328 e lusive v ictories
action where prior choices, whether made by him or by others, have
circumscribed his agency.
Th e Price of a Light Footprint
Th e insurgency against which the United States and its NATO allies
fought in Afghanistan had widened as an indirect consequence of Bush
administration policies. After sweeping the Taliban from power using
very modest forces, the United States committed fewer than 10,000
troops to hunt Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders. The light footprint
approach, as it came to be known, contributed to the collapse of gover-
nance in Afghanistan. U.S. and NATO forces could clear territory
occupied by the Taliban or other insurgents but not hold it. Nor did
Western nations provide adequate rural development aid, though Bush
in 2002 spoke of a large-scale assistance program to restore the war-
ravaged country. In the years that followed, with the Bush adminis-
tration heavily committed in Iraq, the United States and its allies
deployed only 1.6 soldiers per thousand Afghans, a fi gure similar to that
which has marked some of the least successful modern military inter-
ventions, such as the ill-fated Somalia eff ort in the early 1990s.
By 2005 the Taliban had recovered, thanks also to safe havens in
neighboring Pakistan, and violence spread across large parts of Afghani-
stan. In a manner that recalled Vietnam, the insurgents undermined
government control in rural areas through assassination and intimi-
dation, then set up their own shadow government. Th e Afghan gov-
ernment in Kabul under President Hamid Karzai suff ered from massive
corruption and failed to deliver vital services, while government mil-
itary and police performed poorly. Although the Bush administration
fi nally became alarmed enough to add troops, by 2008, insurgents had
expanded their area of control and American military commanders
voiced worries that without substantial U.S. and NATO reinforcements
the Karzai government might collapse. At the time of Obama’s inaugu-
ration, the situation bore an eerie and uncomfortable similarity to the
one Johnson faced in 1964–1965.
Obama might have pursued military alternatives no longer available
to his predecessor. In the abstract, a president who inherits an ongoing
confl ict can choose to withdraw (eff ectively accepting defeat), stay the