Obama's Afghan-Pakistan Strategy: Army War College Model
This paper examines President Obama's Afghan-Pakistan strategy through the lens of the U.S. Army War College (AWC) Strategy Model developed by Yarger and Barber. It applies the model's four-step methodology — identifying national interests, assessing challenges, comparing to existing national strategy, and recommending policy — to evaluate the strategic objectives outlined in Obama's March 27, 2009 address. The paper also incorporates John Feffer's critical assessment of Obama's foreign policy during his first 100 days, noting continuities with Bush-era military spending and overseas commitments. The analysis concludes that while Obama's Afghanistan strategy largely satisfies the AWC model's requirements, his broader global economic and foreign policy strategy fell short of transformative change.
- Introduction: The AWC Strategy Model: Overview of the AWC model and paper scope
- The Blackwell Criteria and Four-Step Methodology: Blackwell criteria and four analytical steps explained
- Analysis of President Obama's Strategy: Obama's national interests and strategic objectives assessed
- National Policy and Strategic Objectives: Obama's policy ends, means, and resources evaluated
- Analysis of Feffer's Critique: Feffer's dissenting view on Obama's foreign policy
- Summary and Conclusion: Synthesis of AWC model assessment and Feffer critique
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What makes this paper effective
- It systematically applies a formal academic framework — the AWC Strategy Model — to evaluate a real-world policy speech, demonstrating structured analytical thinking rather than simple opinion.
- It incorporates a counterpoint source (Feffer, 2009) to add critical perspective and avoid one-sided analysis, showing engagement with dissenting views.
- The paper clearly maps Obama's stated ends, means, and resources onto the model's criteria, providing concrete evidence for each claim.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates framework-based policy analysis: rather than evaluating a political speech on normative or partisan grounds, the author applies an established military-strategic methodology (Yarger and Barber's four-step model) as an objective analytical lens. This technique is common in national security and strategic studies courses and shows how academic frameworks can structure the evaluation of primary-source documents such as presidential addresses.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens by introducing the AWC Strategy Model and its Blackwell criteria, then walks through the model's four steps. It applies these steps to Obama's March 2009 speech, examining national values, interests, and policy objectives with direct textual evidence. A separate section then integrates Feffer's external critique, before the conclusion synthesizes both analyses to reach a nuanced judgment — affirming the Afghanistan strategy while questioning the broader foreign policy record.
Introduction: The AWC Strategy Model
The objective of this paper is to examine President Obama's strategy using the U.S. Army War College (AWC) Strategy Model as developed by Yarger and Barber. The analysis concludes with a review of the U.S. Government (USG) Afghan-Pakistan strategy as addressed in the relevant course lesson.
The Blackwell Criteria and Four-Step Methodology
The Army War College Strategy Model employs the Blackwell criteria to analyze the effects of strategy on a national interest. These criteria are:
(1) Immediacy in terms of time; (2) Geographic proximity; (3) Magnitude; (4) "Infectious" dimensions; and (5) Connectivity — that is, how many links in the chain of events separate a threat or situation from a core national interest.
This framework follows the sorting of interests by intensity and category. As Blackwell notes, these judgments "should be analytically independent from judgments about how important to the United States a particular national security interest is. We may choose to defend a peripheral U.S. interest because it is not costly to do so; the interest nevertheless is still peripheral. Or we may choose not to defend vigorously an important U.S. national security interest because we decide it is too expensive in a variety of ways to do so; the interest nevertheless is still important, and we may well pay dearly for our unreadiness to engage." (Yarger and Barber, 1997)
The model proceeds through four steps:
First Step: Determine U.S. Interests through understanding national values and the global environment, organized by category: homeland defense, economic well-being, favorable world order, and promotion of values.
Second Step: Identify and Assess Challenges to U.S. Interests, including: (a) defense trends (threats and opportunities); (b) economic trends (threats and opportunities); (c) world order trends (threats and opportunities); and (d) promotion of values trends (threats and opportunities). (Yarger and Barber, 1997)
Third Step: Comparison to U.S. National Strategy — conduct a review and analysis to determine whether the assessment agrees with or differs from the present U.S. national security strategy.
Fourth Step: Recommendations for policy based on national diplomatic, economic, and military policy changes needed in both the present and future to protect interests and access opportunities. (Yarger and Barber, 1997)
Analysis of President Obama's Strategy
In terms of national values and national interests, President Obama clearly stated that "Al Qaeda and its allies — the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks — are in Pakistan and Afghanistan." From a national interests standpoint, defending the United States clearly fits Yarger and Barber's definition of defending U.S. interests: the legal, philosophical, and moral basis for the continuation of our system of government.
Among the strategic objectives stated by President Obama were plans for building roads, schools, and hospitals, as well as isolating the Pakistani population from Al Qaeda influence. Increasing the size of Afghan security forces was also identified as a priority, including building an Afghan Army of 134,000 and a police force of 82,000 by 2011.
President Obama further stated goals of enhancing both the intelligence capabilities and the security of Afghan forces, assisting the Afghan government in developing an economy free from the domination of the illicit drug trade, and supporting Afghan elections. Training and recruitment of security forces was likewise identified as a core goal.
Resources dedicated to this effort, as stated by President Obama, included:
(1) $1.5 billion in direct support over the next five years; (2) a bipartisan bill to increase opportunity zones in the border region, develop the economy, and bring hope to areas affected by violence; (3) human resources for training and recruiting Afghan security forces; (4) agricultural specialists, educators, engineers, and lawyers; and (5) support from U.S. allies.
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