By NSN's own Ilan Goldenberg and Patrick Barry

President Barack Obama's decision to send an additional 17,000 American troops into Afghanistan is igniting debate about what the US can and cannot achieve there. Obama's decision should come as no surprise. During the campaign, he emphatically argued for more attention to be paid to the region where the 9/11 attacks originated. The real indicator of the chances of success is not the number of troops on the ground, however, but the elements contained in the forthcoming strategic review that will be released in April.

Since Obama first outlined his campaign position on Afghanistan in August 2007, the situation has deteriorated so dramatically that today he faces a problem of an entirely different scale.

A rejuvenated insurgency has led to rapidly deteriorating security in Afghanistan, most notably on either side of the border with Pakistan. Exploiting this insecure environment, terrorist groups like al-Qaida have established a regional base from which they can stage attacks against the west. The most recent national intelligence estimates called it the "most serious terrorist threat to the US homeland" (pdf), and nearly every major terrorist incident since 9/11, including the 2004 Madrid attack, the 2005 London bombings and the foiled 2006 plot to blow up 10 transatlantic airliners, can be traced to the region.

There are also troubling signs that the fledgling Karzai government, never the well-functioning model the Bush administration hoped for, is contributing to Afghanistan's downward spiral. Government approval ratings, which once hovered at 80%, have plummeted below 50%. Trust in President Hamid Karzai has also slid, amid allegations of corruption at the highest levels, including charges that his brother has deep ties to the opium trade. In the words of Nato secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer: "The basic problem in Afghanistan is not too much Taliban; it's too little good governance."

Neighbouring Pakistan poses another immediate challenge. There Pakistani Taliban have risen to join their Afghan brethren, and brutal figures like Beitullah Mehsud stir unrest extending from the tribal areas along the northwest border all the way to the Swat Valley, and even Islamabad. Attacks by these groups have also jeopardised Nato and American supply routes into Afghanistan, making the mission there much more difficult and causing the US and its allies to grasp for regional assistance from Afghanistan's neighbours such as Russia, Uzbekistan and even Iran.

The first real opportunity to gage whether the Obama strategy has a chance of reversing the downward spiral is therefore not with the announcement of troop deployments but with the conclusion of its strategic review in April. For that strategy to both succeed and garner the necessary political support in the US, it must address the following issues.

First, America's primary goal must be preventing Afghanistan and the border areas of Pakistan from serving as a staging ground for terrorist attacks against the US and other nations. It must also focus on minimising the destabilising effects that Afghanistan is having on Pakistan – an unstable nuclear power with a population of 170 million people. These two issues most directly impact US national security interests, and while there are other worthy objectives, these must be at the top of the US agenda.

Obtaining these goals cannot be achieved without focusing on Afghan state capacity. While Jeffersonian democracy is unrealistic, an Afghan state does not satisfy its citizens' baseline economic and security requirements will be unable to deny al-Qaida safe havens. The way to achieve this is not primarily through military means but by focusing on building Afghan institutions at the national and local level that are less tainted by corruption, strengthening an Afghan police force that can more effectively enforce the law and protect its citizens and finding pragmatic strategies that loosen the stranglehold of opium.

The US must pursue a regional strategy beginning with a greater focus on Pakistan. Afghanistan and Pakistan's crises are deeply intertwined, with Taliban and al-Qaida elements threatening the stability of both governments. US policy toward Pakistan must move away from overwhelmingly military approaches and toward strengthening the democratically elected civilian government and civil society. The regional strategy must include other critical actors such as Iran, Russia and India, who are all directly affected by the instability in Afghanistan and have the ability to positively impact the situation.

Considering the overwhelming challenges in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is a danger that an unfocused strategy could succumb to mission creep as more and more resources are devoted to an increasingly illusive objective. To avoid this fate the US must develop a focused approach based on measurable and realistic objectives. The question now is whether Obama and his team will be able to deliver such a strategy, and whether or not it is too late for it to work.