service culminating in the appointment of--as Acting 
Chief of Staff and Vice Chief of the Army; Dr. Colin Jackson, 
who served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, 
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia--he's been everywhere; 
General Kimberly Field, who served as a Senior Advisor to the 
Commander of Operations Resolute Support in 2018 and 2019.
    The United States engaged in Afghanistan following the al 
Qaeda September 11, 2001, attacks on the Homeland, attacks 
planned and executed from a Taliban-controlled and al Qaeda-
occupied safe haven in Afghanistan. Eighteen years later, the 
United States and our partners continue to fight terrorists in 
Afghanistan who aspire to attack the United States and the 
West. The Taliban, though not in control, remain a dangerous 
insurgency supporting terrorists with international ambitions; 
al Qaeda, through weakened and still--though weakens and--but 
still active; and ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] is 
trying to plant roots in Afghanistan. For this reason, many 
Americans, including some of my colleagues, ask, ``Why are we--
the U.S. troops still there?'' I'd like to offer a couple of 
reasons for that:
    First, this hearing comes at an inflection point in our 
Afghanistan strategy. Under President Donald J. Trump, we have 
tried to negotiate with the Taliban to reduce violence. I'm 
confident President Trump will only accept a good deal, one 
that preserves the counterterrorism capability and includes the 
Afghan Government. But, the success of these negotiations 
depends on keeping military pressure on the Taliban. If we 
suddenly drawn down troops in
Afghanistan, it would give the Taliban exactly what they want, 
and it would be free. There would be no deal at all.
    Second, while the U.S. Military posture has been 
drastically reduced in the last 18 years, the goal for our 
military engagement has not, to prevent another 9/11 attack. I 
believe a precipitous withdrawal would give terrorist groups in 
Afghanistan free rein to regroup tired forces, plot against 
American interests, and execute terrorist attacks.
    I hope our witnesses will address the opportunities that we 
can still seize in Afghanistan and the risk that a sudden 
withdrawal might entail. That's what this hearing is all about.
    Senator Reed.

                 STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED

    Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    I would, first, like to take a moment to extend my 
condolences to the United States and Afghan servicemembers 
involved in the attack over the weekend and their families. Our 
thoughts are with you, as well as all those who are currently 
serving in harm's way in the defense of the country.
    Thank you, to our witnesses, for appearing today to discuss 
the United States strategy in Afghanistan. You each bring a 
wealth of experience and unique perspectives on our efforts in 
the region. Collectively, you have been involved at nearly 
every level and every phase of our engagement in Afghanistan, 
from individual deployments to senior-level civilian roles, to 
advising and engaging with leaders at the highest levels of our 
national security apparatus. I hope you will draw on your years 
of experience, as well as your positions as independent 
experts, to share your views on the United States strategy in 
Afghanistan.
    We would appreciate your views on where you believe we're 
currently getting it right and should continue U.S. 
investments, as well as where we may have gone astray and need 
a course correction.
    General Keane, you have been critical of the recent effort 
to sit down with the Taliban and said you are not optimistic 
for a peace settlement between the Taliban and Afghan 
Government. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on what should 
be done differently, given the recognition that this conflict 
will only come to a conclusion, likely, through some type of 
diplomatic settlement.
    Dr. Jackson, in 2017 you described United States efforts in 
Afghanistan as a tragedy and said that United States plans have 
seldom corresponded to problems on the ground. I'm interested 
to hear your assessment of the extent to which we have 
addressed this issue and whether there's more that should be 
done to ensure our strategy is aligned with our efforts on the 
ground.
    General Field, you have the most recent in-theater 
experience. I am interested to hear your views on how the 
military mission in Afghanistan has been adapted to support our 
diplomatic efforts with the Taliban, how we are measuring 
progress in that mission, and whether we are effectively 
balancing interest in reducing troop levels with the desire to 
maintain leverage in negotiations.
    I would also like to hear the panel's views on the 
importance of integrating all the tools of national power in 
Afghanistan. As former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral 
Mike Mullen reinforced this week, this is a moment when more 
investment in diplomacy and development is needed, not less. 
Therefore, I was disappointed to see, as just one example, that 
the administration intends to cut all financial support to the 
American University of
Afghanistan, one of the only independent, coeducational 
universities in Afghanistan. For years, the University has been 
a vital part of developing a next generation of Afghan leaders 
who will be essential to Afghanistan's long-term security and 
stability.
    While this hearing is meant to be mainly prospective, I 
would be remiss if I did not mention the recent publication of 
a series of documents by The Washington Post, including 
interviews with over 400 government officials, looking back 
across the conflict in Afghanistan. The documents and the 
Washington Post stories that accompanied their release argue 
that United States efforts in Afghanistan routinely suffered 
from poor planning, a mismatch between stated strategy and the 
resources allocated, and bureaucratic infighting that 
jeopardized the whole-of-government effort. While some have 
taken issue with the Post's reporting, particularly the 
contention that there was a purposeful attempt spanning 
multiple administrations to deceive Congress and the American 
people, the documents highlight the need to persistently 
debate, study, and question our efforts in Afghanistan. We owe 
our troops and front-line civilians a strategy that is worthy 
of their sacrifice and one that will finally bring a 
sustainable end to this conflict.
    It is in this spirit that the Chairman and I sought to 
resume the past practice of holding an Afghan-specific open 
posture hearing. I've been disappointed that efforts with the 
Department of Defense (DOD) to schedule this hearing have yet 
proven to be successful. I believe it is an important part of 
the full transparency and candor that are due the American 
people.
    With that, let me thank you again, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, Senator Reed.
    We'll do our usual opening statements, and I think it's the 
first time we've ever had a request for an additional 1\1/2\ 
minutes. General Keane, I think that's intriguing.
    [Laughter.]
    Chairman Inhofe. Well, we talked it over, and we voted. It 
was close.
    [Laughter.]
    Chairman Inhofe. But, you get your 1\1/2\ minutes extra 
time.
    Senator Reed. I think you broke the tie.
    [Laughter.]
    Chairman Inhofe. Yes, I was the tiebreaker, you're right. 
We look forward to hearing from you. You are recognized first.

   STATEMENT OF GENERAL JOHN M. KEANE, USA (RET.), CHAIRMAN, 
  INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF WAR, FORMER VICE CHIEF OF STAFF, 
                           U.S. ARMY

    General Keane. Thank you, Chairman Inhofe, Ranking Member 
Reed, and distinguished Members of the Committee, for inviting 
me to testify today. I'm honored to be here with such respected 
and qualified colleagues.
    I want to thank the Committee for your support of the 
defense buildup these last 3 years and your National Defense 
Authorization Acts (NDAAs). I was appointed by this Committee--
specifically, the late Chairman, Senator John McCain--to the 
National Defense Strategy Commission. As you know, as reflected 
in our report, we were alarmed by how much the United States 
military capability had fallen behind in providing an adequate 
deterrent to Russia and China. You have put the United States 
military on a path to a much-needed recovery.
    As a very late addition to this panel, let me apologize for 
not providing a written statement to you in advance. This is a 
first for me in 19\1/2\ years of congressional testimony, and 
it's why I asked for an extra minute and a half.
    What I would like to do briefly this morning is so set the 
strategic framework for Afghanistan and a reasonable path 
forward. I have had discussions, for well over a year now, with 
senior United States and Afghanistan Government officials, to 
include the President of the United States; the President in 
Afghanistan; Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, on more than one 
occasion, our chief negotiator with the Taliban; General Scott 
Miller, our on-scene commander; the Chief of Staff of the 
Pakistani military, General Bajwa; and I have sources that have 
close ties to the Taliban leadership, who are not connected to 
United States or Afghanistan intelligence services.
    Let me state up front that Afghanistan remains today, 
despite 18 years of protracted involvement, despite United 
States policies that directly contributed to the length of this 
involvement, that Afghanistan is a vital national security 
interest; specifically, the security of the Homeland and the 
security of the American people. Central and South Asia remains 
the epicenter of radical Islamic terrorism. Afghanistan, a 
mountainous, landlocked, tribal country, is ideally suited for 
a terrorist safe haven or sanctuary. It is why UBL--Osama bin 
Laden--chose that site, invited by the Haqqani family back in 
the mid-1990s. It is why the al Qaeda leadership remains in 
close proximity today across the border in Pakistan and their 
fighters maintain a modest presence in Afghanistan. They 
welcome the opportunity to return.
    ISIS has a growing presence in Afghanistan, so much so that 
the Taliban recognized that they cannot drive them out. The 
reality is that, for 18-plus years, the United States-NATO 
[North Atlantic Treaty Organization] commitment, along with the 
Afghan National Security Forces, have prevented another 
catastrophic attack on the Homeland or in Europe. It remains 
the essential objective of the mission in Afghanistan. 
Moreover, from covert bases in Afghanistan, we have killed al 
Qaeda leaders in Pakistan, to include Osama bin Laden in 2011, 
and denied them safe havens in Afghanistan due to the presence 
of United States, NATO, and Afghan National Security Forces 
(ANSF).
    What is the path ahead? First of all, United States troop 
presence will likely be reduced in the near term to 8,600, an 
agreement--and also the possibility of an agreement with the 
Taliban, with conditions based on reduction in violence, peace 
negotiations with the Afghan Government, and an open public 
break with the al Qaeda.
    General Scott Miller, one of our very best commanders in
Afghanistan who is due to brief you next month, was working on 
reducing United States troop presence before negotiations began 
with the Taliban. He concluded, after he took command and did 
his assessment, that he had more troops than are required to do 
the mission. In other words, the troop reduction that we will 
undergo to 8,600 is an acceptable risk, in the mind of the 
commander in charge.
    Second, we need to reduce the financial burden on the 
United States. Currently, it's around $45.5 billion, down from 
a high of $110 billion in 2010 during the Afghan surge. Let's 
get it down--it's possible--to only below $30 billion 
initially, and eventually below that. Not just because of the 
troop reductions, but by reductions also in contractors who 
represent a $27 billion cost of the $45 billion. Ashraf Ghani, 
who I've spoken to on more than one occasion, if he forms the 
new government, wants to reduce the United States burden of $5 
billion to the Afghan National Security Forces. He wants to 
provide more funds himself. He thinks he can do that, and he's 
had negotiations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE 
[United Arab Emirates], and a couple of others, to assist in 
the financing.
    Third, after a new Afghan Government is formed, the United 
States should publicly support the constitutional democratic 
order. Recall that 92.8 percent of the people in Afghanistan 
wanted these elections to take place. That is a remarkable 
statement on their behalf, and recall that every single year 
for 18 years, the Afghan people have rejected the Taliban, to 
the tune of 85 percent of that population. They represent the 
most unpopular insurgency in the history of insurgencies since 
we've been tracking them. We need to ask the Afghan leadership 
to lay out a concrete plan for taking full responsibility for 
securing their country and paying for it with less United 
States resources, and ask the new president to come to the 
White House and brief our President on it.
    Lastly, conduct an Afghanistan-Pakistan broader regional 
security pact designed to counter terrorism, bolster the 
region's ability to tackle terrorism without United States 
capabilities over time. The United States can broker this--the 
U.N. [United Nations], or NATO. Commit the parties not to use 
terrorist proxies, not to--to close safe havens, and to respect 
each other's sovereignty. Pakistan must stop the political, 
military, or materiel support to the Taliban conducted on 
Pakistani territory. The reward or payback is a free trade 
agreement and regional trade deals and economic investment with 
Pakistan.
    In conclusion, listen, I share every Member's frustration 
with the length of United States involvement in Afghanistan, 
but it is important to remind ourself that this war with 
radical Islam came to us, and it is, at a minimum, a 
generational war, with no easy or quick solutions. Today, we 
are executing a very different model than what we used to begin 
our involvement in the 9/11 wars. While radical Islam has 
spread and is still thriving in the world, to some 40 
countries, the United States is only actively involved in those 
countries where America's national interest and the security of 
the Homeland are at risk. As such, the model is to assist the 
locals in host country in doing the fighting, with a modest 
amount of troops to support them, and also to provide airpower. 
So, in Syria, less than 1,000 troops supporting 70,000 Syrians 
who are doing the fighting against ISIS. In Iraq, 5,000 troops 
supporting 300,000 Iraqis who are doing the fighting against 
ISIS. In Afghanistan, it'll be 80,000--8,600 supporting 300 
local fighters doing the fighting against ISIS and the Taliban. 
This is a model that is working. Protecting the American people 
from ISIS and al Qaeda, with a modest investment.
    Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you, General Keane.
    Dr. Jackson.

  STATEMENT OF DR. COLIN F. JACKSON, PROFESSOR, STRATEGY AND 
  POLICY DEPARTMENT, UNITED STATES NAVAL WAR COLLEGE, FORMER 
    DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE FOR AFGHANISTAN, 
                   PAKISTAN, AND CENTRAL ASIA

    Dr. Jackson. Chairman Inhofe, Ranking Member Reed, 
distinguished Members of the Committee, thank you again for the 
opportunity to testify today. I look forward to discussing the 
challenges facing us in Afghanistan today.
    My comments are strictly my own, not a reflection of the 
views of the administration, the Department of Defense, the 
Department of the Navy, or the United States Naval War College. 
I hope my testimony will shed some light on the connection 
between the South Asia Strategy, the opportunities, and the 
risks ahead.
    I would echo General Keane's observation that the maturity 
and seriousness of this body--and, I would also say, of the 
House Armed Services Committee--was one of the most refreshing 
aspects of my service in government. This is an incredibly hard 
set of problems, and you have shown the maturity and the focus 
that has made this job that much easier.
    I would ask to have my written testimony entered into the 
record. I'll just make my remarks brief.
    I do think United States leaders today face two seemingly 
antithetical imperatives in Afghanistan. The first is the 
entirely understandable desire to end a nearly-two-decade war. 
The costs of that war, human and financial, have far 
outstripped the expectations of leaders in 2001, and there are 
pressing priorities elsewhere. That said, the imperative of 
protecting the American Homeland from terrorist attack remains 
unchanged.
    We still, unfortunately, face a very real and substantial 
threat of external attack by Salafi and Jihadi movements 
emanating from South and Central Asia. We do not get to decide 
whether we have a substantial threat of terrorism emanating 
from the region. All we have is a decision of how to deal with 
that threat, the threat posed primarily by ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-
K) and al Qaeda. Any responsible policy and strategy on 
Afghanistan must address both imperatives, not one. The salient 
question in 2020 is whether the United States political 
leadership of both parties has the patience and the foresight 
to see this campaign through to a favorable conclusion and 
avoid the temptation of a hasty peace.
