Donald Trump has probably never heard of the Grand Old Duke of York and his 10,000 men. But in spelling out his new Afghan strategy, the US president gave a good impersonation of that symbol of military muddle-headedness, incompetence and futility immortalised in the English nursery rhyme.

By marching US troops back up the Afghan hill, having previously solemnly vowed to march them down and out of the country, Trump risks the worst of both worlds: leaving the US and its allies neither up nor down, without a clearly defined mission, and stuck in the middle of a worsening conflict.

His speech on Afghanistan on Monday night was long delayed, and it is easy to see why. White House advisers had been arguing for months over what to do about the 16-year-old war, America’s longest. When the speech came, there were no new ideas or initiatives. Instead Trump retained the main planks of Barack Obama’s policy and tried to dress it up as something fresh.

Two things have changed. One is that Trump has agreed with his generals that troop levels must be increased, reversing the drawdown during the Obama years. There are nearly 10,000 US military personnel in Afghanistan, mostly special forces, advisers and trainers. That figure looks likely to rise by about 4,000, though Trump gave no number.



The other change is more dangerous. After the searing US experience in Iraq, policymakers broadly agreed that future overseas missions should have attainable objectives, a fixed duration, and a clear exit strategy. Not setting such parameters in advance was George W Bush’s big mistake in Iraq. Obama was careful not to repeat it.

Trump has ignored that hard-won knowledge. He has committed the US to waging an open-ended conflict with no limit on its scope or duration, and with no agreed measure of what constitutes victory. Now Britain and other Nato allies will be under pressure to perform a similar volte-face, and increase their combined troop deployments above the current level of roughly 6,500.

Trump’s repeated assertion that the US would “fight to win” is misleading at best and reckless at worst. Obama almost trebled US combat troop levels to around 100,000 after taking office in 2009, in an all-out attempt to finish the war. It did not work, although Obama claimed it did, and he slashed troop levels accordingly. The history of warfare in Afghanistan suggests nobody ever “wins”.



The US has hardly any combat regulars in theatre now, and Trump’s proposed reinforcement of about 4,000 is a drop in the ocean. The security situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated sharply. The Afghan government faces a resurgent Taliban, a continued al-Qaida menace and a rising Islamic State presence. Kabul, once relatively safe, has been targeted by repeated suicide bombings.

According to US estimates, government forces control less than 60% of Afghanistan, with the remainder of the country either contested or under the control of the insurgents.

In an indication of how increasing troop numbers can make matters worse, the annual total number of civilian deaths and injuries has broken previous records each year since Obama’s “surge” in 2009. According to the UN’s mid-year report for 2017, there were 1,662 civilian deaths and 3,581 casualties. Armed conflict has claimed the lives of 26,512 civilians and injured 48,931 since 2009.

The US strategy of training and equipping the Afghan army and police to bear the brunt of the fighting, which Trump indicated will continue, has also been costly. US officials say an average of 20 Afghan national army soldiers are dying each month. The Afghan Ministry of Interior Affairs says 1,302 police officers were killed between March and August, about nine a day.

Despite Trump’s bald threat to cut financial support for Pakistan, which is accused by Washington of failing to suppress Taliban bases in the north-west of the country, he offered no reason as to why his warnings would be heeded when those of Obama and Bush were ignored. His tough words are likely to be seen in Islamabad as typical Trump bluster.



A parallel statement by Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, that Washington is ready to conduct unconditional peace talks with the Taliban, similarly offered nothing new.

The Taliban dismissed the president’s speech as vague and unhelpful, and have threatened to cause more American pain if the war is intensified.

Trump’s political U-turn in recommitting to a war he has previously dismissed as a waste of time and resources marks a victory for the “realists” in the White House, notably HR McMaster, his national security adviser, and James Mattis, his defence secretary, both of whom are former generals.

They were opposed by Steve Bannon and other champions of Trump’s nationalist, “America first” platform, which pledged to end foreign entanglements. Bannon was dismissed from his post as chief strategist last week.

Despite his efforts to justify his about-turn in his prime time TV speech, Trump will find it difficult to convince his domestic supporters, and his foreign allies, that he has a workable policy. And his bad relations with Nato mean he may struggle to get the European troops he wants as the US once again marches up the Afghan hill.