Obama's Afghanistan war speech partly a bid for more foreign troops
In his Afghanistan war speech Tuesday, Obama is expected to call for more US troops to fight. But he'll need as many as 10,000 new foreign troop commitments, too, to get to the force size military commanders say is needed.
General Stanley McChrystal, head of NATO troops in Afghanistan, arrives at a ceremony in Kabul November 21.
Omar Sobhani/Reuters
Washington
President Obama's speech next Tuesday laying out his plans for Afghanistan is aimed first at the American public, but another crucial audience is overseas at NATO and in foreign capitals where the president will be seeking additional troop contributions.
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Mr. Obama is expected to call for about a 50 percent increase in US troops over the 68,000 already fighting in Afghanistan.
But that number will not reach the 40,000 additional soldiers that US military commanders are seeking. A key part of the president's plan will be to reach the military's goal for an expanded fighting force through foreign contributions, say administration officials and some Afghan war policy analysts.
"At the end of the day, I believe that between what President Obama announces and what the allies end up putting in will get us to General McChrystal's 40,000," says Lawrence Korb, a national security policy analyst and a former Pentagon official, referring to the troop request made to Obama by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan.
While some pledges have already come in, initial reports suggest that US partners in Afghanistan will reach only about the halfway mark in the approximately 10,000 additional soldiers Obama will ask them to contribute. Instead of sending more troops, some NATO members, like Canada and The Netherlands, are instead drawing up plans to pull out.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown predicted earlier this week that some NATO countries would together come up with about 5,000 additional troops. In a letter to NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Mr. Brown said a majority of the 10 NATO members and other partners that British officials had contacted in recent weeks intend to send additional troops, police trainers, or civilian development workers.
Some officials at NATO headquarters in Brussels, however, caution that new contributions are not likely to jump immediately as a result of Obama's new Afghanistan strategy. They note that London is planning to host an international conference on Afghanistan in early January, and that some countries are likely to wait for the results of that conference before making additional commitments.