    By staying in Afghanistan for this long period of time, we 
have succeeded in preventing additional attacks on the American 
Homeland. But, this effect has not been permanent. The removal 
of focused United States counterterrorism surveillance and 
direct action in Afghanistan, whether part of a deal or not, 
would most likely lead to the rapid expansion of ISIS-K and al 
Qaeda capabilities and the increasing likelihood of attacks 
against United States and allied homelands.
    It is also easy to lose, in the length of this long war, a 
sense of what has changed. As General Keane has observed, we 
are well past the period of nation-building in Afghanistan. 
That has not really been going on since 2014. Certainly, since 
2017, what we are seeing is a focused counterterrorism 
operation directly linked to the negotiations ongoing with the 
Taliban.
    The Afghans have assumed the vast majority of the fighting 
and the dying in Afghanistan. This is, in the main, a story of 
Afghan Security Forces fighting with United States advisors in 
support against the Taliban and ISIS-K. The reason we are 
focused on this today is the interest in the deal that may or 
may not emerge at a bargaining table with the Taliban. I would 
argue that this is not about getting ``a deal,'' it is about 
getting ``a good deal.'' A bad deal is on offer every day.
    Who are the signatories? What are the terms? Is the 
agreement enforceable? These are the three primordial questions 
on any deal.
    What would a good deal constitute? A good deal would 
prevent a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, it would represent 
real power-sharing between the existing Government of 
Afghanistan and elements that have been in contest with it.
    Any lasting political settlement in Afghanistan must 
include the Government of Afghanistan as the senior partner, 
not an absentee, and not an afterthought.
    U.S. access and partnership on counterterrorism must be 
guaranteed, not simply proposed. We need, for the foreseeable 
future, the ability to operate until such a time as locals can 
handle these problems to our satisfaction.
    The United States must remain in some small size to enforce 
any existing or proposed political agreement. There is nothing 
in the recent 40-year history of Afghanistan to suggest that 
peace deals will be self-enforcing.
    The way out of Afghanistan runs through a lasting 
settlement, not a phony peace. If we give in to the temptation 
of a hasty or lopsided or unenforceable settlement, we will be 
exposed and may well be dragged back in, as we were into Iraq 
and Syria.
    How do we get there from here? The key is not to exercise 
or exhibit desperation. Good deals only emerge if we are 
willing to walk away, as the President did in September. We 
must force the Taliban senior leadership to negotiate with the 
sovereign Government of Afghanistan. This is the hard right 
over the easy wrong.
    We must also convince Pakistan that they must close the 
deal, not just open it. They must be willing to restrain the 
Taliban from attempting to take over a future Afghan political 
system. They must accept the emergence of a stable and peaceful 
Afghanistan as the prerequisite for any reconsideration of 
United States-Pakistan relations.
    The beginning of wisdom in negotiations is the willingness 
to walk away. President Trump exercised that in September, and 
I hope that that trend continues.
    A peace that deserts our allies and enables our enemies to 
seize power will raise the risk of terrorist attack. Such an 
outcome would be a bad deal for America. For these reasons, we 
may be better served waging a focused and increasingly 
efficient military campaign until an acceptable deal emerges.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Jackson follows:]

               Prepared Statement by Dr. Colin F. Jackson
    Chairman Inhofe, Ranking Member Reed, distinguished Members of the 
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I look 
forward to discussing the challenges facing us in Afghanistan. My 
comments today are strictly my own and do not reflect the views of the 
Administration, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, 
or the United States Naval War College. I hope my testimony can shed 
some light on the connection between the South Asia Strategy and the 
opportunities risks ahead in Afghanistan and the region and I look 
forward to addressing your questions.
    the south asia strategy, reconciliation, and the prospects for 
                              afghanistan
    United States leaders today face two seemingly antithetical 
imperatives in Afghanistan. The first is the entirely understandable 
desire to bring a nearly two-decade war to an end. The costs of the 
war, human as well as financial, have far outstripped the expectations 
of 2001 and the emergence of great power competition with China and 
Russia suggests that scarce United States resources might be better 
spent on these priorities. At the same time, the imperative of 
protecting the American Homeland from terrorist attack remains 
unchanged. We still face a very real and substantial threat of external 
attack by salafi jihadi groups emanating from South and Central Asia 
and this threat will not go away anytime soon. Although al Qaeda has 
been battered in the years since 2001, it is not dead and its 
leadership remains focused on external attacks on the United States and 
its allies. Al Qaeda's longstanding alliances with local militants 
including the Taliban and the Haqqani network make Afghanistan and 
Pakistan areas of outsized importance. The rise of ISIS-Khorasan in 
eastern Afghanistan and areas of Pakistan poses a distinct threat not 
only to United States and foreign forces but also to the populations of 
the West. Any responsible policy and strategy on Afghanistan must 
address both of these imperatives. This is what has made the resolution 
of the war so challenging and has led three administrations to step 
back from the illusion of simple endgames.
    Complexity is not synonymous with hopelessness. The South Asia 
Strategy of August 2017 offers a framework within which the United 
States can either manage the terrorism problem at acceptable cost or 
bring the war to a reasonable and lasting political settlement 
consistent with U.S. national interests. Real progress has been made in 
reducing the cost of the war and increasing the capability of the 
United States, allied, and Afghan forces engaged there. We are almost a 
decade removed from the surge and its sweeping ambitions to reform 
Afghanistan; what we see on the ground today is a focused, highly 
efficient counterterrorism campaign executed by Afghan security forces 
in conjunction with very small numbers of United States and allied 
advisors and counterterrorism forces. The salient question in 2020 is 
whether the U.S. political leadership of both parties has the patience 
and foresight to see this campaign through to a favorable conclusion 
and avoid the temptation of a hasty, phony peace.
                        the south asia strategy
    On of the greatest contributions of the South Asia Strategy of 
August 2017 was its laudably clear articulation of the ends, ways, and 
means of the campaign in Afghanistan. For the first time the United 
States established a negotiated, settlement inclusive of the Taliban as 
the political objective. Equally important, the strategy explicitly 
rejected the timelines that had undermined the impact of the Obama era 
investments in the surge and transition. Instead, the South Asia 
Strategy argued that the resolution of the war would be conditions 
based--we would wage a focused, military campaign as long as necessary 
to obtain a favorable political settlement from the American point of 
view.
    The new strategy also marked a shift in the ways the U.S. sought to 
defeat terrorist groups and bring the war to a successful conclusion. 
The United States sought to deny the Taliban the ability to seize major 
population centers and to punish them by increasing the offensive 
striking power of the Afghan security forces. By imposing a ``mutually 
hurting stalemate'' on the Taliban, and credibly threatening to 
maintain or increase the pressure indefinitely, the United States 
sought to compel the Taliban to negotiate and rejoin the political 
process. The strategy also placed heavy pressure on Pakistan. If the 
defining feature of the war in Afghanistan has been the physical 
insulation of the Taliban senior leadership inside settled Pakistan, 
then the United States had to press Pakistan to reduce its active and 
passive support to the movement. Only by negating sanctuary and shaking 
the confidence of Taliban leadership could the United States hope to 
translate military effects in Afghanistan into a change in Taliban 
calculus and drive them towards good faith negotiations. Throughout 
this process, United States counterterrorism and intelligence forces 
waged a parallel campaign against transnational terrorist groups 
including al Qaeda and ISIS-K.
    The South Asia Strategy also changed the means applied to the 
problem. The most obvious change was the introduction of roughly 4,000 
additional advisors to increase the offensive striking power of the 
Afghan security forces. Equally important, the United States decided to 
shift critical enablers from other areas of CENTCOM to Afghanistan. 
These included lift assets, ISR platforms, and artillery and aircraft 
to enable Afghan forces to increase the tempo of offensive operations. 
Finally, General Nicholson directed a doubling of the size off the 
Afghan Special Security Forces (ASSF) in recognition that those 
commando, police special units, and high end counterterrorism forces 
were the primary instruments of offensive operations. The expansion in 
ASSF, combined with a tripling of the Afghan Air Force (including UH-
60, A-29, and MD-530 acquisitions), would enable the Afghans to 
increase the scale and tempo of operations against the Taliban.
                   assessing the south asia strategy
    Almost as soon as the strategy was announced, Secretary Mattis 
directed the Department to develop a means of assess its progress. The 
framework we developed broke the assessment into three logical 
elements: inputs, outputs, and outcomes. The external inputs of the 
strategy were mostly complete by the spring of 2018. The dispatch of 
additional advisors under the first Security Force Assistance Brigade 
(SFAB) and provision of critical enablers gave the Afghans the 
wherewithal to shift from ineffective and vulnerable defensive 
positions to focused offensive operations. The expansion of the Afghan 
Special Security Forces and the Afghan Air Force proceeded more slowly 
but were successful and are largely complete. In tandem with these 
efforts inside Afghanistan, the United States suspended security 
assistance to Pakistan and made clear its insistence that Pakistan 
curtail Taliban activity and cooperate in the United States push for a 
political settlement. The appointment of Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad as 
the Special Representative for Afghan Reconciliation (SRAR) signaled 
the seriousness of the United States commitment to that end.
    Predictably, the outputs of the strategy took substantially longer 
to emerge and the results were more mixed. The U.S. push to get the 
ANDSF out of defensive check points and into expanded offensive 
operations ran into organizational and political obstacles. General 
Nicholson and later General Miller labored to replace a raft of 
ineffective Afghan leaders and install younger and more energetic ones 
from the Ministries to the tactical level. The success of the Afghan 
Special Security Forces led to their overuse and deterioration; Afghan 
political and military leaders often sent these units as ``fire 
brigades'' to various threatened areas only to see them pinned down 
indefinitely in static roles. Resolving this problem and putting these 
high end Afghan units into a functioning ``operational readiness 
cycle'' consumed a considerable amount of time and political capital. 
The United States initiative to get Afghan security forces out of 
vulnerable, static check points collided with the political incentives 
of Afghan political leaders to secure various local constituencies. 
While United States leadership persuaded senior Afghan leadership of 
the importance of this shift, the basic tension between the military 
need to increase focused and coherent offensive operations and the 
political demands for population and territorial control set up a tug 
of war that is likely to endure.
    The battle between the Afghan Government and the Taliban was also 
expressed in terms of control of population, territory, and urban 
areas. Under General Nicholson, the campaign was framed in terms of 
expanding the government's control over the population. Under General 
Miller, the focus shifted from the pursuit of population or territorial 
control to a search for leverage in the negotiations with the Taliban. 
As the prospect of political negotiations loomed, the United States and 
the Taliban increased the intensity of their respective offensive 
operations. The result of this contest for has been a very violent, 
battlefield impasse; the Taliban has been largely unable to seize and 
hold major population centers or provincial capitals while the Afghan 
security forces have been unable to displace the Taliban from their 
rural strongholds. While some have characterized this as a 
``stalemate,'' the government unquestionably controls the better half; 
control of the five major cities of Afghanistan brings control over the 
future of Afghanistan. The Taliban remains capable of launching 
terrorist attacks and interrupting movement along major roads; the 
Afghan security forces, with the support of United States and allied 
advisors, can launch offensive operations and achieve tactical 
overmatch in almost every engagement. Paradoxically, the inability of 
either side to win outright on the battlefield, and the mounting costs 
to both sides, provide powerful, first-order incentives for political 
negotiation.
    At the same time that the Afghan security forces and United States 
advisors have focused on maximizing leverage in future political 
negotiations, those same forces have been waging a sustained 
counterterrorism campaign against ISIS-K in several areas of 
Afghanistan. While the United States accepts that the war with the 
Taliban must end in some inclusive political settlement, the United 
States has concluded that ISIS-K, like al Qaeda, has no place in a 
future, Afghan political order. ISIS-K has proven highly resilient, 
absorbing large numbers of casualties in the face of sustained military 
operations by the Afghans and the United States. ISIS-K has attracted 
recruits from both the Taliban and other militant groups; the same 
ideology and tactics demonstrated in Iraq and Syria have allowed ISIS-K 
to capture the mantle of hard-line, salafi jihadi resistance in the 
region. While the Taliban sees ISIS-K as a political and military 
rival, and has fought with the group for territorial control in 
multiple areas, United States and Afghan counterterrorism operations 
are the primary reason ISIS-K has been held in check. The removal of 
that bulwark would expose the Taliban to the full force of a very 
capable and resilient enemy and open the way to external attacks on the 
West.
    The final set of outputs has been pressure on the Taliban 
leadership and its external patrons. While the Taliban leadership 
laments the impact of intensified Afghan and United States offensive 
operations, mounting Taliban casualties have not had a decisive impact 
of the leadership's decision calculus thus far. The senior leadership 
remains physically insulated from U.S. military action and the group 
places heavy emphasis on internal unity and consensus. This means that 
hardliners can veto major changes in Taliban policy and the default of 
the group is to continue the fight rather than risk internal rupture. 
United States efforts to persuade Pakistan to play a constructive role 
have been partially successful. In response to hard pressure and 
persuasion, Pakistan has played an indispensable role in bringing the 
Taliban to the negotiating table and there are encouraging signs that 
Pakistani leadership may be reconsidering the strategic utility of 
proxy militant groups such as the Taliban and LeT. That said, it 
remains unclear whether this Pakistani cooperation reflects a genuine 
commitment to forge a durable and balanced political settlement in 
Afghanistan or whether it simply hopes to lift U.S pressure by taking 
visible first steps in that direction.
    If reconciliation has always been the paramount objective of the 
South Asia Strategy, the military initiatives and political shifts have 
at the very least created promising openings. President Ghani's 
February 2018 offer of negotiations without preconditions, followed by 
the brief Eid ceasefire of August 2018, suggested that a political 
settlement might be within reach. The resumption of direct talks 
between the United States and the Taliban Political Commission in the 
fall of 2018 offered an opportunity to explore the feasibility of 
political settlement.
