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Weve tried killing terrorists. Lots and lots of them. As many as 42,000 Taliban and other insurgents have been killed and another 19,000 wounded in fighting since 2001, according to one rough 2016 estimate. The United States has also carried out more than 400 drone strikes in Pakistan, decimating Al Qaedas core leadership. Last year a drone took out the Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour.

Result: The Talibans numbers in 2005 were estimated at anywhere between 2,000 and 10,000 fighters. Within a decade, those numbers had grown to an estimated 60,000 fighters.

Weve tried carrots and sticks with Pakistan. In 2011, Washington gave $3.5 billion in aid to Islamabad. That same year we killed Osama bin Laden in the garrison city of Abbottabad. Then the aid plunged.

Result: Last month, James Mattis withheld another $50 million in aid because the Defense Department could not certify that Pakistan had taken sufficient action against the Haqqani network, though Islamabad claims otherwise. American leverage with Pakistan has declined as Chinese investment in the country has surged, reaching $62 billion this year.

Weve tried diplomacy. Getting the Taliban to the table was one of John Kerrys core ambitions as secretary of state. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, both made clear they were eager to reach an accommodation.

Result: The Taliban launched a rocket attack aimed at Kerry during his visit to the country last year. The groups insistence that all foreign troops withdraw before it enters talks gives away its game, which isnt to share power with the elected government, but to seize power from it.

What about two supposedly untried options: another surge, exceeding what Obama did in troop numbers but not limited by deadlines or restrictive rules of engagement; or, alternatively, a complete withdrawal of our troops?

But thats been tried, too. Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s practiced a bomb-the-stuff-out-of-them approach to warfare, likely including the use of chemical weapons. They devoted a decade to the effort and lost. America effectively abandoned the region, too, as we imagined life in a supposedly post-historical world.

We know what happened next. Between 1990 and 2000, tens of thousands of Afghans as many as a million people, according to one estimate died in three waves of civil war. The Taliban took Kabul in 1996; Osama bin Laden returned that same year. Pakistan and India tested nuclear weapons two years later. Then came Sept. 11, 2001.

President Trump may think hes trying something new with his Afghan policy. He isnt. Obama killed a lot of terrorists. George W. Bush pursued what amounted to a conditions-based approach, without target dates for withdrawal. Both were often stern with Pakistan. Both conducted intensive policy reviews.

Trump may also think hes going to win in Afghanistan. Thats not happening either, not in our lifetimes. Even if we could kill every insurgent tomorrow, they would return, as long as they can draw on the religious fanaticism of the madrasas, the ethnic ambitions of the Pashtun, and the profits of the heroin trade.

A more forthright president might have leveled with the American people. We wont win, at least as most of us imagine winning. But we cant leave, not least because it would create the kind of vacuum in Afghanistan that the Islamic State so swiftly filled, to such devastating local and international effect, in Syria and Iraq.

What can we do? With relatively modest troop increases, we can provide the elected Afghan government with sufficient military support to reverse some of the Talibans recent gains and ensure that it cannot seize Afghan cities or control entire provinces. With relatively modest troop numbers, we can also try to keep U.S. casualties relatively low over time, avoiding the political race to the exits when combat fatalities rise.

Bottom line: We need an approach thats Afghan-sufficient, from a military point of view, and America-sustainable, from a political one, for the sake of an open-ended commitment to an ill-starred country from which there is no way out.

Trump, incredibly, may have alighted on the best of a bad set of Afghan options.

Read more:
On Afghanistan, There's No Way Out - New York Times