Robert D. Blackwill

There are no easy or cost-free ways to escape the current quagmire in Afghanistan. Although it has problems, a de facto partition of Afghanistan, in which Washington pursues nation building in the north and counterterrorism in the south, offers an acceptable fallback.

The USA should make a massive commitment, of Marshall Plan proportions, to assist the USSR to build a post-communist free market economy. This would act as a powerful inducement for reformers like Gorbachev to abandon all ambition to retain any commitment to communism. The West should (1) provide copious communications infrastructure (2) enlist Soviet help in global security management issues (3) offer massive economic aid "conditional upon political pluralization and a coherent economic program for moving rapidly to a market economy".