On December 21 General Petraeus launched a trial balloon via the New York Times. As his campaign in Afghanistan is failing he presented the great idea to extend the ground war into neighboring Pakistan.
From today's Washington Post we learn that this plan, for now, has thankfully been rejected in favor of more political engagement:
The strategy, determined in last month's White House Afghanistan war review, amounts to an intensifying of existing efforts to overcome widespread suspicion and anti-American sentiment in Pakistan, and build trust and stability.
President Obama and his top national security aides rejected proposals, made by some military commanders and intelligence officials who have lost patience with Pakistan, to allow U.S. ground forces to conduct targeted raids against insurgent safe havens, officials said. They concluded that the United States can ill afford to threaten or further alienate a precarious, nuclear-armed country whose cooperation is essential to the administration on several fronts.
It is unclear from the article what the actual strategy is supposed to be. Biden is flying to Pakistan but what he is supposed to deliver is unclear. It sounds a bit like muddling through like before until something happens or not:
Beginning with Biden's visit, the time may be ripe for a frank exchange of views and priorities between the two sides, another administration official said. The Pakistanis "understand that Afghanistan-Pakistan has become the single most important foreign policy issue to the United States, and their cachet has gone up." But they also realize that they may have reached the point of maximum leverage, this official said, "and things about their region are going to change one way or the other" in the near future, as Congress and the American public grow increasingly disillusioned with the war and a timeline for military withdrawal is set.
"Something is going to give," he said. "There is going to be an end-game scenario and they're trying to guess where we're heading."
There have already been many "frank exchanges" and yes, the Pakistanis, especially General Kiyani, have been asking for a end-game scenario:
"Kayani wants to talk about the end state in South Asia," said one of several Obama administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive relationship. U.S. generals, the official said, "want to talk about the next drone attacks."
The problem is that the U.S. still does not have a strategy and has no idea what it wants. Waiting until "something is going to give" is neither a strategy nor an end-game.
Repeating what was done before, talking tough with Pakistan, they look at the U.S. logistic lines and laugh about it, and tinkering at the edges of the economic aid policies will change nothing. While it has rejected Petraeus lunatic plans, the White House seems still to be under influence of military operational thinking instead of developing some sane and realistic policy to end the Afghanistan conflict.