    Whereas the inputs and outputs have been to varying degrees 
controllable, the outcomes of the strategy have depended to a far 
larger degree on the interaction of independent actors including the 
United States, the Afghan state, the Taliban, and an array of external 
parties. The simplest outcome--the steady state prevention of 
additional terrorist attacks outside the region against United States 
and allied homelands--has been successfully accomplished only by 
maintaining heavy, continuous military and intelligence pressure on 
ISIS-K and al Qaeda. At present this success cannot be considered 
permanent; the removal of United States focused counterterrorism 
surveillance and direct action in Afghanistan would most likely lead to 
the rapid expansion of ISIS-K and al Qaeda capabilities and an 
increasing likelihood of directed or inspired attacks against United 
States and allied homelands.
    While the United States has made substantial progress in its multi-
decade bid to buttress the Afghan state, and the Afghans have assumed 
human costs of fighting the war, the regime cannot expect to defeat the 
Taliban and ISIS-K without substantial United States financial 
assistance and some level of military advisory support. President Ghani 
has been a far more effective and supportive security partner in the 
fight against the Taliban and ISIS-K than his predecessor President 
Karzai. But the Afghan economy remains too small and the Afghan revenue 
system too weak to extract the resources necessary to wage a two-front 
war without substantial external assistance. What has changed 
dramatically is the share of the fighting the Afghans have assumed; the 
campaign in Afghanistan is in the main a story of Afghan security 
forces fighting against the Taliban and ISIS-K with United States and 
allied forces providing only the key enablers, advice and training to 
amplify their offensive power and reach.
   the search for political settlement: good deal, bad deal, no deal
    For the past 18 months, the focus of attention has appropriately 
been on the progress of political reconciliation. It bears restating 
that it is easier to pursue peace than secure it. Ambassador Khalilzad 
has faced the monumental task of brokering a durable peace settlement 
favorable to U.S. interests. He has done so under considerable time 
pressure from various domestic fronts and in the face of rival powers 
eager either to stymie a settlement or impose costs on the U.S. While 
the outcome of the SRAR's initiative remains uncertain, any judgment of 
that outcome must focus on the terms of the settlement and its 
practical enforceability. Any good deal must provide a real rather than 
rhetorical answer to the enduring threat of salafi jihadi terrorism to 
the United States and allied homelands.
    A bad deal with the Taliban has been on offer for years and 
arguably decades and it remains on offer today. From the 1990s to the 
present, the Taliban has offered a modus vivendi that offers rhetorical 
assurances that no threats will emerge from Afghanistan in return for 
non-interference by the West. Under the Taliban regime of the 1990s, 
the leadership offered sanctuary to Islamist militant groups including 
al Qaeda. While the Taliban did not endorse external terrorist 
operations against the West, neither did it demonstrate a willingness 
or ability to restrain let alone punish al Qaeda. This Taliban policy 
failed to prevent the Embassy attacks of 1998, failed to prevent the 
attack on the USS Cole, and failed to prevent the attacks of 9/11. Even 
in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Mullah Omar's regime preferred to lose 
power rather than break with al Qaeda and turn over the perpetrators. 
Careful examination of the Taliban's domestic and foreign policy on 
militancy reveals how little has changed in the ensuing decades. The 
new Taliban, like the old Taliban, prefers to offer domestic sanctuary 
to Islamist militants and rhetorical assurances to the international 
community rather than break its relationships with these militant 
fellow travelers.
    The opening position of the Taliban in the current talks appears 
largely unchanged from this longstanding policy. Based on public 
statements, the Taliban insist on the withdrawal of all foreign forces 
in advance of any political settlement; in return, they offer vague 
assurances to prevent future attacks emanating from Afghanistan. Any 
deal that trades the fact of complete United States troop withdrawal 
for the fiction of Taliban counterterrorism assistance cannot 
reasonably guarantee the security of the American Homeland. In this 
sense, the President's decision in
    September 2019 to walk away from the talks was fundamentally 
correct. Barring a durable and reasonably comprehensive ceasefire, some 
level of enduring United States military and intelligence presence, and 
a reasonable political settlement between the Taliban and the Afghan 
Government in advance of withdrawal, it is hard to see a path that 
leads to the simultaneous accomplishment of the twin goals of ending 
the war and safeguarding the American Homeland.
    Two fundamental threats in any negotiation are desperation and 
wishful thinking. Secretary Mattis repeatedly insisted that success in 
the South Asia Strategy depended on avoiding the appearance of 
desperation. Any opponent that senses his counterparty wants or needs a 
deal more than he does will be inclined to dig in and wait for 
concessions. For an array of reasons, public speculation about U.S. 
timelines and the precedent of United States decisions in Syria have 
reinforced Taliban impressions that time is on their side. This has led 
them to hold fast to their opening positions, reject meaningful 
interaction with the Ghani Government, and cling to longstanding 
alliances with militant groups including al Qaeda. While it is possible 
that the Taliban senior leadership is ready to engage in domestic power 
sharing, to make a genuine break with al Qaeda, and is willing and able 
to address the ISIS-K threat in conjunction with the United States, the 
body of evidence suggests this is highly unlikely.
    If the history of Taliban policy provides the outlines of a bad 
deal, what would constitute a good deal? Any good deal would have to 
address the existing and projected terrorist threats of ISIS-K and al 
Qaeda in more than rhetorical terms. In the short run, this would 
require some level of United States intelligence and military presence 
until such a time that a future Afghan state can demonstrate it can 
prevent such attacks. The scale of that United States presence could 
vary considerably based on the performance of the Afghan security 
forces and the magnitude of the terrorist threat. Such a settlement 
would also require meaningful power sharing between the existing 
government and the Taliban. Any Taliban takeover would most likely end 
in either an unacceptable return to arrangement of the 1990s or a 
renewed civil war along ethnic or political lines, most likely fueled 
by the external support of bordering states including Russia, Iran, and 
Pakistan. Finally, any good deal would require an ability to enforce 
the terms and not simply monitor their progress or unraveling. Given 
the track record of the Taliban, Afghan power brokers, and external 
patrons, enforcement rather than trust must be the rule in the 
aftermath of any political settlement. Some residual U.S. and allied 
military presence might play a useful role in deterring the parties 
from returning to civil war.
    If a good deal would require some mix of Afghan power sharing, 
residual United States counterterrorism presence and access, and hard 
power enforceability, then how might we improve our position in the 
negotiations? The first step would be to convince the Taliban 
leadership that we are willing to wage an intense but efficient 
military campaign as long as necessary to secure an acceptable outcome. 
Unless we can demonstrate a credible commitment to follow through on a 
conditions-based approach, we are unlikely to persuade the Taliban to 
move off their traditional and fundamentally unacceptable policy 
positions on Islamist militancy in Afghanistan. Second, the U.S. may 
need to follow Sun Tzu's formula of ``attacking the enemy's 
coalition.'' If the Taliban refuse to change their positions on a 
general settlement, it may be reasonable to explore ``separate peaces'' 
with Taliban leaders, commanders, and factions.
    Some of the leaders most exposed to the brunt of Afghan and United 
States offensive operations inside Afghanistan may be willing to switch 
allegiances in return for some combination of amnesty and access to 
status and resources inside the existing Afghan political system. One 
major challenge here would be to convince the Afghan Government that 
calculated concessions along these lines are risks worth taking. Any 
splits within the Taliban coalition inside Afghanistan would force the 
Taliban leadership to reconsider their staying power and by extension 
their policy positions at the negotiating table.
    At the same time, it will become increasingly important to explain 
to the Pakistani leadership that the future of the bilateral 
relationship will hinge more on the final outcome in Afghanistan than 
the opening act. If Pakistan plays a positive role in convening talks, 
but the end result is a Taliban takeover or subsequent terror attacks 
in the West, then Pakistan will be held responsible. Both states, for 
different reasons, have a strong interest in forging a durable rather 
than a fictive settlement in Afghanistan. Without a lasting settlement, 
the United States cannot afford to disengage completely; without a 
lasting settlement, Pakistan cannot reasonably ask for renewed American 
assistance on the military, diplomatic, or economic fronts.
    What if we are faced with a choice between a bad deal and no deal? 
What can easily be lost in the larger narrative of the long war is how 
much more efficient in blood and treasure our campaign today is than at 
any other period since 2002; with only 10 percent of the troops we had 
at the peak of the surge, we are, with our Afghan allies, inflicting a 
similar level of damage on the Taliban. We have today a credible 
security partner in President Ghani who is determined to help the U.S. 
wage war on the full range of militant groups in the region. The Afghan 
security forces are capable of denying the Taliban victory on the 
battlefield and protecting the population centers of Afghanistan. If we 
cannot reach a deal that meets our core requirements on 
counterterrorism, we can fall back on a solid foundation of our 
partnership with the Afghan security forces and refocus our efforts on 
reducing the human and financial costs of the battlefield deadlock to a 
minimum. Paradoxically, a credible demonstration of our military 
ability and political willingness to hold the line and inflict high 
levels of damage on the Taliban, ISIS-K, and al Qaeda may be the key to 
forcing a reassessment by the Taliban leadership. Here again the 
President's actions in September 2019 loom large. The beginning of 
wisdom in negotiations is the willingness to walk away. By 
demonstrating that he preferred no deal to a bad deal, he forced the 
Taliban to reconsider its positions and its timeline.
    Is it worth it?
    As General Dunford noted on multiple occasions, insurance is a good 
metaphor for the dilemma we face today in Afghanistan. We do not get to 
decide whether we have a substantial threat of terrorism emanating from 
South and Central Asia; all we have is a decision of how to deal with 
the threat posed by ISIS-K and al Qaeda. We could disengage entirely 
and that would be the equivalent of canceling our terrorism insurance 
policy: we would save the cost of the insurance premium but we would 
take on the totality of the future risk. Alternatively, we could 
continue to try to build the capability of an increasingly competent 
Afghan security force so that they could continue the fight against the 
ISIS-K, al Qaeda, and if need be the Taliban; this is the ``whole 
life'' insurance policy we currently pursue. Still another option would 
be to cut costs by switching to a ``term life'' policy in which we 
focus exclusively on unilateral, U.S. counterterrorism operations and 
stop building the capacity of our local partners.
    Even if insurance is the appropriate analogy, the question of cost 
remains. Are we overpaying to insure against the terrorism risks we 
face? There can be no certain answer to this question; the best we can 
say is that the resilience of al Qaeda and ISIS-K, and their 
undiminished desire to strike at the United States and its allies, mean 
that the threat is likely to be real and substantial for the 
foreseeable future. One temptation might be to switch from our current 
insurer--the United States military and intelligence presence and our 
Afghan security force partners--in favor of an ostensibly lower cost 
insurer in the form of a reconciled Taliban. In theory, a functioning 
counterterrorism agreement with the Taliban might allow us to cut costs 
by removing our own forces and reducing our financial support for the 
Afghan security forces. The poison pill here is counterparty risk. 
Based on their military and political track record, we have few reasons 
to believe that the Taliban are willing or able to contain the risks 
posed by al Qaeda and ISIS-K that will remain in the wake of a 
successful reconciliation. Under these circumstances, switching 
insurance providers might deliver us short-term savings at the cost of 
a medium-term collapse of our solution to the terrorism problem in 
South and Central Asia.
    A more responsible approach to cutting the costs of the insurance 
policy would be to focus on driving the premiums down. Here the recent 
initiatives by General Miller point towards an increasingly affordable, 
steady-state alternative to a premature and problematic deal with the 
Taliban. General Miller has already demonstrated the ability to cut the 
United States troop footprint and the financial cost of the war while 
increasing military pressure on the Taliban. While the room for future 
efficiency gains is finite, the least bad option might be for the 
United States to continue to the insurance premium in Afghanistan to 
the practical minimum and prepare to wage this increasingly small and 
efficient counterterrorism campaign until something breaks our way. We 
should be primed to discuss a deal that meets our minimum requirements 
but willing to hold the line rather than accept a phony peace. A peace 
that deserts our allies and enables our enemies to seize power will 
raise the risks of renewed terrorist attacks on the American Homeland 
by al Qaeda and ISIS-K. Such an outcome might draw us back into future 
military operations in the region on far more disadvantageous terms. 
For these reasons, we may be better served waging a focused and 
increasingly efficient military campaign until an acceptable deal 
emerges. This may be less satisfying than a secret plan to win the war 
but it may be a more realistic and prudent response to the persistence 
of serious terrorist threats in South and Central Asia.

    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you.
    General Field.

 STATEMENT OF BRIGADIER GENERAL KIMBERLY C. FIELD, USA (RET.), 
 EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ALBRITTON CENTER FOR GRANT STRATEGY, BUSH 
SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC SERVICE, FORMER SENIOR ADVISOR 
         TO THE COMMANDER, OPERATIONS RESOLUTE SUPPORT

    Brigadier General Field. Good morning, Chairman Inhofe, 
Ranking Member Reed, and distinguished Members of the 
Committee. I'm very grateful for the opportunity to testify.
    I first served in Afghanistan in early 2002 as the chief 
planner of a Civil Military Operations Task Force, and then 
again in a 2-year stint as the executive officer to the 
operational commander from 2009 to 2011, and then, most 
recently, as Senator Reed mentioned, as the designated red-
teamer, as General Miller put it. I'm currently the executive 
director of the Albritton Center for Grant Strategy at the Bush 
School, and it's from both of those perspectives that I'm 
speaking.
    In my 18 years of observing and participating in this 
conflict, our objective has, in fact, been consistent. We've 
sometimes lost sight of it, but we've always been there to 
protect the Homelands, ours and the NATO member states.
    The ways we have chosen to do that have varied from 
counterterrorism to counterinsurgency, to train-advise-and-
equip-assist, then, now, to a negotiated political settlement 
between the Taliban and the government.
    But, looking forward, we have to ask ourselves two things. 
First, is the original purpose still valid, or have we 
sufficiently reduced the threat to accept more risk? Secondly, 
how does Afghanistan fit in a different strategic context and a 
different conception of our position in the world than that of 
2001?
    With that in mind, I offer three options that I think are 
all, frankly, viable: We could leave now, we could accept an 
indefinite small presence, or we could refine our current 
theory of victory.
    First, we could leave now, knowing that our Homeland will 
be sufficiently safe in the short run. It's a fact that, with 
the recent degradation of ISIS in Nangarhar, as well as al 
Qaeda's disorganization, there is now very little threat to us 
or our allies from Afghanistan. I just think we need to say 
that. But, leaving carries a risk of having to return, at 
significant cost, including the cost that we didn't, or 
couldn't, live up to our promises. To me, that matters, and so, 
this option sounds bad. Not only is ISIS likely to reemerge and 
the Taliban ties to al Qaeda are intercommunal and 
interfamilial, but the option is incongruent with our values. 
