Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Defense Secretary Robert Gates told lawmakers that the U.S. must focus efforts in Afghanistan on making sure the country can’t be used as a base for terrorism and lower expectations about nation-building.

Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee today that two additional combat brigades can be sent to Afghanistan by late spring and a third can be there by late summer to bolster the fight against Taliban insurgents. A U.S. Army combat brigade typically encompasses about 3,500 soldiers.

The buildup must be part of a new strategy that emphasizes expelling terrorists and their allies and avoids overreaching in achieving broader economic and political goals, Gates said.

“Afghanistan is the fourth or fifth poorest country in the world,” Gates said. “If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose, because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience or money.”

Gates’s remarks may foreshadow a significant shift in strategy in Afghanistan under President Barack Obama. His predecessor, George W. Bush, who began U.S. military involvement in that country in 2001 after the attacks of Sept. 11, repeatedly cast the mission as an effort to create a strong democratic central government in the tribal, Muslim nation.

The American-backed leader of Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai, has been unable to extend his authority beyond the capital, Kabul, and is increasingly threatened by the Taliban militia that once ruled the country and sheltered al-Qaeda.

Soviet Lesson

The U.S. currently has 36,000 troops in Afghanistan. Adding three brigades would bring that level to at least 46,500.

Gates recalled that the Soviet Union failed in Afghanistan in the 1980s even with 120,000 troops and a “ruthless” method of operating there. “It’s not for nothing that Afghanistan’s known as the ‘graveyard of empires,’” he said.

U.S. goals in Afghanistan must be “modest, realistic,” and “above all, there must be an Afghan face on this war,” Gates said. “The Afghan people must believe this is their war and we are there to help them. If they think we are there for our own purposes, then we will go the way of every other foreign army that has been in Afghanistan.”

Obama said last week that his young administration is engaged in a full review of U.S. goals and strategy in Afghanistan, where insurgent attacks on American, NATO and Afghan government forces last year reached the highest level since 2001.

‘Greatest’ Challenge

Gates called Afghanistan “our greatest military challenge” and made clear that more U.S. troops would be heading there soon to fulfill the requests of ground commanders. Adding soldiers beyond that makes him “deeply skeptical,” Gates said.

“There is no purely military solution,” Gates said. “But it is also clear that we have not had enough troops to provide a baseline level of security in some of the most dangerous areas.”

Committee Chairman Carl Levin said afterward that Gates’s comments about U.S. goals likely reflected both Obama’s priorities and the secretary’s long-held attitude.

“It’s partly the new administration, but it’s also partly where Gates’s own views have been,” said Levin, a Michigan Democrat. Those views “are now more in sync with this administration, perhaps, than the previous administration.”

The committee’s senior Republican member, Senator John McCain of Arizona, said the American public “must understand this is a hard, long slog we’re in, in Afghanistan.”

McCain, who lost the presidency to Obama in last year’s election, said he doesn’t see a “game-changing” strategy in Afghanistan similar to the Sunni Muslims in Iraq who rose up against insurgents with U.S. backing.

Weapons Spending

In addressing broader Defense Department aims, Gates told lawmakers the U.S. faces “hard choices” on weapons spending that may lead to cuts in some programs.

“We may have to invest more in the future-oriented program of one service and less in that of another, particularly when both programs were conceived with the same threat in mind,” Gates, 65, told the senators.

McCain and Levin both said changes in the Pentagon’s acquisition of weapons would be a top priority for the committee.

Even as spending to ease the credit crisis and stimulate the economy has driven the deficit to more than $1 trillion, the U.S. has about 177,000 troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. spends about $12.3 billion a month on the two conflicts, according to an October 2008 report by the Congressional Research Service.

Afghan ‘Exit Ticket’

In Afghanistan, Gates said the highest priority is to train and expand the Afghan army and police, which would give the U.S. an “exit ticket” from the conflict.

He said other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization must contribute more to that effort by providing trainers and helping to finance the expansion of the Afghan forces.

Gates said that expansion will cost as much as $4 billion initially and another $2.5 billion a year after that, while Afghanistan’s total national government income at present is only about $800 million.

While NATO has a force of about 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, many nations restrict their forces from serving in areas of the country where the fighting is most intense. Gates said those countries should remove such restrictions.

Civilian Deaths

Gates also expressed concerns about Afghan civilians killed and injured in the course of U.S.-NATO military operations, saying they do “enormous damage” to the U.S. mission by alienating the local population.

“My worry is that the Afghans come to see us as part of the problem rather than as part of the solution, and then we are lost,” he said.

Fighting al-Qaeda in its refuge inside Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan is an important objective, administration officials say. Gates said today that Pakistan’s government has been told that “we will go after al-Qaeda wherever al-Qaeda is.”

The rapidity of the troop buildup in Afghanistan is partly dependent on how quickly the administration draws down U.S. forces in Iraq. Gates was asked about that pace, which is a potential source of tension between a president committed to a 16-month timetable and military commanders who fear that too rapid a pullout would jeopardize hard-won security gains.

“There is still the potential for setbacks,” Gates warned. “There may be hard days ahead for our troops.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Ken Fireman in Washington at kfireman1@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: January 27, 2009 15:54 EST