S.Amdt. 609

SA 609. Mr. McCAIN submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by
him to the bill H.R. 2810, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year
2018 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military
construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy,
to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for
other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:

At the end of subtitle B of title XII, add the following:

SEC. ___. SENSE OF CONGRESS ON THE UNITED STATES STRATEGY FOR
AFGHANISTAN AND SOUTH ASIA.

It is the sense of Congress that--
(1) it is in the national security interest of the United
States that Afghanistan never again serve as a sanctuary for
international terrorists to conduct attacks against the
United States, its allies, or its core interests;
(2) to secure the national security interest of the United
States in Afghanistan, the United States should pursue an
integrated civil-military strategy with strategic objectives
to--
(A) deny, disrupt, degrade, and destroy the ability of
terrorist groups to conduct attacks against the United
States, its allies, and its core interests;
(B) prevent the Taliban from using military force to
overthrow the Government of the Islamic Republic of
Afghanistan and reduce the Taliban's control of the Afghan
population;
(C) improve the capability and capacity of the Government
of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, to the extent
feasible and practicable, to defeat terrorist and insurgent
groups as well as to sustainably and independently provide
security throughout Afghanistan;
(D) establish security conditions in Afghanistan necessary
to encourage and facilitate a negotiated peace process that
supports political reconciliation in Afghanistan and an
eventual diplomatic resolution to the conflict in
Afghanistan; and
(E) forge a regional diplomatic consensus in support of the
long-term stabilization of Afghanistan through integration
into regional patterns of political, security, and economic
cooperation;
(3) the United States should pursue an integrated civil-
military strategy that would achieve United States strategic
objectives by--
(A) bolstering the United States counterterrorism effort in
Afghanistan by--
(i) increasing the number of United States counterterrorism
forces in Afghanistan;
(ii) providing the United States military with status-based
targeting authorities against the Taliban, the Haqqani
Network, al-Qaeda, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and
other terrorist groups that threaten the United States, its
allies, and its core interests; and
(iii) pursuing a joint agreement to secure a long-term,
open-ended counterterrorism partnership between the United
States and the Government of the Islamic Republic of
Afghanistan, which would include an enduring United States
counterterrorism presence in Afghanistan;
(B) improving the military capability and capacity of the
Afghan National Security and Defense Forces (ANSDF) against
the Taliban and other terrorists groups by--
(i) in the short term, establishing United States military
training and advisory teams at the kandak-level of each
Afghan corps, and significantly increasing the availability
of United States airpower and other critical combat enablers
to support Afghan National Security and Defense Forces
operations; and
(ii) in the long term, providing sustained support to the
Afghan National Security and Defense Forces as it develops
and expands its own key enabling capabilities, including
intelligence, logistics, special forces, air lift, and close
air support;
(C) strictly conditioning further United States military,
economic, and governance assistance programs for the
Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan upon
measurable progress in achieving joint United States-
Afghanistan benchmarks for implementing necessary
institutional reforms, especially those related to anti-
corruption, financial transparency, and the rule of law;
(D) imposing graduated diplomatic, military, and economic
costs on Pakistan as long as it continues to provide support
and sanctuary to terrorist and insurgent groups, including
the Taliban and the Haqqani Network, while simultaneously
outlining the potential benefits of a long-term United
States-Pakistan strategic partnership that could result from
the cessation by Pakistan of support for all terrorist and
insurgent groups and constructive role in bringing about a
peaceful resolution of the conflict in Afghanistan; and
(E) intensifying United States regional diplomatic efforts
working through flexible frameworks for regional dialogue
together with Afghanistan, Pakistan, China, India,
Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and other nations to
promote political reconciliation in Afghanistan as well as to
advance regional cooperation on issues such as border
security, intelligence sharing, counternarcotics,
transportation, and trade to reduce mistrust and build
confidence among regional states; and
(4) the President should ensure that the Secretary of
Defense, the Secretary of State, and United States military
commanders have all the necessary means, based on political
and security conditions on the ground in Afghanistan and
unconstrained by arbitrary timelines, to carry out an
integrated civil-military strategy as described in paragraphs
(2) and (3), including financial resources, civilian
personnel, military forces and capabilities, and authorities.
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