We have armed the country to the teeth, making a potential 
civil war a bloodbath. We own part of the blame for the rampant 
corruption from which the people have suffered. Tens of 
thousands of civilians--Afghan civilians--have died. We've made 
promises to women and young people, maybe promises we should 
not have made, but we made them. But, we did try hard. We can 
only do so much, and sunk costs are not necessarily a reason to 
stay.
    A second option is to remain indefinitely--and I think 
you've heard that today--reducing presence and cost as much as 
we can. The NATO mission will likely stay, as long as the U.S. 
there. We continue to plug away on a conditions-based 
withdrawal as part of an intra-Afghan political settlement 
while pressuring key ISIS and Taliban nodes. Further, we have 
typically left behind a mid- to long-term presence in places of 
geostrategic importance to us to guarantee our desired 
outcomes. Is Afghanistan now of geostrategic importance in this 
era of great-power competition? I think we have to ask that.
    What we should not do is continue to fight on and on 
without executable theory of victory. Major General Fox Conner 
said, in World War I, ``Never fight unless you have to, never 
fight alone, and never fight for long,'' and I might add to 
that, ``Never fight someone else's fight.'' We're doing all 
these things, really, and it's bad for our democracy. If we 
believe Afghanistan carries enough import to make these 
tradeoffs, it requires a clear message to the American people: 
where this mission fits in the war on terrorism and/or why 
Afghanistan and the region are important in an era of major-
power competition. It also demands we unmuddle our message to 
the Taliban. We need to say we're not going anywhere until our 
objectives are achieved. That's what it would take for option 
two.
    A third option is to address the shortcomings of our 
current plan to get that political settlement, and, frankly, 
this is the one I favor. Military pressure is necessary for 
Special Representative Khalilzad to bring to the table, but 
it's insufficient. Taliban fighters are, in fact, reeling from 
the precision and lethality of the last year. But, the pool of 
them is seemingly endless. More importantly, tactical pressure 
will work only if the people with whom we are meeting are 
actually able to speak for the Taliban, both the Taliban in 
Afghanistan and the Taliban in Pakistan. Finally, while it is 
true we have a good partner in President Ghani in prosecuting 
the military fight, it is less clear he is willing or able to 
speak for enough of his country in the peace process.
    So, to the military pressure in the current--effort, we 
should add at least three things I can think of:
    First, we have to strengthen the diplomatic effort to 
address Afghanistan in the context of the South Asia Strategy. 
Further, we should broaden our global engagement to specify the 
international community's contribution to the peace dividend, 
and communicate that vision to parties of the conflicts. A 
forceful Taliban takeover results in none of that. The Quetta 
Shura and the Military Commission in Pakistan may not fully 
understand this, but it's time to convey that we have much less 
to lose than any Afghan or Pakistani. The spoiler owns the 
carnage, the poverty, the isolation, not really us.
    Secondly, the Taliban's doing the fighting, living--the 
Talibs doing the fighting live among the Afghan people, 89 
percent of whom support negotiations and 64 percent of whom say 
reconciliation is a possibility. The Afghan Government, with 
our support, should ramp up efforts to encourage Taliban 
fighters to stop using violence. They should not have to 
renounce the Taliban as a political movement. They, too, should 
hear clearly what peace looks like, and the last NDAA gave the 
Command the authority to support such efforts.
    Last, and related to the unity required in our Afghan 
partner, the current level of corruption and fractiousness in 
the Afghan Government is unacceptable. Afghan leaders must 
address it seriously. It's hard, but not impossible, to 
condition our money and our support on progress in 
anticorruption and unity.
    Again, I prefer the third option, for a limited period of 
time and against specific benchmarks. Our military campaign is 
the most precise and effective it has ever been. The use of a 
relatively small amount of resources has been highly strategic, 
and the current commander knows exactly how to align those 
needs with expert ways to achieve our ends.
    Further, we should see any forthcoming first step in a 
peace deal Ambassador Khalilzad can wrangle as better than the 
status quo. That's the first step. There are choices to be made 
after that. But, the burden of creating gains out of 18 years 
of investment cannot fall on these two men alone. If a refined 
plan to get a negotiated settlement does not work, and the 
Taliban may continue to think they can wait us out, we have 
those two sub-par options left.
    In closing, this was another horrific week for at least two 
families of soldiers deployed to Afghanistan. A thinking 
democracy must ask, as you have today--and thank you very 
much--is it worth it? I say only if we are extremely clear 
about the threats and honest about the threats. Our larger 
interests are values, the future role of our country in the 
world, and that we are clear-eyed about our theory of victory. 
We certainly want peace. To me, we have to try our very best to 
get it, but that does not have to mean forever.
    Thank you for hearing me today.
    Chairman Inhofe. Very good, General Field.
    In the beginning of your comments, you talked about how 
promises were made to the women and young people, elaborate a 
little bit on that.
    Brigadier General Field. We've had a partner in the Afghan 
Government----
    Chairman Inhofe. Yes.
    Brigadier General Field.--over the years. As we moved from 
counterterrorism to counterinsurgency in search of enduring 
solutions in Afghanistan because of the connection between the 
Taliban and al Qaeda, you know, we moved to a democratization, 
of sorts, in Afghanistan, and that includes individual rights. 
Women are half of the population. So, we ended up there. We put 
a lot of money into women's programs, and we continue to do 
that. We still have, in fact, an appropriation to train and 
educate women in the security forces. So, we have made a lot of 
promises to the women and to young people in general.
    Chairman Inhofe. Okay. The word I got from that was that we 
haven't really kept our promises there to women and young 
people. I kind of thought we were in pretty good shape on that, 
because it seemed that progress has been made primarily 
through--by women.
    All right----
    Brigadier General Field. Sir, we have kept our promises.
    Chairman Inhofe. Sure. Sure. I appreciate that.
    Dr. Jackson, you and I talked about--kind of bringing up 
the subject that's been--it's been behind us quite a ways, but 
it's my understanding that one of our colleagues is going to 
have a hearing this afternoon on the Afghan Papers. So, I 
thought we might get some comments in there, in the beginning. 
Now, you and I have talked about this in the past. We know that 
we're talking about, primarily, everything that was pre-2016. 
I'd like to have you elaborate a little bit on the Afghanistan 
Papers and the--in that that seems to be coming up for another 
discussion.
    Dr. Jackson. Senator, yes, I would echo your comment. The
Afghanistan Papers does cover, exclusively, a period preceding 
the current administration; that is, sort of, pre-2016. I think 
there are several other elements that distort the picture 
unhelpfully in this rendition. I was reminded of George Wills' 
famous comment, saying--of another subject, he said, 
``presenting the obvious with a sense of original discovery.'' 
That would be my epitaph for the 
Afghanistan Papers Project. Much of what is said in there is 
true. Afghanistan has been a violent place, it has been a place 
we have struggled to understand, it is one that is beset with 
corruption, with drug economy, all of these things. True, true, 
true, and known. To leap from that, however, to arguing that 
there's a plot to deceive the United States people that's been 
prosecuted over three U.S. administrations by every senior 
military, civil servant, and political leader is, I think, 
unfair and deliberately distortionary.
    Chairman Inhofe. Yes.
    Dr. Jackson. I think it's unfortunate that we're sucking 
the oxygen out with articles like this, as distinct from very 
good reporting in the same paper. I'd point to yesterday's 
article on ISIS-K by the Washington Post which was a model of 
good journalism: talking about a current problem, looking at 
what it might be in the future, in terms of ISIS-K's presence 
and threat. I just wish we could spend the mind-share that we 
have available on current and real problems, rather than 
disinterring things that aren't very relevant----
    Chairman Inhofe. Yes.
    Dr. Jackson.--to the current discussion.
    Chairman Inhofe. I agree with that, and that's an excellent 
statement.
    General Keane, did you forget to introduce your friend 
today?
    General Keane. This is Angela McGlowan, who----
    Senator Reed. Turn your mic on, sir.
    General Keane. All right. Angela McGlowan, my wife, who I 
married on December 8 and who ran for congressional office in 
the State of Mississippi a number of years ago, and summarily 
lost, but she did it as a promise to her father. The first job 
she had in Washington, DC, was working for Senator Robert Dole.
    Chairman Inhofe. Oh, my goodness.
    General Keane. She's been working for Rupert Murdoch for 
about 22 to 23 years. So, thank you.
    Chairman Inhofe. Well, great introduction, thank you so 
much.
    General Keane, when you talked about the reduction from 
12,000--probably 12,000-plus--down to 8.6, I think that 
Secretary Mark T. Esper has said that these reductions would 
not necessarily be linked to a deal with Taliban. A lot of 
people were kind of surprised that he said that. What do you--
how do you think----
    General Keane. Well, I think----
    Chairman Inhofe.--that link should go?
    General Keane. Well, first of all, as I said in my opening 
statement, General Miller's been working on the force reduction 
for some time, based on his assessment that he had more forces 
than he needed to meet the mission requirement. I believe that, 
given the fact that negotiations were taking place, the 
administration made a logical decision not to unilaterally 
conduct that reduction, and use that as leverage in the 
negotiations. I think that's where we are. But, if there's not 
a settlement in those negotiations between the United States 
and the Taliban, I do think Secretary Esper is right, then 
we're likely to announce that reduction anyway, because General 
Miller wants to get on with it. He doesn't want anybody to be 
in that country, exposed unnecessarily to a risk, if he doesn't 
need them to accomplish the mission.
    Chairman Inhofe. Yes. Good point.
    Senator Reed.
    Senator Reed. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
    I want to thank the witnesses for excellent testimony, and 
let me ask a question to all of you, and then I've got another 
question.
    But, there seems to be a consensus that the greatest 
strategic threat that faces the United States in Afghanistan is 
the projection of terrorist power into the Homeland. It's 
diminished--going to General Fields--but, it's still there, and 
it could revive itself unless we get it right. That's the 
strategic issue. Then there are other equities, if you will. We 
have created a society in which women are given rights, et 
cetera. That could be endangered by a Taliban takeover.
    But, the question I have is that, implicit in everything 
that you've said is, a continuing presence of U.S. Forces for 
this counterterrorism threat is important. Reading what the 
Taliban have demanded from Khalilzad, et cetera, is the firm 
commitment that we withdraw our forces. How do reconcile that? 
Is it reconcilable? An affiliated issue is, one of the 
presumptions is, they'll tell you, ``You can take your forces 
out, because we'll suppress al Qaeda.'' What capability do they 
have, or inclination?
    So, General Keane, briefly----
    General Keane. Sure.
    Senator Reed.--and then right down the panel.
    General Keane. Thank you. Yes, that's a great question, 
Senator.
    I think what the administration is trying to do and 
reconcile in this issue--I'll be, just, frank with you, I did 
read the initial draft agreement, months ago, before 
negotiations were broken off, and I was quite alarmed by it, 
because, up front, we were making a statement that we--the 
United States is going to withdraw completely from Afghanistan. 
That, in of itself, would undermine the Afghan Government, the 
morale of the Afghan National Security Forces, be a huge 
propaganda victory for the Taliban, and they would sell it as a 
humiliating defeat for the United States. This is principally 
to shore up their own fighters. What's not well understood is 
how fractured the Taliban organization actually is, 
particularly at the tactical warfighting level, and how many of 
them are weary and really want some kind of a settlement and 
stop the fighting. Others continue to fight to the bitter end.
    But, the point is, is that I think the reconciliation is, 
let's establish some conditions to work this through. Those 
are, specifically, reduction in violence. Well, that's a broad 
term, and I think there's argument over that right now, in 
terms of, what does that mean? The Taliban has two problems 
with this. It's why they don't want a cease-fire. One, they 
have people who will violate the cease-fire and continue to 
fight. Two, they will have people that will melt away if the 
cease-fire goes on for an extended period of time, because 
they're weary. So, I think that is an issue.
    The second issue is to make a public break with the al 
Qaeda. I, personally, think that's meaningless, because I think 
they've already demonstrated their allegiance to the al Qaeda. 
They were willing to give up their regime and thousands of 
fighters to protect them, back when George Bush challenged them 
to give the al Qaeda up, and every indication we've had is the 
same.
    The third thing is to begin negotiations with the Afghan 
Government. I can tell you for a fact, based on my sources, 
that the leadership of the Taliban still is very committed to 
two things: one, to get the United States out of Afghanistan; 
and two, to physically, militarily, overthrow the government.
    Senator Reed. Thank you.
    Dr. Jackson, please, and then General Field.
    Dr. Jackson. Yes. To pick up on General Keane's point, I 
couldn't agree more. I think the Taliban, from the body of 
evidence, historical, stretching back into the 1990s, has shown 
no inclination, even under the most severe strain, to break its 
real alliance with al Qaeda. This is the most disturbing aspect 
of the entire story. That is, when faced with a choice between 
the loss of the regime after 9/11 and taking any of a series of 
steps to hand over OBL--Osama bin Laden--that, essentially, 
Mullah Omar chose to lose power rather than break the alliance. 
I am deeply fearful that they will say all the right words and 
that they will very rapidly renege on those words. I don't, 
also, think that they have the capability--anywhere near the 
level of capability that we've built with our Afghan allies in 
the counterterrorism space. So, they cannot handle the residual 
threat, I think, over the near or medium term, and they will 
not break the alliance with al Qaeda.
    Senator Reed. General Field, please.
    Brigadier General Field. Sir, you asked how to reconcile 
those two things. I think it's conditions-based. I know that 
sounds trite at this point. But, the issue really is, how do 
you start, from here? Like--what are we doing--what, exactly, 
are we thinking is the formula that's going to get the Taliban 
in Pakistan--for the most part, the Taliban in Pakistan--the 
Military Commission and the Quetta Shura is really in charge 
here--what is going to make them change their calculation? We 
have to add new injects. It's not just military pressure. That 
is not going to work. I really believe they can fight for a 
very long time. Yes, they're tired, and yes, they're reeling. 
But, what else are we going to do to convince them? They're 
absolutely right that the people want peace, its fighters are 
tired, so that means you have to work inside the country a 
little bit, in my opinion, and we have to have a stronger 
diplomatic effort. We've got to aim--we have got to engage more 
in the region, but more globally, to say, ``This is what peace 
looks like. You own that.'' If--if we don't start moving 
there--this is going to take confidence-building measures. 
