Nov. 30 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama will outline
for the public tomorrow the cost of his new strategy in
Afghanistan and the limits on U.S. involvement there, White
House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.

Obama last night ordered his military commanders to begin
carrying out his plan, which he’ll announce in an address from
the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

“You will hear the president discuss clearly that this is
not open-ended,” Gibbs said. “This is about what has to be
done in order to ensure that the Afghans can assume the
responsibility of securing their country.”

Obama has been informing U.S. allies of his plans; calls he
placed today included ones to French President Nicolas Sarkozy
and U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He isn’t discussing troop
levels with the other leaders, Gibbs said. Obama also plans to
brief a group of U.S. lawmakers before his speech, scheduled for
8 p.m. New York time.

Obama is unveiling his strategy, which a U.S. official said
will include deploying 30,000 to 35,000 additional American
troops, as polls show public support for the war dropping.

On the ground in Afghanistan, the U.S. and its North
Atlantic Treaty Organization allies are facing stiffer
resistance from the Taliban. The president has said his main
goal is to disable al-Qaeda and other extremist groups that have
established havens in the border region between Afghanistan and
Pakistan.

Local Forces

Gibbs said the main U.S. objective is to train Afghan army
and police forces so they can fight the insurgency and “so that
we can then transfer that security responsibility appropriately
back to the Afghans.â€

While Obama will “touch onâ€

Obama convened his top national security advisers last
night to lay out his decision and give orders for carrying it
out. Among those he discussed the plan with were Vice President
Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary
Robert Gates, Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, General
David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, and National
Security Adviser Jim Jones.

Obama also spoke with the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan,
Karl Eikenberry, and the top commander on the ground, General
Stanley McChrystal, by secure video conference, Gibbs said.

Orders Issued

“The president communicated his final decision on the
strategy in the Oval Office and issued orders on the strategy’s
implementation,” Gibbs said. Obama’s orders “are being acted
upon by those whose job it is to implement them.”

Obama was briefing other world leaders, including German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and
Chinese President Hu Jintao. He met today at the White House
with Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

The U.K.’s Brown said today his country will add 500 more
troops to Afghanistan, bringing to 10,000 the total number it
has committed there. Brown spoke with Obama for 45 minutes in a
video conference. They agreed on the importance of combining
military and political strategies and asking other nations to
share more of the burden, according to a statement from Brown’s
office.

French Forces

Sarkozy said in Paris today that he will keep French
soldiers in Afghanistan until the country is “pacified and
sovereign.” France has 3,095 troops in Afghanistan, and Sarkozy
didn’t say whether he would add to that force. He and Obama
spoke for about 40 minutes, the French president’s office said.

Obama planned to speak with Afghanistan President Hamid
Karzai and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari either later
today or tomorrow, Gibbs said.

Before departing for his speech at West Point, Obama
planned to brief about 31 lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats,
from the House and Senate, Gibbs said.

Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, the top Republican on the
Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that Obama “is in a
moment in which he really has to regain the approval of the
American people.”

“This is why this speech and the plan is so important,”
he said on CNN.

Explaining to Congress

To help garner support, top administration officials will
be heading to the Capitol. The Senate Armed Services Committee
is scheduled to hear testimony Dec. 2 from Clinton, Gates and
Mullen. McChrystal and Eikenberry will return from Afghanistan
to speak to lawmakers, likely next week.

An issue getting increasing attention among congressional
Democrats is the cost of the war effort. Democratic
Representative David Obey of Wisconsin is among lawmakers
backing a so-called war tax to help pay for the war.

White House Budget Director Peter Orszag has estimated that
each additional soldier in Afghanistan may cost $1 million
annually. Orszag was among the president’s advisers
at his final strategy session.

“The costs of our involvement in Afghanistan both in terms
of our men and women in uniform, the health of the force and
what this will mean” for the federal budget, have “been part
of this discussion from the very beginning,” Gibbs said.

Defense Spending

The Defense Department has spent $168.1 billion on Afghan
operations since the October 2001 invasion through Sept. 30, the
end of fiscal 2009, according to figures released by the
Pentagon today. That includes $47.3 billion spent in fiscal 2009
as the U.S. increased its troop level from 34,400 in January to
about 68,000 now. That’s up from $32 billion spent in fiscal
2008.

The monthly costs averaged $3.9 billion in fiscal 2009,
with a high of $10 billion in September, according to the
Pentagon.

The non-partisan Congressional Research Service in a Sept.
28 report estimated that lawmakers have authorized about $227
billion in spending on Afghanistan since the war started. The
CRS figure includes funding for such categories as civilian
agencies and intelligence as well as military operations.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Julianna Goldman in Washington at
jgoldman6@bloomberg.net ;
Roger Runningen in Washington at
rrunningen@bloomberg.net