One large step: the commander-in-chief on December 1 announced the second Afghan "surge" of his term. Photograph: US Army/Tommy Gilligan

President Obama has finally made a decision: he has called for 30,000 more US troops to be deployed to Afghanistan to "finish the job" and "bring a successful conclusion to the war". This is one of Obama’s most important foreign policy decisions. It comes after months of deliberation and a painstaking consultative process. Yet for those who expected a paradigm shift, the outcome to this much-anticipated and long-awaited announcement has been an anti-climax.

For the president has not reconfigured US military engagement with Afghanistan. He has simply backed General McChrystal’s request for more troops and reaffirmed his commitment to a military strategy that has been under discussion and in the pipeline since before his inauguration. The narrowly defined military objective is to "disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaeda" in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The troop count is where the Obama administration diverges from its predecessor. President George W Bush took a "light footprint" approach, deploying few troops in places far apart. This failure in strategy is now being blamed for having missed the opportunity to quell the then nascent insurgency at the outset. Despite this, Afghanistan has been susceptible to mission creep. It witnessed a gradual but steady increment in troop numbers throughout the Bush administration – and now a jump in numbers under the Obama administration.

Obama is not giving General McChrystal the 40,000 extra soldiers he requested. But with a contribution of troops from other NATO allied countries – the total number is likely to meet McChrystal’s requirements to wage the desired counter-insurgency war being articulated. This will bring the number of troops in Afghanistan to more than 100,000 – reminiscent of the numbers present during the Soviet occupation in the 1980s.

Whether this troop surge will quell the insurgency is questionable. Early indications from the first increase of 21,000 soldiers announced earlier this year point to an exacerbation and escalation of violence, with military fatalities and civilian casualties reaching record high levels. The jury is still out on the impact of this troop surge, as military operations are ongoing. But more troops are likely to lead to an intensification of the war and a further militarisation of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. It is a high-risk, high-stakes strategy.

This troop surge is framed within an exit strategy. Obama wants a rapid deployment by early 2010 to "reverse the Taliban momentum", before handing over responsibility to Afghan forces and starting the withdrawal of US troops by July 2011. The president has made clear that the Afghan government needs to play its part in tackling the Taliban on its border. It is setting out plans to train quickly large numbers of the Afghan army to take over the fight, but this is not without its difficulties. The high rates of attrition, ethnic imbalances, and poor fighting capabilities of the Afghan army could undermine the counterinsurgency effort.

The number of troops, both Afghan and US/NATO, has become a defining factor in Obama’s "AfPak" strategy. The more important issue, however, is what these troops will do on the ground: how effective a counter-insurgency strategy they are likely to implement and how their increased presence is received by war-weary Afghans. It is these factors that will determine the future course and conduct of the war and how quickly US/NATO troops are able to enter into and then extricate themselves from the AfPak conflict.

As the current strategy plans for a surge and then an exit from Afghanistan, it inextricably links any successes there with Pakistan. It also points to the importance of tackling al-Qaeda and foreign militancy in Pakistan’s tribal belt. Conflating the two separate but parallel conflicts into one existential threat further complicates any exit strategy from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. It will take a well-formulated approach, not primarily determined by the troop surge, to tackle the Taliban on both sides of the Durand line.