We're not doing that. We just keep doubling down on military 
pressure and thinking something's going to change. I don't know 
what that looks like.
    Senator Reed. Thank you.
    I have other questions, but I just--a brief comment, if the 
Chairman, would allow, is that--it was touched upon by, I 
think, everyone's comments, the sustainability of the Afghan 
Government. At present, the Afghan Government funds only 55 
percent of their budget, only 10 percent of their forces. The 
notion that we can draw down forces and money simultaneously 
probably is not realistic, and we have to think, all of us, are 
we going to be investing, long term, maybe indefinitely, 
billions of dollars a year just to keep, sort of, the lid on 
it, if you will? One of the other ironies--in a coalition 
government, that means we're sort of providing resources, 
indirectly at least, to Taliban elements, or at least 
representatives. So, those are questions I--that I wanted to 
get, and I just want to make those points.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you.
    Senator Purdue.
    Senator Purdue. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you, all of you, for your service.
    Secretary Jackson, we've heard the same testimony, we've 
heard the same concerns. It's all--and it's all valid. I agree 
with General Field, we need a multidimensional formula. I 
believe it, personally, having had some experience over there 
during my career, the Pashtun problem is not just an Afghan 
problem or a Pakistan problem. It--you know, and the India/
Pakistan relationship right now has great bearing in 
Afghanistan, I believe. The question I have for you, 
specifically--and I want to do it from a perspective of what 
General Field just mentioned, as broadening this formula, 
because the current one's not working, and, unless we're 
willing to invest billions of dollars indefinitely for a status 
quo until they get on their feet, the question I have is--I 
don't see an ultimate solution as long as the Haqqani family 
down there is different, as long as the people in the 
surrounding countries have the Pashtun problem and no national 
identity, we're going to always have this sort of issue in 
Afghanistan. So, the question is, what does the Pakistan 
relationship with India, right now, that relationship, have to 
do with Afghan peace process? How do we broaden the bigger 
dialogue to include the bigger Pashtun problem to get to a 
long-term, sustainable solution?
    Dr. Jackson. In my second stint in Afghanistan, in 2011, 
the biggest lesson I left with was the sense that we might have 
framed the problem wrong. At the time, we were talking about an 
Af-Pak problem--Afghanistan-Pakistan--and I came out thinking 
that if we considered Afghanistan a secondary theater in the 
competition between India and Pakistan, we would be closer to 
framing it the way the locals do. So, I think Pakistan's 
position on this has always been conditioned by--primarily by 
its competition with India, which is curious to us, but very 
real to them.
    I think it points the direction towards potential--not easy 
potential, but potential--for other ways to attack this. I 
agree with General Field's argument. Let me put it slightly 
differently. It's hard to build a transmission belt between 
battlefield pressure inside Afghanistan and the decision making 
of the people we're trying to influence. That's the real 
problem, and so, the question is, what is that transmission 
belt? One way of getting at that is to get at--and I--the words 
are always going to be fraud sponsors, patrons, providers of 
sanctuary in Pakistan.
    I do think there is potential, for the following reason. 
Pakistan is in a really bad place right now, and they know it. 
We've suspended security assistance, they're in a sort of a 
slow-motion economic crisis. They feel, genuinely, that the 
conventional military balance with India is moving away from 
them, and they're deeply worried. This explains, in many 
reasons, why they were willing to take important first steps to 
help convene the talks with the Taliban. I think the critical 
thing to tell them is, it isn't about the opening, it's about 
the ending, and, you know, if we tell Pakistan that the only 
road back to a normal and balanced relationship with the United 
States is to secure a real settlement involving power-sharing 
inside Afghanistan. It's not about having a piece of paper 
pointing to it and then watching the Taliban take over 
Afghanistan--if that happens, fair or unfair, from Pakistan's 
point of view, they will be blamed, and they should be blamed.
    Senator Purdue. Thank you.
    General Field, the ANSF attrition rate over the last few 
years is really not sustainable, by anybody's measure that I've 
seen, and yet, if we go to the drawdown that we're talking 
about now, what role do the NATO allies--what--how do you see 
that playing out in the short term? What role does NATO play in 
the longer term, in terms of trying to get to some sustainable 
solution, here, that avoids the military outcome that we're 
witnessing every day in Afghanistan today?
    Brigadier General Field. Thank you, sir.
    I think NATO is there as long as we're there. They're there 
because we're there. I'm not sure they feel the same threat to 
their homelands that we espouse. They're----
    Senator Purdue. So, you--I'm sorry, I don't mean--so, if 
you see a significant drawdown like we're making right now, 
does it--what impact does that have on the NATO allies in 
Afghanistan? What sense of responsibility do they have?
    Brigadier General Field. Yes, I think we may see a small, 
commensurate drawdown. They'll skinny down as much as they can, 
too, but I don't think they'll go anywhere. Again, this first 
step--this first stair step--I think we can do it, and I think 
that we probably should, and I don't think we'll risk NATO. 
We'll still have our base in Mazar-eSharif and in the West, 
which we need right now in any kind of support to the 
government and stabilization. It has to be across the country, 
at least in the major urban centers.
    Senator Purdue. I see.
    Brigadier General Field. I think we're okay.
    Senator Purdue. Great. Thank you.
    Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Senator Shaheen.
    Senator Shaheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you all very much for being here.
    Dr. Jackson, I certainly agree with your statement that 
what we need in Afghanistan is not a deal, it's a good deal. In 
my mind, part of that good deal means that women have to have--
continue to have freedom of movement. They continue to need to 
have access to education, to all of the rights that they 
currently have under the new Afghan constitution.
    I guess my question for each of you is, to what extent do 
you see women being involved in the Afghan peace talks, to 
date? Senators Reed and Jones and I were there in April, and we 
met with a group of women leaders who recognize that we need 
peace. They understood that Taliban had to be part of that. 
But, they were very concerned about what was going to happen to 
their rights under any peace negotiation and about the 
commitment of the United States to ensure that women are at the 
negotiating table. So, can I ask each of you to give me your 
insights on what you think is happening there?
    General Keane?
    General Keane. Yes, well, I totally agree with your concern 
here. I do know, from talking to administration officials, that 
going forward with the progress that we've made on women rights 
inside Afghanistan, which have been considerable, that that has 
got to be on the table, particularly when the Taliban is 
conducting negotiations with the Unity Government of 
Afghanistan. They have to be at that table, as well. That is 
the verbal commitment I've heard now. That remains to be seen 
if that is carried out. But, I don't know anybody in this 
administration or in a previous one who doesn't support women 
rights in Afghanistan and the progress we've made. There is no 
deal that we can participate in that would forfeit any part of 
that, in my judgment.
    Senator Shaheen. Dr. Jackson?
    Dr. Jackson. What I would say is, one of the more 
dispiriting aspects of interacting with the current Taliban 
leadership in the talks is how little their ideological 
positions have changed. The policy positions, whether they're 
on withdrawal of U.S. troops or assurances on counterterrorism, 
are almost word-for-word unchanged from the mid-1990s--that is, 
pre-9/11. The same goes for women's rights. The line that they 
provide very frequently is that, ``We will offer rights 
consistent with Islamic law.'' That was the same position they 
took under the Taliban version-1 regime, which was pretty 
hideously repressive.
    I think what's at risk is not simply women's rights in 
Afghanistan, which is one of the towering achievements of our 
time----
    Senator Shaheen. Right.
    Dr. Jackson.--but, really, all of modern Afghanistan. When 
you go to Kabul today, a city of 5 million people--this was 
something that was in ruins, with a population of 500,000 at 
the end of the Taliban period. Young Afghans have voted with 
their feet to come from dirt-poor areas of rural Afghanistan to 
buy into a modern, growing Afghanistan that looks a lot like 
the rest of South Asia. Whether it's women or young people of 
both genders, that's been an accomplishment that's easy to miss 
in the whole cloud of violence and frustration.
    Senator Shaheen. I agree with you.
    General Field, I'm going to ask you to respond a little 
differently to the question. That is, given what Dr. Jackson 
and General Keane have said, doesn't that mean that the on us 
to ensure that any deal with the Taliban includes protecting 
rights of women really falls on the United States and our NATO 
partners who are in Afghanistan? As well as the Afghans, of 
course.
    Brigadier General Field. It does. It does. I think that the 
agreement has to, simply must, include those considerations. 
Now, in execution, I think we have to be realistic. The reason 
I say that is because there's a real divide between urban and 
rural, and yes, there has been an urbanization movement, for 
those----
    Senator Shaheen. Right.
    Brigadier General Field.--those rights. But, in much of the 
rural areas, there's a lot of Taliban ideology sympathizers. 
They don't want to use violence anymore, necessarily, but 
they--and some of them are women--so, I don't think we can 
paint the whole country with the same brush. But, the peace 
agreement certainly has to secure the gains.
    Senator Shaheen. Thank you.
    I'm almost out of time, but I did want to raise one other 
issue, because last week a Federal judge ordered the Trump 
administration to end visa processing delays for hundreds of 
Afghan and Iraqi nationals who have worked for United States 
Forces. I have been very concerned that we have many people who 
are in danger in Afghanistan who have helped us, and yet we're 
not doing enough to ensure that they are protected. So, I 
wonder if anyone on the panel has worked with any of those 
Afghans who are trying to get here, and if you can talk about 
the importance of ensuring that we keep our promises that we 
made to those individuals who helped us.
    I guess, Dr. Jackson, you're nodding, I will ask you to 
respond to that.
    Dr. Jackson. Two observations. One, I think if we look to 
past involvements, one of the greatest stains on American honor 
at the end of the Vietnam War was our inability or 
unwillingness to take care of the people who had worked for us. 
They were the billpayers for our withdrawal in Southeast Asia.
    I think we can do better. I think we can take care of 
people who have exposed themselves to enormous personal and 
familial risk. There's one individual who has worked at the 
ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] headquarters for 
every commander for the last 12 years, Abdullah----
    Brigadier General Field. [Inaudible.]
    Dr. Jackson.--yes--has worked for every one of these 
commanders. To show the kind of risk that he's encountered, he 
was one of the casualties in the attack that almost injured 
General Miller last year. He was severely wounded. He went for 
medical treatment and returned to his job. In that same year, 
quite tragically, his sister was killed in a helicopter 
accident in Afghanistan--again, trying to do the right thing in 
this country. There are so many of these Afghans who have been 
stalwart allies. They deserve everything we can do to take care 
and protect them.
    Senator Shaheen. Thank you all very much.
    Mr. Chairman, I hope that you and Senator Reed and this 
Committee will weigh in with the administration on the 
importance of ensuring that these SIV [Special Immigrant Visa] 
applicants are given their due and we ensure that that process 
moves along.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you.
    Senator Sullivan.
    Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I want to thank the witnesses for their decades of service 
to our country.
    I was home in Alaska this past weekend, and, you know, we 
have a lot of military forces, a lot of veterans. It's a very 
pro-military State. But, in some of the meetings I had, there 
were questions on, ``Hey, how long is this going to take?'' 
General Keane, I'm a big fan of yours. A lot of what you 
testified to could have been a similar testimony, you know, 10 
years ago, in terms of where we are. But, on the other hand, I 
think we need to think through what happens if we're not there.
    What I'd like to ask all of you, first and foremost, is, 
let's assume we don't just drawn down to, you know, 8,600, or 
whatever. Let's assume, in the next year and a half, we leave 
Afghanistan. Militarily, we're gone. Then, a couple of years 
later, we drawn down aid to the government there dramatically. 
Very quickly, but each of you, what happens? What happens? 
We're gone. No military in Afghanistan. What happens to 
security in Afghanistan? What do you think is the risk to the 
Homeland? Following up on Senator Shaheen's question, what do 
you think happens to the rights of women in Afghanistan? What 
happens to the current government?
    I'll just take that from each of you, if you can--I know 
you could probably write a book on that, but I'd like to keep 
it short, because I have a few more questions.
    General Keane. Sure. I'll take a poke at it.
    Well, first of all, that would be a recipe for disaster, in 
my judgment. The Government of Afghanistan would be seriously 
undermined. Civil society----
    Senator Sullivan. Would it collapse?
    General Keane. Eventually, yes. The Afghan Security Forces 
would have huge psychological, morale problems. They would feel 
a sense of betrayal that the United States is literally 
deserting them. I think civil war in Afghanistan would be on 
the horizon, you know, within 6 to 8 months as a result of it, 
and, certainly, ISIS and the al Qaeda will also be the 
beneficiaries of it; not the obvious ones, in terms of the 
Taliban. They will have gotten what they've always tried to 
achieve since they were permitted to reemerge, and that is the 
United States withdrawal, where the United States is 
humiliated, and they can use that as a propaganda weapon to 
solidify the fractured nature of the Taliban fighters, and 
shore them up. It would be, in my judgment, quite catastrophic.
    Senator Sullivan. Threats to the Homeland and the----
    General Keane. Well, the safe havens are there, and ISIS 
would grow, al Qaeda would eventually grow. We'd--we can't--if 
we're out of there, we can't keep our covert bases.
    Senator Sullivan. Okay.
    General Keane. So, we're not going to be able to keep a 
foot on the throat of the al Qaeda leadership that we've been 
doing for 20 years. That's gone. We'd have to find another 
place to do that from, for sure.
    Senator Sullivan. Progress that has been made with regard 
to women and the rights of women?
    General Keane. I think the--the other thing is--look, it--
we're all frustrated by the length of this. I'll tell you what, 
U.S. policy has more to do with why we're there 18 years; and 
most of that's failed U.S. policy, in my judgment. But, to look 
the Afghan people in the face and deal with that kind of 
catastrophic failure, and what that would mean to them after 
their sacrifice side-by-side with us, the casualties that 
they've had on the civilian side and also in their forces 
fighting this. They don't want the Taliban to rule them. As 
we've said, 80 percent of them, plus, reject them offhand 
because they know what this tyranny and barbarism truly is. So, 
yes, I think there's a moral issue there, as well.
    Senator Sullivan. Others? Dr. Jackson? General Field? 
Very----
    Dr. Jackson. Yes, I----
    Senator Sullivan. Very quickly. I'm kind of burning my 
time, but I think it's a very important question. Just to 
expand on what General Keane said. I would like--Senator 
Shaheen talked about--there's a lot of progress that we've made 
for--you know, our security is first and foremost, of course. 
