![](https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/01/afghanistan.jpg?w=200&h=196&crop=1)
Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani joined many commentators earlier this month in making the case for doubling U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan from the current 27,000. He and others argue that more troops would address escalating violence in the country and hedge against the increasing fragility of neighboring Pakistan’s government. Such a large-scale U.S. troop increase, however, could be disastrous in the region, where maintaining a relatively light U.S. footprint and building a more significant allied one is the paradoxical key to defeating al-Qaida and the Taliban. Even the 3,000-man increase that U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is currently considering […]