That's why we're there. That's my view. That's what I certainly 
tell my constituents. But, there's progress, other areas. What 
happens? Quickly, the final two----
    Dr. Jackson. Yes.
    Senator Sullivan.--witnesses. What happens? We pull out 
fully, militarily. We're gone, and we start cutting back on 
aid. What happens?
    Dr. Jackson. I----
    Senator Sullivan. Build on what General Keane mentioned, 
don't repeat it.
    Dr. Jackson. I get it.
    I agree with him in his basic estimate. I think you'd see a 
renewed civil war. I think you would see a splintering of the 
Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, particularly if we 
cut off funding. I think you would forfeit all the gains of a 
modern Afghanistan that we've paid for over 20 years. That's a 
huge number, and I think, and importantly, you would see the 
entry of foreign enemies of the United States in a big way. 
Iran would enter in a big way, covertly via militia groups. 
Pakistan would increase its involvement in an attempt to 
influence the political outcome, and Russia would likely become 
involved in a big way.
    Senator Sullivan. General Field?
    Brigadier General Field. Sir, again, this is a slightly 
different take, perhaps. I do think that there would be civil 
war. I think the Tajiks are arming--significantly arming. 
Having said that, I'm not necessarily sure that ISIS would 
thrive in the utter chaos of civil war. It's not typically, 
historically, statistically not true that violent extremists 
organizations thrive in utter chaos. They need some stability, 
some ability to move around. But, I think that the current 
government will collapse to the urban centers. They'll hang on 
a little while. I don't know how long. The warlords are also 
arming and are very armed, and we will lose a lot of the gains 
made for the--in the modern society. With regard to women, we 
have more women educated now than there were all of children 
educated in Afghanistan. That will probably stop in the rural 
areas, and in the urban when it collapses, potentially. But, 
it's not predetermined to me that the Taliban will win.
    Senator Sullivan. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Senator Heinrich.
    Senator Heinrich. In the last few days, I was dismayed to 
hear of the death of Sergeant First Class Antonio Rodriguez, of 
Las Cruces. Sergeant First Class Rodriguez died of injuries 
sustained when an individual in the Afghan National Security 
Force, in an NSF uniform, opened fire on both United States and 
Afghan forces in Nangarhar Province. That incident is still 
under investigation, but Sergeant First Class Rodriguez's death 
brings our continued presence in Afghanistan, the longest 
military operation in our country's history, into pretty sharp 
relief. I hope, as we have this conversation today, that all of 
us, frankly, will keep his family in New Mexico, Texas, and 
North Carolina in our thoughts.
    These sorts of incidents are not new. We are all familiar 
with the extensive reporting in the Washington Post. Building 
an ANSF that can stand and fight the Taliban is--and, frankly, 
other military groups--is still a core pillar of the American 
and coalition strategy. I want to ask, how viable is that 
portion of the strategy? Given 20 years of really halting 
progress within that organization, why and how is that still a 
viable piece of this? If it is a viable piece, what are we 
going to be doing different to ensure that this is a 
sustainable operation?
    Maybe we can start with General Field and go all the way 
across.
    Brigadier General Field. Thank you, sir.
    Progress on the conventional forces, the conventional part 
of the ANDSF [Afghan National Defense and Security Forces], has 
not been great. You're absolutely right. Is it sort of our 
theory of change? Is--does it--must it stay our theory of 
change, we have to have a vibrant security force in order to 
achieve our objectives? Yes, that's probably right. We have 
made progress in certain capabilities. The ASSF [Afghanistan 
Security Forces Fund], the Special Forces----
    Senator Heinrich. Yes.
    Brigadier General Field.--made a lot of progress. We do 
have good leaders at the top of these organizations now. They 
are reliable partners to General Miller. How much of that is 
permeating down through the ranks is the issue. That's the 
problem. Rampant--there's rampant corruption. There's just a 
lack of good leaders. Why can't we change that? I don't know. 
In part--and I could be wrong about this--I think we have asked 
them to fight in a way that isn't necessarily organic to them. 
We have made them reliant on our capabilities, the ones we use, 
not necessarily what they would use. So--but, we can't start 
over. You know? That's the problem. We are where we are. So, 
what do we do? I say we have to devolve more and more authority 
to them to do things their way, and support them, and watch our 
money.
    Dr. Jackson. I would very much echo that. I think the 
larger Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police have 
been a frustration for a number of years. Very large 
organizations that have varied wildly, in terms of efficacy on 
the ground. It's not that they're all broken or they're all 
perfect. It's a very uneven mix, region by region, unit by 
unit. But, the success of the high-end forces in Afghanistan 
should not be forgotten. The Afghan Commandos are terrific. 
Working with our Green Berets in-country, they have been the 
striking force that has beaten back ISIS-K. They are the guys 
who get sent around as fire brigades to various crises across 
the country. The Commandos are terrific, and they're proof that 
if you partner over a very long term with small numbers of U.S. 
Forces, these guys are great. They want to fight, they're 
effective. This is true with----
    Senator Heinrich. That bright spot within the overall----
    Dr. Jackson. Yes.
    Senator Heinrich.--structure, is it sustainable over the--
like----
    Dr. Jackson. Yes.
    Senator Heinrich.--at--it is sustainable and self-
sustaining?
    Dr. Jackson. Yes. So, to answer your narrow question--and I 
think it's a perfect question--is, you know, how would we 
change this? We can't change where we started, but I think a 
smaller Afghan Army, more heavily focused on these special 
capabilities, is probably the right answer in many instances. 
There have been, you know, observations at the command level. 
How do we do the hold mission better and more cheaply, and, on 
the other hand, how do we focus more resources and attention on 
the things that are going well, which is Afghan Special 
Security Forces?
    General Keane. Yes, I would agree with that assessment, 
that the Afghan counterterrorism forces has had significant 
success. A couple of things are driving that: leadership 
selection and development, vetting the people who are in that 
force, very similar to what we do with our forces. So, you have 
a higher quality in that force, to begin with, as a product to 
work with. We've been operating, now, side by side for a number 
of years, where we do our operations together. When they're 
looking at our guys and seeing what they do, they just--it's 
easier to copy exactly what they're doing. It's much better 
than any classroom instruction that you can possibly have. 
We've seen that when we were able to operate with the 
conventional forces and we had some number of U.S. Forces there 
when we were conducting combat operations. The best success we 
had was when we operated together and they could see it. But, 
we're not going back to those numbers of forces. That's a fact.
    Chairman Inhofe. Senator Blackburn.
    Senator Blackburn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you all for being here.
    General Keane, thank you very much for taking the extra 
minute and a half. We appreciate that.
    I want to ask just a couple of questions about great-power 
competition. Fort Campbell is actually primarily in Tennessee, 
and we represent and interact with many of the men and women in 
uniform who are there. We also have the 118th Wing in 
Nashville, the National Guard unit that is a full-time Intel 
unit, and they've very involved with ISR [intelligence, 
surveillance, and reconnaissance] and the drones. There's a 
good bit of conversation around the issue of great-power 
competition and Russia and China and the impact that they are 
seeking to have in the Middle East.
    General Keane, I'll come to you first. I would just like to 
hear a little bit about what you see with Russia and China and 
Afghanistan and where you feel or think or have observed that 
that stands.
    General Keane. Yes, thank you.
    Well, I'm a little partial to Fort Campbell, myself, having 
had multiple assignments there.
    Senator Blackburn. We appreciate that you are, and hope 
that you----
    General Keane. Yes.
    Senator Blackburn.--continue to be.
    General Keane. Yes. Love the place, frankly.
    Yes, big-power competition is something I think the 
National Security Strategy of this administration got right. It 
established a new strategic framework in dealing with the world 
as it really is. It also, in the congressional commission that 
I was on, underscored rather dramatically some of the 
challenges that we're facing with having adequate deterrence 
for China and for Russia, and how we've got to seriously 
accelerate the development of our capabilities, and not just in 
terms of the hardware themselves, but also in terms of new 
organizations and new doctrine to cope with an evolving threat.
    One of the things that may be interesting to you, Senator, 
we disagreed with the National Defense Strategy that was 
espousing that we could accept risk by pivoting out of the 
Middle East to deal with the big-power competition. In our 
judgment, we fundamentally disagreed with that because of the 
evolving nature of the threat in the Middle East. The 
administration, I think, has rightfully changed its policy with 
Iran to contain it and be willing to confront it. It is an 
evolving threat that we need to work against in cooperation 
with our allies. Secondly--and that actually has forced us to 
increase troops to the region as a result of the activities of 
Iran, particularly this last year. As we have noted, the 
radical Islamic terrorist threat is thriving, despite all of 
our efforts with our multinational nations in pushing against 
this. Because it is an ideology, and they're still young people 
who are drawn to it, that want to be a part of it, and so, our 
presence, I think, there, is very important.
    Russia is really about a strategic issue, and that is: 
attempting to replace the United States as the most influential 
country that's outside the region. That gives us great concern. 
They've got arms deals going with every country, every Arab 
nation. They're building nuclear power plants in the region. In 
full disclosure, I'm involved in a commercial effort to help 
secure those power plants. But, nonetheless--and China, itself, 
is aligning with the Iranians, as is Russia, despite the fact 
that China depends on oil out of the Middle East, to the tune 
of 62 percent.
    So, yes, big-power competition is certainly central to the 
United States National Security Strategy.
    Senator Blackburn. Dr. Jackson?
    Dr. Jackson. I think, on the point of great-power 
competition, I would agree with General Keane. This is an 
overdue adjustment. I actually see it as a very bipartisan 
agreement. The challenge is that China and Russia deserve 
greater attention in the priorities. But, I also agree with 
General Keane, just pulling the plug in the Middle East tends 
to end not in happy endings but essentially in whiplash. We've 
seen, as we try to draw down two foreign places like Iraq and 
Syria, we end up getting drawn back in. I think the name of the 
game is, go as small as you can in places like Afghanistan, 
Syria, and Iraq. Go long. Wait for a good deal to come to you. 
Do not face bad deals, and, at the same time, use some of those 
savings, both in mind-share and in resources, to focus on what 
are genuinely larger long-term problems, like competition with 
China, like competition with Russia.
    Senator Blackburn. I yield back.
    Chairman Inhofe. We will continue on without our sound 
system working.
    Senator Manchin.
    Senator Manchin. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you all for your service, and also for being here.
    I come from a State, West Virginia--a very patriotic State. 
We love fighting. We have no problem dogfighting. The thing I 
want to say is--I always said--explain things, and they ask 
questions. So, I'm going to ask an overall question of where we 
are. I've always said, ``If you don't pay attention to history, 
it has a tendency to repeat itself.'' So, I have people that, 
basically, fought in the Korean War. We're still present in 
South Korea. We have over 28,000 troops in South Korea, but 
they have a thriving economy, and they offset a lot of their 
cost for us being there and having that presence in the world. 
We're in Afghanistan for 18 years, going on two decades. We've 
spent over $2 trillion, and there's no resemblance of any 
economy whatsoever. We've left Syria and left the Kurds, the 
only people we had fought like the devil with us and never 
turned their guns on us, but we're still in the country that 
has no problems turning the guns we've given them and teach 
them how to use on us. The people in West Virginia are having a 
hard time. I know what you're saying, and I respect that and 
all of your wisdom, but, for us to still be there with a 
presence and no sign of us ever leaving, thinking we're going 
to leave it a barren waste hole, if you will--it's going to be 
filled up with all this resentment against us. Is it really a 
threat? Is there really a presence of threat that we can't 
control? Have we not built up enough?
    I would say this--enough intelligence in that area that we 
would not monitor their buildup if they're going to--we're back 
on.
    So, I go home to the good people in West Virginia. I'm 
trying to explain to them. I said, ``I really can't. I don't 
know what the plan is.'' We've got people that want out 
immediately. Everyone has--anybody that runs for higher office 
says, ``Let's get out of there. We've been there long enough.'' 
Then the people that really know--the military--says, ``We 
can't abandon them. Look what happened in Iraq. Look what's 
happening in Syria.'' I don't know why in the heck we left the 
Kurds. Can't figure that one out at all.
    So, this whole thing that we have, and they said, ``Well, 
look at South Korea, the presence we have there, but look at 
North Korea, what's going on now.'' Everything seems to be in a 
jumble, and we have fewer of our allies with us, supporting us, 
than ever before. If somebody can put any rationale that I can 
go home to West Virginia and says, ``We've got to keep spending 
and keep keeping the faith.''
    General Keane. Well, I agree with you. I mean, the global 
security challenges the United States is facing today, you 
know, are on a scale that we haven't seen in 40 years, with the 
big-power competition we just talked about, Iranians' attempt 
to seek dominance and control of the Middle East and the flow 
of oil, and certainly the spread of radical Islam, despite some 
of our best efforts to deal with this ideology.
    When it comes to the radical Islam issues, I think we've 
learned to make better choices, and I don't want to relitigate, 
you know, the war in Iraq----
    Senator Manchin. Yes----
    General Keane.--and what our early policies were in 
Afghanistan.
    Senator Manchin. Let me----
    General Keane. We're past all of----
    Senator Manchin. If I can interrupt you one second, because 
I forgot to make this, and, like I say, we've--we probably have 
more veterans per capita than any other State. We've fought in 
everything. You name a war, we'll go to it. But, with that 
being said--with that being said, they bring back to me what 
Eisenhower said, ``Beware of the industrial military complex. 
Beware of that.'' So, they're thinking that we're staying 
engaged because of this military complex, industrial military 
that benefits from the wars that we stay at. You have all this 
right now, at a horrible time, in the most strategic time, that 
we've got to make some decisions in the long run. So, just 
wanted to throw----
    General Keane. Well, I will tell you, from my own knowledge 
of the leaders in the Pentagon, both military and civilian--and 
they would like to be able to get out of this, certainly--but, 
also, at the same time, they are--they've taken an oath to 
protect the American people, and that's what's driving this.
    Listen, we have made some--I think, some very good choices. 
I describe Syria, Iraq, both ISIS, ``Modest investment, big 
payoff, keep ISIS down, don't let them get back.'' Afghanistan, 
we're doing the same thing with al Qaeda, ISIS, and the 
Taliban, who want to be their host. That is a modest 
investment, big payoff, protect the American people. Three 
other places that we've decided to make an investment, very 
modest. We go into Yemen to take down al Qaeda when we have 
opportunities to do so. Couple of hundred people are committed 
to that. We go into Libya, we stopped ISIS from establishing a 
safe haven in Libya. That was their choice, and we put our 
Special Ops guys in there and hit them hard, and kept hitting--
--
    Senator Manchin. I think that's all great.
    General Keane. A couple of hundred guys involved in that, 
and----
    Senator Manchin. But, here's the thing----
    General Keane. Now, why are we--why do we go to those 
places? Because just radical Islamists are there? No. We're 
there because both of those organizations have aspirations to 
hurt America.
    Senator Manchin. If I could----
    General Keane. The third place is in eastern Africa. We've 
got a Maritime Task Force that, every once in a while, goes 
into Somalia and Kenya and goes after al-Shabaab because they 
have aspirations outside of the region. Six places we're 
involved. Forty plus places where radical Islam is in the 
world, we are not involved, but we are involved in this place 
because of the security of the American people. That is what 
you can tell them, Senator.
    Senator Manchin. Well, I do tell them that, but I--and I'll 
just follow up with this. They come back to me immediately and 
they said, ``You know what? We don't want all $2 trillion. A 
little bit of investment in West Virginia--build us a road and 
a bridge and a school--we won't burn it down, and we won't blow 
it up.'' They cannot understand why we're doing--trying to do 
nation-building there. There's no nation to build. The people 
don't even know what-in-the-heck-country they live in. They 
know they live in a province, but not the country. It just 
seems like we're trying to establish something, and money won't 
do it.
    General Keane. Well, we have stopped that, Senator, for the 
last 4 to 5 years. We are not involved in nation-building. We 
went down that rabbit hole, and we paid a horrible price for 
it, and we squandered an awful lot of American taxpayers' 
dollars. I totally agree with you.
    Chairman Inhofe. Senator Hawley.
    Senator Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thanks, to all of our witnesses, for being here today, and 
thanks for what you've said.
    Look, I mean, this is a--our--the situation in Afghanistan 
is--obviously, it's a huge problem. It's--in many ways, seems 
like an intractable problem. But, I disagree with Senator 
Manchin. I think that the people of my State--Missouri is the 
State that I represent--and the American people have been 
really patient. I hear you counseling patience this morning, as 
if--as if, you know, we're just a year or 2 into this thing. 
We're almost 20 years into this thing. We've spent--you know, a 
modest investment? We've spent almost a trillion dollars in 
Afghanistan. We have lost many, many lives in Afghanistan. We 
have been there--it's the longest conflict in our history, and 
I, for one, still can't figure out what in the world our 
strategy is there. I don't think we have a coherent strategy. 
I'll just be honest with you. We've had a succession of 
American presidents who have promised to end this war. It's not 
over. I don't see any particular clear strategy there. I don't 
know what we're doing in Afghanistan. I don't see any 
reasonable prospect that we're soon going to change course, and 
I can tell you, the people of my State don't, either, and 
they're out of patience, and they're right to be out of 
patience, and I'm out of patience. So, let me just ask some 
questions in that vein.
    General Field, let me ask you this. You alluded to this 
earlier. What if we reduced our troop presence below 8,600? 
What's the effect on our ability to conduct direct action 
against al Qaeda and ISIS? I mean, give me your assessment of 
that.
    Brigadier General Field. This is a great question, and sort 
of dangerous ground, because, once we start this thing, it 
might snowball, and all of a sudden we're somewhere we didn't 
necessarily want to be.
    Having said that, I think it's a question for General 
Miller. I think he would probably say he can go lower and still 
conduct the counterterrorism (CT) mission. That's my guess. I 
don't want to put words in his mouth. I think he would say 
that.
    The question, really becomes, then--it's the CT-plus, 
right? What do you need to maintain access to human 
intelligence, to special--the Afghan special operators? What 
price is the Aghan Government going to extract from us to be 
able to stay there and pursue our own interests? Right? It's 
the ``plus'' part of CT. As far as military capabilities, we 
could come way down. Right? It's just a little trickier than 
that.
    But, I would just say, if I may, sir, your constituents are 
not wrong. They're not. But, I guess the question I would ask 
back to them is, does the object of Afghanistan have any value 
whatsoever? Is it worth a certain amount of money and a certain 
amount of lives? I guess that's really the question, and that 
is the question you just asked me.
    Senator Hawley. Yes, indeed. Well, I think our investment 
in Afghanistan--I mean, surely we've answered that question, 
haven't we? A trillion dollars is a lot of money, and lives 
lost, we've spent a lot there. My question is, how are we 
actually going to adopt a strategy in Afghanistan that will see 
to our national interests? My fear is, we're not yet focused 
enough on what our interests actually are. I'm not interested 
in being in Afghanistan just to be in Afghanistan. I'm not 
interested in pursuing policies that haven't worked. We've had 
a succession of administrations over years who have said, 
``This time, it's going to work. This time, we're actually 
going to refocus. This time''--meanwhile, China--China, which 
is a pressing national security threat to us, growing stronger, 
militarily, by the day--China continues to grow in the Indo-
Pacific, poses direct threats--we are not postured correctly in 
the Indo-Pacific. We are not ready to meet that challenge. We 
are behind the curve. We've got to get ahead of the curve, and 
the question is, what are we going to do about that?--I think, 
and I hope that you're sensing--I mean, it's--none of you are, 
any longer, stakeholders in this. I--again, I want to emphasize 
how much I appreciate your service. This is a tough problem, 
obviously. I mean, clearly. But, I just think that it's time 
that we communicated that we need a change.
    General Field, I just wanted to stay with you for a second 
because of what your--your testimony has been very interesting. 
Can I just ask you a further hypothetical? Can you just--let's 
imagine a worst-case scenario. You mentioned the Afghan 
Government, so let's imagine a worst-case scenario. Let's say 
there's no settlement, and let's say that we do reduce our 
troop presence below 8,600, just hypothetically. Let's say that 
the Taliban does expand its territorial control. What would 
that do to our ability to carry out any direct action against 
al Qaeda and ISIS, our CT strategy? If the Taliban expands 
their control, we reduce our troop presence, but we don't have 
a deal.
    Brigadier General Field. The question then becomes, do we 
have any secure ground from which to take direct action? The 
neighborhood is tough. Can we work with Pakistan? Everybody 
says, ``No way.'' I don't know. Maybe we could. We have a lot 
of leverage, as Dr. Jackson was saying. Right now, we have more 
leverage than we did before because of the situation they're 
in. Could we do it outside the country? I'm not sure. But, I'm 
throwing out that it should be explored. Do we have--would 
there be any--could we--would there be any of Afghanistan still 
under the control of the government that we could guarantee? 
Needs to be explored.
    Senator Hawley. Yes. Thank you very much.
    Thank you, again, to all of you, for your service to our 
country, and for being here today.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Thank you.
    Senator Jones.
    Senator Jones. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you, to the witnesses, for being here today.
    I want to go at this a little bit different way, and it is 
really a follow-up, to some extent, from Senator Hawley and 
Senator Manchin.
    General Field, you mentioned, in your prepared remarks, 
your testimony initially--you talked about the need to be 
clear-eyed about our threats, but you also mentioned victory. I 
think one of the frustrations is, what does a ``victory'' look 
like? There is a difference between a victory, in the 
traditional sense of the word, versus achieving objectives, I 
think, and I know Secretary of the Army Ryan D. McCarthy has 
talked about a book that was published recently called 
``Infinite Games.'' That's my concern, that we are in a 
position now where conflicts are not the same, they're--we 
don't have--they're--there is no--when we talk about 
``declaring war on X,'' it implies that there's going to be an 
ultimate winner and an ultimate loser. That just doesn't seem 
to be the case, these days, in anything we're doing, whether 
it's drugs, poverty, or terrorism.
    I'd like for each of you, if you can, a minute, to talk 
about that and the difference between victory--because a lot of 
this may be just trying to reorient the American people a 
little bit about what we're facing in the long term.
    I'll start with you, General Field, and feel free to tell 
me I'm wrong or misguided. I have no qualms about that, either.
    Brigadier General Field. You know, it's a tough question 
for military officers to say that victory isn't--and winning 
isn't what we're all about.
    Senator Jones. Right.
    Brigadier General Field. Having said that, your question, I 
think, sir, is right. In this case, I did use ``theory of 
victory,'' and I struggled with that--should I use 
``victory''?--just for the reason that you said.
    I think, really, in this case, victory is a negotiated 
settlement. How do we get that? I already gave you my 
prescription, my----
    Senator Jones. Right.
    Brigadier General Field.--prescription for getting there. 
But, to your larger point about whether these conflicts just 
need to be managed now--and we need more expertise in managing 
them, not simply having a mindset of military victory. That 
comes back to what Senator Reed said initially is, what are our 
other instruments that we have to strengthen? Diplomacy. Or 
economic development. What are the other things that we need to 
do? You know, we point, always, to the National Defense 
Strategy, but that nests in the National Security Strategy, 
which talks about many other things than just whacking people 
with our military----
    Senator Jones. Right.
    Brigadier General Field.--to be crude.
    Senator Jones. Yes, sir.
    Dr. Jackson. I think you're exactly right to point out, you 
know, sort of, what does ``victory'' mean? I would tell you 
that, in the vein of Clausewitz, ``War is politics by other 
means,'' we're seeking something political, here; and largely, 
we have achieved it, albeit at an enormous cost. That is, 
preventing additional attacks on the American Homeland. Victory 
does not mean we want to administer Afghanistan. Victory does 
not mean we want to stay there just because we've been there. 
It is to prevent attacks.
    I think the operative question--and getting back to the 
earlier Senator's question--why are we there? I think we're 
there to buy an insurance policy for your constituents against 
the possibility, which is hard to estimate, of future external 
attacks from the region. The operative question is, do you want 
to self-insure? Do you want to wear that risk? Personally, my 
opinion, I would not. If I'm going to take out an insurance 
policy--and that's what we're doing right now in this region; 
it's very focused, but it could get, potentially, cheaper--the 
question is, are we overpaying for that insurance policy? That 
is a legitimate question. That's why General Miller is so 
focused on saying, ``How skinny can we get while still 
accomplishing the things we seek politically?'' But, I think 
that's the way I would frame it, and I know it's a tough sell, 
and I know that this has been exhausting. You know, most so for 
a lot of the folks who have been involved with it on the 
ground. This has not been a fun campaign, or a deeply 
satisfying one.
    Senator Jones. Right.
    General, if----
    General Keane. Yes. I mean----
    Senator Jones.--if you would--you mentioned the National 
Defense Strategy, as well--if you would, maybe, incorporate, 
``Do we need to make some changes to that?''--as part of your 
answer on this.
    General Keane. Well, the National Defense Strategy--we 
looked at it for a year as part of the Congressional 
Commission, and we were alarmed by the fact that we were not 
truly ready to provide adequate deterrence for China and 
Russia. There's much needed to be done, and we outlined that 
very specifically in our report, and we were trying to send a 
clarion call to that effect.
    In dealing with warfare, itself--I mean, fundamentally, 
you're trying to change an adversary's behavior--initially, 
politically, if you can, and diplomatically--and, if not, then 
it may lead to confrontation. But, the objective is also to 
change their behavior, which will result in either 
unconditional surrender or some kind of political settlement.
    The problem we have, when you're dealing with radical 
Islamists or extremist terrorism who are conducting a different 
kind of unconventional war, they will always test the will of 
democracies, because the nature of these wars, by definition, 
are protracted. My problem with three administrations now is 
their absolute failure to come to grips with that in terms of 
the public education of the body politic in America, to explain 
why we're in these wars, to give the American people periodic 
assessments, to don't run from setbacks that take place, to 
explain that it's not just military that's involved here, there 
is a whole-of-government approach. I'm not talking about 
nation-building--that's involved here, and look at what the--
President Bush wanted us to go back and watch the Yankees, 
which is a good thing after 9/11. I got it. But, never was the 
progress being made in Iraq or in Afghanistan addressed 
periodically, or the lack of progress, and that's how you keep 
an American population engaged. They have a right to know.
    The same thing in Afghanistan. We made horrible policy 
decisions in Afghanistan that should have been some rendering 
to the American people about, which protracted the war. The 
Taliban didn't protract the war. We protracted the war, and we 
tolerate Pakistan to keep the safe havens in--for the Afghan 
Taliban in that country. Do we address any of that to the 
American people? Have any of the administrations, to include 
this one, gone before the American people and talked to them 
about this, and be straight up about what's happening, what's 
our assessment, what's our plans to deal with it? That's what 
keeps the American people engaged, and so, your constituents 
are poking you in the chest every time you're home, ``What's 
going on there? Why are we still there? It seems like we're not 
making any progress.'' You shouldn't have to explain that to 
the American people. The executive branch should be doing that, 
and we've failed at that miserably through three 
administrations, in my judgment.
    Senator Jones. Thank you.
    Thank you all.
    I appreciate it, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Senator King.
    Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    First, I want to thank you for--and Senator Reed--for 
calling this important hearing. I think it's an important 
discussion.
    I do have a suggestion, however. I'm, as you may know, a 
Member of the Intelligence Committee, and, for 7 years, we've 
been having hearings, in the Intelligence Committee, on 
Afghanistan, and hearings here. There were times when I weren't 
sure we were talking about the same country. So, I think it 
would be very helpful, if this Committee wants to take an 
active role, that we have a classified hearing with the 
intelligence community about what their perceptions are in 
Afghanistan, what the chances are, what would happen if we 
left, if we stayed. I just think that would give us a more 
fulsome picture, because, as I say, they have, over the years, 
had a very different view than the witnesses that we've had at 
this Committee.
    Chairman Inhofe. Well, which one's better?
    Senator King. I would say that the CIA [Central 
Intelligence Agency] is running slightly ahead right now.
    [Laughter.]
    Chairman Inhofe. Okay.
    Senator King. In terms of their assessment. That's all I 
can tell you, Mr. Chairman. But, I just think it's important. 
If we're going to tackle this subject, we ought to have the 
most complete picture that we can, and these witnesses have 
added a great deal to our understanding today.
    Let me talk about the haven-for-terrorism argument, because 
that's really the fundamental justification. Is that a 
realistic justification now? Because there are other places 
that can be havens: Yemen, Libya, Somalia, Mali, Sudan. Is it, 
sort of, geopolitical whack-a-mole: We're going to focus in one 
place, and our adversaries are going to rise up somewhere else?
    Dr. Jackson? Do you see what I'm saying?
    Dr. Jackson. I--absolutely.
    Senator King. I mean, haven-for-terrorism arguing is sort 
of--it reminds me of the domino theory of the 1970s or the 
1960s----
    Dr. Jackson. Yes.
    Senator King.--as a kind of all-purpose justification.
    Dr. Jackson. Absolutely. I think it's an infinitely 
expansible argument, and you're right to ask, what makes 
Afghanistan different? I think at least three different things 
make this particularly difficult and important to us:
    One is, sort of, geography. This turns out to be a 
sanctuary that's hard for us to be at if we're not actually 
physically located there. This is a war being waged in a 
landlocked country surrounded either by enemies or frenemies. 
This is an incredibly hard place to wage a war if you're not 
there. So, the consequences of leaving there, leaving our 
counterterrorism footprint and trying to exert influence from 
outside, is much, much, much more difficult.
    Senator King. So, it would really become a haven----
    Dr. Jackson. Yes, absolutely.
    Senator King.--because of its geography and location.
    Dr. Jackson. We've run this experiment before, in the 
1990s. In other words, the Clinton administration got very 
worried about----
    Senator King. But, we're doing counterterrorism in other 
countries without a military presence.
    Dr. Jackson. Absolutely.
    Senator King. Would that be----
    Dr. Jackson. Yes.
    Senator King.--possible in Afghanistan?
    Dr. Jackson. Not in the same way. In other words, it's much 
easier for us, geographically and politically, to operate in a 
place like Yemen from offshore than it is for us to operate 
offshore into Afghanistan. It has to do with distances, it has 
to do with agreements with neighboring countries, that type of 
thing.
    Second thing I would point out is sponsors. This 
neighborhood is full of people fueling extremist behavior, or 
backing various horses in this race. Iran is a consistent 
backer of various--not just Shite, but Sunni groups. Pakistan 
has had a finger in multiple different proxies.
    Senator King. Could I ask you to accelerate? Because I've 
got a----
    Dr. Jackson. Yep.
    Senator King.--digital timer going down.
    Dr. Jackson. I'll leave it there.
    Senator King. Thank you.
    General Keane. My addition----
    Senator King. Go ahead.
    General Keane.--to that is, we are interested in Yemen, 
Libya, and Somalia and Kenya, and we operate offshore to do 
that. We don't have a physical presence in the country. We use 
direct-action forces to do that.
    Senator King. Right.
    General Keane. As I explained earlier, the reason is, all 
three have aspirations to attack the United States or our 
European allies. In Central and South Asia, much more 
challenging, to be sure, for the reasons we just discussed, and 
I think a physical presence is essential. Half of the world's 
terrorist organizations are in that region; in Pakistan and in 
Afghanistan, in particular.
    Senator King. Well, we've maintained a troop presence in 
Japan, South Korea, Germany, other parts of Europe for 70 
years.
    General Keane. Right.
    Senator King. Is this a case, would you make to the 
American people, that this is a place where we need an 
indefinite presence, not at a terribly high level, but at a 
level that will enable us to keep, as I think you used the 
term----
    General Keane. The--I totally agree----
    Senator King.--``keep our foot on the throat of the 
terrorists''?
    General Keane. I totally agree with that assessment. I 
think it's a political apple that leaders are not willing to 
swallow and talk to the American people honestly about. This is 
a multigenerational problem that we've got. We are being 
selective about which radical Islamist groups are threatening 
the American people, and you can make a case that we could 
possibly have to have a counterterrorism force someplace in 
Central/South Asia--best place is Afghanistan--as long as that 
threat is there, indefinitely.
    Senator King. It will require a military presence to 
support the counterterrorism function. Isn't that----
    General Keane. Yes.
    Senator King.--what you're saying?
    General Keane. I think we will eventually, frankly, get 
down below 8,600 at some point, and we'll narrow that down to 
intelligence, counterterrorism, and airpower that's outside the 
country to be able to support our activities. But, it could 
possibly lead to an indefinite commitment of a small number of 
forces in that country, much like we have less than 1,000 now 
trying to keep our foot on ISIS--keep our foot on their throat 
in Syria to make sure that----
    Senator King. But, I----
    General Keane.--they don't reemerge.
    Senator King.--I think you would agree--and I'm out of 
time, but I think you would agree that, if that's going to be 
the case, somebody's got to tell the American people that.
    General Keane. I totally agree with that, Senator.
    Senator King. Thank you.
    General Keane. Totally agree with that.
    Senator King. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. You know, we were just visiting, here. I 
think there's merit in having a closed hearing of this 
Committee.
    Senator Reed. Intelligence.
    Chairman Inhofe. Well, not necessarily. We can do it 
ourselves.
    Good thought. We'll follow through.
    Senator Duckworth?
    Senator Duckworth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I want to chat a little bit about the AUMF [Authorization 
for use of Military Force] and the role of Congress and what we 
can do to assist in the efforts in Afghanistan.
    The Constitution grants Congress with the sole power to 
declare war. With this authority comes a solemn responsibility 
to make sure our forces are properly resourced and a commitment 
to making sure our Nation actually brings the wars that we 
authorize to an end. As has been referenced today, military 
operations in Afghanistan are conducted pursuant to a broad 
AUMF that Congress enacted in 2001 to authorize the use of all 
necessary and appropriate force against the perpetrators of 9/
11, to prevent those terrorists and their enablers from 
conducting a future attack. While the 107th Congress clearly 
passed the 2001 AUMF to respond to the 9/11 attacks, subsequent 
Congresses and Presidents have done little to prevent multiple 
administrations from interpreting this 2001 law to justify 
nearly any military operation in the region. Whether one 
supports or opposes the current United States military strategy 
in Afghanistan, there should be some consensus--and, more 
importantly, acceptance--that, ultimately, it's the 
responsibility of the 116th Congress to debate and vote on the 
path forward in Afghanistan.
    Building on the issue of democratic accountability, I would 
like each witness to address whether you support the current 
Congress holding votes on whether to repeal the 2001 AUMF and 
whether to pass a new authorization that accurately reflects 
what United States troops are doing on the ground in 
Afghanistan today.
    General Keane. Well, I'll bite on it. I absolutely think 
it's essential that we get a new Authorization for the Use of 
Military Force. President Obama, I think, was stretching it 
when we went back into Iraq. I mean, there is--you can make the 
connection. The current administration is stretching it, you 
know, to deal with our operations in Syria and continuing our 
operations in Iraq.
    When I watch the Congress try to deal with it, I get 
frustrated with it, because we seem to come to an impasse. Part 
of the impasse that concerns me is, you've got to give the 
executive branch--you're giving them authority to use military 
force, but you should not get into the details of what the 
strategy is and start to limit how that force would be used. 
That, it seems to me, is the tension point that I've noticed in 
your deliberations. When we begin to impose that, then this 
body is not going to be able to agree.
    But, I agree with the basic premise. I want the Congress to 
come together and authorize the use of military force, and stop 
using that old authorization document--I don't believe which is 
sufficient for what we're doing today.
    Senator Duckworth. Thank you.
    Dr. Jackson?
    Dr. Jackson. I'm very sympathetic, philosophically, to 
cleaning up the sort of authority situation. However, I will 
say, from the seat I used to sit in, the act of creating the 
detail that hangs on those authorities actually takes time and 
is really necessary. I will say that I think the Commander, 
General Miller, today has the authorities he needs to prosecute 
the war, both against the Taliban and against ISIS-K and al 
Qaeda. It took years to get the right detailed authorities 
there so that he could use a small number of forces to go after 
these very large problems.
    My fear would be, first, do no harm. That is, be careful, 
when we reopen this, that we don't disrupt a series of 
authorities that are necessary to an increasingly skinny force 
waging a war in Afghanistan.
    Senator Duckworth. Thank you.
    General Field?
    Brigadier General Field. So, yes, I think that we certainly 
need another conversation about AUMF, but not necessarily to 
expand the authorities, but to actually limit the authorities 
of the executive branch to keep us--to engage in and then keep 
us in sustained conflict.
    Senator Duckworth. Thank you.
    Very briefly, speaking of renewed congressional oversight 
of this war, I recently joined my colleagues in supporting the 
Ensuring a Durable Afghanistan Peace Act. Our bipartisan bill 
seeks to ensure transparency and oversight of any peace effort 
in the region. I'd love the entire panel, if you could--we're--
I'm out of time; perhaps you could do it in writing--to address 
a constructive role that Congress should play in promoting a 
durable peace process.
    Senator Duckworth. Thank you.
    I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
    Chairman Inhofe. Yes. Senator Peters. Sorry.
    Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Thank you, to our witnesses, for some very thought-
provoking testimony. I appreciate it.
    General Field, I'm interested in your views on whether a, 
quote, ``conditions-based strategy'' remains a credible option, 
given United States policy and rhetoric that we hear on 
Afghanistan. President Trump's rhetoric on Afghanistan has 
included referencing nuclear weapons, and that, if he ``wanted 
to win that war, Afghanistan would we--would be wiped off the 
face of the Earth,'' end of quote from the President. The 
administration has pulled back or withheld aid funding for 
unspecified concerns about corruption. I know that has been 
creating confusion among our Afghan partners. The President has 
made conflicting comments on his policy for the number and role 
of United States troops in Afghanistan. I could go on.
    But, General Field, based on your experience, what has this 
done to U.S. credibility in the region? How has it impacted our 
ability to rely on a condition-based strategy?
    Brigadier General Field. I think we have credibility in the 
region, but there's a lot of uncertainty. There's a lot of 
uncertainty, and even fear, I think, on the part of certain 
segments of the Afghan society.
    The--it would be helpful if we were to determine--once we 
have determined our strategy and the way forward, and that we 
are committed to trying our very best with a negotiated 
settlement, it would be helpful to say that, ``We're here until 
we do it.'' That would be helpful. It would send a very strong 
message to the Taliban, mostly the Taliban in Pakistan.
    Senator Peters. Well, I find it interesting you used the 
term ``once we have determined a strategy.'' We've been there 
20 years. That's quite a long time.
    At the time the administration's South Asia Strategy was 
released, which was the most recent strategy, General Nicholson 
briefed us on a campaign plan that emphasized ensuring the 
Afghan Government controlled the vast majority of the 
population. He had three lines of effort: provide additional 
United States troops as advisor at lower levels within the 
Afghan military; modernize the Afghan air force and double the 
size of Afghan Special Forces so that they can go on the 
offensive; and attack Taliban sources of financing, 
particularly through airstrikes against narcotics and sources 
across the country. It's my understanding that our current 
strategy, the shifting strategies, has shifted away, now, from 
these lines of effort and other than focus on increasing the 
size of the Afghan Special Forces. So, I know that General 
Miller has ended the practice of tracking population control 
and has argued that it's not a useful metric anymore.
    General Field, you were an advisor to General Miller on 
these changes when they took place. Can you place them into 
context for us? Were the military lines of effort that General 
Nicholson prioritized failing? If so, why?
    Brigadier General Field. I wouldn't necessarily say they 
were failing, but we did not have the metrics to say that they 
were succeeding. Now, I know that sounds like a dodge, right?
    Senator Peters. It sounds like more than that.
    Brigadier General Field. But, part of the issue really is 
that we have different sort of lines of effort and metrics each 
time we change our command. Right? So, any strategy depends on 
an alignment of ends, ways, and means. We didn't necessarily 
feel like we had enough resources to execute those lines that 
General Nicholson laid out, particularly the counter-threat 
financing. We didn't have the metrics that they were working, 
at striking drug labs. It was just not--it wasn't--we weren't 
seeing any effect, and we needed all of the resources we had 
for--to pressure the Taliban, certain nodes, and to prosecute 
the fight against ISIS.
    Senator Peters. General Keane, in 2009, over 10 years ago, 
you made clear that you believed that, ``this war is 
winnable''--2009--``and that we should not run'', ``run from 
the term `victory.''' Is that still your opinion? What's that 
victory going to look like?
    General Keane. No. That's not my opinion today. I mean, 
what was taking place in 2009, the Bush administration was 
departing, they left a review on Afghanistan that we had to 
change the strategy to counterinsurgency, much as we had done 
in Iraq and achieved a positive military outcome. The Obama 
administration did their own review--two reviews--and made the 
same conclusion. Then they asked for military options from 
General Petraeus, the CENTCOM [Central Command] Commander, and 
General McChrystal, the Commander in Afghanistan. They wanted 
options. McChrystal and Petraeus gave them a force level of 
80,000. This is a surge, now, an escalation of our forces to be 
able to apply a counterinsurgency strategy, but was--by 
definition, requires more forces. At 80,000, there's no risk. 
At 60,000, there is some risk, and at 40,000, it's the least 
amount of force necessary to win. By ``winning,'' mean we have 
a stable military outcome and the Taliban is not in the 
position to overthrow the government.
    The Obama administration made a decision to cut that by 25 
percent. General Petraeus allegedly said, ``I'm not arguing 
over a transportation bill, here. I'm arguing over the basic 
needs to conduct a successful campaign.'' Then the--so, we went 
in there with 25 percent less, which meant we could not work 
against the Haqqani Network and----
    Senator Peters. General----
    General Keane.--the Quetta Shura in the south, and we 
pulled the forces out 15 months later.
    Senator Peters. General----
    General Keane. That doomed us to where we are today.
    Senator Peters. I'm out of time. I don't mean to cut that 
off. That's part of why we're still here. All these things----
    General Keane. That's part of why we're here today.
    Senator Peters. So, my question is just, is this war 
winnable, like you said in 2009? Is it winnable?
    General Keane. What we need to do today--we're not going to 
summarily defeat the Taliban. What we have to do--we're at a 
stalemate with them. I don't see them being defeated in the 
near term. What I do see is preventing the American people from 
being attacked by the al Qaeda or by ISIS groups. That is our 
focus, and we've been succeeding at that, fortunately, for 18 
years.
    Chairman Inhofe. Okay.
    Well, thank our witnesses. We appreciate it very much. That 
was very blunt and very enlightening, and I appreciate your 
willingness to be here.
    Any further comments?
    Senator Reed. I, too, want to join the Chairman in thanking 
the witnesses for their excellent testimony. I think this issue 
deserves even further scrutiny both in a closed session and in 
further open sessions. But, thank you very, very much for your 
insights today. I appreciate it.
    Thank you.
    Chairman Inhofe. We are adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 11:21 a.m., the Committee adjourned.]

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